The Stranglers Honeymoon

4

‘Can you tell me what this is?’

The young shop assistant smiled nervously and fingered his moustache. Van Veeteren wiped the counter with his shirt sleeve and placed the object in the middle of the bright, shiny surface. The young man leaned forward to examine it, but when he realized what it was he straightened his back and watered down his smile.

‘Of course. It’s an olive stone.’

Van Veeteren raised an eyebrow.

‘Really? Are you absolutely sure of that?’

‘Of course.’

He picked it up carefully between his thumb and index finger and eyed it closely.

‘No doubt about it. An olive stone.’

‘Good,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘We’re in agreement so far.’

He gingerly took a rolled-up handkerchief from his pocket and unfolded it meticulously.

‘What about this, then?’

It seemed as if the young man was about to give this object the once-over as well, but for some reason changed his mind. He remained halfway bent over the counter with an odd expression on his freckly face.

‘It looks like a tooth filling.’

‘Precisely!’ exclaimed Van Veeteren, sliding the olive stone towards the little dark-coloured lump of metal until they were more or less side by side, with only a centimetre or so between them. ‘And might I ask if you have any idea who you have the great pleasure of conversing with on a beautiful September day like this one?’

The shop assistant tried to smile again, but it wouldn’t come. He glanced several times at the display window and the door, as if hoping that a rather more normal customer might turn up and relieve the somewhat tense atmosphere inside the shop. But no such saviour appeared, and so he put his hands into the pockets of his white smock and tried to appear rather more self-assured.

‘Of course. You are Chief Inspector Van Veeteren. What are you getting at?’

‘What am I getting at?’ enquired Van Veeteren. ‘Let me inform you. I want to go to Rome, and I’ll be damned if I don’t make sure I get there. Tomorrow morning, to be more precise, when I have a flight booked from Sechshafen. However, I must say that I had hoped to make that journey in the best possible condition — namely with all my teeth present and correct.’

‘Your teeth?’

‘My teeth, yes. Incidentally, it is true that my name is Van Veeteren: but when it comes to my occupation, allow me to inform you that I ceased to be a member of the police force three years ago.’

‘Yes, of course,’ said the youth apologetically. ‘But they say you get dragged back in from time to time.’

Get dragged back in? Van Veeteren thought, losing his concentration for a moment. Do they say I get dragged back in? What the hell. .?

He thought quickly about the four years that had passed since he handed in his resignation to Hiller — but the chief of police changed the request on his own initiative to a sort of permanent leave, an arrangement for which there was no precedent in the rulebook. Was the situation really as the callow youth had described it? That he got dragged back in now and then? That he had difficulty in staying away?

Three or four times, he decided. Maybe five or six, it depended on how you counted.

But no more often than that. Once or twice a year. Not much to speak about, in fact, and he had never been the one to take the initiative. Apart from just once, perhaps. It had usually been Münster or Reinhart who had proposed something over a beer at Adenaar’s or Kraus’s place. Asked a tricky little question or requested some advice, as they and their colleagues were getting nowhere in a particular case.

Asked for help, in fact: yes, that’s the way it was. Sometimes he had declined to be of assistance, sometimes he had been interested. But dragged back in? No, that was going too far. Definitely an exaggeration: he hadn’t been involved in any police work in the real meaning of the term since he had become an antiquarian book dealer. In that respect his conscience was as clear and pure white as both innocence and arsenic.

He glared at the shop assistant, who was shuffling his feet and seemed to be having difficulty in remaining silent. Van Veeteren himself had never found it difficult to remain silent. On the contrary, he and silence were old mates, and sometimes he found it advantageous to use silence as a weapon.

‘Rubbish,’ he said in the end. ‘I work with old books at Krantze’s antiquarian bookshop. Full stop. But the point has nothing to do with my personal circumstances, but with this olive stone.’

‘I see,’ said the shop assistant.

‘And this filling.’

‘And so?’

‘You acknowledge that you know me?’

‘Er, yes. . Of course.’

‘Do you also acknowledge that you sold me a sandwich this morning?’

The shop assistant took a deep breath, as if to build up some strength.

‘As I have done every morning for the past year or so, yes.’

‘Not every morning,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘Not by any means. Let’s say three or four times a week. And nowhere near a year either, as I used to shop at Semmelmann’s until January when they closed down. I very much doubt if I would ever have had a problem like this in that shop, incidentally.’

The young man nodded submissively and hesitated.

‘But what the hell. . What is the point you are making?’ he managed to force himself to ask as the blush began to make its way up from under his shirt collar.

‘The content of the sandwich, of course,’ said Van Veeteren.

