In any case, time had left its mark on Uri Zander. His hair was now long and straggling at the sides and at the back of his neck – the top of his head was empty – and a crescent-shaped pot belly coupled with a distinctly humped back made him reminiscent of a carelessly drawn question mark.
He didn’t seem particularly happy either.
‘Would you like anything to eat or drink?’ he asked as the chief inspector lowered himself warily into a red contraption made of soft plastic.
Van Veeteren shook his head.
‘Just as well, I’ve got nothing in.’
He took off his round-rimmed spectacles and started polishing them on his shirt, a tight-fitting flowery garment. The chief inspector thought he recalled the pattern from one of those summers at the beginning of time – probably sixty-seven or sixty-eight – when he had been so new to the game that he occasionally found himself rented out as a uniformed representative of the forces of law and order. Whenever the regular police were short- staffed, that is – which they were all the time.
All those pot-perfumed music festivals and free-love manifestations that, in retrospect at least, seemed to have been so thick on the ground. There were pleasanter memories than those, even in his life.
‘Well, as I explained,’ he began, ‘it’s not you we’re interested in, but your ex-wife. Madeleine Zander.’
‘Ugh!’ said Mr Zander.
‘I assume you’re familiar with the situation,’ the chief inspector went on. ‘We are busy with the murders of the young girls at Sorbinowo, and that sect she’s mixed up with is involved somehow or other. There were three women present at the camp, and Madeleine is one of them… As you may have heard, they all refused to cooperate with the police from the very beginning. I don’t know what you think of all this…’
‘Bloody idiots,’ said Uri Zander.
Ah, Van Veeteren thought. Good. He hadn’t really been worried, but there was always a risk that Uri Zander might line up on his ex-wife’s side. It was more than clear that this was not the case.
‘That accursed church,’ his host exploded. ‘And that priest… In my view the whole lot of ’em should be locked up; they’re a disgrace to the town. A disgrace to humanity dammit.’
‘So you know them all well?’ the chief inspector asked.
‘How can you avoid knowing about them these days?’ wondered Uri Zander, putting his glasses back on. He was evidently dissatisfied with the result as he took them off again right away and started polishing anew.
‘How long were you married to Madeleine?’
‘Eight years,’ said Zander. ‘From seventy-four to eighty-two. She was only twenty when we met. Got a bun in the oven the very first time we had a shag. We were on a tour, I thought she was your usual groupie of course, but in fact she was almost a virgin and then, well, things just went on from there.’
‘So you got married before the child was born?’
‘Of course. Oh, I liked her a lot in those days. And it was time to stop playing around. I was getting involved in too much of this and that, if you follow me?’
Van Veeteren nodded, as always in such circumstances.
‘Anyway, we settled down, I suppose you could say. I got myself a proper job and Madeleine looked after Janis, our daughter. Maybe things could have turned out okay – in any case, we were together for eight years: most marriages come to grief a lot sooner than that, don’t they?’
‘Perhaps,’ said Van Veeteren, who had stuck it out for more than three times as long as that. ‘No more children?’
Zander shook his head.
‘Nope. But when you think about it, it’s obvious it was doomed from the start.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Huh, I don’t really know. She was young and inexperienced. I’m seven years older, and then, well, it seemed as if she felt obliged to give everything a try, once she’d got over the first flush of being a mother. And she got over that pretty damned quick, by Christ she did.’
‘Tell me about it,’ said Van Veeteren.
Zander finally replaced his spectacles and started groping around for cigarettes instead. He eventually found a pack under a pile of newspapers and magazines on the table. After a discreet check on how many were left, he offered one to the chief inspector and then lit up for both of them.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘she wasn’t exactly happy sitting around at home with the kid. With Janis, that is. She wasn’t happy about anything, if truth be told. She had loads of ideas about every bloody thing, but nothing was good enough to keep her happy in the long run.’
‘What kind of ideas?’ Van Veeteren wondered.
‘Everything you can think of,’ snorted Zander, forcing a cloud of smoke out through his hairy nostrils. ‘Every damned thing you can think of! She became a feminist, a Buddhist, a spiritualist – and in the end she became a lesbian as well.’
‘Really?’ said the chief inspector.
‘Yes, really – although that soon passed. Everything passed. Some things lasted just for a few months, others for a bit longer, and every time she started out on something new it was as if nothing of the old stuff counted any longer. As if… As if she needed to start out on a new life twice a year, more or less. Not exactly a secure background for a little kid, don’t you think? It was all that jumping around from one thing to another that finished me off in the end.’
‘I understand,’ said Van Veeteren, and he really did. ‘But she seems to have stuck with the Pure Life – is that true?’
Uri Zander inhaled and nodded.
‘Yes, it seems so. You might ask yourself why. I think she was there at the very beginning, that must be over ten years ago now. It would have been better if she’d stuck to another of her fads, but I couldn’t give a toss about that now. Janis has flown the nest, and she has no intention of finding herself a new mum.’
‘Who looked after her?’ the chief inspector asked. ‘After you’d separated, that is.’
‘Me, of course,’ said Uri Zander, with perhaps a trace of humble pride in his voice. ‘For fuck’s sake, she couldn’t be left with that scatterbrained nincompoop! They used to get together over the weekend the first few years, but then Madeleine cleared off to the USA for six months – some fancy emancipated sect or other; I think they were at the heart of a scandal later on, but that was after she’d moved on – and since then they haven’t been in touch at all. Janis wasn’t interested, nor was the scatterbrained nincompoop, as I understand it.’
Van Veeteren devoted a few moments’ thought to this family idyll.
‘Do you know a lot about the Pure Life?’ he asked eventually. ‘What they get up to, that sort of thing?’
Zander puffed away at his cigarette and gazed out of the window, looking miserable.
‘No,’ he said. ‘Only what I’ve read in the newspapers. And what people have been saying after these murders, of course. Obviously, I think they’re a collection of right bastards, and it’s a bloody scandal that they can hoodwink so many poor swine who are so stupid that they can’t distinguish between a hole in the ground and their own arsehole. Youngsters and old dodderers and all the rest of ’em, just so that they can get screwed by the priest and shag one another.’
‘So you think that’s what it’s all about, do you?’
‘Yes,’ Zander said. ‘That’s what I think. And I’m not the only one.’
Van Veeteren thought for a moment.
‘What do you think about the murders?’ he asked.
Zander stubbed out his cigarette and his face took on a thoughtful expression.
‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘This Yellinek character might well be a bloody psychopath, I don’t doubt that for a second: so I reckon he’s the one who’s done it. And now, needless to say, he’s hiding away here in Stamberg, in a house owned by some lunatic woman who’s a member of his congregation – there are plenty of those around. Most likely, of course, he’s busy screwing her all ends up. For Christ’s sake! The Pure Life? Fuck me!’
‘Hmm,’ said the chief inspector, glancing at the poster. ‘But why are Madeleine and the rest of them refusing to say a word, do you think?’
‘Because he’s told them to stay schtum, of course. He’s the big shagger god after all, and they obey every word he utters. I take it you know about the court case against him a few years ago?’
‘Of course,’ said Van Veeteren.
