21

Early summer became high summer.

If it had to do with private or professional reasons he was never quite sure, but for the next three weeks he took part in no further interrogations of G.

Reinhart and Münster played the Nasty Cop-Nice Cop game on a few occasions, with Reinhart playing the role of the unpleasant officer and Münster the rather more humane one. It was an old ruse and easy to see through, but it sometimes paid off even so. To some extent, at least. When a person is treated with friendliness and understanding after aggression and animosity, he finds it hard not to give way and unburden his mind. Irrespective of whether or not he realizes that it was all an act.

But not in this case. After a few long and fruitless sessions, Reinhart and Münster agreed that Jaan G. Hennan regarded their visits mostly as a sort of welcome — and almost entertaining — relief in the tedium of waiting for the trial to begin that had become his everyday routine, and they agreed to put a stop to it. If it was not possible to extract any information by interrogating him, then perhaps the loneliness and isolation might make him wobble slightly.

The Chief Inspector took upon himself the task of speaking to people recommended by Rooth and Jung for a follow-up interview. He had asked them for the names of at least a handful of people who might just possibly have information about what Hennan had been getting up to after his return from the USA, and they had obeyed the order. They had given him a list of five names. Not six or seven: he realized that if he had asked for at least three, he would have received precisely that number.

The whole operation had cost several working days, and afterwards Van Veeteren was able to confirm that the time had been wasted just as Inspector Rooth had claimed it would be. None of the five — nor any of the other twenty-two interviewees — had had any contact with Hennan whatsoever in recent times. At least, none of them admitted to being in touch with him; and on the day before the trial was due to begin in the Linden courthouse, when the Chief Inspector attempted to sum up the result of a month’s work aimed at throwing light on the circumstances surrounding Barbara Hennan’s death, he came up with the round but deeply unsatisfactory number of zero.

Absolutely nothing. They knew no more now than they had known at the beginning of June. Nothing had been refined from a suspicion to a certainty, nothing had turned up from an unexpected quarter — as sometimes happened as a sort of reward for valiant drudgery.

Things had not gone their way, to put it in a nutshell, and it was probably this grim truth that was nagging away in the back of his mind when he decided to confront the leading character one last time. One early Monday morning, when he sat down opposite him yet again in the bleak interrogation room, it felt as if he were in the closing stages of a hopeless game of chess, with so few pieces left and the situation so deadlocked that the only possible moves remaining were repetitive and leading nowhere apart from an inevitable draw.

And it was presumably because of this that he decided to change the routine a little.

‘Your lawyer?’

Hennan shook his head.

‘Not necessary. I don’t want to expose her to this nonsense.’

‘All right. Then I suggest we have a conversation off the record.’

‘Off the record?’ said Hennan. ‘Why?’

‘Because it could be interesting,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘No tape recorder and no witnesses.’

‘I don’t understand the point.’

‘That’s neither here nor there. Let’s go to another room.’

‘By all means. But just for a change. As far as I know you even have bugs in the loos.’

‘You have my word,’ said Van Veeteren.

‘Your word?’ Hennan burst out laughing, and stood up. ‘Okay! Off the record, if you think it will make any difference.’

The Chief Inspector chose one of the so-called discussion rooms on the first floor. He asked if Hennan fancied a beer, and rang down to the canteen and asked them to come up with two.

‘Shouldn’t we have a lie-detector test?’ asked Hennan after taking his first swig. ‘That might be interesting, don’t you think?’

‘I don’t see the point,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘I know you are lying even so.’

‘Yes, I’ve gathered that you think that. But next week at this time, when I’m a free man, don’t pretend that you didn’t understand the fact of the matter.’

‘Your conception of time is a little out of joint,’ said the Chief Inspector. ‘In my judgement you’ll have to wait for fifteen years. Not a week.’

Hennan smiled.

‘We’ll see about that,’ he said. ‘My lawyer says that she has seldom if ever seen a prosecutor as naked as this one.’

‘Does she, indeed?’ said Van Veeteren. ‘Anyway, I suggest we abandon these clichés and get down to some serious talking instead.’

