The Return

15

PC Jung looked at his watch and sighed. He had arranged to meet Madeleine Hoegstraa at her home at four o’clock, and rather than arrive too early he had decided to spend three quarters of an hour in a bar in her neighborhood in the outskirts of Groenstadt. The drive there had gone much faster than he’d expected, and needless to say he was well aware that the key was his deep-seated fear of arriving too late for anything at all.

He sat down at one of the window tables with a large cup of Bernadine. The curtains were semi-transparent, and he could see blurred images of passersby: Just for a moment he had the impression of watching an old surrealistic movie. He shook his head. Movie? Good God, no! Exhaustion, that’s what it was. The usual setup: cops too shattered to keep awake.

He stirred his hot chocolate and started sketching out questions in his notebook instead. Now that he started examining it more closely, it dawned on him that it was really a vocabulary book full of French verbs, and he realized that he must have put it in his briefcase after testing Sophie on her homework the other night.

Sophie was thirteen, getting on for fourteen, and the daughter of Maureen, whose company he’d been keeping for some time now.

Quite a long time, to be honest, even if opportunities to be together were few and far between. And as he sat there waiting for time to pass by, he started to wonder a bit vaguely if anything serious would ever come of it. Of him and Maureen, that is. Tried to work out if that was really what he wanted.

And above all: Did Maureen want it?

Maybe it was better if she didn’t. Better to leave the cake uncut and just pick off a currant here and there when he felt like it. As usual, in other words. The same old routine.

He sighed once more and took another sip.

But he liked Maureen and liked being together with Sophie in the evenings and helping her with her math lessons. Or French, or whatever it happened to be. It had only happened three or four times so far, but it had struck him that for the first time in his life, he had been playing the role of father.

And he liked it. It had a sort of dimension he hadn’t experienced before. That gave him a feeling of equilibrium and security and stability, things that hadn’t exactly featured prominently in his life hitherto.

Not clear precisely what that meant, but even so.

Sure is, he muttered to himself—and at the same time, he wondered where on earth he had picked up such a silly expression.

But when he thought about those unassuming evenings, the simple and yet awe-inspiring task of taking on a bit of responsibility for a growing child—well, he had to admit that he hoped that one of these days Maureen would pop the question.

Ask him to stay on. Throw his hat into the ring. Move in and make a family of them.

On other days the same idea could frighten him to death. He was well aware of that and would never dream of raising the matter himself. But the thought was there all right. A sort of secret wish, something close to his heart whose delicacy or frailty was so sensitive that he never dared to pick it up and examine it in detail. Never really come to grips with it.

The fact was that life had its cul-de-sacs; and needless to say, it wasn’t always possible to turn back and retreat.

What the hell am I on about, he thought.

He checked his watch once more and lit a cigarette. Another quarter of an hour. He wasn’t exactly looking forward to interviewing Mrs. Hoegstraa. As far as he could make out, he was required to cross-question an upper-class lady of the old school. A privileged and spoiled woman with an abundance of rights but no corresponding obligations. That’s the impression she had given on the telephone, at least. Mind you, it wasn’t at all clear how this fitted in with Verhaven.

Verhaven had never been a member of the upper classes, surely.

No doubt she would pin him down, no matter what. Note his characteristic young man’s smell of tobacco and cheap aftershave lotion. Stained trousers and dandruff on his shoulders. Sum him up, then make sure to keep him at arm’s length. Imply that people of her social standing regarded the police as servants. That was something they had committed themselves to and thrown their weight behind aspects of society that had to be maintained: money, the fine arts, the right to dispose of one’s wealth as one sees fit—and so on.

Fuck it all, he thought. I’ll never get over this. I’ll always be standing here with my dirty cap in my hand, and I’ll keep on bowing to my superiors as long as I live.

I’m so sorry to impose on you. So sorry that I have to ask you a few questions. So sorry that my dad was sacked by the printing works and drank himself to death.

Oh dear, I’m so sorry, your ladyship, I must have got it wrong. Of course, I want to be buried in the pet cemetery with all the dogs. That’s where I belong!

He emptied his mug of hot chocolate and stood up.

