It was five o’clock on Saturday afternoon when he got home, and the only one there to greet him was Bismarck.
At least she was pleased to see him. On the kitchen table was a note from Renate to say that she had gone to Chadów to congratulate her mother on her birthday. She might stay on until Sunday — if he was interested in knowing, he could always ring.
As for Eric, he had gone to the coast with some mates. She had made him promise to be home before midnight, but whether or not he would keep that promise, she had no idea. It would have helped if his father had been around to assist her.
Van Veeteren tore the note into four and threw it into the waste-paper basket. He felt a sudden irritation flaring up inside him, and an urge simply to get into the car and drive away from it all. From work, home, wife, son — all the oppressive, stifling aspects of his life which could only be compared to a chronic, nagging pain. Deep down under his skin and into the depths of his soul. It was a primitive and childish feeling: he knew that, but it only made matters worse.
It was as if this was the basic condition of life, he thought. The primeval swamp out of which you constantly had to crawl, and fight against with all means at your disposal. Every morning, every day until the end of time. The moment you lowered your guard you lay there again, kicking and squirming. Back to square one.
He drank a beer, had a shower and put on some clean clothes. That helped slightly. He went for a walk through Randers Park with Bismarck. The weather was tolerably pleasant: cloudy but no wind, and the temperature was certainly above twenty degrees. He decided to eat out.
And in no circumstances to ring his wife.
But it was silly to keep on trying to fool himself, he also thought. Naive to pretend that she was the villain in the plot.
That was not Renate. He was the real villain.
He got back home at about nine o’clock, and once again there was only the dog there to welcome him. They went for another walk through the park, now in persistent light rain; but when they returned home, he requested Bismarck to go and lie down, so that he had an opportunity to think a few human thoughts in peace and quiet. Bismarck nodded, yawned and lay down on her favourite armchair in Jess’s old room.
Van Veeteren read the Allgemejne and listened to Sibelius for half an hour, but switched off after Valse triste. Checked that there wasn’t a late film on the box that might be of interest, then went to fetch his briefcase and a beer.
He took out the tape, put it in the tape deck and made himself comfortable in his chair. Switched off the light. Poured out a glass and pressed the start button.
Might as well, he thought. If you are a self-tormentor, you do what you have to do — I’ll have to do it sooner or later anyway. .
After the usual introductory statements about the time, place, subject matter and those involved, they got down to business. It was no more than six hours since they had completed the actual interrogation at the police station, but he noticed immediately that the changed environment — the stage-managed setting versus the dark living room, the well-worn armchair, the late hour and being on his own — somehow changed the circumstances. Transformed what had been presumed and somehow shifted the perspective in ways he couldn’t put his finger on.
Or perhaps it was just confirmation of the simple fact that you can sometimes hear better if you can’t see.
He closed his eyes and listened to his own voice.
VV:
Welcome to a new conversation, herr Hennan.
G:
Thank you.
VV:
Let me make it clear from the start that neither I nor Intendent Reinhart are here because we have nothing better to do. If you have nothing to say, or don’t want to answer questions, we can shut up shop without more ado.
G:
I’m naturally at your service, gentlemen. The sooner we can establish that my wife died as a result of an accident, the better.
R:
Why do you refute in such a casual manner that there might be other forces at work? I listened to the recording of your earlier conversation last night, and I find it difficult to see the logic of your reasoning.
G:
I’ve no doubt that’s true. I’m sorry, what did you say your name was?
R:
Reinhart.
G:
All right, Constable Reinhart. You are looking for what you want to look for, and you see what you want to see. That logic is so obvious that even you ought to be able to understand it.
R:
Rubbish.
G:
My wife died as a result of an accident.
VV:
I hear what you are saying. But as I’ve already said, we have sufficient evidence to indicate that there is quite a different explanation. If you refuse even to consider the possibility that somebody killed her, we can only conclude that you yourself played a part in what happened. I thought you’d had time enough to think about that and realize the facts of the situation.
G:
I’m afraid I must disappoint you on that score. And I’m afraid you underestimate me.
R:
Has it not occurred to you that you are behaving in rather an odd manner?
G:
Has it not occurred to you — both of you — that you are treating me in rather a strange way? Not to say improperly.
R:
Explain.
G:
By all means. I have just had my wife taken away from me in traumatic circumstances. One can hardly say that you have been very considerate thus far.
R:
Really? If you’ll forgive me for saying so, you seem to have controlled your sorrow and sense of loss rather well.
G:
That is something you know nothing about, Constable. Why should I lay bare my soul before my executioners?
R:
Executioners? Good God. .
VV:
So you mourn the loss of your wife?
G:
Of course.
VV:
More than you mourned the loss of your first wife?
G:
I have no yardstick for making such comparisons.
