Hakan Nesser - The Inspector and Silence

‘Hairslide,’ said Ruth Najda. ‘Not hairband.’

‘Okay. When did she set off?’

The girl checked her watch then shrugged her shoulders.

‘A quarter of an hour ago, more or less. She said she’d be back in five minutes, but that was thirteen and a half minutes ago.’

‘Hell and damnation!’ said Reinhart. ‘Show us exactly which way she took!’

‘Why are you so-’ Ruth Najda began, but the chief inspector interrupted her.

‘Get on with it!’ he bellowed. ‘We’re in a hurry and this isn’t a game!’

‘Okay,’ said the girl, and set off through the alders.

‘How’s it going?’ yelled Suijderbeck into the microphone. ‘Can’t you switch off that damned engine so that we can hear what you say?’

‘It’s not easy to fly a helicopter without an engine,’ explained the voice. ‘But we caught a glimpse of somebody down below a couple of minutes ago. It might have been him. And the guys down there are hot on his heels.’

‘Well done!’ roared Suijderbeck. ‘Make sure he doesn’t get away, because if he does I’ll be up there with you before you know what’s hit you, and kick you all out one after another. Is that clear?’

There was a crackling noise over and over again. Then:

‘Your name’s Suijderbeck, is that right?’

‘Yes. Why?’

‘I thought I recognized your style, that’s all.’

‘Over and out,’ said Suijderbeck.

It was Reinhart who saw them first.

He glimpsed the girl’s long, fair hair flashing past some tree trunks, then Wim Fingher’s back appeared briefly. Then they came into full view as they emerged from between two large, moss-covered boulders – first the girl and then, ever so close behind, the murderer, clutching a black baton in his hand.

Van Veeteren stopped dead. Reinhart stumbled, recovered his balance and reached for his gun – but it wasn’t necessary: at that very moment there was a commotion in the thicket and two uniformed police officers came racing out. One threw himself at Wim Fingher in a flying tackle that wouldn’t have been out of place in any American B-movie you could think of, the chief inspector thought. It sent him crashing to the ground, and the other officer stood with his legs wide apart, his pistol aimed at the murderer’s head from a metre away.

‘If you move just one centimetre, you fucking monster, I’ll blow your brains out,’ he explained patiently.

All in all a very professional operation, and the chief inspector suddenly felt utterly exhausted.

Bottomless exhaustion, and he realized that he hadn’t slept a wink for over twenty-four hours.

‘Why did you do that?’ asked Helene Klausner.

‘It was necessary’ Reinhart explained. ‘He’s sick.’

‘Sick?’

‘Yes,’ said Reinhart. ‘Did he touch you?’

‘Touch me? No, he was just helping me to find my hair-slide. This.’

She waved something sky-blue. The chief inspector nodded.

‘Good,’ he said. ‘But shouldn’t you be having breakfast now? Off you go!’

‘All right. Bye-bye!’

They watched the girls slowly ambling towards the red building a little further along the shore.

‘Can I borrow your diving mask now?’ they heard the dark-haired girl ask. ‘I was waiting all the time, and you promised…’

‘Yes, of course,’ said the blonde cheerfully, setting up her hair with a well-practised movement. ‘Let’s have breakfast first, though.’

The chief inspector cleared his throat and went to sit down in the boat.

‘That’s that, then,’ he said. ‘Would you be so kind as to cast off.’

Kluuge tried to glare into the telephone receiver.

It was three in the afternoon, he was in bed and Deborah was massaging his shoulders and chest. She was sitting astride him, and he could feel the baby pressing up against his own stomach. It was a divinely inspired moment, in both a spiritual and physical sense, no doubt about that. And then Chief of Police Malijsen interrupted it with a telephone call!

‘Why the hell didn’t you let me know?’ he screeched. ‘You ought to have known that you couldn’t handle a situation like this on your own. It was just an amazing stroke of luck that it didn’t end in chaos! I shall make sure personally that you get…’

Kluuge placed the receiver under the pillow and thought for three seconds. Then he took it out again.

‘Shut your trap, you stupid bugger!’ he said, and hung up.

‘Well done,’ said Deborah.

As far as he could recall, those present were the same as last time, and it was a while before he was alone with the editor.

‘Well, what do you think?’ asked Przebuda. ‘I expect you’ve seen it before?’

Van Veeteren nodded.

‘Yes, of course,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘I can’t say that Mazursky is one of my favourites, but The Tempest is one of his best.’

‘I agree entirely,’ said Przebuda. ‘Three cheers for The Tempest. There’s something special about Crete as well.’

‘There certainly is,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘Can I buy you a drink?’

Przebuda shook his head demonstratively. Then he smiled.

‘No chance,’ he said. ‘But I have a decent meal up my sleeve, and a few good wines. A Margaux ’71 and a Mersault.’

‘Why are we hanging around here, then?’ wondered the chief inspector.

‘Case closed, I take it?’ assumed Przebuda after the mushroom pasty, veal medallions in a lemon sauce, watercress salad and one and a half bottles of wine.

‘Yes,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘Case closed. A very nasty business. There are no extenuating circumstances when children are attacked. And heaven remains silent.’

‘And heaven remains silent,’ echoed Przebuda. ‘Yes, it tends to do that. How did you work it out? That he was the one, I mean?’

The chief inspector leaned back and paused for a few moments before answering.

‘It was in the telephone directory,’ he said eventually.

‘The telephone directory?’

‘Yes. Do you remember Ewa Siguera?’

The editor hesitated.

‘Er, that woman in the photograph?’

‘Yes. Her name wasn’t Siguera. It was Figuera. You’d heard wrongly. Or written it down wrongly.’

‘Good God,’ said Przebuda and froze, his glass halfway to his mouth. ‘You surely don’t mean that if…’

The chief inspector shook his head.

‘No. Don’t worry. The dead were already dead. It’s just that things might have gone a bit faster.’

Mind you, on second thoughts he realized that this wasn’t actually the case. The reverse was more likely in fact. If he’d had the right name from the start, he might well never have caught on to the realities. Not in time, anyway – in time to prevent that girl with the blonde hair and the hairslide from… No, he preferred not to imagine what might have happened.

Przebuda was sitting there in silence, and seemed to be meditating.

‘I don’t understand this,’ he said. ‘What the devil had Ewa Siguera – sorry, Figuera – to do with Wim Fingher?’

‘Nothing,’ said the chief inspector. ‘Nothing at all. This really is an excellent wine. It’s so rare to find this very dry aftertaste penetrating even under the tongue…’

‘I have another bottle,’ said Przebuda. ‘Cheers!’

They drank.

‘Well?’

‘Nothing at all, as I said,’ the chief inspector resumed. ‘But when I was preparing to call Figuera, I came across the name Fingher on the same page. The same column, in fact, just a couple of lines further down. It’s not exactly a common name…’

Przebuda tried to nod and shake his head at the same time.

‘Anyway, then I remembered the two comments I’d heard when I called on them the second time, on the Thursday. It must have been Mathias Fingher – the father, that is – who said both of them. He said that they only had one son, and he mentioned that his wife was going to visit a grandchild. Or it could have been her who said that.’