The G File

39

It was half past six in the evening when Bausen and Van Veeteren scrambled into Bausen’s old Citroën, and set off to start looking for houses. A rain shower had just passed over, but the sky was starting to turn clear again, and provided that no more banks of clouds came sneaking in from the southwest they should have a few hours of daylight at their disposal.

Or twilight at least. Bausen did not think there was much point in working in darkness.

‘What did I say?’ he had let slip as he replaced the receiver after the telephone call from deKlerk. ‘We haven’t even got as far as move number thirteen!’

Van Veeteren had no comment to make on that. But on the other hand, he did wonder about Bausen’s motive in telling the investigation leader when he came round that he was pretty sure he recognized the house from the photographs, but that there were a few other possibilities that he ought to check up on — and then, when they were alone again, saying that in fact he didn’t think he had ever seen the house before.

‘Why did you lie?’ Van Veeteren had asked him.

‘There’s lying and lying,’ Bausen had replied. ‘I thought we ought to get out and about, you and I — and surely to God, we’re bound to find the right hovel sooner or later.’

‘Always assuming it really is in this dump,’ Van Veeteren had said.

‘Don’t be so finicky,’ Bausen had said.

He attached the two enlarged photographs to the instrument panel with the aid of a spring clip, and started the engine. Van Veeteren was holding another enlargement in his hands: one of the many pictures of the back of the house and the one in which the man’s face was clearest. He had been studying the somewhat blurred features of the man ever since he had first been given it an hour ago, but couldn’t make up his mind if it really was Jaan G. Hennan or not.

Maybe, maybe not.

But if I see him in person, he thought, I’ll be able to decide in half a second.

‘I’d have thought there were two districts for us to choose from,’ said Bausen. ‘Rikken and Wassingen. You can see that from the quality of the building — it’s not exactly a working man’s shack.’

‘Evidently not,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘Have you thought about the location of the photographer? I think that ought to tell us something significant.’

Bausen nodded.

‘Yes, of course. He seems to have been able to shoot away more or less undisturbed from the back of the house. That could mean that there is a little wood or some sort of natural cover in that direction. The pictures from the front seem to suggest that as well. Anyway, we shall soon see. Keep your eyes skinned, we’ll start with Wassingen.’

The residential district of Wassingen was on the southeastern edge of Kaalbringen — an extensive estate with architect-designed detached houses mainly from the forties and fifties. There were about a hundred in all, with large gardens, and many of them bordering on the deciduous woods that ran around some two-thirds of the area.

Oost Honingerweg ran from east to west through the whole district, with banana-shaped side roads to the north and south, and it took Van Veeteren and Bausen over half an hour to crawl through the whole caboodle. They kept stopping here and there to compare what they saw with Verlangen’s photographs, and were twice attacked by an unsupervised male boxer badly in need of a pee (right rear wheel, left front wheel — at least they assumed it was the same dog, but it happened in two different streets); but when they had finished they were able to establish — with a level of probability bordering on certainty — that it was not in Wassingen that the deceased private detective Maarten Verlangen had stood (sat? lain?) taking photographs five months previously.

‘It’s only a quarter past seven,’ said Bausen, looking at his watch. ‘We can cover Rikken as well before it gets dark.’

‘And if we don’t find the place there either?’ wondered Van Veeteren as he wound down the side window and lit a cigarette. ‘What do we do then?’

‘We shall find it in Rikken,’ said Bausen. ‘I can feel it.’

Twenty minutes later Van Veeteren could concede that Bausen’s optimism had been justified.

He was also able to establish that he was not too old to have palpitations. Bausen switched off the engine and cleared his throat.

‘There we have it. No doubt about it, don’t you think?’

No, there was no doubt about it. The front of the solidly built brown-brick building was identical to the one in the photograph. Even the low brick wall along the edge of the street. And the garage, which was unclear in the photograph, and the projecting roof over the front door. The two pruned fruit trees at the gable end were now in leaf: in April they were only just in bud, but it was obvious that they were the same trees.

The right house. Definitely. Van Veeteren noticed that his palpitations were followed by a degree of dryness in his mouth, and he wished he’d had a pair of sunglasses with him, not to mention a broad-brimmed hat to pull down over his brow. So that he was ready for anything.

