The G File (7 page)

‘The doctors thought so. It’s for varicose veins.’

‘I see,’ said the Chief Inspector. ‘Anything else?’

‘Yes, I’m afraid so,’ said Münster. ‘Hiller will no doubt be on to you. Something’s happened in Linden, if I understood it rightly.’

‘Linden?’

‘Yes. If we don’t have anything more important on – and we might not have now that—’

‘We’ll have to see,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘You’ll be in your office if I need you, I take it?’

‘Buried under a drift of papers,’ said Münster with a sigh, and continued down the corridor.

Van Veeteren entered his office, and noted that it smelled rather like a working men’s lodging house. Not that he had ever lived in such an establishment, but he had been inside quite a few in the course of his duties.

He opened the window wide and lit a cigarette. Inhaled deeply. Another morning and I’m still alive, he thought, and it struck him that what he would like to do more than anything else was to go and lie down for a while.

Was there anything in the rules and regulations that said you were not allowed to have a bed in your office?

‘Yes, well, it’s that business in Linden,’ said Hiller, pouring some water into a pot of yellow gerbera. ‘I suppose we’ll have to drive out there and take a look.’

‘What’s it all about?’ asked Van Veeteren, contemplating the chief of police’s plants. There must have been about thirty: in front of the big picture window, on the desk, on a little table in the corner and on the bookshelves. It’s beginning to look like an obsession, he thought, and wondered what that was a sign of. Growing roses was a substitute for passion – he had read that somewhere; but Hiller’s display of plants in his office on the fourth floor of the police station was much more difficult to pin down. Van Veeteren’s botanical knowledge was limited, but even so he thought he could identify aspidistra and hortensia and yucca palm.

And gerbera.

The chief of police put down his watering can.

‘A dead woman,’ he said. ‘At the bottom of a swimming pool.’

‘Drowned?’

‘No. Certainly not drowned.’

‘Really?’

‘There was no water in the pool. It’s rather difficult to drown in those circumstances. Not to say impossible.’

A slight twitch of the mouth suggested that Hiller was indulging his sense of humour. Van Veeteren sat down on the visitor chair.

‘Murder? Manslaughter?’

‘Probably not. She probably fell in by sheer mischance. Or dived in by mistake. But it seems to be not straightforward, and Sachs has asked for assistance. He’s not quite himself after that little haemorrhage he had – no doubt you remember that? He seems to be aware of that himself. But he only has one more year to go before he retires.’

Van Veeteren sighed. He had met – and worked with – Chief Inspector Sachs on three or four occasions. He had no special views about him – neither positive nor negative – but he knew that Sachs had suffered a minor cerebral haemorrhage a few months ago, and that it might have affected his judgement to some extent. At least, that is what had been alleged: but if it really was the case, or if it had more to do with Sachs’s lack of confidence after being a millimetre-thin blood-vessel wall away from death – well, that was difficult to say.

‘When did it happen?’ asked Van Veeteren.

‘Last night,’ said the chief of police, running his fingers over the immaculate knot in his tie. ‘You could delegate it to somebody, of course; but if you’re not too snowed under I think you ought to drive out there yourself. Bearing in mind Sachs’s situation. But there’s nothing to suggest anything irregular, remember that. It shouldn’t need more than a few hours and a bit of common sense.’

‘I’ll go myself,’ said Van Veeteren, standing up. ‘A car drive might do me good.’

‘Harrumph!’ said Hiller.

‘Jaan G. Hennan!’ exclaimed Van Veeteren as Münster started manoeuvring them out of the underground labyrinth that was the police station garage. ‘I can hardly believe my eyes.’

‘Why?’ wondered Münster. ‘Who is Hennan?’

But Van Veeteren didn’t reply. He had received a three-page summary of the case written by somebody called Wagner and including a short statement by the pathologist Meusse. He was holding the documents in his hand and trying to absorb the contents. Münster glanced at his boss and realized that it was pertinent to wait, and meanwhile concentrate on driving.

‘Hennan,’ muttered the Chief Inspector, and started reading.

Wagner’s report revealed that the dead woman was called Barbara Hennan, and that the police had been summoned to the scene (Kammerweg 4 in Linden) by a telephone call (received 01.42) from the dead woman’s husband. A certain Jaan G. Hennan.

