The Inspector and Silence

THREE
19-23 JULY
7

Elgar’s cello concerto came to an end a hundred metres before the road sign at the entrance to the town. He switched off the CD and drove into a parking area with a tourist information board and an excellent view over the countryside below. Groped around in the glove pocket and produced the half-full pack of West he had been thinking about for the last half-hour. Lit a cigarette and got out of the car.

He stretched his back and performed a few cautious physical jerks while taking in the panorama spread out before him. The water course – basically the River Meusel that three or four times expanded to form long and narrow dark lakes – flowed towards the south-west through a flat, cultivated valley. The town of Sorbinowo was scattered around and between lakes number two and three from where he was standing, and he counted half a dozen bridges before the river disappeared from sight among wooded hills some six kilometres or so further on. Yachts, canoes and every kind of boat you could think of were bobbing up and down in the water, rocked by the gentle breeze. Directly below him several anglers were fishing from an old stone bridge, and about three kilometres to the west hordes of children were laughing and shouting and splashing around in an area designated a bathing beach.

This really was an idyll; Hiller and Mahler had been right. Dark, glittering waters. Fields of ripe corn. A scattering of deciduous woods and occasional villages in a half-open landscape. The whole area encircled by silent coniferous forests. The armies of silence.

A quivering summer heat made the rippling water enticing, even for a bather as hesitant as Chief Inspector Van Veeteren.

An idyll – yes, okay, he thought and drew deeply on his cigarette. Seen from a distance, before you’ve had a chance to scrape the surface, most things could seem pretty and well-organized. That was a reliable old truth.

As he stood there listening to the usual signals from the small of his back after a long car journey, a many-threaded skein of thoughts came to life inside him – about age and distance. For when he eventually (August? Krantze’s antiquarian bookshop?) asserted the undoubted rights that came with his age and retired… when he gave up once and for all rooting around in the rubbish heaps of his environment, what he intended to seek out and lay claim to was distance – to occupy the elevated position afforded by keeping things at a distance. The observer’s perspective. At long last to allow himself to be satisfied with the surface – glittering or not – and to interpret all the signs in a positive way. Or better still, not at all. To allow a pattern to be just that, a pattern. To leave the world and himself in peace.

In other words, just to sit there gaping at what went on. With a beer and a chessboard at Yorrick’s or Win-derblatt’s. The wages of virtue after a life spent on the shadowy side?

Some bloody hope, he thought, stubbing out his cigarette. There are so many snags. Always these goddamned snags.

Anyway, time to lift the lid of summer-slumbering Sorbinowo.

A little girl missing?

The Pure Life?

Pure drivel, more like! he thought, drinking the last few lukewarm drops of mineral water that had been lying and sloshing about for far too long on the passenger seat. The paranoid imaginings of a nervous summer stand-in, nothing more… But if he could drag things out for a few days and at the same time repay his debt to that crackpot Malijsen, he had no real reason to complain.

There were worse times than wasted time – perhaps that was precisely what constituted the observer’s position? One of the things, at least.

Or so the chief inspector thought in the back of his mind as he wiped the sweat off his brow. Then he clambered back into the car and started to freewheel slowly down towards the village.

It only took five minutes to walk from the police station at Kleinmarckt to Florian’s Inn, and it was immediately obvious to Van Veeteren that this was not one of the places where Sergeant Kluuge normally had his lunch. Crisp white tablecloths, discreet waiters dressed like penguins and an air-conditioning system that seemed to work even on the open terrace where Kluuge had reserved a table.

And the establishment was deserted.

‘My God, what a place!’ said the chief inspector in a friendly tone, and sat down.

‘It’s our treat,’ explained Kluuge, somewhat embarrassed and completely unnecessarily. ‘Choose whatever you like!’

Van Veeteren gazed out over the water, potentially threatening and still glittering some twenty metres below, and thought about that business of surfaces again. Then he applied himself to a study of the menu brought to him discreetly by one of the penguins.

‘Perhaps we should talk a little about… about those telephone calls,’ said Kluuge when they had made inroads into their salmon roulade. ‘That’s why you’ve come here, after all.’

‘Hmm,’ agreed Van Veeteren. ‘Tell me about them. I can eat and listen at the same time, it’s a skill I’ve developed over the years.’

Kluuge laughed politely and put down his knife and fork.

‘Yes, well, it’s just those two phone calls, but I got the feeling

… the feeling…’

Van Veeteren nodded encouragingly.

‘I reckon it could be serious. There was something about her voice. I don’t think she sounded like a loony, or anything like that.’

And you have a long experience of loonies, do you? Van Veeteren thought; but he didn’t say anything.

‘Obviously, I called that camp to check up, but they didn’t seem to know what I was talking about. Then I tried to find out a bit about what they get up to, but I didn’t get very far. Waldingen is owned by a foundation that’s been going for a long time, and they rent the place out to sizeable groups, mostly during the summer of course. The Pure Life were there last year, and they’ve booked themselves in for more or less the whole of this summer. From the middle of June until September the first, if I’ve understood it rightly.’

‘Hmm,’ said Van Veeteren, taking a swig of beer.

‘I drove out there yesterday afternoon to take a look. It’s about thirty kilometres from here. I just drove past, without stopping. It’s pretty remote, I must say: nothing but the lake and the forest, and it must be at least a kilometre to the nearest neighbour. I suppose it’s pretty ideal if you want to be on your own. I seem to remember that my old school organized camps there, but I never attended any of them.’

‘That woman,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘The one who called. Who do you think she was?’

Kluuge looked blank.

‘I’ve no idea.’

‘Have a guess.’

Kluuge shrugged.

