The Inspector and Silence (12 page)

Or a metaphor at least.

But there was nothing. Nothing occurred to him, and no thoughts crystallized in his brain. Only the word ‘impotence’, which was beginning to feel like an old acquaintance by this time. A disconsolate, ancient relative determined not to die, but who refused to be cast out – perhaps because of the very relationship.

He sighed. Noted that the bottles of beer were unfortunately empty and stood up. Went over to the window and looked out over the lake, where the last canoeists of the day were mooring at the jetties. It was a few minutes after half past nine, and shades of blue were busy transforming the evening light into mellow summer darkness.

A July night, Van Veeteren thought. ‘A summer night’s no time for sleep’, or something along those lines – who had written that?

No matter, the thought had merit. A little evening stroll and a glass of white wine seemed to be in order. To help him shake off the thought of that old acquaintance, if nothing else.

And to help him make up his mind to leave here. There was no longer any substantial reason for him to continue this putative investigation. The debt he owed Malijsen could surely be considered paid – no matter how you calculated it – and it was hard to see any rational reason for launching more attacks on the Waldingen camp. No matter how hard one might try to find one.

Mind you, perhaps old Borkmann had a point when he used to claim that: Reason has an elder sister, never forget that. She’s called Intuition.

She finally found the body long after the sun had set. Darkness had begun to spread through the pine trees, and for one confused moment she wondered if it wasn’t just an illusion after all. A bizarre mirage, this sudden sight of a girl’s white skin gleaming at her through the brushwood – perhaps it would disappear the moment it occurred to her to close her eyes.

But she didn’t close her eyes. The inner voice that had led her here would not allow her to close her eyes. She would have to act, to undertake the incomprehensible task it had given her.

There was no arguing, she must do it.

Where did it come from, this voice that drove her? She didn’t know, but presumably it was the only source of strength available to her in the nightmare she was experiencing. The only thing that kept her going, and made her take these measures and steps – it must be something based inside herself nevertheless; a side of her that she had never in her life needed to make use of, but it had now kicked in and made sure that whatever had to be done really was in fact done. A sort of reserve, she thought, an unknown well from which she could scoop out water, but over which – at some point in the distant future, may God please ensure that she soon got there! – she must place a heavy lid of forgetfulness. Plant the grass of time upon it: I am the grass; I cover all, as the poet said – why on earth should she think of poetry now? – so that neither she herself nor any other person could suspect what she had used its water for. Or even that it had been there.

In the distant future.

The well. Her strength. The inner voice.

It was very dark now. She must have been standing there, staring at the incomprehensible, for an incredibly long time, even if she hadn’t been aware of it. She switched on her torch for a moment, but realized that light would do her no favours in these circumstances, and switched it off again. Pushed some twigs aside and pulled out the whole of the thin, naked body. Bowed down on one knee and took hold of it under its back and under its knees; was briefly surprised by the stiffness in the muscles and joints, and was reminded fleetingly of the body of a little foal when she had been present at a failed birth many years ago.

The body was not heavy, below forty kilograms for sure, and she was able to carry it with little difficulty. She hesitated for a moment, wondering about various alternatives, but eventually came to a place where she could hear that inner voice once more. Carefully – as if displaying some kind of perverted respect no matter what the circumstances – she placed the body in a half-sitting position against the trunk of an aspen tree: an enormous aspen with a whole sky of whispering leaves – and began to cover it over with what she could find in the way of branches and twigs and last year’s husks.

Not to hide it, of course. Merely to shield it a little in the name of dignity and propriety.

When she had finished it was so dark that she couldn’t see the result of her work, but for the sake of respect and reverence, she stood there for a while, head bowed and hands clasped.

Perhaps she said a prayer. Perhaps it was merely a jumble of words passing through her mind.

Then she suddenly felt a white-hot flash of terror. She retraced her steps rapidly and collected the spade from where she had left it. Continued on to the road, and hurried away as fast as her legs would carry her.

‘Intuition?’ said Przebuda, and smiled over the rim of his wine glass. ‘Surely you’re not telling me that you are troubled by doubts as far as intuition is concerned? Myself, I rely upon it without question, I simply think it’s a talent that has skipped a few stages – in the chain of cause and effect, that is. Or gives the impression of having skipped them. It’s a bit more advanced, but there’s no essential difference. We have it, but we don’t understand how we are in a position to have it. I mean, we absorb enormous amounts of information every second . . . Everything is stored away, but only a tiny portion of that gets as far as our active consciousness. The rest stays there, sending out its signals – usually in vain, simply because we are so unreceptive. Let’s face it, we’re only human after all.’

Van Veeteren nodded, and stretched out his legs under the table. It was Monday evening, and he was slumped back in an old leather chair in Andrej Przebuda’s large living room-cum-study. He’d been sitting there for quite a while, sipping an outstanding Chateau Margeaux ’81 and nibbling slices of pear with Camembert. Smoked. Dinner had been eaten in the company of Eisenstein, de Sica, Bergman and Tarkovskij, and only when they had left the table and sauntered over to the armchairs did the conversation turn to the matter that was the chief inspector’s motive for his stay in Sorbinowo.

