The G File (52 page)

It was remarkable. For some reason he had the impression that his son was watching him just now.

Not Ulrike, not Jess.

Just Erich, nobody else.

It was difficult to judge how long the journey took. The darkness – both inside and outside him – deadened his senses. The pain in his buttocks became more intense, and he doubted if he would be able to stand upright. His shoulders and upper arms seemed to be paralysed, and his head was bursting.

Quarter of an hour, perhaps? He guessed that it was probably no more than that. Not very far out of town, in other words. Ten to fifteen kilometres: the last section was uneven and bumpy – presumably a narrow dirt road through a forest or over a field.

She stopped. He heard the front door open and close again. A minute passed, then she opened the boot lid.

He turned his head and blinked at the light. Scraped his cheek again, on the same place. Varied his gaze several times between the barrel of the pistol and her face.

Speak, he thought. The longer I can manage to talk to her, the longer I have left to live.

‘Get out.’

She gestured with the pistol. It took him some time to clamber to his feet. And even longer to straighten his back. He looked around in the faint light of dawn. Trees in all directions, just as he had thought: they had driven along a road that was barely wide enough for a car, with a high strip of grass in the middle of it.

Mainly beech trees, but a few others here and there. Young aspen saplings and small fir trees. Quite well tended: he guessed she had driven westwards, and when he sniffed the air he thought he could detect traces of the sea.

But maybe that was just his imagination. Maybe it was simply that he wanted to feel the presence of the sea at a time like this.

‘You’re not going to get away with this, you know,’ he said.

‘Nonsense. You’re the one who’s not going to get away.’

He could hear that she meant what she said. It occurred to him that he only had a few seconds to live – but then he noticed that she was holding a spade, and he suspected that she had other plans.

‘Lie down on your stomach.’

With difficulty he knelt down and then fell forwards.

‘Your face touching the ground.’

He did as she said. His back was in agony. But with two swift strokes of a knife she cut through the ropes. Round both his hands and his feet.

This is the moment, he thought. This is my chance to run for it – or would have been if I were thirty years old . . .

But it took quite some time to unwind the ropes and put them on one side, and when he stood up again she was standing only two metres away, and was in full control of the situation.

‘Walk.’

She indicated the direction by nodding and gesturing with the pistol. He slowly straightened his back so that he was able to walk, and set off up the steep path.

The vegetation became more dense. There were more twigs and branches everywhere. He began to understand what she had in mind.

He began to understand who she was.

‘This will do fine.’

He stopped in the little hollow and looked around. Vision was limited to about ten metres in all directions. Dawn had not yet taken over from night. Not completely. The occasional bird could be heard, but only as an isolated sound in the distance. No wind. A lingering nocturnal chill, and thin streaks of mist that were slowly dispersing. He assumed it was not yet six o’clock, but didn’t bother to check. He felt weariness once more taking possession of him.

I’m still drugged, he remembered. Gave a start when she threw the spade down in front of his feet.

‘Dig.’

He looked at her.

‘What if I refuse?’

I’ve already said that, he thought. Can’t I think of better questions?

‘I’ll shoot you and do the digging myself.’

‘You won’t get away with this.’

‘I won’t get away with it if I allow you to carry on living.’

He thought about that. It wasn’t difficult to see her point. Of course she had to kill him.

‘What about Linden?’ he said. ‘I think you owe me an explanation of that.’

She screwed up her eyes and stared at him, raising the gun so that it was pointing at his forehead between his eyes. She stood absolutely still for several seconds, then lowered it a few centimetres.

‘Dig.’

He interpreted that as a sort of agreement, and picked up the spade. He looked around for a suitable place.

Suitable? he thought. How do I want to lie?

‘Where is east?’ he asked.

‘Why do you ask?’

‘I want to lie with my head in that direction.’

She laughed.

‘Over there.’

He nodded. Selected a spot where the ground seemed to be softest. If I have to dig my own grave, he thought, I don’t want to have to struggle with a mass of roots and stones. That would be . . . undignified.

‘Linden,’ he reminded her as he dug into the ground.

