The Return (18 page)

“Same here,” said deBries. “Time to go home.”

31

At first sight, for the first tenth of a second after opening the door, he had no idea where he was. The thought that he might have got the wrong room after twelve long days of absence did occur to him, but then he realized that it was the same old office as usual. Perhaps it was the strong afternoon sun slanting in through the dirty windows that confused him. The whole of the far wall, behind the desk, was bathed in generous but blinding sunlight. Dust was dancing. It was as hot as in an oven.

He opened the window. Lowered the blinds and succeeded in protecting himself to some extent from the early summer. When he looked round, he found that the changes were not in fact as great as he had at first thought.

There were three of them, to be precise.

First of all, somebody had tidied up his desk. All his papers were in neat piles instead of being splayed out like a fan. Not a bad idea, he could see that immediately. Odd that it had never occurred to him before.

In the second place, a vase with yellow and mauve flowers had been placed next to his telephone. I am obviously an outstandingly popular and well-liked person, Van Veeteren thought. Hard but fair under the rough surface.

In the third and last place, he had received a new desk chair. It was turquoise in color; he thought he could recall the shade from a coat Renate had once bought while on a catastrophic holiday in France. Provence blue, if he remembered rightly, but that was irrelevant. It had soft armrests in any case—the chair, that is—a curved back and headrest, and was vaguely reminiscent of seats in the first-class compartments of trains in one of the neighboring countries, he couldn’t remember which.

He sat down tentatively. The seat was just as soft as the armrests. He sank back into the backrest and noticed that under the seat was a selection of wheels and levers that evidently enabled him to adjust every possible feature—height, angle, headrest angle, elasticity coefficient, you name it. On the desk in front of him was a brochure in full color with precise instructions in eight languages.

Wow! Van Veeteren thought and began fiddling with the controls in accordance with the instructions. I can snooze the time away in this chair until they start paying my pension.

Twenty minutes later he had finished, and just as he had started wondering how he could most easily and smartly procure a beer, the duty operator rang to inform him that a lady was in reception, asking for Van Veeteren.

“Send her up,” he said. “I’ll meet her by the elevator.”

It was Saturday, and the building was practically empty. He would prefer to avoid the blunder made by Reinhart a year or so ago when his instructions resulted in a prospective narc with a bad sense of direction ending up fast asleep on the sofa in the chief of police’s office. Hiller himself had discovered the intruder early on Monday morning, and not even Reinhart’s tactful reminder that it was possible to lock doors with the aid of something known as a key had persuaded the authorities that there were extenuating circumstances.

“Your name is Elena Klimenska, is that right?” he began when she had settled down on the visitor’s chair.

“Yes.”

She was a rather elegant woman, he had to admit. Somewhere between forty and fifty, he would guess, with dark, dyed hair and strong features, discreetly brought out by carefully applied makeup and sophisticated perfume. As far as he could judge, that is.

“I am Detective Chief Inspector Van Veeteren,” he said. “As I explained, it’s to do with your testimony in connection with the trial of Leopold Verhaven here in Maardam in November 1981.”

“So I gather,” she said, folding her hands over her black patent-leather purse.

“Can you tell me what your testimony comprised?”

“Er…I don’t understand what you mean.”

She hesitated. Van Veeteren took a toothpick from his breast pocket and studied it carefully before making a cautious attempt to adjust the angle of his chair backward. Hmm, not bad, he thought. This must be the perfect chair for interrogations.

Although the victim should ideally be sitting on a three-legged stool. Or a wooden packing case.

“Well?” he said.

“My testimony? Er, the thing is, I happened to be walking past and I saw them, behind the Covered Market.”

“Saw who?”

“Him and her, of course. Verhaven and that woman he murdered…Marlene Nietsch.”

“Where did you pass?”

“Excuse me?”

“You said you happened to be walking past. I would like to know where you were when you saw them.”

She cleared her throat.

“I was walking on the sidewalk along Zwille. I saw them a short way up Kreugerlaan….”

“How did you know it was them?”

“I recognized them, of course.”

“Before or after?”

“What do you mean?”

“Did you know it was Leopold Verhaven and Marlene Nietsch when you saw them, or did it dawn on you afterward?”

