The G File (34 page)

It was the third time in the last few days that he had run through the case concerning G in detail – for Ulrike, Bausen and now Beate Moerk – and it was beginning to dawn on him that he felt more isolated from all that had happened on each occasion that he had to sit down and recount it.

Maybe that wasn’t so odd. The book of memoirs he intended writing was going to focus on Jaan G. Hennan, so presumably there was – in addition to all the other traumatic detritus – something mysterious and hidden away in this old story. Something which resisted all forms of description and narration. Or at least resisted his own tentative efforts to do so.

Perhaps it is a sort of therapy that one day will cure me? he thought, somewhat surprised. The effort, that is. But hell’s bells, why can’t I just amputate the whole confounded business and be rid of it, once and for all?

In any case, Beate Moerk seemed obviously interested. She asked questions, made notes and asked him to explain things in more detail – so the whole procedure lasted three cups of coffee, the same number of Danish pastries and getting on for an hour.

But it went much more quickly when it came to deciding what the Kaalbringen police could do to help. After all, there was not a lot they could be asked to do. Apart from trying to find Verlangen.

Or at least to find something that indicated that he had been there. Some three weeks ago. Round about 15 April. Moerk promised to start digging immediately: all being well it should only take a few hours to check every hotel and boarding house in the area, and irrespective of the outcome she should be able to ring Bausen some time that evening.

As far as Jaan G. Hennan was concerned, there was nothing much more they could do than something similar – but preferably somewhat more discreet. Mind you, if he really was in Kaalbringen and was using his real name, it should not be especially difficult to find him. But on the other hand, if for some reason or another he preferred to use a different identity, that would change the situation of course.

And they would have to take into account the fact that G – wherever he happened to be – was a free man with the same human rights as everybody else.

Van Veeteren informed Inspector Moerk that – unless something startling happened – he would be setting off for Maardam at some point during Sunday evening, and wondered if he might invite her to a late lunch or early dinner before he left Kaalbringen. Tomorrow, in other words. Presumably together with Bausen.

He thought she hesitated for a moment before accepting the invitation in principle – but she would have to discuss the situation with her husband first.

That was perfectly understandable, of course. She promised to give a definite answer when she telephoned Bausen that evening.

He had just over an hour to fill before meeting Bausen for lunch, and took a walk down to the harbour and marina. He crossed over Fisktorget, and found he remembered the names of all the buildings and streets in or running into the square: Dooms gränd, Esplanaden, See Warf – the hotel he had stayed at for over a month – Hoistraat and Minders steeg.

It felt odd to be wandering around here again – the axe-murderer case was almost a decade ago now: but the years had drained away at an amazing speed, as they usually did when memories had not been kept alive by return visits. The boats bobbing up and down in the marina could well have been exactly the same as the ones all that time ago, he thought, and the same applied to the ice cream kiosk and the girls lounging around in front of it. And when he branched off onto the well-worn pedestrian and cycle path through the trees of Stadsskogen, he found himself expecting to come across the place where one of the victims had fallen foul of the murderer’s razor-sharp axe.

But he didn’t. He emerged into the Rikken housing estate without having found the exact scene of the crime, and realized that even when you see again and recognize familiar places, there has to be an allotted portion of illusion and imagination. Of course.

As he tried to find the nearest way up to the Blue Ship restaurant, he thought instead about whether he would recognize G if he happened to bump into him.

It was far from certain, he had to admit. At least if it was just a brief meeting with other people milling about.

And if – against all the odds, he reckoned – G really was here in Kaalbringen and wanted to remain incognito, he had every chance of succeeding in his desire.

In the space of fifteen years you could change every single cell in your body twice over, if Van Veeteren remembered rightly what he had been taught in his biology classes at the beginning of time. You were at the mercy of inherent forces, as it were.

He arrived at the Blue Ship in somewhat low spirits at a couple of minutes past one. Bausen had already found a window table with a good view.

Let’s face it, Van Veeteren thought: Ulrike was no doubt right. This is not going to lead anywhere.