She sat down on a fallen tree trunk a couple of metres away from him and lit a cigarette – just as before using one hand and not releasing him for single second from either her gaze or the pistol.

‘What do you want to know?’ she asked.

Rooth was woken up by church bells.

At least he thought – for one lovely and hope-filled second – that they were church bells. He had been dreaming about his own marriage to a slightly olive-skinned woman by the name of Beatrice – she shared so many traits with his old classmate from grammar school, Belinda Freyer, with whom he had been in love for as long as he could remember – and it was in the middle of the ceremony, in a crammed full church, with jubilant heavenly choirs and a bride dressed in white, that the telephone rang.

He fumbled over the bedside table, switched on a lamp and discovered that it was no more than 6.15.

Who the hell rings at a quarter past six in the morning? he thought.

And what the hell is the significance of dreaming about church bells at that time?

He discovered that the telephone was quite some way away on the narrow desk. He thrust aside the duvet and heaved himself up, and it was just as he heard Münster’s voice in the receiver and saw his own chalk-white face in the mirror over the desk – at precisely that very brief split second – that the penny dropped and he identified the missing link that had been hovering somewhere in the back of his mind for several days.

That detail.

Everything went black before his eyes.

‘Hang on a moment,’ he said to Münster.

He leaned forward, and took a grip on himself.

‘What’s the matter?’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Rooth. ‘I had a little dizzy fit. I think I jumped up too quickly . . .’

‘I understand,’ said Münster. ‘I know it’s damnably early in the morning, but we have a problem.’

‘Really?’ said Rooth. ‘A problem?’

‘Van Veeteren hasn’t come home to Maardam. It seems . . . well, it seems as if something has happened to him.’

Rooth glared at his face again. It was not a pretty sight, but he couldn’t give a toss about that at the moment.

‘The
Chief Inspector
?’ he said. ‘Not come home? What are you saying?’

‘Bausen rang a quarter of an hour ago,’ Münster said. ‘He’d spoken to Ulrike Fremdli down in Maardam . . . No, something has obviously happened. He left here shortly after lunch yesterday: all the hospitals and so on have been checked. But he’s . . . well, he’s simply disappeared.’

Rooth could feel the synapses groping after one another in his brain. Digging and rummaging away after a link. Van Veeteren had disappeared . . . and he had suddenly realized what it was that he’d seen but hadn’t been able to see the significance of . . .

Could it . . . ?

Why should . . . ?

The digging and rummaging came to a halt and uncovered a message.

‘Bloody hell!’ he said. ‘Let me think for a second . . . I think I’ve hit upon something.’

‘Hit upon something?’

Münster sounded doubtful.

‘Yes.’

‘Out with it then! This is beginning to look like . . . like I don’t know what.’

‘Come in to me two minutes from now and I’ll explain everything,’ said Rooth. ‘Bloody hell!’

Then he hung up and checked the colour of his face in the mirror one more time.

Then he washed himself very quickly and started to get dressed.

‘I feel awful,’ said Münster. ‘This is ridiculous. I don’t know if I’m awake or dreaming.’

‘You have your clothes on in any case,’ said Rooth. ‘We’d better assume that we’re both awake.’

‘Okay. What was it you’d hit upon?’

Rooth buttoned up his shirt ostentatiously and put on his shoes before answering. Münster watched him impatiently. For a brief bizarre second he considered assisting him, but decided not to.

‘Fru Nolan,’ said Rooth. ‘There’s something about Elizabeth Nolan that doesn’t add up.’

‘Why?’

‘I said there was something nagging away at the back of my mind, and when you rang I realized what it was.’

‘When I rang?’

‘Precisely then, yes. I jumped up out of bed to answer the phone, and everything went black before my eyes. But I happened to see my face in the mirror. It was white, or a sort of grey.’

‘Really?’ said Münster. ‘And?’

‘And then I thought about fru Nolan. When she came running out of the house . . . after she had found her husband dead in the bath. It was Moerk and I who had been sitting outside—’

‘Yes, I know that,’ said Münster. ‘But what didn’t add up?’

Rooth cleared his throat.

‘The colour,’ he said.

‘The colour?’

