The G File

6

When Chief Inspector Van Veeteren came out into the street with Bismarck, it had just turned half past six in the morning and the sun had not yet managed to climb over the top of the line of dirty brown blocks of flats on the other side of Wimmergraacht.

Even so, it seemed like quite a decent morning. The temperature must have been round about twenty degrees, and bearing in mind that he lived in a city where near gale-force winds blew three mornings out of five and it rained every other day, he couldn’t really complain.

Not about the weather, at least.

What he could complain about was the time. His wife Renate had woken him up with a prod of the elbow, and claimed that Bismarck was whimpering and wanted to go out. Without a second thought he had got up, dressed, attached a lead to the collar of the large Newfoundland bitch, and set off. He was presumably not properly awake until he came to the Wimmerstraat-Boolsweg crossroads, where a clattering tramcar screeched round the curve and scratched a wound in his eardrums.

He was now as wide awake as a newborn babe.

Bismarck forged ahead, her nose sniffing the asphalt. The goal was obvious: Randers Park. Five minutes there, ten minutes examining the plants and relieving herself in the bushes, then five minutes back home. Van Veeteren had been on this outing before, and wondered if the faithful old dog really was all that keen on this compulsory morning walk.

Perhaps she did it to keep the people she lived with happy. They needed to get out and have some exercise every morning, taking it in turns: it seemed a bit odd, but Bismarck did what was required of her in all weathers, rain or shine.

It was a worrying thought: but she was that type of dog, and how the hell could one know for sure?

At the beginning there had been no question of Van Veeteren being involved in the morning exercise. Bismarck was his daughter Jess’s dog, and had been ever since she acquired her eight years ago. After eleven months of insistent pestering.

She had been thirteen at the time. Now she was twenty-one and was studying abroad for a year at the Sorbonne in Paris. She lived in a tiny little room in a student hostel where keeping Newfoundland dogs was not allowed. Nor any other animals, come to that. Not even a French boyfriend was permitted.

So Bismarck had to stay behind in Maardam.

There was also a son in the house. His name was Erich, he was fifteen years old, and liked going out with dogs in the mornings. He was allowed to do that now and again after his big sister moved to Paris, but this morning he was not at home.

God only knows where he is, it suddenly struck Van Veeteren.

He had phoned at eleven o’clock the previous night, spoken to his mother and explained that he was out at Löhr and would be spending the night at a friend’s house. He was in the same class — or possibly a parallel one — and his friend’s father would drive them straight to school the following morning.

What was the name of the friend? Van Veeteren had wanted to know when his wife hung up and explained the situation.

She couldn’t remember. Something beginning with M, but she couldn’t recall having heard the name previously.

Van Veeteren also wondered if Erich had some clean underpants and a toothbrush with him, but hadn’t bothered to pester his wife any further.

Bismarck turned into the entrance of the park, ignoring with disdain a neatly curled poodle who was on his way back home with his boss after a satisfactory outing.

I must have a chat with Erich one of these days, thought Van Veeteren, taking a packet of West out of his jacket pocket. It’s high time I did so.

He lit a cigarette and realized that he had been thinking the same thought for over a year now. At regular intervals.

He had breakfast together with his wife. Neither of them uttered a word, despite the fact that they spent a good half-hour over the kitchen table and their newspapers.

Perhaps I should have a chat with Renate as well one of these days, he thought as he closed the front door behind him. That was also high time.

Or had they already used up all the available words?

It wasn’t easy to know. They had been married for fifteen years, separated for two without having managed to go their separate ways, and then been married for another seven.

Twenty-four years, he thought. That’s half my life, more or less.

He had been a police officer for twenty-four years as well. Perhaps there was a sort of connection, he thought? Two halves of my life combining to form a whole?

Rubbish. Even if you have half a duck and half an eagle, that doesn’t mean that you possess a whole bird.

He realized that the image was idiotic, and during his walk to the police station he tried instead to recall how many times he had made love to his wife during the past year.

Three times, he decided.

If he interpreted the word ‘love-making’ optimistically. The last occasion — in April — didn’t seem to come into the category of ‘making love’.

And to be honest, in no other category either.

That’s life, he thought — and avoided stepping into a pool of vomit somebody had left on the pavement by a hair’s breadth. It could have been worse, to be sure; but for Christ’s sake, it could have been considerably better as well.

On his way up to his office on the third floor he bumped into Inspector Münster.

‘How’s the Kaunis case going?’ he asked.

