The G File (39 page)

‘Am I right in thinking you didn’t have many guests round about that time?’

‘Hardly a soul. A few of the caravans were occupied at the weekends, but that’s all. That’s the way it usually is in April . . . But now it’s full, as you can see.’

She gestured proudly at all the caravans.

‘Yes, so I see,’ said Moerk. ‘But the other guests – the ones who stayed here while Henry Sommers was living in his caravan: I assume they are all noted down in your book?’

‘Of course. Not many of them, as I said – and it can be a bit sensitive as well.’

‘Sensitive?’

‘Yes. And I’m not all that bothered when it comes to names. As long as they write something down.’

‘Why can it be sensitive?’

‘Some of them might be married, others might not be.’

‘I understand,’ said Moerk. ‘But I’m afraid we must ask you for the names even so. Obviously we shall be as discreet as possible. Could we take a look at the remains as well?’

‘The remains?’

‘The place where the caravan used to stand.’

Szczok leaned back in her chair and chuckled.

‘Of course you can, for Christ’s sake. It’s that grey patch over there in the corner.’

She pointed in the direction of a couple playing badminton. Then she leaned over to her left and fished out another bottle of beer from the bucket standing by the caravan wall. It was obvious that she was beginning to get a certain amount of pleasure from the visit, despite everything. From the discussion with the forces of law and order outside the Freedom Republic. Moerk sighed and stood up.

‘I’ll go and take a look.’

It won’t do any harm for Stiller to look after himself for five minutes, she thought.

When they left Geraldine’s Caravan Club a quarter of an hour later, Inspector Moerk felt somewhat resigned.

‘Well, that didn’t produce much that will be of any use to us,’ she said.

‘No,’ said Stiller. ‘Not much at all. What did it look like where the caravan had been standing?’

‘A greyish-brown patch on the grass,’ said Moerk. ‘That’s all. It’s typical that she didn’t even bother to report it. It could well have been arson, but I don’t suppose we’ll ever know now. Did you get anything out of her when you were alone with her?’

‘The names of two people who were here at the same time as Verlangen,’ said Stiller, tapping his chest where he had a pocket containing his notebook. ‘I assume they were both married to different partners, but they’d stayed with her before. Nothing much apart from that . . . We spoke mostly about her book.’

‘What?’

‘Her novel – the one she started writing forty years ago.’

‘Oh, that . . . What did she have to say about that, then?’

Stiller cleared his throat in some embarrassment.

‘She claimed it would soon be finished. She asked if I’d like to read it before she sends it to a publisher . . . Apparently it’s over two thousand one hundred pages.’

‘Good Lord! Two thousand . . .’

‘. . . one hundred, yes. I said I’d read it – maybe I spoke too soon, but I didn’t want to offend her.’

‘Congratulations,’ said Moerk. ‘So you know what you’re going to be doing every night for the next year.’

Stiller nodded.

‘It’s no big deal. I read quite a lot anyway – and maybe she’ll forget about it in any case.’

Moerk looked furtively at him from the side as she backed the car out of its parking place, and thought that perhaps he had more strings to his bow than she had suspected thus far. This probationer.

‘What are you doing?’ said Ulrike Fremdli.

‘I beg your pardon?’ said Van Veeteren, taking off his headphones. ‘What did you say?’

‘I wondered what you’re doing. It’s a quarter past three.’

‘I couldn’t sleep,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘I’m lying here, listening to Penderecki.’

‘Really?’ said Ulrike.

Van Veeteren sat up and made room for her on the sofa. She sat down.

‘What does that mean?’

‘What does what mean?’

‘“Really?” – The way you said it.’

‘How did I say it?’

‘A bit like Archimedes in the bath tub. It sounded as if you had just understood something.’

‘There’s quite a lot I understand – you must have noticed that by now.’

She yawned and tried to rub the sleep out of her eyes.

‘Yes, of course,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘But this presumably had something to do with my sleeplessness.’

‘Naturally.’

‘Naturally?’

‘You’re not so stupid as to be unaware yourself about why you can’t sleep, surely? And not so stupid that you think I don’t understand . . . Not that latter point, at least.’

Van Veeteren thought for a moment.

‘You have a point there.’