‘The colour, yes. She passed out and lay there on the lawn . . . I took a quick look at her before I continued into the house. She was red in the face.’

‘Really?’

‘Really? Is that all you can come up with? I must say you disappoint me. How can you be red in the face when you’ve fainted? If all the blood leaves your face, you go pale for God’s sake!’

Münster stared at him for three seconds. Rooth stared back.

‘So you mean that . . .’

‘I mean that she was play-acting. She didn’t pass out at all, dammit! There’s something dodgy about Elizabeth Nolan, and if Van Veeteren has disappeared now, it could well be that—’

‘Good God!’ interrupted Münster, taking his mobile out of his pocket. ‘That must mean that . . .’

He didn’t complete the sentence. Fell silent and rang Bausen’s number. Bausen answered after one ring, but Münster had time to wonder why he had chosen Bausen rather than deKlerk.

Perhaps it was simply because that number was still in the phone after the call twenty minutes ago?

Or perhaps there was some other reason.

It didn’t take long to fill Bausen in. Münster explained that he and Rooth were about to leave for Wackerstraat, and he asked Bausen to inform deKlerk and Inspector Moerk.

Bausen sounded as flabbergasted as Münster felt.

So they thought Van Veeteren had gone to see Elizabeth Nolan rather than going straight home to Maardam, did they? What did that mean?

Münster replied that he had no idea what it meant, nor what might have happened – but as he said that he felt himself overcome by a sort of icy cold wave so strong that for a moment he wondered if he was having a heart attack.

Then he realized that it must have been something mental – he wasn’t even fifty years old yet – said goodbye to Bausen and hung up.

Rooth was fully dressed by now and ready to leave.

‘Tell me what this means,’ said Münster. ‘If you are right, that is. Does it mean that . . . that Jaan G. Hennan didn’t in fact kill himself, or . . . or what the hell are you trying to say?’

‘I’m not trying to say anything at all,’ said Rooth. ‘I’m just trying to get ready to see how things look out there at the Nolans’ house. Okay? Are you coming with me, or do you want to go back to bed?’

‘All right,’ said Münster. ‘What are we waiting for?’

‘I’m beginning to understand that there was a fair amount of planning behind it all.’

She smoked and seemed still to be wondering whether or not to talk to him. Van Veeteren waited.

‘A fair amount,’ she said in the end.

‘More than was necessary in connection with Philomena McNaught?’

She allowed herself a faint smile, and suddenly, thanks to this unpremeditated reaction, he saw her for what she was. In her entirety, inside and out . . . It was as if she had hitherto managed to hide behind her disguise. But now . . . It was remarkable.

Lady Macbeth, he thought. Nice to meet you.

‘Dig,’ she reminded him. ‘If I’m going to explain a few things to you, I expect you to keep working while I do so.’

‘Of course.’

He started by measuring out the outlines. Scratched out an oblong shape with the edge of the spade – about two metres by sixty centimetres. He realized it was going to take quite a while. At least twenty minutes, perhaps half an hour.

His allotted time.

Assuming she didn’t lose her patience and shoot him sooner than that.

‘I’m sorry I needed to kill him,’ she said. ‘It was your fault – yours and that damned private detective’s. But he seemed to weaken somehow.’

Aha, he thought. She feels a need to explain herself.

‘Weaken? Hennan?’

‘Yes. It happened as he got older.’

He thought for a moment.

‘Men grow gentler with age,’ he said. ‘So do some women, I think. But if there is any of your victims that you don’t need to feel sorry for, surely it’s your husband?’

She regarded him with an expression he was unable to interpret.

Indifference? Contempt for men in general?

Or was she sitting there and wondering whether to increase the pressure on the trigger slightly? He thought it looked like it. Now, he thought. The time has come.

But nothing happened.

‘Don’t get any ideas into your head!’ she said after a while. ‘Don’t get any ideas at all. If you start getting awkward I’ll shoot you without further ado.’

For a moment he tried to imagine what it would feel like when the bullet entered into him.

Pain. A brief, white-hot pain of course – but where? Where would it begin, where would it spread to, and would he lose consciousness before he was actually dead?