But it’s good fun to meet an old axe murderer again. No doubt about that.

Beate Moerk set about what she needed to do the moment Van Veeteren left Kaalbringen police station. According to the telephone directory there were twenty-eight different hotels and bed-and-breakfast establishments where one could spend a night or indeed several in the little coastal town of Kaalbringen, but she knew that only about half of them were open all the year round. Exactly which ones were open in the usually rainy and not exactly hospitable month of April was not clear, but she decided to leave nothing to chance and started telephoning them all, one after another in alphabetical order.

After five calls she changed tactics, and decided to use faxes instead of the telephone. Half an hour later she had sent out information to all the establishments unlikely still to be in hibernation – but she did not include a photograph of Verlangen: he looked even worse in a photocopy than he did in reality – like a botched Rorschach test or something of that sort – and in view of the fact that Van Veeteren could see no reason why he would have used a false name, she hoped it didn’t matter.

Did they have the name Maarten Verlangen in their register? At some time in April this year – or at any other time, come to that. Please reply to Inspector Moerk at the police station. Preferably before five p.m. Negative or positive. It was a routine matter, but urgent.

By the time she left her office at a few minutes past three she had received eleven responses to the nineteen faxes she had sent out.

All of them negative.

Van Veeteren had one victory and one draw in the bag from the games played the previous evening, but by the end of the Saturday afternoon session Bausen had caught up at 2–2. They decided to postpone a deciding game until later in the evening, and combined (but with Bausen very much in charge) to prepare a stew containing rosada fish, hake, mussels, olives, garlic, peeled tomatoes and parsley, which they ate together with saffron rice and thin slices of crispy bacon.

Van Veeteren was inclined to agree with Bausen that it was top hole, as good as it damned well gets. Especially when, as in this case, it was washed down by a bottle of white Mersault, one of the very last of the 1973 vintage in Bausen’s cellar.

Black coffee, a calvados and a Monte Canario cigar to round things off – and, Bausen claimed, heavenly bliss would be attained via a few simple but testing yoga exercises recommended by Iyenghir, devised specially for people with stiff loins and excessively short rear thigh muscles. Men over the age of fifteen, in other words.

But not immediately after the food, God forbid. On this occasion it was merely theoretical.

The theory had barely been considered when Inspector Moerk rang to report on progress. Bausen handed the telephone over to Van Veeteren, who was half-lying on the sofa as he heard that seventeen of the nineteen hotels and B&B establishments had responded, and could confirm that they had not had as a customer anybody by the name of Maarten Verlangen – nor anybody corresponding to the description of him – during the past year. Neither in April nor in any other month.

So two establishments had not responded – probably because they had not yet opened for the season, but Moerk promised to look into that the following day. When she was also looking forward to having dinner with the two former chief inspectors at round about six p.m.

‘Where?’ she wondered.

Van Veeteren consulted his host briefly, and they agreed on Fisherman’s Friend. The best ought to be good enough – and it promised to be that sort of occasion.

Inspector Moerk assured them that she was very pleased about the choice of venue, and wished the two gentlemen a very pleasant evening. What were they doing, in fact? Wine and cigarettes and chess, presumably?

What? Yoga exercises?

She wished them sweet dreams and hoped they would soon be feeling better, then hung up. Van Veeteren noticed that he was smiling.

The fifth game was soon abandoned as a draw, and as the time was merely half past eleven – and there was still half a bottle of 1991 Conde de Valdemar on the table – they agreed to make one final attempt at a decider.

And so it was turned two o’clock when Bausen blew out the last candle with a tired sigh. Another draw. Final result: 3–3.

‘That’s life,’ said Van Veeteren when he had settled down in the guest bed and Bausen stood in the doorway to wish him goodnight. ‘We’re unbeatable, that’s the bottom line.’

‘I agree entirely,’ said Bausen. ‘And if that bastard G really is here in Kaalbringen, we’ll nail him as well.’

‘Let’s hope and pray that’s the case,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘If Inspector Moerk has found Verlangen by tomorrow, I’ll bet there’s another chapter still to be written in this damned story, despite everything.’