“Afterward, of course.”

“You weren’t acquainted with either of them?”

“Certainly not.”

“How far away were you?”

“Twenty yards.”

“Twenty?”

“Yes, twenty.”

“How do you know?”

“The police measured the distance.”

“What were they wearing?”

“He was in a blue shirt and jeans. She had on a brown jacket and a black skirt.”

“Not particularly conspicuous clothes.”

“No. Why should they be conspicuous?”

“Because it’s easier to recognize people if there’s something special about their appearance. Were there any special details?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“How did you come into contact with the legal authorities?”

“There was an appeal for witnesses in the newspapers.”

“I see. And so you responded to that appeal?”

“I thought it was my duty to do so.”

“How much time had passed by then? Roughly.”

“A month. Six weeks, perhaps.”

Van Veeteren snapped the toothpick.

“You’re saying that you could remember two people standing talking beside a van after…six weeks?”

“Yes.”

“People you didn’t know?”

“Of course.”

“Had you any special reason for noticing them and remembering them?”

“Er, no.”

“What time was it?”

“Excuse me?”

“What time was it when you were walking along Zwille and happened to see them?”

“Seven or eight minutes to ten.”

“How do you know?”

“Er, that’s the time it was. What’s so remarkable about that?”

“Did you check the time?”

“No.”

“Where were you going? Did you have an appointment to keep or something of that sort?”

“I was out shopping.”

“I see.”

He paused and leaned back so far that his feet left the floor. For a brief moment he felt almost weightless.

Is there a lever to pull that will bring me back into the atmosphere? he wondered, but he soon regained control of his module.

“Mrs. Klimenska,” he said when he had made contact with both his desk and the floor once more. “I would like you to explain this to me, as slowly and clearly as you can. I sometimes find it a bit hard to understand things. A man has been found guilty of first-degree murder on the basis of your evidence. He has been in prison for twelve years. Twelve years! If you hadn’t come forward, it is very likely that he would have been cleared. Will you please tell me how the hell you can be certain that you saw Leopold Verhaven and Marlene Nietsch standing talking in Kreugerlaan at seven and a half minutes to ten on Friday, September the eleventh, 1981! How?”

Elena Klimenska sat up straight and met his gaze without the slightest hesitation.

“Because I saw them,” she said. “As far as the time is concerned, that’s the only possibility. He drove away from there at ten o’clock, and they were together at the corner at twelve minutes to.”

“So they weren’t actually at the corner when you saw them?”

“Of course not.”

“Bravo, Mrs. Klimenska. You know your stuff very well, I must say. But then, it’s only thirteen years ago, after all.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Was it the police or the prosecutor who helped you with the timing?”

“Both of them, of course. Why…”

“Thank you,” Van Veeteren interrupted. “That’s enough. Just one more question. Was there any other witness who could confirm your evidence?”

“I don’t understand.”

“Somebody you had just left, for instance. Or bumped into five minutes later, perhaps?”

“No. How would that have helped?”

Van Veeteren didn’t answer. He drummed quietly on the edge of his desk instead, gazing out through a gap in the blinds at the sunshine bathing the warm streets. Elena Klimenska adjusted a pleat in her grayish blue dress, but didn’t change her expression.

“Do you usually sleep soundly at night, Mrs. Klimenska?”

Her mouth narrowed to form a thin line. He could see that she’d had enough. That she presumably had no intention of answering any more questions or insinuations.

“I ask because I’m curious,” he said. “It’s part of my job to play the psychologist now and again. If it had been me, for instance, who had been responsible for getting another human being locked up for twelve years on the basis of totally unfounded and invented evidence, I would probably not feel too good about it. You know, the conscience thing, and all that…”

She stood up.

“I’ve had enough of your…”

“But maybe you had some special reason?”

“What the…”

“For getting him locked up, I mean. That would explain it.”

“Good-bye, Chief Inspector. You can be sure the chief of police is going to hear of this!”

She turned on her heel and managed three paces toward the door.

“You lying bitch,” he hissed.

She stopped dead.

“What did you say?”

“I merely wished you a pleasant afternoon. Can you find your own way out, or would you like me to escort you?”

