The Weeping Girl

10

12 July 1999

Monday was overcast, but the high pressure was very much present in the interrogation room at Lejnice police station. Lampe-Leermann was wearing an orange shirt with a prominent collar and the top three buttons unfastened. The sweat stains under his arms were hardly visible. He smelled strongly of aftershave lotion.

Well, rather that than old garlic, Moreno thought as she sat down opposite him. Observed him closely before saying anything, and decided that on the whole he seemed to be more composed than he had been on Saturday, and she felt quite optimistic when she started the tape recorder.

It was exactly 13.15 when she did so, and when she finally switched it off after a most productive session, one hour and four minutes had passed.

So, a most productive session, and job done. At least, that was how she assessed it. Whether or not Franz Lampe-Leermann would agree was doubtful: but as far as she could judge she had squeezed out of him most of what he had to say. Three names that were completely new to the police, half a dozen that were known already, and information that was probably sufficient for the police to start proceedings against the whole lot of them. And quite a lot more information as well, the value of which she couldn’t be sure about at the moment, but which would most probably lead to more guilty verdicts. Unless the prosecuting authorities saw things differently, or other things needed to be taken into account — but there was not much point in speculating about that at this stage.

And she had not made him any significant promises regarding such things as extenuating circumstances or dropping charges against him. Needless to say she had no authority to grant such concessions anyway — but when all was said and done it was the police who eventually decided what information came into the public domain, and what didn’t.

So, a satisfactory outcome: she could grant herself that much. Reinhart could look after the mopping-up: Inspector Moreno had done all that was required of her, and more besides.

‘Miss Copper is looking pleased with herself,’ said Lampe-Leermann, scratching his hairy chest.

‘That’s because I can now get out of this dump,’ said Moreno.

‘So you wouldn’t fancy a little bit extra, then?’

The implication — or possible implication — made her see red, but she kept control of herself.

‘And what might that be?’

‘A titbit. A little goody to round things off. But I need a fag first.’

Moreno hesitated. Looked at the clock and wondered what the hell he had in mind.

‘What do you mean?’ she asked eventually.

‘Exactly what I say, of course. As always. A titbit. But first a fag. There’s a time and place for everything.’

‘You can have five minutes,’ said Moreno. ‘But make sure you really do have something worthwhile to come out with, otherwise you’ll lose all your bonus points.’

Lampe-Leermann stood up.

‘Don’t worry, young lady. I’m not in the habit of disappointing my women.’

He knocked on the door, and was let out into the smoking yard.

‘It’s about that hack.’

‘Hack?’

‘That journalist. Don’t quibble about words, young lady.’

Moreno said nothing.

‘I’m sitting on a fascinating little story. And I’m sitting on his name. .’

He tapped the side of his forehead with two fingers.

‘That’s what these negotiations are all about.’

Moreno nodded and glanced at the tape recorder, but Lampe-Leermann made a dismissive gesture.

‘I wouldn’t have thought you’d need to record this. I’d have thought you’d be able to remember it without any assistance.’

‘Come to the point,’ said Moreno. ‘A journalist who knows something?’

‘Exactly. What do you think about paedophiles?’

‘I love them,’ said Moreno.

‘I have a certain amount of sympathy for them as well,’ said Lampe-Leermann, scratching himself under his chin. ‘There’s such a lot of cheap comments written about them. . You might think they’re being victimized. And they’re everywhere, of course. Normal decent citizens like you and me. .’

‘Come to the point!’

Lampe-Leermann looked at her with an expression that was presumably meant to be fatherly understanding.

‘Everywhere, as I said. It’s nothing to be ashamed of — you shouldn’t be ashamed of your inclinations, as my little mum always used to tell me. . But it’s such a sensitive subject nowadays, and people are up in arms about what’s been happening. Anyway. .’

He made a dramatic pause while he stroked his dyed moustache, and it struck Moreno that she’d never seen anything like this. Nor heard. Scumbag was far too complimentary a name for this creature. She clenched her teeth and kept a straight face.

‘Anyway, I met that hack, and he told me he’d been given ten thousand to keep his mouth shut.’

‘Keep his mouth shut?’

‘Yes.’

‘About what?’

‘Keep his mouth shut about that name. The name of that paedophile.’

‘Who?’

Lampe-Leermann shrugged.

‘I don’t know. I don’t know. It’s the hack who knows, but I’m the one who knows the name of the hack. Are you with me, Miss Copper?’

‘Of course,’ said Moreno. ‘And?’

