The G File

51

He dug a few spadefuls in silence. His back ached more with every movement now, but in view of what lay in store he simply ignored it. As long as I’m in pain I’m still alive, he told himself. He had started sweating as well, but didn’t want to take off his jacket. A diffuse idea of it being cold down in the ground was in the back of his mind: presumably that was what held him back.

‘You needn’t have involved Verlangen,’ he said. ‘It would have worked even so.’

‘Rubbish. Jaan had good reason to punish him. . And besides, he was necessary, of course.’

He suspected that she was reluctantly keen to convince him of that. As if she felt a need to justify her actions, despite everything.

‘Why?’

‘To divert the attention of the police. Jaan G. Hennan had murdered his wife, his wife had suspected something was amiss and turned to a private detective who nevertheless was unable to save her life. That was how you were supposed to see the situation, and that is how you saw it. Was there ever any suspicion that the victim might have been somebody else?’

He didn’t reply, but he felt pangs of conscience inside himself. She’s right, he thought. That possibility never occurred to us. Not to me nor to anybody else. Only to a drunken private detective fifteen years later. That’s the way it was.

Not especially flattering.

It serves me right, he concluded. This finale is an appropriate conclusion to the whole messy business. It ought to start raining as well.

But that was evidently not the forecast for this September morning. Not for the short time he had left, at least. It was almost full daylight now — but no sun, and in no circumstances would it manage to shine into the little clearing before getting on for lunchtime. By then it would all be over and done with.

So just a pale, featureless sky. No wind, no signs. He dug a little deeper without speaking. It occurred to him that he liked the smell of soil, despite everything.

‘Who was Liston?’ she asked suddenly.

‘Liston?’

‘Yes. Verlangen went on about somebody called Liston. He was supposed to have received money from my husband.’

Van Veeteren straightened his back and leaned with his elbows on the spade handle.

‘I’ve no idea.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘My word of honour. How did you meet, by the way?’

‘Who?’

‘You and Hennan.’

She hesitated for a few seconds, then decided to tell him that as well.

‘It was in 1980. A few years before he married Philomena.’

‘I see. So that was a bogus marriage from the very start?’

‘Bogus marriage?’ She burst out laughing. ‘Yes, you could certainly call it that. She was an absolute nincompoop — the fact that she actually got married was something she could thank her lucky stars for.’

‘You had no moral reservations?’

Her smile was now perfectly natural.

‘Morals, Chief Inspector. You are using very weighty language indeed. Nobody mourned the death of Philomena McNaught, believe you me. We shortened her suffering in this world by some forty or fifty years. . And how many mourners do you expect to attend the funeral of Maarten Verlangen?’

He noted that she was addressing him more formally again. He started digging once more, then remembered something else.

‘Children,’ he said. ‘She had a child, that woman you murdered. Did you know that?’

Her smile turned into a grimace.

‘Some careless prostitutes have children.’

He got the feeling that he had run out of words. She’s not worth it, he thought. Not worth the effort of keeping up this macabre conversation. I mustn’t let her think that I regard her with some sort of respect — like an opponent I take my hat off to.

What if she gets away with this? he suddenly thought. With five people’s lives on her conscience. Mine as well.

Perhaps there are more? — In England, for instance: they had spent some time there, after all. But he didn’t want to ask her about that. Didn’t want to say anything else at all. Or to know any more.

Nevertheless, as he carried on digging he tried to assess how probable it was. That she would get away with it. He realized that his analytical capabilities were not at their best in the given circumstances, but the odds seemed to be very much in her favour. Surely that was the case?

Dammit all, he thought. If these were my memoirs, what a dreadful conclusion that would be. The one and only Chief Inspector lowers the curtain on his only unsolved case by allowing himself to be killed by Lady Macbeth. It’s a good job I shelved my scribbling. A good job that I resigned as a police officer.

But it wasn’t his memoirs or his career that this was all about: it was about his life. Nothing else.

Erich? mumbled a voice somewhere inside him. Are you still looking down at me, my son?

He heard no answer, but nevertheless made up his mind how the final scene would appear. There was no reason to delay things any longer. Time had run out. He could feel the sweat pouring down his back.

One chance in a hundred, he had already decided.

At most.

‘What should we do?’ said Bausen. ‘I have no doubt about that at all. We must send out an urgent S.O.S. message on every damned radio and television channel you can find, asking for information about Van Veeteren and his car. Without delay! This is not just some sort of coincidence, and if there’s anything in what Rooth claims, it could be urgent — absolutely top priority urgent!’

It could also be too late, he thought; but he didn’t say that.

‘All right,’ said deKlerk. ‘I’d already intended to do that, of course. But what else should we do, I meant?’

‘What else?’ muttered Bausen. ‘We must help Rooth and Münster. Check with the neighbours to see whether anybody noticed a blue Opel in Wackerstraat yesterday. . And we can also cross our fingers — and arms and legs and eyes and everything else. Would you like me to come to the station?’

DeKlerk hesitated for half a second.

‘Yes, please,’ he said. ‘That would be best, I suppose.’

Münster and Rooth entered the Nolans’ house via a ventilation window at the back.

They then spent five or six minutes wandering aimlessly around from room to room in the vain hope of stumbling upon something that could give an indication of what had happened.

Always assuming that anything at all had happened.