‘Serious?’ said Hennan. ‘Off the record?’

The Chief Inspector nodded and lit a cigarette.

‘Exactly. I think you need to get things off your chest, and you have my word that whatever you say will not be used against you.’

Hennan looked at him for a brief moment with something that seemed like interest.

‘Why should I need to do that?’ he asked.

‘Basic psychology,’ said Van Veeteren, pausing briefly while he rolled up his shirtsleeves.

‘Psychology?’ said Hennan. ‘It stinks of desperation, if you’ll excuse-’

‘Rubbish. Let me explain. You are regarding this as a sort of trial of strength. . between you and us. You are obsessed by the thought of winning. But if you really were innocent, being exonerated would hardly be a feather in your cap, would it?’

Hennan said nothing. Took a drink of beer.

‘One point two million goes quite a long way, of course: but your triumph would be getting away with it despite the fact that you are guilty. And so it would be a plus-point — a big plus-point — if one of us. . me for example. . knew exactly what the facts are. Are you with me? It has to do with aesthetics.’

Hennan leaned back and smiled briefly again.

‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Of course I’m with you. But if what you say is correct, you seem to be convinced already that I am behind the death of my wife. Isn’t that enough? If I’m satisfied with the money, can’t you be satisfied with the fact that you know?’

‘Not really,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘I am a scrupulous person, and there are certain question marks. I don’t quite have the whole picture clear before me.’

‘Really?’ said Hennan. ‘So the Chief Inspector wants some details. How I actually did it. How I could sit in that restaurant and even so kill my wife. Have you considered hypnotism?’

The Chief Inspector nodded.

‘Of course. But you are no more hypnotic than a donkey.’

‘Thank you,’ said Hennan. ‘No, I admit that it didn’t happen that way.’

‘Good. So that’s one thing we agree about at least. How did it happen, then?’

‘You want me to reveal that?’

‘Yes.’

Hennan turned his head and contemplated the wall for a while, and for a second — or a tiny fraction of a second — the Chief Inspector had the impression that he was about to reveal all.

To explain how he had in fact taken the life of his wife, Barbara Clarissa Hennan, née Delgado — in a way that was so clever and ingenious that no detective chief inspector in the whole wide world could possibly imagine it.

Then that split second disappeared into its shell like a mussel; and looking back, it was not possible to say if it had been imagination or not. Hennan slowly straightened his back and took a deep breath. Directed his gaze once more at Van Veeteren, and eyed him with an expression of mild contempt.

‘It seems to be nice weather out there.’

‘Could be worse.’

‘Thank you for the beer. Perhaps I can return the compliment next week. I know a good place in Linden.’

Huh, I hate that bastard, thought the Chief Inspector. I really do.

That night he dreamed he was making love to Christa Koogel.

They were married, had four children and lived in a big house by the sea. Behrensee, as far as he could make out, south of the pier. Just how this came to him in a dream was unclear, to say the least; but it was a fact even so. It was not a sudden, frenzied bout of intercourse, but calm and tender love-making with a woman who had been his life’s companion for many years; and when he woke up it was clear to him that he had been on a journey in search of one of those alternative paths through life. A possibility that had not become reality, a direction his life could have taken if only something else had not intervened instead.

If he had not made different choices. Or if he had made them.

He looked at the clock. It was only half past five. He noticed that he was covered in sweat: if this was a result of his illusory love-making, or if it was the cold sweat caused by the angst of what might be in store in the day to come, he didn’t know. The dream lingered on inside him like a stab of sorrow, and he knew that he would be unable to go back to sleep.

He got up carefully — so as not to wake up his actual life’s companion — and had a shower instead. Stood there for ages, hoping the water would wash away some of the slag inside his body as well: but it was doubtful if he succeeded in that. When he sat down at the breakfast table with the Allgemejne, it was twenty minutes to seven. The trial in Linden was not due to begin until ten o’clock, and he realized that he had a long day ahead of him.

The first of many.

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