‘Of course I have. What are you going to do about it?’

‘I don’t really know. Have you any good suggestions?’

‘There is only one solution. Why imagine anything else?’

‘You think so?’

‘You know full well there is. Don’t be silly,’

‘I’m never silly. But all right, a few days – if you insist.’

‘I don’t insist.’

‘No? Then I suppose I’ll have to make the decision off my own bat, then.’

Ulrike burst out laughing and put him in a stranglehold.

‘But we’d better sleep on it first,’ said Van Veeteren, wriggling free. ‘To be honest, I have some misgivings.’

Ulrike became serious.

‘Me too,’ she said, and all at once – for a fraction of a second – she looked so nakedly serious that his heart missed a beat.

As if . . . As if death had paid them a brief visit at that late hour, but then decided to leave them in peace for a bit longer.

Nasty, he thought. Who is it, allowing us to lift the veil slightly in this way?

Intendent Münster found it difficult to shake off the feeling of déjà vu when he sat down next to Rooth in the pale-yellow conference room in Kaalbringen police station on Tuesday morning.

At first he failed to see why the past seemed to be so tangibly close: to be sure, the town and the premises and the peaceful square outside were the same as nine years ago, but the people involved were almost all new. Neither Rooth nor Probationer Stiller nor the new chief of police had been present last time. Only himself and Inspector Moerk.

Beate Moerk. She was the reason, of course. She was a mother-of-two now and must be getting on for forty, he thought; but even so he could see in her face and her eyes the same things that had affected him so much during the axe-murderer case . . . whatever they were. He noticed that she was avoiding looking at him today: that was no doubt a sensible precaution to take at this early stage of proceedings. Rooth had said that she was a hell of a pretty inspector, and even if Rooth was a pathetic case when it came to love and passion, he nevertheless had eyes in his head.

The sun streamed in through the south-facing window, just as it had done nine years ago. When he thought a little more about it, he realized that of course it was not only Beate Moerk and this familiar room that was making his sense of time somewhat wonky. The G case had been on the agenda even longer – since fifteen years ago, to be precise! – so the feeling of not really being in the present time was perhaps quite natural, in fact.

And it was Maarten Verlangen who was the catalyst, needless to say. The link with then and now. The remains of the down-and-out private detective had been lying out there in the mushroom woods for several months, rotting away. Then they had been discovered – and it was to find out who had put them there that they were sitting in this room now.

In the first place, that is. Officially. What it also involved was another matter. Synergy effects, perhaps one could say. Or rings in the water, as one might have said in the old days.

But irrespective of what one might choose to call it, Münster thought, two CID officers from Maardam would not have been sent out to investigate what had happened to a drifter like Maarten Verlangen if there had not been more ingredients in the soup than those that were floating around on the surface; that was clear.

And there was no sign of Chief Inspector Van Veeteren or Inspector Kropke in the police station on this warm, late-summer Tuesday, Münster reminded himself. Nor was Chief Inspector Bausen at the helm, but instead a certain Intendent deKlerk. Münster had not yet had time to form an opinion of him, but assumed that he was a competent police officer. There was nothing to suggest otherwise, at least. The chief of police had just hung his jacket over the back of his chair, looked somewhat hesitantly at those present, and clapped his hands.

‘Well, nice to see you all again,’ he said. ‘Shall we get going? God willing we’ll be served with coffee an hour from now.’

‘
In sha’a Allah
,’ said Rooth. ‘I’m delighted to hear that we have come to somewhere civilized.’

Remember that you are responsible for your own stupidities, Rooth, Münster thought, taking off his jacket as well.

‘As a matter of routine, let me just map out the situation to start with,’ said deKlerk, opening a file. ‘Our colleagues from Maardam are more familiar with the background of this case than the rest of us, so I trust they will feel free to correct me if I get anything wrong.’

Rooth nodded and Münster took out his notebook.