‘If she’s telling the truth,’ said the chief inspector, wiping his mouth with his serviette, ‘we have to assume that she must know about what’s happened somehow or other. Don’t you think?’

Kluuge nodded thoughtfully.

‘Er, yes, I suppose so.’

‘I assume you don’t have one of those telephones that tell you the number of the person who’s called you?’

Kluuge shook his head and looked embarrassed again.

‘We’ll get one after the summer holiday. Malijsen has ordered one, but there have been delivery delays.’

Van Veeteren changed track.

‘Do you know how many people there are at the camp?’

‘Not exactly. It’s some kind of Confirmation jamboree. Only girls, I think. And I suppose they’ll have a few leaders, and then there’s that priest.’

‘Priest?’

‘Oscar Yellinek He’s the one who started the sect, if I’ve got it right. I spent some time yesterday looking into it. Set it up ten or twelve years ago, based mainly in Stamberg – well, more or less only there, apparently. There was a branch in Kaalbringen, but it didn’t last long and has closed down. There have been quite a few articles and suchlike written about it, and there was a scandal a year or so ago. Yellinek was in jail for a few months, but it’s been all quiet lately…’

Van Veeteren washed down the remains of his salmon with half a glass of beer. Kaalbringen? he recalled. Chief Inspector Brausen? The axe murderer…

He suppressed the memory. Gazed out over the lake, and the clusters of children romping around on the beaches. Summer camps, he thought instead. The whole area is infested with summer camps, of course. A few unpleasant memories from his own childhood began to stir, but he managed to bite their heads off.

‘But you didn’t go in and take a closer look?’ he asked. ‘When you were driving past anyway?’

‘No,’ said Kluuge. ‘I didn’t.’

‘Why not?’

‘I thought I’d better wait until you arrived. I’d called them earlier, and they said there was nobody missing.’

Great, Van Veeteren thought. That’s what I call socking it to ’em.

‘I see,’ he said. ‘Perhaps we ought to drive out there and take a look even so. The lion’s den and all that.’

Kluuge nodded enthusiastically. Sat up straight and gave the impression of being ready to set off without delay.

‘Calm down,’ said the chief inspector. ‘All in good time. We must first see if we can get a decent dessert at this place.’

‘I suppose you’re snowed under with work, are you?’ the chief inspector asked when they got back to the chief of police’s apricot-coloured office. (Apricot? Van Veeteren thought. I bet the bugger painted it himself!)

‘Well,’ said Kluuge. ‘I’ve got loads of reports and suchlike to see to.’

Van Veeteren dropped a toothpick behind the radiator.

‘Okay, I suggest you try to find out a bit more about that sect. Call the police in Stamberg and hear what they have to say, that’s probably easiest. I’ll take care of Waldingen myself, if you don’t mind. Do you have their number, so that I can give them a ring first?’

Kluuge wrote it down on a scrap of paper.

‘I think I’ll book myself a room for the night as well, to make sure that we can get to the bottom of this. Can you recommend anywhere?’

Kluuge hesitated.

‘The City Arms or Grimm’s,’ he said eventually. ‘The City Arms is probably a bit higher class, but Grimm’s is located by the edge of the lake. A hundred metres or so from Florian’s, where we had lunch. Not quite as good, but still…’

‘Grimm’s will be fine,’ said the chief inspector, standing up. ‘You can give me a buzz if anything crops up, otherwise I’ll see you here tomorrow morning.’

Kluuge stood up and shook hands.

‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘I’m grateful to you for taking this on.’

‘No problem,’ said Van Veeteren, leaving Sergeant Kluuge to his fate.

The room was a most unfortunate mixture of old and new, but there was an ample bath and a balcony with a pleasant view over the lake and the village climbing up the slope towards the edge of the forest on the far shore. Van Veeteren moved in, put his suitcase in the rickety wardrobe and dialled the number to Waldingen.

Still no answer after ten rings, so he replaced the receiver. Turned his attention instead to the map that Kluuge had provided him with. Waldingen wasn’t a village even, the sergeant had explained, it was really only the name of that old summer camp for children – built sometime in the twenties – but nevertheless it was named on the map. A little black square next to a road branching off from a bigger road that ran round two little lakes before joining up with the main road again.

Forty or fifty kilometres into the forest, in other words. Hmm. He folded up the map and tried the number again.

Still no answer. He checked his watch. Five past three. The sun was still blazing down over the lake. His room was in the shade, but even so the temperature was approaching thirty-five degrees. He sat there for a while, in two minds about what to do next.

What the hell should he do?

Then he remembered that he’d noticed some sort of outdoor dining area under capacious parasols facing the lake. He dug out Klimke’s Neutral Observations from his case, collected his pack of cigarettes and left the room.

Two dark beers and four cigarettes later he made another attempt to call Waldingen, with the same negative result.

What the hell are they up to? he wondered. If they are taking care of a gang of teenage girls, surely the least they can do is to man the telephone.

Or had Kluuge been so shit-scared that he’d supplied the wrong number?

Van Veeteren rang directory enquiries: the number was correct.

He checked his watch.

Half past four. Now what?

A shower, and then a slow stroll through Sorbinowo, he decided. Preferably along a few shady alleys, if there were any. In order to work up an appetite for dinner, if for no other reason. That visit to God’s chosen flock would have to wait until tomorrow, no matter what. He didn’t fancy the idea of heading off into the forest without having established contact first.

But never mind that. If he was hoping for a case that would keep him occupied for the next two weeks, the last thing he wanted was to rush things.

He undressed and marched into the yellow-and-blue bathroom.

For Christ’s sake, he thought.

Then he showered in complete darkness for the next ten minutes.