I worry too much, he thought. That’s my problem.

I hope she doesn’t serve up chamomile tea, he thought.

Mrs. Hoegstraa kept the safety chain on and examined his ID through the narrow crack.

“Sorry about that; I try to be very careful,” she said as she opened the door wide.

“You can never be too careful,” Jung said.

“Please come in.”

She led him into a living room overfilled with furniture. Invited him to sit in one of the pair of plush armchairs, like thrones in front of the fire. There was also a glass-topped table teeming with cups and saucers, scones, cookies, butter, cheese and jam.

“I always drink chamomile tea myself,” she said. “For my stomach’s sake. But I don’t suppose that would appeal to a man. Would you like coffee or a beer?”

Jung sat down feeling relieved. He had evidently misjudged this plump little woman somewhat. His worries had been exaggerated and originated from inside himself. As usual, perhaps.

This lady was human, no doubt about that. She exuded warmth.

“I wouldn’t say no to a beer,” he said.

Perhaps there was something else about her, he thought as he watched her head for the kitchen. Something he was well acquainted with.

A bad conscience, no less?

“Fire away,” he said. His notebook with the questions he’d planned to ask could wait a bit. He might not even need to produce them at all.

“Where shall I start?” she asked.

“At the beginning, perhaps,” he suggested.

“Yes, I suppose that would be best.”

She took a deep breath and settled down in her chair.

“We have never been in close touch,” she said. “You will obviously have gathered that we severed all connections after these…this murder business. But to tell you the truth there wasn’t much contact before that either.”

She took a sip of tea. Jung put a slice of cheese on a cracker and waited.

“There were three of us siblings. My elder brother died two years ago, and I’ll be seventy-five this fall. Leopold was an afterthought, as they say. I was seventeen when he was born. Both Jacques and I had left home by the time he started school.”

Jung nodded.

“Then my mother died. He was only eight. He and Dad were the only ones left.”

“In Kaustin?”

“Yes. Dad was a blacksmith. But at that time he was away fighting the war, of course. They gave him special dispensation to go home six months before it was all over, to look after Leo. I helped out a bit, but I was married and had my own children to look after. Lived in Switzerland, so it wasn’t all that easy to drop everything and do one’s bit. My husband ran a company in Switzerland, and I was needed to make a contribution there as well.”

Oh yes, Jung thought. A guilty conscience, as usual.

“But you didn’t live in the house your brother eventually bought? Not then, when you were a child?”

“No, we lived in the village. The smithy has closed down, but the house is still there.”

Jung nodded.

“Leopold bought that smallholding when he moved back there. That was after the athletics scandal.”

“Tell me about it,” said Jung. “I’m all ears.”

She sighed.

“Leo had a lot of problems when he was growing up,” she said. “I think he was a very lonely child. He had a hard time at school, found it hard to get on with his schoolmates, if I’ve understood it rightly. But you can no doubt find out more about this from others. He left school at twelve, in any case. Helped Dad in the smithy for a while, but then moved out to Obern. Just packed up and moved out: I assume there was some kind of row between him and Dad, but we never knew any details. He must have been fifteen, sixteen. It was 1952, if I remember rightly.”

“But things went well for him in Obern?”

“Yes, they did. He wasn’t afraid of work, and there were plenty of jobs at that time. Then he joined that athletics club and started running.”

“Middle distance,” added Jung, who was quite interested in athletics. “He was a brilliant runner—I’m a bit too young to have seen him, but I’ve read about him. Middle distance and upward.”

Mrs. Hoegstraa nodded.

“Yes, they were good years, in the mid-fifties. Everything seemed to be going well.”

“He held several records, didn’t he? National records, that is…For the fifteen hundred and three thousand meters, if my memory serves me correctly.”

She shrugged and looked apologetic.

“Forgive me, Inspector, but I’m not very good at sports. And in any case, he was stripped of them all afterward.”

Jung nodded.

“It was an enormous scandal, obviously. Banned for life—that must have been a bitter blow for him…very bitter. Had you any contact with him during those years?”

Mrs. Hoegstraa looked down.

“No,” she said. “We didn’t. Neither my brother nor I.”

