For Christ’s sake, it was a gift, and in no way something that could be regarded as just deserts for work done.
He didn’t even have the good sense to be duly grateful.
Of course he knew that he was the best interrogating officer in the district, possibly in the country; but he would have been delighted to abandon any such claim in return for being able to give Munster a sound thrashing at badminton.
Just once would be enough.
And needless to say, it was this ability of his that had motivated his promotion to detective chief inspector, despite the fact that there had been others much more interested in the post than he was, when old Mort retired.
And needless to say, that was why the chief of police kept tearing up his resignation letters and throwing them into the trash can.
Van Veeteren needed to be at his post.
He had eventually reconciled himself to his fate. Perhaps that was just as well: as the years passed he found it more and more difficult to imagine doing any other job in which he wouldn’t immediately make himself impossible to work with.
Why be a depressed master gardener or bus driver when you can be a depressed detective chief inspector, as Reinhart had said in one of his more enlightened moments.
But how were things now?
In nineteen cases out of twenty he was certain.
It was the twentieth where the doubts surfaced.
What about the twenty-first?
An old rhyme came into his head.
He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel and tried to dig out the continuation from the dark recesses of his memory.
That sounded a bit odd, but never mind. What next, then?
Spurned? Van Veeteren thought. Why not?
What a lot of rubbish! He spat out the toothpick and pulled up outside the police station. As usual he was forced to steel himself before getting out of the car-there was no doubt that this building was one of the three ugliest in town.
The other two were Bunge High School, from which
establishment of learning he had once graduated and where Mitter was employed, and Klagenburg 4, the tenement building where Van Veeteren had been living for the past six years.
He opened the door and groped in the backseat for his umbrella, but then remembered that he’d left it to dry on the landing at home.
6
“Good afternoon.”
The door closed behind the chief inspector. Mitter looked away. If he excluded his former father-in-law and his colleague who taught chemistry and physics, Jean-Christophe Colmar, Van Veeteren must be the most unsympathetic person he had ever come across.
When the man sat down at the table and started chewing his ever-present toothpick, it struck Mitter that it might be an idea to admit to everything. Just to get rid of him.
Just to be left in peace.
But presumably it was not as easy as that. Van Veeteren wouldn’t be fooled. He sat with his bulky body crouched over the cassette recorder, looking like a threatening and malicious trough of low pressure. His face was crisscrossed by small blue veins, many of them burst, and his expression was reminiscent of a petrified bloodhound. The only thing that moved was the toothpick, which wandered slowly from one side of his mouth to the other. He could talk without moving his lips, read without moving his eyes, yawn without opening his mouth. He was much more of a mummy than a person made up of flesh and blood.
But beyond doubt a very efficient police officer.
It seemed not at all improbable that the chief inspector would know the extent of Mitter’s guilt long before Mitter himself did. Van Veeteren’s voice modulated between two quarter tones below low C. The higher one denoted a question, doubt, or scorn. The lower one stated facts.
“So, you have not achieved any more insight,” he stated.
“Would you kindly extinguish that cigarette! I have not come here to be poisoned.”
He switched on the cassette player. Mitter stubbed out his cigarette in the washbasin. Returned to his bed and stretched out on his back.
“My lawyer has advised me not to answer any of your questions.”
“Really? Do whatever you like, I shall unmask you anyway.
Six hours or twenty minutes, it makes no difference to me. I have plenty of time.”
He fell silent. Mitter listened to the ventilation system and waited. Van Veeteren did not move a muscle.
“Do you miss your wife?” he asked after several minutes.
“Of course.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“I couldn’t care less what you think.”
“You’re lying again. If you don’t care what I think, why are you telling me such idiotic lies? Use your brains, for God’s sake!”
Mitter made no reply. Van Veeteren reverted to the lower quarter tone.
“You know I’m right. You want to talk me into believing that you miss your wife. But you don’t, and you know I know you don’t. If you tell the truth, at least you don’t have to be ashamed of yourself.”
It was not a criticism. Merely a statement of fact. Mitter said nothing. Stared up at the ceiling. Closed his eyes. Perhaps it would be as well to follow his lawyer’s advice to the letter. If he didn’t say a word and avoided all eye contact, no doubt it would. .
But behind closed eyelids something different became clear.
Something different came instead and pinned him against the wall. There was always something.
Wasn’t Van Veeteren right after all?
The question nagged at him.
You don’t miss her, do you?
He was damned if he knew. She had entered his life.
Smashed down an open door, charged forward like a dark princess, and taken him into her power. Completely, totally.
Taken him, held on to him. . and then gone away.
Is that how it was?
No doubt it could be described like that, and once he’d started putting things into words, there was no going back.
Eva Ringmar turned up in the fourteenth chapter of his life.
Between pages 275 and 300, roughly. She played the role that overshadowed all others; the priestess of love, the goddess of passion. . And then she went away, would probably continue for a while to live a sort of life between