R:
So there’s no difference between one or two dead wives?
G:
I have no comment to make on that kind of insinuation.
R:
I’m not surprised.
VV:
Your firm was a bluff, wasn’t it?
G:
A bluff? Why should it be a bluff?
VV:
What type of activities are you concerned with?
G:
Business, of course.
E:
What kind of business?
G:
Import and sales.
VV:
Of what?
G:
I have been investigating various possible markets so far. . I don’t think these are the kind of realities that you have a clue about. In any case, that’s irrelevant. When are you thinking of letting me go?
R:
Letting you go? Why the hell should we let you go?
G:
Do you think I don’t know my rights? I’ve asked you not to underestimate me — that would only cause you problems.
VV:
How long is your rental contract at Villa Zefyr?
G:
Six months, automatically renewable. If it isn’t cancelled, it runs automatically for another half-year.
VV:
Have you cancelled it now?
G:
Why should I have done that?
R:
Because your wife is dead, for example.
G:
I haven’t thought about that yet.
VV:
In view of the fact that you are likely to be in jail for a few decades, perhaps you ought to do so.
G:
Rubbish.
R:
And you are thinking of carrying on with your so-called firm, are you?
G:
That’s not something I need to discuss with you. But I’m thinking of contacting a lawyer if you insist on being unreasonable. . Or at least not observing the limits of your authority.
VV:
What time did your wife get back from Aarlach on the evening of the murder?
G:
The evening of the murder?
VV:
Don’t split hairs when it comes to words. What time did she get home?
G:
I don’t know.
R:
Didn’t you ring home to check if she was back?
G:
I’ve already said that I did.
VV:
At what time?
G:
Several times. She didn’t answer.
VV:
When was the last time you rang?
G:
About half past six.
VV:
Why do you think she contacted a private detective?
G:
I’ve no idea. I don’t believe any of this.
VV:
You’ve had a whole day to think about it. Surely you must have thought of some reason?
G:
As I said, I don’t believe it.
R:
And she hadn’t made any similar arrangements previously?
G:
Of course not.
VV:
What did you talk about that evening, you and Verlangen?
G:
Nothing important.
R:
What do you mean by that? Football? Brands of whisky? Women?
G:
For example.
VV:
But you recognized him?
G:
There are some coppers’ phizogs you never forget.
R:
Were you engaged in drug trafficking in the USA as well?
G:
I’ve never been engaged in drug trafficking.
VV:
Did your wife have any enemies?
G:
Enemies? Why should she have any enemies? She hardly knew anybody in this country.
R:
So you didn’t have a social life?
G:
We didn’t want to have one yet.
VV:
Why?
G:
That was our business. Are you as bored by all this as I am?
R:
You can bet we are. Prize idiots don’t have all that much in the way of entertainment value.
VV:
Claus Dorp — can you tell us a bit about him?
G:
Claus Dorp? Why should I tell you anything about Claus Dorp?
VV:
Because he’s an old friend of yours, isn’t he?
G:
I wouldn’t say that.
VV:
I don’t suppose he would either. But you were both found guilty in that drugs business twelve years ago. Isn’t that the case?
G:
So what?
VV:
Have you been in contact with him since you came back?
G:
No.
R:
What about Christian Müller? Ernst Melnik? Andreas van der Heugen?
G:
Bravo! Clever coppers! No, I haven’t seen any of them for twelve years.
VV:
When you got home and found your wife at the bottom of the empty pool, can you tell us exactly what you did then?
G:
I’ve already answered that question several times. If you really want to hear it all again, maybe you could dig out your tapes and listen to them.
R:
You’ll have to say it all again at the trial in any case.
G:
All the more reason why I shouldn’t do it now. But there won’t be a trial — you know that as well as I do.
R:
Shall we have a bet on that?
G:
What?
R:
One point two million, perhaps? That’s a nice round sum.
G:
You like to joke, don’t you, Constable.
R:
Of course. But I don’t want to have a bet with you. I don’t get involved with any old riff-raff.
G:
I’m glad to hear it. Can I tell you something? Man to man, as it were.
VV:
Please do.
G:
You are pretty ropey actors — I don’t know which of you is worse. You know full well that the case you are trying to build up against me would be laughable in a courtroom. You know that and I know that. A flimsy house of cards. It would only need a third-rate defence lawyer to sneeze, and the whole thing would collapse. Why don’t you admit that it’s the case? So that we don’t have to carry on with these ridiculous pirouettes?
R:
What’s it like to rape your little sister? Do you feel good afterwards?
There was a long silence. Only the sound of Jaan G. Hennan lighting a cigarette, and Reinhart tapping a pen absentmindedly on the table. Van Veeteren switched off.