But that was not the case.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said when they had sat down at a table in the conservatory at Fisherman’s Friend, ‘but it seems this Verlangen character hasn’t been here in Kaalbringen after all. Or at least, he hasn’t spent a night in any of our hotels or B&B establishments.’

‘How carefully have you checked?’ asked Bausen.

‘As carefully as you could ask for,’ said Moerk. ‘But it’s not a hundred per cent certain, of course. There’s a youth hostel, and quite a few private guest rooms as well – but only in the summer months. If he really has spent a few days here, it’s possible that he stayed with a friend, don’t you think?’

‘It’s possible,’ Van Veeteren agreed, ‘but unlikely. For one thing he doesn’t have any friends, according to his daughter . . . Not outside Maardam, at least. And for another, a good friend would surely have reported the fact if he’d gone missing. But it’s obvious that we’re clutching at straws here in any case. He might simply have been passing through, for instance.’

‘The phone call to his grandson came from the railway station, is that right?’ asked Moerk.

‘Unfortunately, yes,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘A call box. That could mean that he was on his way to somewhere else, of course – or back to Maardam: but I don’t think there’s much point in speculating about that.’

‘But all this doesn’t exclude the possibility that he did spend a few days here,’ said Bausen optimistically. ‘And that’s the main point, isn’t it?’

Van Veeteren nodded.
The main point?
he wondered as he gazed out over the sea, which was grey and ambivalent in the gathering dusk a hundred metres or so below them. What does he mean by
the main point
?

The waiter came with menus, and there was a pause in the conversation. Van Veeteren leafed through the stiff pages, and was reminded that this wasn’t just any old restaurant. It was perched up on a limestone cliff a kilometre or so east of Kaalbringen where the coast became much more hilly – and especially out here in the conservatory one seemed to be floating on air. Seagulls were soaring around in the gentle breeze, and he recalled – or thought he recalled in any case – that he had been sitting at this very same table with Bausen nine years ago. They had eaten turbot, if he remembered rightly, and drunk a bottle of Sauternes . . .

That was before the antiquarian bookshop. Before Ulrike. Before Erich’s death.

It wasn’t even a decade ago, he thought. But nevertheless my life has changed fundamentally. I’d never have believed it at that time.

Bausen cleared his throat, and Van Veeteren came back down to earth.

‘Anyway,’ he said. ‘Verlangen has presumably been here, at least for an hour or two – but I don’t think we’re going to get any further than that at the moment. I’m inclined to regard this meal as pleasure rather than business.’

‘Objection!’ said Bausen. ‘Why restrict yourself to either– or when you can have both–and? I assume there’s a Wanted notice out on this Verlangen character, and that you and your colleagues at the police station are keeping your eyes skinned.’

There seemed to be a degree of irony in this assumption, and Beate Moerk smiled in order to show that she had realized that.

‘We’re all eyes, yes,’ she said. ‘If we discover the slightest trace of Verlangen – or of Jaan G. Hennan come to that – I promise that you will hear about it without delay. Maardam CID, I assume?’

‘Well,’ said Van Veeteren, digging out a business card. ‘I think it would be better if you contacted Krantze’s Antiquarian Bookshop in the first place. Discretion is the better part of valour, as they say.’

‘I’m with you,’ said Moerk, accepting the card. ‘But to tell you the truth, I’m feeling a bit peckish. I thought our agreement included a bite to eat?’

‘Absolutely right,’ said Bausen. ‘There’s a time for everything, and now it’s time to eat.’

During the drive back home he listened to Pergolesi and thought about his memoirs.

Or rather, why he had interrupted them.

The bottom line was that it was not – as he often maintained and used as an excuse – the murder investigation involving G that had thrown a spanner into the works. Of course not. It just so happened that the two things occurred at the same time, and he needed an excuse.

In fact, the need to document his life as a police officer seemed to have deserted him. The need to put things into perspective and put into words his thirty years in the police force . . . The feeling that something had to be justified.