Hour of the Wolf

35

He spent Wednesday evening and half of Thursday in an old Art Nouveau-style mansion in the Deijkstraat district. Krantze had bought the whole of a private library on the owner’s death: in round figures there were four-and-a-half thousand volumes to be examined, assessed and packed into crates. As usual there were three categories to be considered: books that would be hard to sell and of doubtful value (to be sold off by the kilo); books worthy of a place on the shelves of the antiquarian bookshop that would no doubt find a buyer in due course (no more than two to three hundred in view of available shelf space); and books he would love to see in his own bookcase (five at most — over time he had learned to transform moral questions into unambiguous numbers).

It was no unpleasant task, wandering around this old bourgeois mansion (the family had been lawyers and appeal judges for several generations, if he had read the genealogy correctly), thumbing through old books. He could take as long as he needed — the hereditary gout that now afflicted Krantze prevented him from doing work that could not be carried out while sitting down. Or lying down. Naturally he had first established that there were no scientific tracts from the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries in the collection, the narrow field that, in the autumn of his life, had become his real passion (and his only one, Van Veeteren had unfortunately been forced to conclude).

When his Wednesday work was finished, he ate a solitary, lugubrious dinner, watched an old De Sica film on Channel 4, and read for a few hours. For the first time since Erich’s death he found that he was able to concentrate on such matters. He didn’t know if it had to do with the latest conversation with Reinhart. Maybe, maybe not. And in that case, why? Before he fell asleep he lay for a long time, recapitulating the grim series of events that had led to the murder of his son. And to that nurse suffering the same fate.

He tried to conjure up the murderer. Noted that he hadn’t in fact been the motor driving the whole business. Rather, he seemed to have been dragged into a situation, an increasingly intense and infernal dilemma that he had tried to solve with every means available to him. He had killed and killed and killed with a sort of desperate, perverted logic.

And nevertheless, in the end, become the victim himself.

No, Reinhart was right. It was not a pleasant story.

That night he dreamt about two things.

Firstly about a visit he’d paid to Erich when he was in prison. It wasn’t an especially eventful dream: he simply sat in Erich’s cell, and Erich lay on the bed. A warder came in with a tray. They drank coffee and ate some kind of soft biscuit without speaking to each other — it was in fact a memory rather than a dream. A memory which perhaps had nothing more to say than what it portrayed: a father visiting his son in prison. An archetype.

He also dreamt about G. About the G file, the only case he had failed to solve over all his years as a police officer. Nothing actually happened in this dream either. G sat in the dock during his trial, wearing his black suit, and gazed at Van Veeteren from the depths of his dark eyes. There was a sardonic smile on his lips. The prosecuting counsel walked back and forth, firing questions at him, but G didn’t answer, simply sat there looking at Van Veeteren in the public gallery with that characteristic mixture of contempt and mockery.

He felt much greater distaste at this short dream sequence, but when he woke up he couldn’t even recall in which order he had dreamt them. Which one had come first. As he ate his breakfast he wondered if they could have somehow been merged into each other, as if in a film — Erich in prison and G in the courtroom — and in that case what the message of such a parallel dream might be.

He didn’t find an answer, perhaps because he didn’t want to. Perhaps because there wasn’t one.

When he had finished packing on the Thursday afternoon, and marked all the boxes, he took his own carrier bag of books to his car, drove to the swimming baths and spent a couple of hours there before returning home to Klagenburg at about six o’clock. There were two messages on the telephone answering machine he had been given as a present by Ulrike. One was from her: she intended visiting him on Friday with a bottle of wine and some morel pate, she announced, and wondered if he could use his own initiative to buy a few small gherkins and whatever other accessories he felt would be appropriate.

The other message was from Mahler, who explained that he intended to set up the chess pieces down at the Society at about nine p.m.

At that moment The Chief Inspector was inclined to give the inventor of the telephone answering machine — whoever that might be — half an acknowledgement.

It was raining when he emerged into the street, but it was pleasantly warm and he took the route through the cemetery as he had planned. The first week after Erich’s funeral he had been there every day, preferably in the evening when darkness had wrapped its comforting blanket around the graves. Now it was three days since the last time. As he approached the spot he slowed down as a sort of sign of respect — it happened without his thinking about it: an automatic, instinctive bodily reaction, it seemed. The open area was deserted at this time of day, gravestones and memorials stood up like even blacker silhouettes in the surrounding darkness. All that could be heard were his own footsteps on the gravel, pigeons cooing, cars accelerating a long way away in another world. He came to the grave. Stood listening, as usual, his hands dug deep into his overcoat pockets. If there was any ever-so-faint message or sign to be perceived at this time of day, it would be a sound: he knew that.

The dead are older than the living, he thought. Irrespective of how old they were when they passed over to the other side, they have experienced something which makes them older than any living thing.

Even a child. Even a son.