Jung waited for a while.

“But we were not the only ones at fault. That’s the way he wanted it. He was a loner, always preferred to be on his own. He was always like that. Obviously, we would have preferred it to be different, but what can we do about it now? What could we have done then?”

She suddenly sounded weary.

“I don’t know,” said Jung. “Can you bear to go on a bit longer?”

She took another sip of tea, then continued.

“He left everything and moved back to Kaustin. Bought that house—he’d evidently managed to save a bit of money, from his work and his running. He was found guilty of taking drugs, and for…what do they call it? Breach of amateur regulations?”

Jung nodded again.

“I’ve read about it,” he said. “He collapsed during a five-thousand-meter race while going for the European record. He’d been promised a large sum of money if he broke it, on the quiet, of course…. And they discovered the amphetamine and quite a few other things when they got him to hospital. He was one of the first athletes to be caught for drugs offenses in the whole of Europe, I think. Ah well, please go on, Mrs. Hoegstraa.”

“Well, he bought that house, as I said. The Big Shadow, as they used to call it when I was a child, I don’t know why. It’s a bit off the beaten track, of course. It had been empty for a few years, and he got it cheap, I suppose. And then he got going with his chickens. He’d been working in that line while he was in Obern and had no doubt seen the potential. He could be quite enterprising when he put his mind to it. Had a good business sense, that sort of thing.”

She paused. Jung took a swig of beer, then asked:

“And then there was Beatrice?”

She suddenly looked very dejected.

“Do we really have to take that as well, Inspector?”

I don’t know, he thought. Besides, I’m not an inspector yet. Might never be, come to that.

“Just a few little questions?” he suggested.

She nodded and clasped her hands on her knees. He started to feel for the vocabulary book in his inside pocket, but decided yet again to do without it.

“Did you ever meet her?”

“Not when she was grown up. I knew her when she was a child in Kaustin. They were more or less the same age. In the same class at school.”

“But she hadn’t stayed put in the village either, had she?”

“No. She came back a few months after Leopold. She’d been living in Ulming for a time, I think. Left a man behind there as well.”

Jung pondered. Didn’t really know what he was trying to find out. What it was permissible to ask about, and what the point of it was. Surely this poor old lady couldn’t have anything to do with it? What was the justification for his sitting here and plaguing her with memories she’d spent all her life trying to forget?

There again, one never knows.

“Was she pretty?” he asked eventually, when the silence was starting to become too much for him.

She hesitated.

“Yes,” she said. “From a man’s point of view, she must have been very beautiful.”

“But you never saw her.”

“No, only in photographs. In the newspapers.”

He changed track. Completely.

“Why did you wait so long before contacting the police, Mrs. Hoegstraa?”

She swallowed.

“I didn’t know anything. Believe me, Inspector. I had no idea that anything had happened to him. We had no contact, none at all; you have to understand that.”

“Don’t you think it’s odd that your brother could be dead for eight months without anybody missing him?”

“Yes, I’m so sorry…. It’s terrible.”

“You never visited him when he was in prison?”

“Once, that first time. He made it very clear that he didn’t want any more visits.”

“And you respected that?”

“Yes, I respected that.”

“What about your brother?”

“Yes. He tried once after the second murder. Leo refused to see him.”

“Did you write to him?”

She shook her head.

“But you looked after the house for him?”

“No, not at all. I just looked after the key. We went there twice during the last twelve years. The second time was a week before he was due for release. He sent me a postcard asking me to leave the key there for him.”

“And that was all?” Jung asked.

“Yes,” she said, looking slightly embarrassed. “That was all, I’m afraid.”

Huh, Jung thought as he crossed the street a quarter of an hour later. I must remember to phone my sister this evening. This is not what ought to happen.

I’d better call Maureen as well, come to that. About the vocabulary book if for nothing else.

He had already driven a few miles before it occurred to him that he’d forgotten to ask about the testicle business; but no matter how he looked at it, he couldn’t see that it was significant. In any case, it would be easier to deal with that detail on the telephone.

And not to have to be so embarrassingly close, that is.

I suppose I’m a bit of a prude really, he thought, switching on the radio.