‘Full stop,’ said Münster. ‘Neither of those interrogations we talked about is going to be possible until next week.’

‘Why not?’

‘One of them is in Japan, and the other is going to be operated on this morning.’

‘But he’ll survive, I hope?’

‘The doctors thought so. It’s for varicose veins.’

‘I see,’ said the Chief Inspector. ‘Anything else?’

‘Yes, I’m afraid so,’ said Münster. ‘Hiller will no doubt be on to you. Something’s happened in Linden, if I understood it rightly.’

‘Linden?’

‘Yes. If we don’t have anything more important on — and we might not have now that-’

‘We’ll have to see,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘You’ll be in your office if I need you, I take it?’

‘Buried under a drift of papers,’ said Münster with a sigh, and continued down the corridor.

Van Veeteren entered his office, and noted that it smelled rather like a working men’s lodging house. Not that he had ever lived in such an establishment, but he had been inside quite a few in the course of his duties.

He opened the window wide and lit a cigarette. Inhaled deeply. Another morning and I’m still alive, he thought, and it struck him that what he would like to do more than anything else was to go and lie down for a while.

Was there anything in the rules and regulations that said you were not allowed to have a bed in your office?

‘Yes, well, it’s that business in Linden,’ said Hiller, pouring some water into a pot of yellow gerbera. ‘I suppose we’ll have to drive out there and take a look.’

‘What’s it all about?’ asked Van Veeteren, contemplating the chief of police’s plants. There must have been about thirty: in front of the big picture window, on the desk, on a little table in the corner and on the bookshelves. It’s beginning to look like an obsession, he thought, and wondered what that was a sign of. Growing roses was a substitute for passion — he had read that somewhere; but Hiller’s display of plants in his office on the fourth floor of the police station was much more difficult to pin down. Van Veeteren’s botanical knowledge was limited, but even so he thought he could identify aspidistra and hortensia and yucca palm.

And gerbera.

The chief of police put down his watering can.

‘A dead woman,’ he said. ‘At the bottom of a swimming pool.’

‘Drowned?’

‘No. Certainly not drowned.’

‘Really?’

‘There was no water in the pool. It’s rather difficult to drown in those circumstances. Not to say impossible.’

A slight twitch of the mouth suggested that Hiller was indulging his sense of humour. Van Veeteren sat down on the visitor chair.

‘Murder? Manslaughter?’

‘Probably not. She probably fell in by sheer mischance. Or dived in by mistake. But it seems to be not straightforward, and Sachs has asked for assistance. He’s not quite himself after that little haemorrhage he had — no doubt you remember that? He seems to be aware of that himself. But he only has one more year to go before he retires.’

Van Veeteren sighed. He had met — and worked with — Chief Inspector Sachs on three or four occasions. He had no special views about him — neither positive nor negative — but he knew that Sachs had suffered a minor cerebral haemorrhage a few months ago, and that it might have affected his judgement to some extent. At least, that is what had been alleged: but if it really was the case, or if it had more to do with Sachs’s lack of confidence after being a millimetre-thin blood-vessel wall away from death — well, that was difficult to say.

‘When did it happen?’ asked Van Veeteren.

‘Last night,’ said the chief of police, running his fingers over the immaculate knot in his tie. ‘You could delegate it to somebody, of course; but if you’re not too snowed under I think you ought to drive out there yourself. Bearing in mind Sachs’s situation. But there’s nothing to suggest anything irregular, remember that. It shouldn’t need more than a few hours and a bit of common sense.’

‘I’ll go myself,’ said Van Veeteren, standing up. ‘A car drive might do me good.’

‘Harrumph!’ said Hiller.

‘Jaan G. Hennan!’ exclaimed Van Veeteren as Münster started manoeuvring them out of the underground labyrinth that was the police station garage. ‘I can hardly believe my eyes.’

‘Why?’ wondered Münster. ‘Who is Hennan?’

But Van Veeteren didn’t reply. He had received a three-page summary of the case written by somebody called Wagner and including a short statement by the pathologist Meusse. He was holding the documents in his hand and trying to absorb the contents. Münster glanced at his boss and realized that it was pertinent to wait, and meanwhile concentrate on driving.

‘Hennan,’ muttered the Chief Inspector, and started reading.

Wagner’s report revealed that the dead woman was called Barbara Hennan, and that the police had been summoned to the scene (Kammerweg 4 in Linden) by a telephone call (received 01.42) from the dead woman’s husband. A certain Jaan G. Hennan.