‘What’s the address?’ he asked.

Bausen shook his head.

‘We’ll have to check the name of the street, I can’t remember it. But it’s number 14 in any case. . There doesn’t seem to be anybody at home, but you never know, of course.’

‘Keep moving,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘We can’t just park here.’

‘All right. There’s a street sign over there at the corner.’

He started the engine again, and they moved off.

‘Wackerstraat,’ said Van Veeteren when they came to the junction. ‘Wackerstraat 14. Now we know.’

Bausen gestured with his hand.

‘The municipal forest borders the garden — that’s where Verlangen hid. Just like I did once upon a time. . Hmm. . What do we do now?’

Van Veeteren thought for a moment.

‘Phone the police,’ he said. ‘They can find out who lives here. Perhaps they will want to be consulted about the next step as well.’

‘You reckon?’ said Bausen. ‘Ah well, I suppose we have no option but to contact them.’

‘No option?’ said Van Veeteren. ‘What on earth do you mean by that?’

But Bausen did not respond.

‘Over to you, Stiller,’ said deKlerk. ‘You’re the one who has dug up the information, so you might as well take us through it. Please forgive the overcrowding, by the way, but there aren’t usually nearly as many of us as we are now, and this is. . as you know. . the biggest room we have access to.’

The chief of police’s comments were justified: despite the fact that it was turned ten o’clock at night all those involved in the investigation had answered the call. The local officers: Moerk and Stiller. The CID officers brought in from Maardam: Münster and Rooth. The two former chief inspectors: Bausen and Van Veeteren.

And deKlerk himself. Seven in all. As somebody had said the other day: one couldn’t complain about the number of staff assigned to this case.

It also occurred to the chief of police that if that down-at-heel private detective was gazing down at them now from his heaven — or peering up from the other place — he really ought to raise an eyebrow as a reaction to the stir his death had brought about. Yes indeed.

He squeezed down onto his chair, and nodded encouragingly at Stiller.

‘Okay,’ said the probationer. ‘What I found out wasn’t all that remarkable, in fact. They’ve been living here for ten years, and all the information I have has come from the tax authorities. Anyway: Christopher and Elizabeth Nolan. Owners of the art gallery and attached shop Winderhuus down in Hamnesplanaden. . They moved here in 1992, and launched their business the following year. I suppose one could say that they are quite firmly established now. They come from Bristol in England — he’s sixty-three, she’s fifty-one. As far as I can make out it’s fru Nolan who has most to do with Winderhuus: they were quite well off when they came here, and still have a considerable fortune even if the art business has been running at a loss in recent years. .’

‘That’s what the tax authorities think, at least,’ said Beate Moerk.

‘Yes,’ said Stiller. ‘I’ve been following up mainly the information I received from them. The Nolans have no children; they bought the house in Wackerstraat in 1995 — they lived in a flat in Romners Park for the first three years. There are no indications of financial irregularities of any kind — on the contrary, they have both declared their considerable wealth every year since they came here. . Anyway, that’s what I’ve managed to dig up.’

‘An art gallery?’ muttered Rooth. ‘That must be a good place to hide money in.’

‘Maybe,’ said Münster. ‘But Christopher Nolan? I don’t know what to think, in fact. .’

‘Harrumph,’ said Bausen, looking hard at all present in turn. ‘If you’ll forgive me for saying so, there’s not much point in thinking anything at all so far. Either this bloke is identical with Jaan G. Hennan, or he’s identical with Christopher Nolan. Until we’ve established the facts, we can put all theories to one side. We don’t need to start speculating at this stage, do we?’

‘You may well be right,’ said the chief of police with a slightly strained smile. ‘And how should we go about sorting out that little detail? Any suggestions?’

Nobody spoke for several seconds. Then Intendent Münster cleared his throat.

‘One possibility is of course to go there and interrogate him. Or talk to him, at least. But I’m not sure if that’s the right thing to do in this case.’

‘I think it’s a bloody daft thing to do,’ said Rooth. ‘Surely we can’t be so naive as to deal with an arsehole like Hennan with all our cards on the table?’