‘It’s his job that makes it interesting. I wouldn’t call it a titbit if it weren’t for the place where he works. This chappie with the inclinations. What do you think, Inspector?’

Moreno said nothing. But she noted that for the first time since they began the conversation, he had referred to her as Inspector. She wondered if that was significant.

‘He lives in your little nest. How about that, eh? He’s a detective officer. . One of your crowd.’

He smiled and leaned back.

‘What?’ said Moreno.

Lampe-Leermann leaned forward again. Pulled a hair from out of his right nostril, then smiled once more.

‘I’ll say it again. There’s a paedophile in the Maardam police station. One of your sleuths. He paid my informant ten thousand to keep his gob shut. It would be daft to pay up if you had nothing to hide, don’t you think?’

What the. . Moreno thought. What the hell is he saying?

The information was reluctant to register in her consciousness, but somehow it did so in the end. Seeped slowly but inexorably through the defences of her reason and emotions and experiences and crystallized as a comprehensible message.

Or rather, incomprehensible.

‘Go to hell,’ she said.

‘Thank you,’ said Lampe-Leermann. ‘In due course, perhaps. .’

‘You’re lying. . Forget all the brownie points you thought you had amassed. I’ll see to it that you get eight years. Ten! You bastard!’

His smile grew broader.

‘I can see that you are upset. You have no sympathy, eh, you neither? Incidentally I don’t know if he took the money from his own pocket, or if it came from the public purse, as it were. . That would depend on his rank, of course, and I don’t know what that is. But the hack does.’

He fell silent. For a brief moment Moreno thought the room was shaking — just a slight swaying, as if the film they were taking part in was short of three frames instead of the full twenty-four and made a little jump. . Or how it must feel some distance from the epicentre of an earthquake.

An earthquake?

That could hardly be a metaphor that simply cropped up without reason. She contemplated Lampe-Leermann as he lolled back on the other side of the table. In slightly less civilized circumstances — they only needed to be slightly less — she wouldn’t have hesitated more than a mere second to kill him. If she had the chance. She really would. Like a cockroach under the heel of her shoe. The thought didn’t worry her one jot.

But then she worried precisely because she hadn’t been worried.

‘Is that all?’ she asked. She tried to make her voice sound so ice-cold that he would realize he could expect no mercy whatsoever.

‘That’s all,’ he said. His smile shrank ever so slightly. ‘I can see that you’ve got the message. Let me know when it’s sunk in.’

Moreno stood up. Went over to the rear door and tapped on it with her bunch of keys. Before she was let out, Lampe-Leermann had time to explain one more detail.

‘It was because of this titbit that I wanted to talk to a woman police officer. I hope you didn’t think there was any other explanation? I couldn’t risk sitting face to face with him. . With that very policeman. Or with somebody who might possibly feel a sense of solidarity with him. . A good word, that — solidarity. Even if it has fallen out of regular use nowadays. Hmm.’

All this was just a dream, thought Detective Inspector Ewa Moreno. But I feel a bit sick for some reason.

Five minutes later she had put both Franz Lampe-Leermann and Lejnice police station behind her.

For today.

Constable Vegesack made the sign of the cross, then knocked on the door.

It wasn’t that he was religious — certainly not, and especially not in the Roman Catholic sense: but on one occasion the sign of the cross had turned out to be useful for him. He had fallen asleep in his car while keeping watch on a suspect (and as a result the said suspect, an intermediary in a cocaine-smuggling gang, had sneaked out of the building and disappeared). The following day he had been summoned to Chief Inspector Vrommel’s office for a dressing-down. For want of any better line of defence, he had made the sign of the cross as he stood waiting outside the door (just as he had seen the Italian goalkeeper do before he saved a penalty in the previous week’s Champion’s League match on the telly), and to his amazement, it seemed to work. Vrommel had treated him almost like a human being.

Vegesack didn’t bother about the fact that Vrommel’s attitude was presumably due mainly to the arrest of the escapee later on in the night. From that day on, he always made the sign of the cross whenever he found himself standing outside his boss’s door.

It couldn’t do any harm, in any case, he thought.

Vrommel was standing between two filing cabinets, doing trunk-bending exercises. He did this for at least ten minutes every day in order to keep fit, and it wasn’t something that necessarily intruded upon his work. Things got done even so, no problem.

‘Sit down,’ he said when Constable Vegesack had closed the door behind him.

Vegesack sat down on the visitor’s chair.