‘Anyway,’ said deKlerk, ‘at the heart of the matter – or at least, that’s the theory on the basis of which we are working – is an old case from 1987: the murder of Barbara Clarissa Henning in Linden. We are assuming it was murder, although the facts have never been established. The victim’s husband, Jaan G. Hennan, was charged with her murder but found not guilty by the court on the grounds of insufficient evidence. He collected a very large sum from his wife’s insurers, and is assumed to have left the country that same year. In the goings-on surrounding the death of Barbara Hennan we find a private detective by the name of Maarten Verlangen: his exact role is unclear in many respects, but he was employed by fru Hennan to keep an eye on her husband just a few days before she was found dead. Verlangen’s evidence at the trial seemed to confirm Hennan’s alibi. The view of the police and the prosecution team was that Hennan had employed an accomplice to murder his wife, but nothing was ever discovered to support that view, and Hennan was found not guilty. Any comments so far?’

‘None at all,’ said Rooth. ‘Go on.’

‘Thank you. Fifteen years later – last spring, to be more precise – Verlangen’s daughter informed the police in Maardam that her father had disappeared, and a few pieces of evidence suggest that he was here in Kaalbringen for some days in the middle of April. The reason why he came up here seems to have been that he had come across something to indicate that Jaan G. Hennan was around.
Nota bene
that Hennan is a free man, but Verlangen claimed – in a telephone call to his daughter and a written note found in his flat – that he had come across evidence linking Hennan to the murder of his wife. What this evidence – or possibly even proof – might be, we have as yet no idea. Chief Inspector Van Veeteren, who was in charge of the investigation in 1987, came up to Kaalbringen at the beginning of May to look for Verlangen – or for traces of him, at least. He made contact with Inspector Moerk, who he knows as a result of the previous investigation, and . . .’

He exchanged looks with Beate Moerk, but as she didn’t seem keen to take over the account of what had happened, he continued himself.

‘. . . and we consulted all the hotels in the area, but received no positive responses. Now we know that this was because we didn’t include the camping site next to Fisherman’s Friend in our original inquiries: Geraldine’s Caravan Club. Anyway, to come right up to date – three days ago, last Saturday, Maarten Verlangen was found dead in woods not far from Wilgersee. There is no doubt that he was murdered . . . shot through the head with a large-calibre pistol . . . And it is just as certain that he had been lying there since round about the middle of April. Anyway, that’s how things stand. Have you anything to say before we take a look at what yesterday’s interviews turned up?’

‘Say and say,’ muttered Rooth. ‘That poor devil was on to something – but I’ve no idea what it could have been.’

‘It might have been pure imagination on Verlangen’s part, we mustn’t forget that,’ said Münster.

‘You don’t get shot on the basis of pure imagination,’ said Rooth.

‘You can be if you’re unlucky,’ said Münster. ‘But I agree that the Hennan link seems to be pretty strong.’

‘It’s been a long time,’ said Beate Moerk. ‘Since last spring, I mean. If that Hennan character really was here in Kaalbringen then, he’s had plenty of time to make himself scarce.’

‘No doubt about that,’ said Münster. ‘He could be in Brazil by now. With a new identity and a new appearance. We shall have to hope that he didn’t think that would be necessary – that it was sufficient to get Verlangen out of the way.’

‘Shall we assume that he really was here in Kaalbringen in April, at least?’ asked deKlerk.

‘Assume is a bit strong,’ said Rooth. ‘But let’s play with the thought. It does seem a bit far-fetched to think that Verlangen was wrong about him being here, but was killed by him even so . . . Or at least, I think it seems far-fetched.’

‘Absolutely right,’ said deKlerk. ‘We can more or less exclude any such thought.’

‘But if he’s living here, he must have changed his name at least,’ said Moerk. ‘There’s no Hennan in the telephone directory, and he’s not in the register of taxpayers. Would you recognize him if you saw him?’

Münster had already discussed this question with Rooth, and admitted that he wouldn’t be a hundred per cent certain. Especially if Hennan consciously tried to change the way he looked in some way or other.

‘We’ve all seen the photo we have of Hennan from 1987,’ he said. ‘If he’s simply grown older in the normal way, presumably any of us ought to be able to recognize him?’

‘But he might be wandering around in net stockings and wearing a wig nowadays,’ said Rooth. ‘That would make it a bit hard to recognize him.’

‘Forgive me,’ said Probationer Stiller hesitantly, stretching somewhat. ‘We’re assuming that Verlangen found Hennan, aren’t we? So are you suggesting that he’s only started wearing net stockings now this summer?’