Two seconds later he was alone again, but he could hear her heels tapping in irritation all the way to the elevator.

Ah well, he thought, pulling the weightlessness lever. That’s the way to treat ’em.

32

“I know,” said Synn. “You don’t need to apologize.”

“He’s been in the hospital and read every single word about these damned cases,” Münster said. “He feels he simply has to go and take a look for himself, and he’s not allowed to drive yet.”

“I know,” said Synn again. She turned the pages of her newspaper and blew at her coffee. It was barely half past seven, but the children had been awake since long before seven, totally oblivious to that fact that it was a summer Sunday…. A morning with a warm breeze and cherry blossom and a deafening chorus of birdsong that floated in through the half-open balcony door and mixed with Marieke’s giggles from the nursery and Bart’s endless monologue about dragons and monsters and soccer players.

He stood up and positioned himself behind his wife. Caressed the back of her head. Placed his hand inside her robe and gently squeezed her breast—and he suddenly felt pain creeping up upon him: a chilling fear, but also a realization, that this moment must pass. This second of absolute and perfect happiness—one of the ten to twelve that comprised a whole life, and was possibly even the meaning of it…

Or so he understood it. If you have twelve treasured memories, his Uncle Arndt had once said as Münster sat on his knee, you will have led a happy life. But twelve is a high number. You’ll have to wait for quite a while yet before you can start collecting them.

Perhaps Synn could sense his unrest, for she placed her hand over his and pressed it harder against her breast.

“I like it,” she said. “I like your hands. Maybe we’ll manage an afternoon outing? Lauerndamm or somewhere like that. It would be good to make love in the open air; it’s been a long time…. Or what do you say, darling?”

He swallowed the lump of ecstasy that welled up inside him.

“Of course, my darling,” he said. “I’ll be back before one. Just get yourself ready.”

“Ready?” she smiled. “I’m ready now, if you want to.”

“Oh, hell!” said Münster. “If it weren’t for the kids and Van Veeteren, then…”

She let go of his hand.

“Maybe we should ask him to babysit?”

“Huh,” said Münster. “I’m not convinced that is the best idea you’ve ever had.”

“All right,” said Synn. “We’ll stick to this afternoon, then.”

Van Veeteren was waiting on the sidewalk when Münster pulled up outside 4 Klagenburg. There was no concealing his suppressed eagerness, and when he had settled into the passenger seat, he immediately fished out two toothpicks that he proceeded to roll from one side of his mouth to the other. It was clear to Münster that this was one of those frequent occasions when any kind of conversation was, if not prohibited, at the very least pointless.

Instead he switched on the radio, and as they drove through the deserted streets that Sunday morning, they were able to listen to the eight o’clock news, which was mainly about developments in the Balkans and yet more neo-Nazi disturbances in eastern Germany.

Then came the weather forecast, promising glorious weather with cloudless skies and temperatures approaching sixty degrees.

He sighed discreetly, and it struck him that if it had been his wife in the passenger seat beside him, instead of a newly operated on fifty-seven-year-old detective chief inspector, he would probably have placed his hand on her sun-warmed thigh at about this point.

Ah well, one o’clock would arrive sooner or later, even today.

They parked outside the overgrown opening in the lilac hedge. Münster switched off the engine and unfastened his safety belt.

“No, you stay here,” insisted Van Veeteren, shaking his head. “I don’t want you breathing down my neck. This calls for solitary reflection. Leave me in peace and wait for an hour down by the church.”

He started to wriggle his way out of the car. He was obviously hampered by his surgical wound; he was forced to cling on to the roof of the car and pull himself up by the strength of his arms, rather than straining his stomach muscles. Münster rushed round to assist him, but the chief inspector was adamant in rejecting any attempt to help.

“One hour,” he repeated, checking his watch. “I’ll walk down to the church under my own steam. The slope is in the right direction, so there shouldn’t be a problem.”

“Wouldn’t it be best if…,” began Münster, but Van Veeteren interrupted him.

“Stop nannying me, damn you! I’ve had enough of that. If I haven’t turned up at the church by half past ten, you can drive up and see where I’ve got to!”

