The Inspector and Silence

30

Uri Zander was dressed like somebody from the 1960s, and hanging over the corduroy sofa in the living room was a signed poster featuring a pop group called Arthur and the Motherfuckers. It was by no means impossible that Mr Zander was in fact identical with one of the four grim-faced youths in bomber jackets and sunglasses, but Van Veeteren didn’t bother to pursue the matter.

In any case, time had left its mark on Uri Zander. His hair was now long and straggling at the sides and at the back of his neck – the top of his head was empty – and a crescent-shaped pot belly coupled with a distinctly humped back made him reminiscent of a carelessly drawn question mark.

He didn’t seem particularly happy either.

‘Would you like anything to eat or drink?’ he asked as the chief inspector lowered himself warily into a red contraption made of soft plastic.

Van Veeteren shook his head.

‘Just as well, I’ve got nothing in.’

He took off his round-rimmed spectacles and started polishing them on his shirt, a tight-fitting flowery garment. The chief inspector thought he recalled the pattern from one of those summers at the beginning of time – probably sixty-seven or sixty-eight – when he had been so new to the game that he occasionally found himself rented out as a uniformed representative of the forces of law and order. Whenever the regular police were short-staffed, that is – which they were all the time.

All those pot-perfumed music festivals and free-love manifestations that, in retrospect at least, seemed to have been so thick on the ground. There were pleasanter memories than those, even in his life.

‘Well, as I explained,’ he began, ‘it’s not you we’re interested in, but your ex-wife. Madeleine Zander.’

‘Ugh!’ said Mr Zander.

‘I assume you’re familiar with the situation,’ the chief inspector went on. ‘We are busy with the murders of the young girls at Sorbinowo, and that sect she’s mixed up with is involved somehow or other. There were three women present at the camp, and Madeleine is one of them… As you may have heard, they all refused to cooperate with the police from the very beginning. I don’t know what you think of all this…’

‘Bloody idiots,’ said Uri Zander.

Ah, Van Veeteren thought. Good. He hadn’t really been worried, but there was always a risk that Uri Zander might line up on his ex-wife’s side. It was more than clear that this was not the case.

‘That accursed church,’ his host exploded. ‘And that priest… In my view the whole lot of ’em should be locked up; they’re a disgrace to the town. A disgrace to humanity dammit.’

‘So you know them all well?’ the chief inspector asked.

‘How can you avoid knowing about them these days?’ wondered Uri Zander, putting his glasses back on. He was evidently dissatisfied with the result as he took them off again right away and started polishing anew.

‘How long were you married to Madeleine?’

‘Eight years,’ said Zander. ‘From seventy-four to eighty-two. She was only twenty when we met. Got a bun in the oven the very first time we had a shag. We were on a tour, I thought she was your usual groupie of course, but in fact she was almost a virgin and then, well, things just went on from there.’

‘So you got married before the child was born?’

‘Of course. Oh, I liked her a lot in those days. And it was time to stop playing around. I was getting involved in too much of this and that, if you follow me?’

Van Veeteren nodded, as always in such circumstances.

‘Anyway, we settled down, I suppose you could say. I got myself a proper job and Madeleine looked after Janis, our daughter. Maybe things could have turned out okay – in any case, we were together for eight years: most marriages come to grief a lot sooner than that, don’t they?’

‘Perhaps,’ said Van Veeteren, who had stuck it out for more than three times as long as that. ‘No more children?’

Zander shook his head.

‘Nope. But when you think about it, it’s obvious it was doomed from the start.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Huh, I don’t really know. She was young and inexperienced. I’m seven years older, and then, well, it seemed as if she felt obliged to give everything a try, once she’d got over the first flush of being a mother. And she got over that pretty damned quick, by Christ she did.’

‘Tell me about it,’ said Van Veeteren.

Zander finally replaced his spectacles and started groping around for cigarettes instead. He eventually found a pack under a pile of newspapers and magazines on the table. After a discreet check on how many were left, he offered one to the chief inspector and then lit up for both of them.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘she wasn’t exactly happy sitting around at home with the kid. With Janis, that is. She wasn’t happy about anything, if truth be told. She had loads of ideas about every bloody thing, but nothing was good enough to keep her happy in the long run.’

‘What kind of ideas?’ Van Veeteren wondered.

‘Everything you can think of,’ snorted Zander, forcing a cloud of smoke out through his hairy nostrils. ‘Every damned thing you can think of! She became a feminist, a Buddhist, a spiritualist – and in the end she became a lesbian as well.’

‘Really?’ said the chief inspector.

‘Yes, really – although that soon passed. Everything passed. Some things lasted just for a few months, others for a bit longer, and every time she started out on something new it was as if nothing of the old stuff counted any longer. As if… As if she needed to start out on a new life twice a year, more or less. Not exactly a secure background for a little kid, don’t you think? It was all that jumping around from one thing to another that finished me off in the end.’

‘I understand,’ said Van Veeteren, and he really did. ‘But she seems to have stuck with the Pure Life – is that true?’

Uri Zander inhaled and nodded.

‘Yes, it seems so. You might ask yourself why. I think she was there at the very beginning, that must be over ten years ago now. It would have been better if she’d stuck to another of her fads, but I couldn’t give a toss about that now. Janis has flown the nest, and she has no intention of finding herself a new mum.’