The police had arrived at 02.08, and established that the woman was lying on the bottom of an empty swimming pool, and was in fact dead. Hennan had been interrogated immediately and it had transpired that he had arrived at home about 01.15, and been unable to find his wife until he discovered her lying in the said empty swimming pool. Both local doctor Santander and pathologist Meusse from the Centre for Forensic Medicine in Maardam had examined the dead body, and their conclusions were identical in all respects: Barbara Hennan had died as a result of extensive injuries in her head, spine, nape and trunk, and there was everything to suggest that all the injuries had been a consequence of falling into the empty swimming pool. Or possibly diving into it. Or possibly being pushed into it. The post-mortem was not yet complete, so further details could be expected.

The time of death seemed to be between 21.00 and 23.00. Hennan maintained that at this time he was in the restaurant Columbine in Linden; he had seen his wife alive for the last time at eight o’clock in the morning when she left home in order to drive to Aarlach. It was not known when she had arrived back home after that outing, nor how she had ended up in the empty swimming pool. All information received thus far had come from the said Jaan G. Hennan.

Meusse’s brief statement merely confirmed that all fractures and injuries were consistent with the assumption that the dead woman had fallen (or dived, or been pushed) down into the pool; and that the alcohol level in her blood was 1.74 per mil.

‘So she was drunk,’ muttered the Chief Inspector when he had finished reading. ‘A drunk woman falls down into an empty swimming pool. Kindly explain to me why the Maardam CID has to be called out to assist in a situation like this!’

‘What about this Hennan character?’ wondered Münster. ‘Didn’t you say you couldn’t believe your eyes, or something of the sort?’

Van Veeteren folded up the sheets of paper and put them in his briefcase.

‘G,’ he said. ‘That’s what we called him.’

‘G?’

‘Yes. I was at school with him. In the same class for six years.’

‘Really? Jaan G. Hennan. Why . . . er . . . why did he only have one letter, as it were?’

‘Because there were two,’ said Van Veeteren, adjusting a lever and leaning the back of his seat so far back that he was half-lying in the passenger seat. ‘Two boys with the same name – Jaan Hennan. The teachers had to distinguish between them, of course, and it always said Jaan G. Hennan on class lists or in class registers. If I remember rightly we called him Jaan G. for a week or so, and then after that it was just G. He quite liked it himself. I mean, he had the whole school’s simplest name.’

‘G?’ said Münster. ‘Yes, I have to say that it has . . . well, a sort of something to it.’

The Chief Inspector nodded vaguely. Fished out a toothpick from his breast pocket and examined it carefully before sticking it between the front teeth of his lower jaw.

‘What was he like?’

‘What was he like? What do you mean?’

‘What sort of a person was he then? G?’

‘Why do you ask?’

‘Well, you seemed to suggest that there was something odd about him.’

Van Veeteren turned his head and looked out through the passenger window for a while before answering. Tapped his fingertips against one another.

‘Münster,’ he said in the end. ‘Let’s keep this to ourselves for the time being, but I reckon Jaan G. Hennan is the most unpleasant bastard I have ever met in the whole of my life.’

‘What?’ said Münster.

‘You heard me.’

‘Of course. It was as if . . . I mean, what does that imply in this context? It can’t be completely irrelevant, surely? If you—’

‘How are things with you and the family?’ said Van Veeteren, interrupting him. ‘Still as idyllic as ever?’

The family? wondered Münster and increased his speed. Typical. If you’ve said A, under no circumstances must you say B.

‘As a man sows, so shall he reap,’ he said, and to his great surprise the Chief Inspector produced a noise faintly reminiscent of a laugh.

Brief and half-swallowed, but still . . .

‘Bravo, Inspector,’ he said. ‘I’ll tell you a bit more about G on some later occasion, I promise you that. But I don’t want to rob you of the possibility of your forming an independent impression of him first. Is that okay with you?’

Münster shrugged.

‘That’s okay with me,’ he said. ‘And that business of him being the biggest arsehole the world has ever seen, well, I’ve forgotten all about that already.’

‘Of course,’ said the Chief Inspector. ‘No preconceived ideas – that is our credo in the police force. In any case, we’ll have a word with Chief of Police Sachs first. Whatever you do, don’t recall the fact that he recently had a cerebral haemorrhage when we meet him.’

