tans.
Mikael explained to Moreno, who was eyeing their fellow-diners with some scepticism, that it was the custom for him and his family to tour the islands every summer. They had done that every year for as long as he could remember, with the exception of 1988 when he had spent a year as an exchange student in Boston.
‘You mean you’ve spent every single summer in Lejnice — or Port Hagen — for the whole of your life?’ Moreno asked.
‘Yes, apart from that one. As I said. Why do you ask?’
Moreno didn’t answer.
No, she thought. I’ve already decided that it’s none of my business.
Nothing to do with me and certainly not with Mikael.
It was not until they were on the evening ferry back to Lejnice that the topic cropped up. And it was not her fault.
‘You haven’t said a single word about Scumbag all day,’ said Mikael.
‘True,’ said Moreno. ‘Case closed.’
Mikael raised an eyebrow.
‘Really? How did you manage that?’
‘I’ve delegated it. I’m on holiday.’
His eyebrow remained high up on his forehead. It suddenly struck her that he looked like an actor — a third-rate actor in a turkey of a B-film. Was the veil about to fall off at last? she wondered.
‘What’s the matter with you?’ she asked. ‘You look odd.’
‘There’s nothing the matter with me,’ he said, and his face began to take on a sort of pedagogical expression. ‘It’s you there’s something the matter with. If the Lampe-Leermann business is over and done with now, I’d like to know what the hell you’re brooding over instead.’
‘Brooding? Me? What the devil do you mean?’
She felt what must be a mixture of resignation and irritation beginning to rise up inside her. And perhaps anger. At his would-be-wise posture — who did he think he was talking to?
He seemed to register her reactions and remained silent for a while. Stared out to sea while tapping his knee with his index and middle fingers. It was a bad habit of his; she’d noticed it long ago, but it was only now that she had recognized it for what it was: a bad habit.
‘Brooding,’ he said again. ‘Don’t be silly. Either you’re beginning to grow tired of me, or there’s something else the matter. I prefer to think it’s the latter. I’m not an idiot.’
Her immediate reaction was to agree with him. Mikael Bau was not an idiot. Claus Badher, who she had dumped five years ago, had been an idiot, so she had some experience of the type. She could make comparisons, and knew what was involved.
One needed to know when one had completed the first chapter of a relationship and was on the way into chapter two — she had read that somewhere, and committed it to memory. Oh, bugger, she thought. Is it never possible to leave your job behind? Does it always have to be there in the background, imposing itself on everything else?
She immediately received an answer from another voice inside her.
It’s not a question of your job, it said. It’s a question of being considerate and sympathetic towards other human beings. A missing girl and a desperate mother.
Mikael continued drumming his fingers. The evening sun broke through a cloud: she closed her eyes to shut out the almost horizontal beams and thought for a while.
‘Something odd happened at the police station,’ she said in the end.
He stopped drumming with his fingers. Then burst out laughing.
‘
‘What the hell has
He flung out his arms.
‘Never rests. Never sleeps. Why do women so seldom have a real literary education?’
It took her five minutes to tell the story.
That’s all there was to it. A girl crying on a train. An unknown father in a home. A worried mother in a police station.
Something that had happened rather a long time ago.
When she had finished, the ferry had just begun to dock and she noticed that Mikael had acquired a vertical furrow on his forehead that wasn’t usually there. It suited him, in a way; but she didn’t know what it signified.
He had no comment to make before they had gone ashore; and once they had left behind all the pot-bellied and well-coiffured, most of his concentration needed to be directed at remembering where they had parked the car. It had been bright and sunny in the morning, but now the car park was enveloped by a damp mist that seemed to distort the perspective and change the circumstances in some strange way.
‘Over there,’ said Moreno, pointing. ‘I recognize that seagull on the shed roof.’
Mikael nodded, and twirled the car keys round his index finger. Then it all began to come back to him. Slowly, like a patient suffering from dementia on a rainy Monday.
‘It must be. .’ he said. ‘Yes, as far as I can remember, that must be it. What else could it be?’
Moreno waited.
‘What the hell was she called? Take it easy now, it’ll come. . Winnie something? Yes, Winnie Maas, that was her name. It must be. . er, what did you say? How long ago?’
‘Sixteen years,’ said Moreno. ‘Are you saying you know about it?’
‘Hmm,’ said Mikael. ‘I think so. I’ve lived out here every summer, as I said. . 1983, then? Yes, that must be it.’
‘She was two years old when her father vanished,’ said Moreno. ‘And she was eighteen last Friday. Or so she said,’
‘Winnie Maas,’ said Mikael again, nodding. ‘Yes, it was a pretty distasteful story. I was about the same age as she was. But I didn’t know her, we never really made close contact with the natives — that’s what we used to call them. With the occasional exception, of course. There were half a dozen of us cousins, quite enough company to keep us going, and more besides. If you wanted some time to yourself you had to lock yourself into the outside loo, or dig yourself down into the dunes.’
‘But who was Winnie Maas?’ asked Moreno impatiently. ‘I’m sorry, but I couldn’t care less about your cousins.’
They found Mikael’s old Trabant between a glistening silver-coloured Mercedes and a glistening red BMW. Like an old jackdaw between two eagles, Moreno thought. But not quite dead yet. They clambered into the jackdaw. Mikael started the engine, producing a considerable cloud of smoke, and they started manoeuvring their way out of the car park. It seemed that he was trying to create some kind of dramatic pause before he answered.
‘Winnie Maas was a girl who was murdered that summer,’ he explained eventually as he switched on the headlights. ‘She was found dead on the railway line under the viaduct. We shall be passing over it in two minutes from now, so you can get an idea of what it’s like, Inspector.’
He laughed, but seemed to notice that it sounded hollow.
‘Sorry about that. Anyway, she was lying dead down there on the railway line, and the murderer was sitting beside her. At least, that’s the official version.’
‘The official version? Do you mean there are other versions?’
He shrugged. ‘Who knows? I recall that there was a lot of chatter about this, that and the other, but I suppose that’s only to be expected. I think it was the only murder there’s been out here for the last thirty or forty years. . I seem to remember that there was a blacksmith who killed his wife with a crowbar at the end of the fifties. So it’s no wonder that there was a lot of speculation. And there was something else as well. . Something scandalous. The whole town was going on about it. . You know what it’s like.’
Moreno nodded. ‘And who was the murderer?’
‘I can’t remember his name. But it could well have been Maager. In any case, he was a teacher at the local