The police had arrived at 02.08, and established that the woman was lying on the bottom of an empty swimming pool, and was in fact dead. Hennan had been interrogated immediately and it had transpired that he had arrived at home about 01.15, and been unable to find his wife until he discovered her lying in the said empty swimming pool. Both local doctor Santander and pathologist Meusse from the Centre for Forensic Medicine in Maardam had examined the dead body, and their conclusions were identical in all respects: Barbara Hennan had died as a result of extensive injuries in her head, spine, nape and trunk, and there was everything to suggest that all the injuries had been a consequence of falling into the empty swimming pool. Or possibly diving into it. Or possibly being pushed into it. The post-mortem was not yet complete, so further details could be expected.

The time of death seemed to be between 21.00 and 23.00. Hennan maintained that at this time he was in the restaurant Columbine in Linden; he had seen his wife alive for the last time at eight o’clock in the morning when she left home in order to drive to Aarlach. It was not known when she had arrived back home after that outing, nor how she had ended up in the empty swimming pool. All information received thus far had come from the said Jaan G. Hennan.

Meusse’s brief statement merely confirmed that all fractures and injuries were consistent with the assumption that the dead woman had fallen (or dived, or been pushed) down into the pool; and that the alcohol level in her blood was 1.74 per mil.

‘So she was drunk,’ muttered the Chief Inspector when he had finished reading. ‘A drunk woman falls down into an empty swimming pool. Kindly explain to me why the Maardam CID has to be called out to assist in a situation like this!’

‘What about this Hennan character?’ wondered Münster. ‘Didn’t you say you couldn’t believe your eyes, or something of the sort?’

Van Veeteren folded up the sheets of paper and put them in his briefcase.

‘G,’ he said. ‘That’s what we called him.’

‘G?’

‘Yes. I was at school with him. In the same class for six years.’

‘Really? Jaan G. Hennan. Why. . er. . why did he only have one letter, as it were?’

‘Because there were two,’ said Van Veeteren, adjusting a lever and leaning the back of his seat so far back that he was half-lying in the passenger seat. ‘Two boys with the same name — Jaan Hennan. The teachers had to distinguish between them, of course, and it always said Jaan G. Hennan on class lists or in class registers. If I remember rightly we called him Jaan G. for a week or so, and then after that it was just G. He quite liked it himself. I mean, he had the whole school’s simplest name.’

‘G?’ said Münster. ‘Yes, I have to say that it has. . well, a sort of something to it.’

The Chief Inspector nodded vaguely. Fished out a toothpick from his breast pocket and examined it carefully before sticking it between the front teeth of his lower jaw.

‘What was he like?’

‘What was he like? What do you mean?’

‘What sort of a person was he then? G?’

‘Why do you ask?’

‘Well, you seemed to suggest that there was something odd about him.’

Van Veeteren turned his head and looked out through the passenger window for a while before answering. Tapped his fingertips against one another.

‘Münster,’ he said in the end. ‘Let’s keep this to ourselves for the time being, but I reckon Jaan G. Hennan is the most unpleasant bastard I have ever met in the whole of my life.’

‘What?’ said Münster.

‘You heard me.’

‘Of course. It was as if. . I mean, what does that imply in this context? It can’t be completely irrelevant, surely? If you-’

‘How are things with you and the family?’ said Van Veeteren, interrupting him. ‘Still as idyllic as ever?’

The family? wondered Münster and increased his speed. Typical. If you’ve said A, under no circumstances must you say B.

‘As a man sows, so shall he reap,’ he said, and to his great surprise the Chief Inspector produced a noise faintly reminiscent of a laugh.

Brief and half-swallowed, but still. .

‘Bravo, Inspector,’ he said. ‘I’ll tell you a bit more about G on some later occasion, I promise you that. But I don’t want to rob you of the possibility of your forming an independent impression of him first. Is that okay with you?’

Münster shrugged.

‘That’s okay with me,’ he said. ‘And that business of him being the biggest arsehole the world has ever seen, well, I’ve forgotten all about that already.’

‘Of course,’ said the Chief Inspector. ‘No preconceived ideas — that is our credo in the police force. In any case, we’ll have a word with Chief of Police Sachs first. Whatever you do, don’t recall the fact that he recently had a cerebral haemorrhage when we meet him.’

‘Of course not,’ said Münster. ‘An interesting call-out, this, no doubt about that.’

‘No doubt at all,’ agreed Van Veeteren.