‘What are we looking for?’ Münster wondered.

‘I’m damned if I know,’ said Rooth. ‘But if you find whatever it is, I’ll let you know.’

‘Good,’ said Münster. ‘I have always admired your ability to explain things.’

Rooth didn’t respond. Münster looked around the spacious living room. There was no trace of Elizabeth Nolan — not as far as they could see, in any case.

Or rather, nothing that suggested where she might have gone. Naturally there were plenty of conceivable legitimate reasons for her not being at home — they had already ascertained that the two cars, the Rover and the Japanese, were in their usual places in the garage and on the drive: but this was a fact that didn’t really throw light on very much. There were buses and trains, for example. Not to mention aeroplanes, if one had reason to travel rather further away. When Münster checked for the third time that fru Nolan was not in her bed, nor hanging in the wardrobe in her bedroom, he began to feel frustrated over the situation.

‘We’re getting nowhere,’ he said to Rooth, who had just come out of the bathroom for the second time. ‘We’re farting around like a pair of idiots. We’re wasting our time here. We must find something more rational to do.’

Rooth shrugged helplessly, and looked out of the window in time to see Beate Moerk and Probationer Stiller getting out of a car.

‘Reinforcements,’ he said. ‘Now there are four of us. Shall we take a neighbour each after all. . and hope that they haven’t already left for work?’

Münster looked at his watch. It was twenty past seven, and he was still feeling sick. It had got worse, in fact.

‘All right,’ he said. ‘I suppose it can’t do any harm.’

‘Coffee?’ asked deKlerk.

Bausen shook his head and sat down at the desk opposite his thirty-year-younger successor.

‘The S.O.S. messages have been sent out,’ said deKlerk. ‘They’ll be broadcast in news bulletins on the telly and the radio every half hour until-’

‘I know,’ said Bausen, interrupting him. ‘I heard it in the car on the way here. What’s happening in Wackerstraat?’

‘They’re busy interviewing the neighbours. Fru Nolan wasn’t at home. That doesn’t necessarily imply anything, but for the moment we have no other clues to follow up.’

Bausen nodded dejectedly.

‘It’s enough, I fear,’ he said. ‘If we take Rooth’s little detail seriously, and assume she in fact only pretended to pass out, well. . In that case Elizabeth Nolan isn’t somebody to take lightly.’

‘It’s only quite a small detail,’ suggested deKlerk.

‘Maybe. But that doesn’t matter. We have an either-or situation, as they say.’

‘Either-or?’

‘Yes. If Rooth was right, we mustn’t make light of it. She tried to give the impression of being in shock, but in fact she wasn’t. That can only mean one thing. The death of her husband was not a surprise to her. . And the next step isn’t difficult to take either.’

‘You mean she killed him?’ said deKlerk.

‘We can take that as a hypothesis. For the moment, at least. And that she presumably had good reasons for doing it. . And so on. No matter how we think about it, it must all go back to that business fifteen years ago. Don’t ask me how. But for heaven’s sake, I’ve got to know Van Veeteren pretty well over the years, and I’ll be damned if he’s the kind of person who just disappears into thin air for no good reason.’

‘What do you think act-’ began deKlerk, but was interrupted by the telephone ringing.

He picked up the receiver and listened. Put his hand over the mouthpiece and informed Bausen in a stage whisper:

‘A woman with information. In connection with the S.O.S.’

He continued listening, asked a few questions and wrote down notes for a few minutes. Bausen leaned back on his chair and watched him attentively — and as it became clear what the call was all about, he began to feel something loosening up inside him. As if he had been holding his breath all morning.

Or had a firmly clenched fist in the middle of his solar plexus.

At last, he thought. At last something is being resolved in connection with this damned business.

But for God’s sake, don’t let. .

He never formulated the thought. He didn’t need to.

‘I’ve finished now.’

She stood up from her place on the fallen tree trunk.

‘How do you know that?’

He clambered up out of the grave, stretched his back muscles cautiously and took hold tightly of the spade handle with both hands. Was careful to ensure that the blade didn’t sink into the ground, but simply rested on a tussock of grass.

‘I don’t think I want to lie any deeper than that.’

She examined the grave briefly and seemed to be weighing something up. He checked his watch. It was five minutes to seven. The forest had come to life now. He perceived it in a sort of distant and semi-conscious way: by means of sensual impressions that were so subtle, he never registered them singly. Or bothered to register them. Faint noises, faint smells, faint movements.

‘Close to heaven,’ he said. ‘I think I prefer to lie as high as possible. If it were your grave I would dig it a little deeper, of course.’

She had no answer to that. She just gritted her teeth so that her mouth became no more than a thin streak, and raised the gun.

‘May I have one final wish?’

‘One final wish? Let’s hear it then.’

She laughed. A little nervously, despite everything. He cleared his throat and grasped the spade handle even more tightly. Tensed the muscles in his legs and arms.

‘A bird. I’d like to see a bird as I die. Can you wait until one appears?’

He looked up at the pale sky above the trees. He heard her producing a sort of noise somewhere between a snort and a laugh.

Then he saw that she was also looking up at the sky.

Now, he thought.

He took a short pace forward and swung the spade.

Heard the shot and felt the pain at the same moment.

A pain so intense that he could never have imagined it. Never.

Then dazzling whiteness.

Then darkness.