‘Anyway, all I can say is that I hope to God you find the bastard and put an end to him and his fucking hangers-on,’ Uri Zander declared. ‘It’s disgusting that they’re allowed to carry on as they do – and they have a school as well. Just imagine, pouring all that shit into youngsters’ minds!’
Van Veeteren began to realize that he’d got as far as he was going to get, and there wasn’t much point in sitting around and listening to Zander’s outbursts. His host was currently fumbling around in the cigarette pack: the cupboard was evidently almost bare, and so he slid it back under the pile of newspapers.
‘Your ex-wife?’ Van Veeteren began. ‘Madeleine. You haven’t married somebody else since then, have you?’
Zander shook his head.
‘Is there any message you’d like me to pass on to her? We’ve got them locked up in Sorbinowo, and I expect to see her tomorrow or the day after.’
Zander looked at him in astonishment.
‘A message for Madeleine? I’ll be fucked if I have anything to say to her.’
‘Maybe your daughter might want to say something to her?’
‘They have no contact with each other. I’ve explained that already.’
‘Yes, that’s right, you have,’ said the chief inspector.
All right, he thought, and braced himself for the effort required to extract himself from the beanbag, or whatever it was he was sitting in. Enough for today. All things considered, he’d been presented with a pretty substantial picture of Madeleine Zander – especially if he compared it with the strangely elusive impression he’d had from the unbleached linen confrontations in Waldingen.
But whether it was going to be of any use to him was another question, of course.
They were already in the hall when his final question occurred to him. ‘Ewa Siguera – does that name mean anything to you?’
‘Siguera?’ said Uri Zander, scratching the place where his hair used to be. ‘No, I don’t know anybody of that name – unless you mean Figuera, of course. I think that was her name.’
‘Figuera?’
‘Yes.’
‘And who’s Ewa Figuera, then?’
Zander shrugged.
‘I don’t really know her,’ he explained, ‘but if I remember rightly that was the name of the woman Madeleine lived with for a while. She might have been a lesbian, but I don’t know.’
‘When was that?’
Zander thought it over.
‘I can’t really remember,’ he said. ‘It was Janis who mentioned it. A few years ago, I reckon. We happened to bump into them. Down by the river.’
‘Is she still living in Stamberg?’ Van Veeteren asked.
‘How the hell would I know?’ said Zander. ‘Why not look her up in the telephone directory?’
Not a bad idea, the chief inspector thought as he took leave of his melancholy host.
Another glimpse into an interesting life, he decided as he emerged into the sunlight again. And it occurred to him that he hadn’t even bothered to find out what Uri Zander did for a living nowadays. Always assuming he did anything at all, of course.
Perhaps he could glean that information from the telephone directory as well, if the desire to know should get the better of him.
Figuera? he muttered to himself as he inserted a new menthol-impregnated toothpick into his front teeth, as a counterbalance to Zander’s prejudices. What if it turned out that this whole case depended on a stupid misspelling?
F instead of S.
There was no evidence to suggest that this was the case, but it wouldn’t surprise him.
Not one bit, dammit. Stranger things had been known to happen.
31
Since Inspector Jung turned up early, as usual, he had to sit down and wait a while for Ulriche Fischer.
It was no big deal, in fact. He declined politely but firmly the offer of Constable Matthorst’s company, and instead sat down at a table under one of the chestnut trees that surrounded the big lawn (where one or two residents and one or two carers were wandering around, evidently aimlessly) – and this gave him an excellent opportunity to plan and polish his tactics for the impending conversation.
The only problem was that he couldn’t concentrate. Not for more than three seconds at a time, that is. No matter how he tried to tame and channel his thoughts, they seemed to sleepwalk stubbornly back to the same topic.
His holiday.
The forthcoming holiday and the trip with Maureen and Sophie. That’s the root of the matter! he thought vaguely. Something he’d read, presumably.
Maureen. Apart from a few short breaks, they had been together for four years now, but during all that time they had never decided to live together – properly as it were. Naturally everything depended on a series of different factors and circumstances, but above all – there could be virtually no doubt at all about this – it was due to his own cowardice and the ambivalence he displayed.
Always assuming you could display an ambivalence?
If so, I’d be the one to do it, Jung thought.
But there wasn’t long to go now, he knew that. Making a decision, that is. There comes a point when you have to either push ahead with things, or walk away; even a newly promoted detective inspector knew that. And this joint holiday – three weeks touring England and Scotland by car with Maureen and her fifteen-year-old daughter – well, this was one of those points. No doubt about it, none at all. Needless to say it was as unspoken as many other things in their relationship, but nevertheless it was as clear as… crystal. Yes, it was crystal clear.
He sighed and took a sip of the juice he’d just been served by a blonde nurse.
He liked them, of course. Both of them. Perhaps he was even in love with Maureen, sometimes at least, and probably he would never – never ever – feel stronger emotions for any other human being. He didn’t think so, anyway. So why hesitate? Why?
But even if he’d been able to grasp why he hesitated, would that have made things any easier?
Perhaps not, he thought. And when he tried to imagine a future – as middle age approached – without Maureen or Sophie, the images he could conjure up in his bachelor mind’s eye were not especially cheerful.
Football. Beer. One-night stands, as Rooth used to call them. Lonely evenings in front of the television, and depressing piles of dirty laundry he could never bring himself to wash. And annoying telephone calls from his senile mother, wondering why she never had any grandchildren to knit scarves for at Christmas.
Get knitting, he used to tell her. It won’t be long now. (She never remembered anything they’d said.)
The same kind of images he used to conjure up before he met Maureen, in other words. Just slightly older and greyer in tone.
So why hesitate?
Maureen’s strength? Her calm determination? Would that be a threat? Sophie’s dissatisfaction with school, and her periods of unreasonable moping?
The fear of being dominated?
None of them were good reasons.
Giving up something although he no longer knew what it was? Was that what it was all about?
Disappearing? Your life is a footprint in the water, Rein-hart used to say. So why did anything matter?
Oh bugger it! Jung thought and emptied his glass of juice. I can toss a coin. Or maybe ask her and rely on her judgement being better than mine. Yes, that would be a neat solution.
It would be just as well to sort it out before we go away, he decided just as Matthorst came out to announce