Which had now been extended by a further day.

‘Presumably it’s the same phenomenon as occurs in connection with new discoveries in the natural sciences,’ said Przebuda. ‘The researcher already knows the answer, he’s seen the final solution before he actually gets that far. Or glimpsed it, at least. If that weren’t the case, he would presumably be in no state to discover it. The bottom line is that we need an advance image of the conclusion. I think Rappaport writes about this, Sartre as well, of course. Pierre and the cafe and all that, you know. It’s another side of the cognitive, that’s all. A sort of . . . Well, what should one call it? The avant garde of knowledge, perhaps?’

‘Hmm,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘A chain that hangs together despite the fact that several links are missing. I’d like to see the public prosecutor who falls for that kind of thing. But you are no doubt right in principle. God knows, of course I believe in intuition.’

‘And what’s your impression of Waldingen, then?’ Przebuda asked, lighting his pipe that kept going out. Deliberately or accidentally. ‘The problem with smoking a pipe,’ he added, ‘is that it goes out as soon as you talk too much. I have to admit that it happens to me now and again. Well?’

The chief inspector sighed.

‘I don’t know,’ he admitted. ‘I’ll be damned if I can work out what I really think. The people we are dealing with are pretty moronic, and they sort of get in the way and conceal the point at issue. Perhaps some kind of intervention would be justified no matter what – God only knows what rubbish they are drumming into those poor girls. But that falls some way short of actually murdering somebody. I can’t really say I’ve found evidence to suggest that anybody really has disappeared . . .’

Przebuda was still preoccupied with his pipe.

‘Only a trace of a suspicion.’

The chief inspector leaned back and clasped his hands behind his head; he let his gaze wander around the book-lined walls and was struck by a sudden illusion of being in the middle of an encyclopaedia. Przebuda’s interests seemed to embrace everything from the financial state of the steel industry in the eighties and fishing quotas in the Arctic Ocean to cultural anthropology and Provençal love lyrics. A newspaperman of the old school, obviously; an incorruptible journalist who – given sufficient time – was quite capable of writing an article on more or less any subject at all. Although he tried to exclude it, Van Veeteren had to admit that the setting of this evening’s conversation reminded him of something else as well. The classic crime novel hero – the case-hardened detective who gathers together all the facts in his head and then solves the case while sitting with his pipe in a winged armchair in his library.

Although on this occasion it was Przebuda smoking the pipe. Van Veeteren was smoking cigarettes.

So perhaps it was his host who would come up with the solution, not himself.

If a solution was needed, that is. Perhaps all the goings-on didn’t amount to an equation – wasn’t that the conclusion he had reached? No missing girl, and no case in fact. Nevertheless there was something special about this room; the only thing missing, of course, was a chessboard. But Przebuda had already admitted that chess was a pastime that had never managed to capture his interest.

Something that indisputably made the game even more unique than it already was, Van Veeteren thought. But pastime! Surely that was little short of blasphemy!

‘Needless to say I have a few notes,’ said Przebuda after a few seconds of silence. ‘In case you are interested. I thought I might write half a page last summer when they were last here. The Pure Life . . . I suppose I thought I’d try to dig down into the sect itself, as it were. Not just the summer camp. Anyway, I interviewed the shepherd and took a few photographs, but I eventually decided to shelve the project.’

‘Why?’

Przebuda shrugged.

‘I don’t really know. Some jobs you just drop, period. I think it had something to do with the impression they made. I found it a bit distasteful, to be honest. I take it you understand what I mean.’

Van Veeteren nodded.

‘That Yellinek and his four fancy women.’

‘Four?’

‘Yes indeed. There were four women who took care of all the chores out there in the forest. Much younger than he was, and, well, I suppose that gave me cold feet, or however you might want to put it. And I don’t particularly want to give dodgy people like that free publicity. Has he brought the same harem with him this year as well?’

‘Three,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘Only three.’

Przebuda burst out laughing.

‘Ah well,’ he said. ‘Perhaps he’s beginning to run out of steam. If they observe other Muslim traditions, maybe they have the right to be satisfied as well. What’s the routine? Two nights out of three?’

‘Every other night, I think,’ said the chief inspector. ‘There are various trends. You don’t happen to have the names of the women who were here last year, do you?’

Przebuda raised an eyebrow, and then his wine glass.

‘Why do you ask?’

‘It’s just a thought that struck me,’ said the chief inspector.

‘All right, I’ll take a look,’ said Przebuda. ‘But first, your very good health.’

‘Cheers,’ said Van Veeteren.

Przebuda stood up and went over to his desk, which was piled high with documents. It formed a triangle in a corner of the room, and must have been over two metres square. He switched on a lamp and began rummaging through a collection of red and green files at least a metre high. After a while he returned with one of them, and took out a bundle of unsorted documents.

‘So, let’s have a look,’ he said, taking a pair of glasses from his breast pocket. ‘I don’t really know why I bothered, but I did actually take a few pictures of them. Yes, here we are.’