‘The content?’

‘Precisely. According to what you said and in accordance with what I expected, you sold me this morning a lunchtime sandwich with a filling of mozzarella cheese — made from buffalo milk, of course — cucumber, sun-dried tomatoes, fresh basil, onion, radicchio and stoneless Greek olives.’

The blush on the assistant’s face blossomed forth like a sunrise.

‘I repeat: stoneless olives!’

With a restrained gesture Van Veeteren pointed out to the youth the small objects on the counter. The young man cleared his throat and clasped his hands.

‘I understand. We apologize, of course, and if what you are saying is. .’

‘That is what I am saying,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘To be more precise, the fact is that I have been forced to make an appointment with Schenck, the dentist in Meijkstraat. One of the most expensive dentists in town, unfortunately, but as I am due to leave tomorrow morning I had no choice. I just wanted to make you aware of the circumstances, so that you are not surprised when the invoice arrives.’

‘Of course. My father. .’

‘I have no doubt that you will be able to explain it all in a convincing manner to your father, but now you must excuse me — I simply don’t have the time to stand here arguing the toss any longer. You may keep the stone and the filling. As a souvenir and a sort of reminder, I don’t need either of them any longer. Thank you and goodbye.’

‘Thank you, thank you,’ stammered the young man. ‘We shall be seeing you again, I hope?’

‘I shall think about the possibility,’ said Van Veeteren, stepping out into the sunshine.

He spent the rest of the afternoon in the inner room of the antiquarian bookshop, working. Answered eleven requests from bookshops and libraries — eight of them negative, three positive. Listed and annotated a collection of maps that Krantze had found in a cellar in the Prague old town (how on earth had he managed to make such a journey and also go down into a cellar, afflicted as he was by rheumatism, sciatica, vascular spasms and chronic bronchitis?). Began sorting out four bags of odds and ends brought in that same morning by the heirs of a recently deceased man, and bought for a song. He allowed the few customers who came into the shop to wander around freely, and the only transaction was the sale of half a dozen old crime novels for rather a good price to a German tourist. At a quarter past five Ulrike rang to ask what time he would be coming home. He told her about the olive stone and the tooth filling, and thought that she found it more amusing than she ought to have done. They agreed to meet at Adenaar’s at about seven — or as soon after that as possible, depending on when he had been allowed to leave the dentist’s chair. Neither of them had any great desire to cook a meal the evening before a journey; and in any case it was by no means certain that he would be able to chew anything so soon after being fitted with new false teeth, Ulrike thought.

‘It’s not a matter of new false teeth,’ Van Veeteren pointed out. ‘It’s just a filling.’

‘They usually have pretty good soup at Adenaar’s,’ Ulrike reminded him.

‘Their beer is usually drinkable,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘I know nothing about their soup.’

When they had hung up he remained sitting there with his hands clasped behind his head for a while. He suddenly noticed that something warm was stirring inside him, and wondered what on earth that could be. An unobtrusive, barely noticeable emotion, perhaps, but even so. .

Happiness?

The word burst as a result of its own presumptuousness, and soon various other thoughts had occurred to him. No, not happiness, he thought. Good God, no! But it could have been worse. And there were other lives that had been even more of a failure than his.

Then he started thinking about relativism. About whether other people’s unhappiness actually made his own unhappiness greater or less — whether the world really was constituted in such a penny-pinching and cheese-paring way that this relativism was the only basis on which good and evil could be judged: but then something seemed to be intent on distracting him. .

A few fake coughs and a cautious ‘hello’ penetrated his consciousness from the other room. He wondered briefly if he should respond or not. But then he stood up and acknowledged his presence.

Six months later he was still not sure if that had been the right thing to do.

The man was in his thirties. Tall and thin, and with a face that did its best to remain unseen behind a long fringe, a dark beard and dark glasses. He seemed to be enveloped by an aura of nervous unease, rather like BO, and Van Veeteren couldn’t help thinking about similarities with a suspect trying to pull himself together before a crucial interrogation.

‘Hello there,’ he said. ‘Can I help you with anything?’

‘I hope so,’ said the man, holding out his hand. ‘Assuming you are Van Veeteren, that is. My name is Gassel. Tomas Gassel.’

Van Veeteren shook his hand, and confirmed that he was who he was.

‘Please forgive me for contacting you like this. What I have to say is a bit on the delicate side. Do you have a moment?’

Van Veeteren checked his watch.

‘Not really,’ he said. ‘I have an appointment at the dentist’s half an hour from now. I was just about to shut up shop for the day, in fact.’

‘I understand. Perhaps tomorrow would suit you better?’