‘Who looked after her?’ the chief inspector asked. ‘After you’d separated, that is.’

‘Me, of course,’ said Uri Zander, with perhaps a trace of humble pride in his voice. ‘For fuck’s sake, she couldn’t be left with that scatterbrained nincompoop! They used to get together over the weekend the first few years, but then Madeleine cleared off to the USA for six months – some fancy emancipated sect or other; I think they were at the heart of a scandal later on, but that was after she’d moved on – and since then they haven’t been in touch at all. Janis wasn’t interested, nor was the scatterbrained nincompoop, as I understand it.’

Van Veeteren devoted a few moments’ thought to this family idyll.

‘Do you know a lot about the Pure Life?’ he asked eventually. ‘What they get up to, that sort of thing?’

Zander puffed away at his cigarette and gazed out of the window, looking miserable.

‘No,’ he said. ‘Only what I’ve read in the newspapers. And what people have been saying after these murders, of course. Obviously, I think they’re a collection of right bastards, and it’s a bloody scandal that they can hoodwink so many poor swine who are so stupid that they can’t distinguish between a hole in the ground and their own arsehole. Youngsters and old dodderers and all the rest of ’em, just so that they can get screwed by the priest and shag one another.’

‘So you think that’s what it’s all about, do you?’

‘Yes,’ Zander said. ‘That’s what I think. And I’m not the only one.’

Van Veeteren thought for a moment.

‘What do you think about the murders?’ he asked.

Zander stubbed out his cigarette and his face took on a thoughtful expression.

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘This Yellinek character might well be a bloody psychopath, I don’t doubt that for a second: so I reckon he’s the one who’s done it. And now, needless to say, he’s hiding away here in Stamberg, in a house owned by some lunatic woman who’s a member of his congregation – there are plenty of those around. Most likely, of course, he’s busy screwing her all ends up. For Christ’s sake! The Pure Life? Fuck me!’

‘Hmm,’ said the chief inspector, glancing at the poster. ‘But why are Madeleine and the rest of them refusing to say a word, do you think?’

‘Because he’s told them to stay schtum, of course. He’s the big shagger god after all, and they obey every word he utters. I take it you know about the court case against him a few years ago?’

‘Of course,’ said Van Veeteren.

‘Anyway, all I can say is that I hope to God you find the bastard and put an end to him and his fucking hangers-on,’ Uri Zander declared. ‘It’s disgusting that they’re allowed to carry on as they do – and they have a school as well. Just imagine, pouring all that shit into youngsters’ minds!’

Van Veeteren began to realize that he’d got as far as he was going to get, and there wasn’t much point in sitting around and listening to Zander’s outbursts. His host was currently fumbling around in the cigarette pack: the cupboard was evidently almost bare, and so he slid it back under the pile of newspapers.

‘Your ex-wife?’ Van Veeteren began. ‘Madeleine. You haven’t married somebody else since then, have you?’

Zander shook his head.

‘Is there any message you’d like me to pass on to her? We’ve got them locked up in Sorbinowo, and I expect to see her tomorrow or the day after.’

Zander looked at him in astonishment.

‘A message for Madeleine? I’ll be fucked if I have anything to say to her.’

‘Maybe your daughter might want to say something to her?’

‘They have no contact with each other. I’ve explained that already.’

‘Yes, that’s right, you have,’ said the chief inspector.

All right, he thought, and braced himself for the effort required to extract himself from the beanbag, or whatever it was he was sitting in. Enough for today. All things considered, he’d been presented with a pretty substantial picture of Madeleine Zander – especially if he compared it with the strangely elusive impression he’d had from the unbleached linen confrontations in Waldingen.

But whether it was going to be of any use to him was another question, of course.

They were already in the hall when his final question occurred to him. ‘Ewa Siguera – does that name mean anything to you?’

‘Siguera?’ said Uri Zander, scratching the place where his hair used to be. ‘No, I don’t know anybody of that name – unless you mean Figuera, of course. I think that was her name.’

‘Figuera?’

‘Yes.’

‘And who’s Ewa Figuera, then?’

Zander shrugged.

‘I don’t really know her,’ he explained, ‘but if I remember rightly that was the name of the woman Madeleine lived with for a while. She might have been a lesbian, but I don’t know.’

‘When was that?’

Zander thought it over.

‘I can’t really remember,’ he said. ‘It was Janis who mentioned it. A few years ago, I reckon. We happened to bump into them. Down by the river.’

‘Is she still living in Stamberg?’ Van Veeteren asked.

‘How the hell would I know?’ said Zander. ‘Why not look her up in the telephone directory?’

Not a bad idea, the chief inspector thought as he took leave of his melancholy host.

Another glimpse into an interesting life, he decided as he emerged into the sunlight again. And it occurred to him that he hadn’t even bothered to find out what Uri Zander did for a living nowadays. Always assuming he did anything at all, of course.

Perhaps he could glean that information from the telephone directory as well, if the desire to know should get the better of him.

Figuera? he muttered to himself as he inserted a new menthol-impregnated toothpick into his front teeth, as a counterbalance to Zander’s prejudices. What if it turned out that this whole case depended on a stupid misspelling?

F instead of S.

There was no evidence to suggest that this was the case, but it wouldn’t surprise him.

Not one bit, dammit. Stranger things had been known to happen.