‘Of course not,’ said Münster. ‘An interesting call-out, this, no doubt about that.’

‘No doubt at all,’ agreed Van Veeteren.

On Friday Verlangen was woken up by a firework.

It went off inside his own head, and its scintillations were somewhat monotonous – a non-stop battery of glowing white explosions. Let me die, he thought. Please God, let me die here and now.

His prayers went unanswered. He carefully opened one eye in an attempt to pin down those two coordinates: here and now.

Here
turned out to be an unfamiliar room. Presumably in a hotel. He was lying in a bed amidst a mass of crumpled sheets and blankets, and didn’t recognize the location. The room looked comparatively neat and tidy, and warm morning sun was pouring in through the windows.

Now
was 09.01. There was an alarm clock on the bedside table, peeping away. He recognized it: it was his own travelling clock, bought at the Merckx supermarket a few months ago. Not that he did a lot of travelling, but you never know . . . Cost: 12.50.

He thought for a moment. There was presumably a little button cunningly concealed at the back of the clock that could be used to switch the bloody thing off. He lashed out with his right fist and the clock fell on the floor and was silent. The effort increased the intensity of the explosions inside his head.

Bloody hell, he thought. Here we go again. Where am I? What day is it?

Three hours later he had accomplished a great deal.

He had staggered to the bathroom, thrown up, had a pee and drunk a litre of water.

And somehow swallowed three headache tablets.

Found his way back to bed and fallen asleep again.

This time it wasn’t the alarm clock that woke him up. It was a small, dark-skinned chambermaid who stood in the doorway, apologizing profusely.

She was young and pretty, and he decided to make an effort to tell her so.

You mustn’t apologize, he wanted to say. You are young and as fresh as a dew-covered lily . . . You are looking at a seventh-rate swine. Learn the lesson.

But all he could produce was a hoarse whisper. His tongue was as supple as chicken wire; and the air coming from his tobacco-laden lungs, which was intended to create an attractive resonance in his dried-out vocal cords, was not much more than a hot puff from a dying desert fire.

Shut the door so that you don’t have to look at me, he thought, and tried to do something with his face. To smile, or something of that sort. It hurt.

Now she apologized again. Wasn’t he supposed to be checking out today? she wondered. Before eleven o’clock – that was the set time. Not just in this hotel, but in each one in the chain, as explained in the information leaflet.

It was twelve noon now.

He understood now. Bitch, he thought, and felt the iron band tightening around his head once more. You were just an illusion, you as well.

‘Ten minutes,’ he managed to croak. ‘Give me ten minutes.’

She nodded and left. Verlangen took a deep breath. Uneasy squeaking sounds emerged from his bronchial tubes. He rolled out of bed and staggered into the bathroom.

He had a simple brunch at a cafe by the name of Henry’s. Two cups of black coffee, a beer and a small bottle of Vichy water. The fog inside his head slowly dispersed, and when he managed to smoke a cigarette as well, he began to realize at last that he was probably going to survive today.

Whatever good that would do him.

Thanks to the blessed return of nicotine into his veins, he found himself able to recall what had happened the previous day – certain parts of it, at least – and the role he had to play in this hellish dump of a town.

Linden, for Christ’s sake, he thought. I’ve never felt so awful as I do here.

He left Henry’s after half an hour, managed to find his Toyota in the hotel car park, flung his bag onto the back seat and walked past Aldemarckt to Landemaarstraat and Hennan’s office. It was a little cooler today, thank God: clouds had started to build up from the south-west, and if he hadn’t misjudged all the signs it would start raining before this evening.

He stopped at his usual place and contemplated the characterless windows above the row of shops. Checked his watch: a quarter to two. One could hardly claim that he had fulfilled his guard duties all that efficiently or enthusiastically today.

He remembered that he had promised to give Barbara Hennan some kind of report, and spent some time wondering how he was going to present it.

What the hell could he say?

That he had sat for a few hours fraternizing with his quarry? Drunk whisky after whisky after whisky with him in that confounded restaurant, whatever it was called? Eventually collapsed into bed as drunk as a lord at God only knows what time. Always assuming that God had been awake then to notice.