Van Veeteren shook his head.

‘I’m afraid not. I’m going away on holiday tomorrow. What is it you want?’

Gassel hesitated.

‘I need to talk to you. But a couple of minutes won’t be enough. The fact is that I find myself in a situation that I can’t cope with. Not professionally, nor as a private person.’

‘What do you mean by “professionally”?’

Gassel looked at him in surprise for a moment. Then he stretched his neck and brushed his beard to one side. Van Veeteren saw the man’s dog collar.

‘Oh, I see.’

‘Please excuse me. I forget that my status isn’t obvious. I’m a curate in the parish of Leimaar here in Maardam.’

‘I see,’ said Van Veeteren, waiting for what came next.

Gassel adjusted his beard and cleared his throat.

‘The fact is that I need somebody to talk to. To consult, if you prefer. I find myself in a situation in which. . in which my vow of silence is in conflict with what my moral conscience tells me I ought to do. To put it in simple terms. Time has passed, and I’m afraid that something very unpleasant might happen if I don’t do something about it. Something very nasty and. . criminal.’

Van Veeteren searched around for a toothpick in his breast pocket, but then remembered that he’d given them up eighteen months ago.

‘But why are you turning to me? Surely you must have a vicar in Leimaar who must be better placed to help you than somebody like me?’

Gassel shook his head.

‘You might think so. But we’re not exactly on the same wavelength on matters like this, Pastor Brunner and I. Unfortunately. Obviously, I’ve thought about it a lot, and. . No, it’s not possible to handle it in that way. You’ve got to believe me.’

‘But why should I be able to handle it any better? As far as I recall we’ve never met before.’

‘Forgive me,’ said Gassel, somewhat awkwardly. ‘I’d better explain how it is that I know about you. I know that you’ve resigned from the police force — that’s the key fact. I’ve given her a sacrosanct promise not to go to the police with the information I have at my disposal. If I hadn’t promised her that, I’d never have found out anything about what was going on — even, of course, if I’d been able to work out that something very nasty was afoot. Very nasty indeed. I got your name from Sister Marianne in Groenstadt — I don’t know if you remember her. She’s only met you once, but she remembers you very well and recommended that I should try to talk to you. . Marianne is an aunt of mine. My mother’s elder sister.’

Van Veeteren frowned. Transported himself rapidly back six years in time, and suddenly saw in his mind’s eye the spartan whitewashed room where he had sat for an hour, talking to the old woman. Sister Marianne. . The Roman Catholic Sister of Mercy and the newly operated-on Detective Chief Inspector who between them, very slowly — and filled with deep, mutual respect — resolved the final unanswered questions in the Leopold Verhaven case. The double murderer who wasn’t in fact a double murderer. An innocent man who had been in prison for twenty-four years — oh yes, he certainly remembered Sister Marianne.

And he also recalled the final act in the Verhaven case. No matter how much he would have preferred to forget it.

I knew it would come back to haunt me, he thought. I knew it would turn up again one of these days.

But in this way? Was he really going to have to pay his debts via this worried young priest?

That’s absurd, he thought. Preposterous. I’m pulling on too many strings. There’s such a thing as coincidence as well, it’s not only a matter of these confounded patterns all the time.

‘Do you remember her?’ Gassel wondered.

Van Veeteren sighed and looked at the clock.

‘Oh yes, of course I do. I remember your aunt very well. An impressive lady, no doubt about that. But I’m afraid that time is running out. And I’m far from convinced that I can be of any help to you. For many years my capacity has been somewhat overestimated.’

‘I don’t believe that,’ said Gassel.

‘Huh,’ muttered Van Veeteren. ‘Be that as it may. But in any case, I simply don’t have the time today, and tomorrow I’m off to Rome for three weeks. But if you are prepared to wait that long, of course I can listen to what you have to say when I get back to Maardam. But don’t be under the illusion that I shall be able to help you.’

Gassel contemplated the bookshelves while he seemed to be thinking that over. Then he shrugged and looked unhappy.

‘All right,’ he said. ‘I can’t see any alternative. When exactly will you be back?’

‘On the seventh of October,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘That’s a Saturday.’

Gassel took a little notebook out of his inside pocket and wrote that down.

‘Thank you for listening to what I had to say, in any case,’ he said. ‘I just hope nothing awful happens between now and then.’

Then he shook hands once more and left the shop. Van Veeteren watched the tall, stooping man walk past the window and out into the alley.

A young priest in a quandary, he thought. Seeking help from an agnostic ex-detective chief inspector. God moves in a mysterious way.

Then he went out, locked the shop door and hurried off to the dentist’s in Meijkstraat.