In the darkness he was unable to read the little memorial placard that had been installed temporarily until the stone ordered by Renate was in place. He found himself wishing he could read it: he would have liked to see the name and the date, and he made up his mind to visit the grave in daylight the next time.

The rain stopped as he stood there, and after ten minutes he continued on his way.

Left his son for now with the words Sleep well, Erich on his lips.

If possible I’ll come to you in due course.

The Society’s premises in Styckargrand were packed. But Mahler had arrived early and secured one of their usual booths with Durer prints and wrought-iron candelabra. He was sitting there, stroking his beard and writing in a black notebook when Van Veeteren turned up.

‘New poems,’ he explained, closing the book. ‘Or rather, old ones using new words. My language ceased to transcend my brain thirty years ago — besides, I don’t even know what transcend means any longer… And how are you keeping?’

‘KBO,’ said Van Veeteren, easing himself into the booth. ‘Keep buggering on. I sometimes have the impression that I’ll survive all this.’

Mahler nodded and took a cigar out of the breast pocket of his waistcoat.

‘That’s our lot,’ he said. ‘Those the gods hate are made to keep buggering on longest. Ready?’

Van Veeteren nodded, and Mahler started setting up the pieces.

The first game lasted fifty moves, sixty-five minutes and three beers. Van Veeteren accepted a draw, despite the fact that he had one extra pawn, because it was stranded on an outside file.

‘That son of yours,’ said Mahler after stroking his beard for a while. ‘Have they caught the bastard who did it?’

Van Veeteren emptied his glass before answering.

‘Apparently,’ he said. ‘Although it seems as if Nemesis has already put his oar in.’

‘What do you mean by that?’

‘He seems to be buried somewhere, according to what I’ve heard. It was a blackmailing lark. Erich was just a pawn in the game… No dirty hands in any case, not this time. Oddly enough that consoles me a bit. But I’d have liked to be able to look that doctor in the eye.’

‘Doctor?’ said Mahler.

‘Yes. Their function is to keep people alive, but this one chose a different line. Slaughtered them instead. I’ll tell you the whole story — but some other time, if you don’t mind. I need to put some distance between me and it first.’

Mahler sat and thought things over for a while, then excused himself and went to the loo. Van Veeteren took the opportunity of rolling five cigarettes while he was away. That corresponded to his prescribed daily consumption: but it had gone up a bit during the last month.

What the hell? Five cigarettes or ten? So what?

Mahler returned, carrying new beers.

‘I have a suggestion,’ he said. ‘Let’s do a Fischer.’

‘A Fischer?’ said Van Veeteren. ‘What are you on about?’

‘Come on, you know — the BIG genius’s final contribution to the game of chess: you set up the back line purely by chance… The same at both ends, of course. Then you avoid those bloody silly analyses right through to the twentieth move. The only must is that the king has to be between the rooks.’

‘I’ve heard about that,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘I’ve read about it. I’ve even studied a game played on that basis — it seemed barmy. It never occurred to me that I’d have to play a game like that… Do you really analyse everything as far ahead as the twentieth move?’

‘Always,’ said Mahler. ‘Well?’

‘If you insist,’ said Van Veeteren.

‘I do insist,’ said Mahler. ‘Cheers.’

He closed his eyes and dug into the box.

‘File?’

‘C,’ said Van Veeteren.

Mahler placed his white rook on c1.

‘Good Lord,’ said Van Veeteren, staring at it.

They continued with the whole back line: only one of the bishops landed in its right place. The kings were on the e file, the queens on g.

‘Fascinating to see the knight in the corner,’ said Mahler. ‘Shall we begin?’

He skipped his usual long session of introductory concentration, and played e2 to e3.

Van Veeteren rested his head on his hands, and stared at the board. Sat there for two minutes without moving a muscle. Then he slammed his fist down on the table and stood up.

‘Bloody hell! I’ll be damned if… Excuse me a moment.’

He wriggled his way out of the booth.

‘What the hell’s the matter with you?’ said Mahler, but he received no answer. The Chief Inspector had already elbowed his way to the telephone in the foyer.

The conversation with Reinhart took almost twenty minutes, and when he came back Mahler had already taken out his notebook again.

‘Sonnets,’ he explained, contemplating his cigar that had gone out. ‘Words and form! We have a totally clear view of the world when we’re fourteen years old, maybe sooner. But then we need another fifty years in order to create a language that can express those impressions. And in the mean time, of course, they’ve faded away… What the hell got into you?’

‘Please excuse me,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘You sometimes get a flash of inspiration even in the autumn of your life. It must have been this daft set-up that sparked it off.’

He gestured towards the board. Mahler peered at him over his half-empty glass.

‘You’re talking in riddles,’ he said.

But enlightenment had not yet dawned. Van Veeteren took a swig of beer, moved his knight out of the corner and lit a cigarette.

‘Your move, Mr Poet,’ he said.