‘We don’t know that it is Hennan,’ said Stiller.

‘All the more reason for not putting all our cards on the table. Not to start with, at least. My Bible says quite clearly that in a case like this we have to start with a bluff. A premier league, king size bluff.’

‘Yes, I’m inclined to agree,’ said Inspector Moerk. ‘We can’t start talking seriously to him until we know for sure whether or not we are dealing with G. It would be plain daft to let slip that we suspect something.’

‘I agree,’ said Münster. ‘He didn’t give the impression of having been born yesterday last time. We have to be careful.’

‘Does anybody disagree?’ asked deKlerk, looking round the table.

Nobody had any comment to make. Van Veeteren exchanged looks with Münster, and seemed to be about to say something, but he changed his mind and took out his cigarette machine instead.

‘But we still need to decide what to do next,’ said deKlerk. ‘Which one of us would be most likely to be able to identify Jaan G. Hennan?’

The question was so rhetorical that Van Veeteren almost dropped his cigarette machine on the floor. Bausen couldn’t help laughing.

‘For Christ’s sake,’ he said. ‘You seem to have made up your minds to send the happy wanderers out to do the work for you — the amateurs who did their bit long ago. But why not? It obviously makes sense for Van Veeteren to make the first move — you would recognize him, wouldn’t you? That’s what you said an hour ago, in any case.’

Van Veeteren put the cigarette machine back into his jacket pocket, and clasped his hands on the table in front of him.

‘Probably,’ he said. ‘I’d like to think so, at least. But I also think it’s highly likely that Hennan would recognize me. We would need to decide if that was an advantage or a disadvantage.’

‘That assumes that you would have to come face to face, doesn’t it?’ said Beate Moerk.

Van Veeteren frowned.

‘Perhaps that wouldn’t be necessary,’ he conceded. ‘But I’m keen to find myself in that situation sooner or later. If it really is him.’

Beate Moerk smiled.

‘I think I’ve understood that,’ she said. ‘A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do. Right?’

‘Hmm,’ said the Chief Inspector. ‘Something along those lines. But how would you go about setting it up in the first place? I have. . I don’t have any great desire to sneak around in that bastard’s shadow, hoping that he might turn round and look at me at some point.’

Bausen had been sitting there for a while, scratching the back of his head.

‘It doesn’t need to be quite as melodramatic as that,’ he said. ‘We could try this: I can give you a few old paintings, and you can call in at Winderhuus when Mr Nolan is on duty, and try to sell them to him. You could please yourself about whether or not to wear a false beard.’

‘As easy as that?’ said Van Veeteren.

‘As easy as that, yes,’ said Bausen.

Perhaps it was due to the late hour, or possibly something else, but three quarters of an hour later nobody had come up with a better solution.

Just around half past one, shortly before he managed to fall asleep, a new thought occurred to Van Veeteren. He didn’t like it.

If, it dawned on him, if Christopher Nolan was identical with Jaan G. Hennan, that must mean — according to the information that Probationer Stiller had dug up and presented in exemplary fashion — that he had been living in Kaalbringen at the time of the axe-killer case nine years ago.

That was a most unwelcome insight.

I wonder how I would have reacted if I’d known that at the time, Van Veeteren thought. Would it have influenced the outcome of the investigation?

And when he eventually fell asleep he immediately started dreaming about wandering around a large art gallery — disguised with a gigantic white Father Christmas-type beard and intent on cutting out of their frames canvases with the world’s most expensive and famous works of art. He recognized Guernica and The Last Supper, and Van Gogh’s Sunflowers.

It was pretty unpleasant, but soon became much worse. Both paintings and false beard had evidently been blown away, and instead he was walking along a vast, deserted beach. Apparently on his way to his own death: this was made clear by a series of yellowish-black, rusted signs sunk down into the sand at regular intervals. The distance still to walk shrank rapidly, and no matter how hard he tried, he failed to catch sight of a single person who might be able to help him turn round. . Not a single one.

When he woke up the next morning he simply could not believe that he had been asleep for seven hours.

Seven minutes, more likely.