I don’t want to hear any more, he thought. Reinhart can listen to it and see if he picks up anything.
Picks up what? he asked himself immediately. What is there to listen for, in fact?
An unintentional slip of the tongue?
Something G happened to let slip without meaning to? A ray of light that could at least indicate where it might be fruitful to dig a bit deeper?
He didn’t think so. To be honest he didn’t think so, he realized that, and to be honest he agreed with G on one point. These interrogations — or conversations — were pointless.
Because the circumstances were clear.
They knew that G was behind the death of his wife.
And G knew that they knew.
It wouldn’t even harm him significantly if he happened to slip up and admit that he had done it, Van Veeteren thought. The only thing that would harm him would be if he let slip how.
Or who, perhaps. That G came out with the name of the accomplice that — when all was said and done — he must have had.
Hoping for something of that sort seemed almost idiotic.
He switched the light on and took the tape out of the machine. Spent a couple of minutes searching through his collection of records, and eventually decided on Bartók’s second piano concerto. He knew that sooner or later he would have to think through that Christa business as well, and it was time now: he could think of no better accompaniment that Bartók.
It wasn’t only Adam Bronstein, it was Christa Koogel as well. That’s the way it was.
Christa Koogel, who had opened up inside him a room of whose existence he had never known. The room of love. A place and a situation in which it was possible to love a woman, and be loved in return. Far away from. . what had he called it?. . the primeval swamp of existence.
He was twenty-one, she was nineteen. For four months — a summer and a little longer — he had lived there. . A magic circle of enhanced vital sensuousness. He could find no alternative way of expressing it, high-flown though the words might seem. An existence, it had seemed to him, in which every object, every action, every look and every touch and mundane chore had been filled with a profoundly meaningful and magically real significance.
Over and over again. Just knowing that she was there in the vicinity, in the same town and the same life, that it was sometimes possible to stretch out his hand and touch her arm or hair or back, and receive a look from her in acknowledgement, gave him — had given him — an incomprehensible feeling of ease and invulnerability. And substance.
Twenty-one and nineteen.
Kissing her and feeling her willingness and her naked skin, gently stroking with the back of his hand along her outstretched arm, then continuing over her breasts and her gently rounded stomach. . he could still — after almost thirty years, it was incredible! — still recall the bodily sensation of that movement and touching. His left hand, her right arm.
The red room of love. Ease and substance. Just over a summer. And then came her hesitation, and he discovered something else. The black hole of absence. Square one.
They never broke off their relationship formally. They didn’t need to.
They simply agreed to meet less often. She needed to think over her emotions. A week later he saw her in a cafe. He saw her, she didn’t see him. Her eyes were preoccupied by something else. She was sitting at a table together with a young man, a different young man. They were drinking wine, and their heads were very close together. They were talking and laughing. He was holding his hand over hers. They were both smoking — she had never smoked when she had been together with Van Veeteren in the red room of love. They had hardly ever drunk wine either. The new man was G.
They never broke off their relationship formally. They didn’t need to.
And she taught him a third thing.
The feminine defect. That horrific and incomprehensible trait. The fact that a beautiful and gifted and much loved young woman can fall for an utter shit who is not fit to kiss the ground she walks and stands on.
And the door to the room of love was closed. Several years later he met her by pure chance, and rashly plucked up the courage to ask her why she had bothered to open it. The door to love. Or was the bottom line that she could open it to anybody who happened to come along? Was it as simple as that?
They spoke for quite a long time. She cried and said that she regretted what she had done. That G had treated her very badly. He had made her pregnant, then abandoned her. After the abortion she didn’t believe in the room of love either. She said — and he believed her — that she wished that they had stayed together and that she had never met G.
But by then it was too late. Renate was in her seventh month, and circumstances were no longer what they had been.
So there it was. That was roughly how it could be put into words. It wasn’t even all that remarkable. Quite a run-of-the-mill melodrama, no doubt. An experience that pretty well everybody had been through — and perhaps that was the aspect which was saddest of all.
He checked the time: a quarter past twelve. Erich hadn’t rung, nor had Renate. Bartók had finished, but he couldn’t be bothered to prise himself out of his armchair and put on something else. He emptied his glass of beer instead, and hoped to rinse Christa Koogel out of his memory.
Or to shift her into the place where she belonged: alternative paths through life that had never been embarked upon. Closed rooms.
But that left G.
That left Jaan G. Hennan.
As a sort of macabre incarnation of all possible devilry and the errors that had scarred one’s earlier life. Downright evil: a person with no redeeming factors.
I hate him, he suddenly thought. If there is any bastard on this earth that I hate, it’s G. I could throw him into a fire without a second thought, as one would do with a cockroach. I really could.
He sat there in the darkness for another half hour. Then he made up his mind and went to bed.