“All right,” said Münster. “But be careful.”

“Clear off,” said Van Veeteren. “Is the door open, by the way?”

“The key’s hanging from a nail under the gutter,” said Münster. “On the right.”

“Thanks,” said Van Veeteren.

Münster got back into the car, managed to turn around in the narrow road and set off through the trees toward the village.

It’s amazing, he thought. We must have spent a hundred hours sniffing around this place. But I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he found something we’d missed.

Not surprised in the least.

Van Veeteren stayed by the roadside until Münster’s white Audi had vanished among the trees. Then he forced his way though the hedge and took possession of The Big Shadow.

The garden was overgrown, no two ways about that. He stuck a toothpick in his mouth and looked around. He began walking around the house but was forced to give up about halfway when he found himself up to the armpits in nettles. No matter, he thought. It wasn’t too difficult to get an impression of what it must have looked like once upon a time. A plot of land taken over by man around the middle of the last century, tamed by plow and harrow, a lot of hard work and tender loving care. But now well on the way back into the arms of Mother Nature. Aspen and birch saplings had eaten into large chunks of the orchard; paved areas, the cellar and outhouses were lost in undergrowth and covered in moss; and the big barn, which had presumably been the famous poultry farm, would surely not survive many more winters. It was very clear that a border had been crossed—the limit beyond which it was no longer possible to reclaim what nature had taken hold of.

Not for an old lag living on his own, at least.

The Big Shadow?

With hindsight it was obvious that the house name was prophetic. He found the key, and after considerable effort succeeded in opening the door. He had to bend down so as not to hit his head on the door frame, and inside there was only just sufficient headroom for him to stand upright. He recalled having read in the newspapers about a month ago that the average height of people had shot up remarkably over the past hundred years. His own six feet two inches would presumably have been considered abnormal when the first settlers moved into this house.

Two rooms and a kitchen on the ground floor. A narrow, creaking staircase led up from a three-foot-square hall to a loft full of old newspapers, broken furniture and other junk. A faint smell of soot and sun-warmed dust clung to the rafters. He sneezed several times, then went back down to the kitchen. He felt the big iron stove, as if expecting to find it hot. Examined the bad reproduction of an almost equally bad original landscape painting hanging over the sofa, then entered the living room. The cracked windowpanes. A sideboard. Table and four ill-matched chairs. A sofa and a typically 1950s television set. A sagging bookshelf with getting on for a hundred books, most of them cheap crime novels or adventure stories. On the wall to the right of the stove was a mirror and a framed black-and-white photograph of a runner breaking the finishing tape. His face seemed tormented, almost tortured. At first he thought it was Verhaven himself, but when he went up to it and examined it more closely, he saw the caption and recognized the man: Emil Zatopek. The Czech locomotive, as he was called. The self-torturer. The man who overcame the pain barrier.

Had he been Verhaven’s ideal?

Or was it just typical of the time? Zatopek had been the king of the track in the early fifties, if his memory served him rightly. Or one of them, at least.

He left the living room for the bedroom and stood gazing at the double bed that, despite its modest size, took up almost all the floor space.

But a double bed? Yes, of course, Verhaven had lived with a lot of women. Not all of them had been murdered. At least, he assumed not.

“Was this your bedroom, then?” muttered Van Veeteren, fumbling for a new toothpick. “Did you get one night’s sleep as a free man, or didn’t he even allow you that?”

He left the bedroom.

What the hell am I doing here? he thought suddenly. What am I kidding myself that I can sort out by strutting around here? Even if I begin to form an impression of what Verhaven was really like, that’s not going to get me one inch closer to the answer.

The answer to the question of who murdered him, that is.

He was overcome with exhaustion and sat down at the kitchen table. Closed his eyes and watched the flickering yellow light that floated past from right to left. Always from right to left: He wondered what that might be due to. They had warned him that he would have moments of weakness, but he hadn’t fully realized that they would be as treacherous as this, practically making his legs give way under him.

He rested his head in his hands. Reinhart always said you should never try to think about anything important when your head’s not right. It’s better to shut down altogether, otherwise you’ll only fill it with a lot of garbage.

