The Return

17

Van Veeteren picked up the bundle of photocopies and leafed through it.

Münster hadn’t been twiddling his thumbs, he had to admit. Forty to fifty pages as least; from several newspapers, but naturally enough mainly Neuwe Blatt and Telegraaf. Arranged in chronological order with the athletics business first and comments on the judgment in the Marlene trial last. Precise dates supplied.

He wondered if it really had been Münster himself who had made all this effort to satisfy his superior’s curiosity, or if it had been some assiduous librarian in the periodicals archives who had done the donkey work. He tended toward the latter explanation, but you never knew, of course.

Münster is Münster, Van Veeteren thought.

He started with the background details. Verhaven’s brilliant but short career on the cinder running track. It couldn’t have lasted for more than two years, if you worked it out. Two successful years before everything changed key.

“New Record by Verhaven!” was the headline of an article over four columns, dated August 20, 1958, incorporating a blurred photograph of a young man looking straight at the camera in close-up, making the V sign.

He didn’t look particularly overwhelmed, Van Veeteren thought. Nor overwhelming. But it had to be said that there were clear traces of seriousness and determination in that resolute mouth, and his dark eyes seemed full of implicit faith in future triumphs and even faster times.

He contemplated that twenty-four-year-old face for a while, wondering if it was possible to read anything into it—if he could discern anything of the future in those steely features…. Any signs of predestination, the embryo of the older man of violence, a double murderer.

Needless to say it was impossible.

He couldn’t blot out the key he was holding in his hands. He knew what he was looking for, and hence it was possible to find it. No, those eyes revealed nothing; only the usual, slightly pompous self-confidence, Van Veeteren decided. The quality that is considered to indicate strength and manliness and God only knows what else that you can generally find in all modern heroes. Perhaps in the classical ones as well. Van Veeteren had never been much of a sports fan, and fooling oneself into believing that there was a qualitative difference between a Greek discus thrower and a Russian ice hockey back was nothing more than an expression of our constant need of self-delusion. Sport is sport.

Having established that, he started reading instead:

It has been obvious all this year to the general public with an interest in sport that Leopold Verhaven is one of our biggest stars on the track. But few people can have expected this incredibly talented athlete from Obern, still only 22 years old, to start breaking records as early as this summer.

But he fooled us all, and how pleased we are to be fooled! Sunday’s brilliant performance in the Verhejm stadium and the impressive new record for the 1,500 meters was followed last night, a marvelous evening of sport at Willemsroo, by a further reduction to an excellent 3 minutes 41.5 seconds, and it should be stressed that Verhaven was forced to run the last 600 meters out on his own, in solitary majesty.

None of the others in the high-quality field was able to keep up when he turned on the heat after about half the race. His easy, lightning-fast stride, the apparently effortless grace and flow characteristic of his style, the rhythm and his masterly tactical brain…

Van Veeteren skipped the rest. Tried to go back in his memory and find himself during that August more than thirty-five years ago. But the best he could do was to establish that it must have been the summer vacation in between two of those easily confused university terms. Before he burned his bridges and threw himself wholeheartedly into police college. Probably a summer job at Kummermann’s, that damn and dusty warehouse, or—much preferably—a week spent by the sea with his uncles.

Ah well. He moved on to the next clip. Almost a year later. May 18, 1959. Three columns in Telegraaf with a picture of the winner crossing the line in another fifteen-hundred-meter race. Obviously his favorite distance—the “blue riband,” isn’t that what they called it? Chest thrust forward to break the tape as soon as possible, longish hair fluttering in the wind, mouth open and eyes more or less unseeing…

“Verhaven Heading for the European Record?” was the headline this time. Van Veeteren read:

3 minutes 40.5 seconds! That is Verhaven’s new record for the 1,500 meters, set last night after a brilliant race at the international meeting at the Künderplatz. Shortly after the 800-meter mark our new king of the middle distance waved good-bye to the rest of the field, and after two magnificent solo laps posted a time that has only been bettered this year by the Frenchman Jazy and the Hungarian Rozsavölgy. Verhaven’s time is the sixth best ever, and there is no doubt that the incredibly talented 23-year-old from Obern will be one of our strongest cards at the Rome Olympics next year. At least, as far as track events are concerned, where our national team seems to be lagging way behind the British, the French and the outstanding Americans. At yesterday’s meeting no fewer than…

May 1959, Van Veeteren thought, putting the page to one side. Three months before the bubble burst, that is.

He took the next article, and there he was already. The scandal had happened, and this time it was also front-page news:

“Verhaven—a Cheat!” Large bold type over four columns; underneath it a blurred picture that, on closer inspection, appeared to be a man being carried away on a stretcher. In rather tumultuous circumstances, judging by appearances.

Van Veeteren read the indignant article on the five-thousand-meter race in the middle of August 1959, in which Verhaven was well in the lead with only just over two laps to go—and a probable European record—but he suddenly collapsed as he emerged from the southern bend at the Richter Stadium in Maardam.

He checked the date: Yes, the article was written two days after the race. When everything had been revealed.

When the doping and the illegal payments had all come to light.

When the fairy tale was over.

Verhaven—the cheat.

Was this the background to Verhaven—the murderer? wondered Van Veeteren.

And to Verhaven—the double murderer?

Was there a link, a connection, with one thing leading to another? Not automatically, of course, but nevertheless a sort of cause and effect. Was the murderer already there as a seed, an embryo, in the cheat? Was it even legitimate to ask such questions?

He could feel weariness creeping up on him again. He smoothed out the slightly wavy sheets of paper and put them back in the envelope.

What was the point of thinking along these lines? he asked himself. Why was his brain following up these dark ideas? Whether he wanted to or not. Was there really nothing more reliable that he could turn his attention to?

If he wanted to claim that he was now in charge of this investigation?

He listened for a while to the pigeons cooing away somewhere outside the window. His thoughts wandered off on their own for a few minutes and contemplated rather vaguely peace symbols, the disintegration of Europe and ambiguous nationalism, before coming back to the matter at hand again. For—the bottom line was, what to do about the suspicion he had?

The persistent idea that kept on nagging away.

Wasn’t that what he really ought to be trying to find evidence for?

How easy and simple it was for a distant observer to draw the same would-be-wise conclusions. Cheat—murderer. Build these putative bridges over imagined chasms. Look for connections where no connections exist or are needed. And come to that, one could ask just how serious the cheating had been.

Did it really carry the weight and significance given to it by the gods and gurus of sports at the time, the innocent 1950s? Or budding 1960s. He found it hard to believe. Did the guy run any faster because he was being paid? The amphetamine and whatever else probably gave him a bit of a boost, one can assume, but would that kind of thing nowadays lead to a life ban?

He didn’t know. It was not his field, certainly not, but Rooth or Heinemann would be bound to know about such things.

Whatever, the question remained: How much had Verhaven—the cheat—weighed against him when he progressed to being Verhaven—the murderer?

In other people’s eyes, that is. Journalists’. The man in the street’s. The police’s, the judiciary’s and the jury members’. The eyes of those who condemned him.

Judge Heidelbluum’s?

That was a question worth thinking about, yes, indeed.

He clasped his hands over his tender wound, closed his eyes and decided to let his dreams take care of it for the time being.