‘Write this down,’ said Vrommel.

The chief of police was known for his parsimony in the use of words, and his bodily contortions made it all the more necessary for him to be even less loquacious than usual.

‘Firstly,’ he said.

‘Firstly?’ said Vegesack.

‘That bastard Lampe-Leermann must be transported to the jail in Emsbaden either this evening or tomorrow. Ring and fix it.’

Vegesack noted this down.

‘Secondly. Inspector Moreno’s recorded interrogation must be typed out so that she can sign it. Do that.’

Vegesack noted it down.

‘Ready by noon tomorrow. There are the cassettes.’

He nodded towards the desk. Vegesack picked up both cassettes and put them in his jacket pocket. The chief of police paused before contorting himself in the opposite direction.

‘Anything else?’ Vegesack asked.

‘I’d have said if there was,’ said Vrommel.

When Vegesack got back to his own office — which he shared with Constables Mojavic and Helme — he wondered if he ought to write down the exchange he’d just had with Vrommel in his black book. The one he’d started on six months ago, and which would eventually be his revenge, his way of getting his own back on Chief Inspector Victor Vrommel. The only thing that enabled him to cope.

The true story of the chief of police in Lejnice.

He had already written over fifty pages, and the title he was currently thinking of giving it was: The Skunk in Uniform.

Although he had not entirely eliminated the possibility of The Long Arm of the Bore, or A Nero of Our Time.

Constable Vegesack checked his diary, and established that there were eighteen days still to go to his leave. Then he telephoned Emsbaden and arranged transport for Franz Lampe-Leermann. That took half an hour. He looked at the clock. A quarter to four. He took out a notepad and a pen, and slotted the first cassette into the player.

With a bit of luck I’ll have finished by midnight, he thought.

When she had more or less finished recounting what had happened, it occurred to her that perhaps she ought to have kept it to herself.

Not just perhaps, in fact. The contents of the scumbag Lampe-Leermann’s rant were such that nobody ought to be exposed to them. Or to be bothered by them.

Especially if it was all a bluff.

And it was a bluff, of course. There was no plausible alternative.

So why had she recounted it all for Mikael Bau the moment they’d sat down on the veranda of the harbour cafe? Why?

She couldn’t think of a satisfactory answer, hesitated for a moment, then bit her tongue.

‘Well, well,’ he said. ‘For Gawd’s sake! What do you make of it?’

She shook her head.

‘It’s all made up, of course. What I don’t understand is what he thinks he’s going to get out of it.’

Mikael said nothing, just looked at her as he slowly adjusted his posture.

‘What if it isn’t?’

‘Isn’t what?’

‘Made up.’

‘It is made up.’

‘By whom?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Who’s made it up, of course. I wonder if it’s that Lampe-Leermann himself, or if it’s that journalist?’

Moreno thought for a moment.

‘Or somebody else again,’ she said. ‘I mean, we don’t even know if the journalist really exists.’

‘Not until Scumbag comes up with a name, you mean?’

‘Exactly,’ said Moreno. ‘And he won’t do that for free.’

They sat for a while without speaking. Mikael continued to look at her, his eyebrows slightly raised. Moreno pretended not to notice.

‘Hypothetically. .’ he said.

She didn’t respond. He hesitated for a few more seconds.

‘Hypothetically. Let’s assume that he isn’t bluffing in fact. Then what do we do?’

Moreno glared at him, and clenched her fists. Took a deep breath.

‘Well, then. . Then we find ourselves in a situation where one of my closest colleagues is a bloody child-fucker.’

‘Don’t speak so loudly,’ said Mikael, looking around furtively. Nobody at any of the neighbouring tables seemed to have noticed anything amiss. Moreno leaned forward and continued in a somewhat lower voice.

‘We find ourselves in a situation that’s so damned awful that I won’t be able to sleep a wink at night. That’s obvious, isn’t it?’

Mikael nodded.

‘I think so,’ he said. ‘How many are there to choose from? Possible candidates?. . We’re still being hypothetical, of course.’

Moreno thought that over. Forced herself to think it over.

‘It depends,’ she said. ‘It depends on how many you count as CID officers — several constables double up with different sections, and there are a few borderline cases. Eight to ten, I’d say. . Twelve at most.’

‘A dozen?’

‘At most, yes.’

Mikael emptied his cup of cappuccino and wiped the foam away from his mouth.

‘What are you going to do about it?’ he asked.

Moreno didn’t answer.

There wasn’t any appropriate answer.