An unusually ugly tablecloth, he thought therefore, when he had opened his eyes again. But it seems somehow familiar. Didn’t Aunt K. have one like it when I visited her in summer about the beginning of the fifties? In that boathouse heated by the summer sun, where you could hear the water lapping under the floorboards. It felt a long way away from The Big Shadow in both time and space, but it must have been around the time when Verhaven left his father here in Kaustin to lead his own independent life.

Forty years ago, or thereabouts.

And then things turned out the way they did….

That’s life, Van Veeteren thought. One big goddamn lottery!

Or wasn’t it like that, in fact? Were there directions and patterns?

A determinant?

Münster leaned against the old gravestone and looked at the clock.

Ten minutes past ten. There were voices inside his head stubbornly urging him to go to the car and immediately drive back to The Big Shadow. The chief inspector had been on his own for more than an hour at this point—recently operated on, weak and sickly; it could be regarded as irresponsible not to keep an eye on him.

But there were other voices as well. Van Veeteren hadn’t actually insisted on any more than one hour of solitary majesty, although he had set the limit at half past ten. Münster had to choose between arriving too soon and arriving too late. An awkward choice, certainly; but if he stuck to the later time, at least he would escape being told off for disturbing the chief inspector’s holy thought processes. If Van Veeteren turned out to be unconscious somewhere among all the junk, that would be a serious matter, to be sure. But he’d rather turn up as an angel of mercy than as an unwelcome and premature intruder.

Münster closed his eyes. From inside the church came the muted, monotonous chanting of today’s sermon. He had watched the whole flock—about twenty pious souls—come wandering at regular intervals along the newly raked gravel path to the church door, where the shepherd had greeted each one with a handshake and a watery smile. Münster had tried to remain discreetly in the background, but the prelate had naturally got wind of him and fixed him with his beckoning gaze. Who was this person remaining willfully outside the temple gates?

But Münster had resisted. The other sheep had trotted slowly and patiently inside. The shepherd followed them in. The bells binged and bonged ten o’clock, a flock of temporarily homeless pigeons fled the steeple, and the service got under way.

The average age was unusually high, Münster noted as the doors closed behind them. It was clear to him that all the faithful would doubtless have deepened and sealed their relationship with the church within ten to fifteen years at most. By lying down to rest in the churchyard, that is.

Or being laid to rest, rather.

On a day like today he was almost inclined to envy them, just a little bit. Or at the very least to detect something serene and transfigured in this well-tended graveyard surrounding the ancient stone-built church with its recently repaired and profane red-tiled roof and black lacquered weathercock. Here, obviously, there was no cruel and avenging God. No trumpets sounding on the day of judgment. No eternal and inevitable damnation.

Only tenderness, reconciliation and the forgiveness of sins.

Mercy?

And then Synn intervened and interrupted (or joined in) his pious thoughts. The image of her naked body, curled up on her side in a summer-warm bed, her knees raised and her dark hair fanned out over the pillow and her shoulders: This image filled him with another kind of tenderness, the same uncomplicated happiness he had felt at the kitchen table a few hours ago, perhaps. And before long, he was recalling the talk about making love in the sight of God in the Garden of Eden He had created. If they could work out how to keep the children out of the way for a while, that ought not to be impossible. They had managed it before; soon he was busy recalling various moments of passion…. Making love in the rowboat on Lake Weimar last summer. In the middle of the lake with only the sky and the gulls as witnesses. And another occasion, early one morning high up on a Greek mountain with a panoramic view over the deep blue Mediterranean Sea. Not to mention the beach at Laguna Monda—that was before Bart was born, one of the very first times…. They had lain there in the warm, dense darkness with the breeze from the mountains caressing her body, her incredibly smooth skin and her…

A chord from the organ brought him back to his senses. Presumably it was intended to wake up a few other sheep dozing off in the flock inside the church. He opened his eyes and shook his head. The hymn singing gathered strength. With the vicar’s baritone, magnified by the microphone around his neck, leading the way, it floated out of the open windows and rose unshackled through the leaves of the trees, up into the heavens, where it was received and enjoyed, one can assume, by those already in residence to whom it was doubtless and unreservedly addressed.