The G File (17 page)

Verlangen stood up and felt that his drunkenness had returned in spades. Glanced at Hennan, who was sitting there smoking and seemed completely absorbed by ‘Take the A-Train’ which was currently being performed on the stage.

‘Go to hell, damn you!’ he said and headed off towards the gents.

When he came back Grouwer was sitting there looking like the cat that got the cream.

‘It’s that bloke in the striped shirt,’ he said, with a conspiratorial wink.

‘Who?’ said Verlangen, looking around once again.

Grouwer signalled with his head.

‘Diagonally behind me. Just beside the stage. Next to that bird in red.’

Verlangen peered in the direction described, and saw the person Grouwer meant. A thin little man in his fifties with neatly combed black hair and an ugly little moustache.

‘Like hell it is,’ he said. ‘You owe me a beer.’

‘Oh dear,’ said Grouwer, grabbing the arm of a waitress who happened to be passing. He ordered two lagers and a tub of peanuts.

‘Well, the least you can do is to tell me who you really meant,’ he said. ‘If I also go to the loo I want to know whether or not I’m standing there having a piss next to a murderer or not. I reckon you owe that to me.’

Verlangen sighed. Thought for a while about the pluses and minuses while Grouwer stared expectantly at him. Emptied his glass of whisky.

Huh, he thought. What difference does it make?

It was a few minutes past half past one when Maarten Verlangen finally collapsed into his bed at home in Heerbanerstraat after his birthday celebrations. He had exceeded his ten-beer limit by quite a lot, he could feel that without any question. But he hadn’t been asleep for more than half an hour before he woke up and felt as wide awake as a new-born babe.

What the hell? he thought as he started rummaging after his address book in the desk drawer. How on earth could I not have thought about that?

He found the number after searching for a few minutes, but when he dialled it and waited for about twenty rings, it dawned on him that he was wasting his time.

Some people get up and answer when the phone rings at two in the morning; others don’t.

It was Friday before the report requested from the USA was spat out of the fax machine in Maardam police station.

To make up for the delay it was unexpectedly comprehensive: six densely typed pages written by a certain Chief Lieutenant Horniman of Denver Police District. Van Veeteren was given the documents shortly after ten o’clock, and he immediately shut himself into his office to scrutinize and meditate on them.

He didn’t really know what he had expected – but in any case not, and in no circumstances, this remarkable information, he thought after he had only read half a page. Good Lord, no!

It began with details about Barbara Clarissa Hennan, née Delgado. She came from a little town in the backwoods of Iowa, Clarenceburg, with a population of barely a thousand souls. She was the youngest of eight siblings, the family was deeply religious and members of an obscure sect that Van Veeteren had never heard of:
The Sons and Daughters of the Second Holy Grail
. However, Barbara had abandoned both her faith and her family and run off with a long-distance truck driver a few weeks after her sixteenth birthday. After that, it seems, she had spent ten years travelling around from city to city and state to state; then she had joined some other dubious sect around the beginning of the seventies, and disappeared more or less without trace for several years. Probably in California, Horniman thought. Around 1980 she turned up in Denver, Colorado, where she worked for some years at a beauty parlour before meeting Jaan G. Hennan.

They had married in 1984 and lived together in Denver until the spring of 1987, when they emigrated to Europe. Apart from a few speeding tickets and a prosecution for the possession of cannabis, which was eventually dropped, there were no known blemishes on Barbara Hennan’s character.

The same applied to her husband, in fact: but Van Veeteren could read between the lines and sensed that Chief Lieutenant Horniman had serious doubts about G’s honesty.

Hennan had come to New York in the autumn of 1979 with a three-month residence permit. He managed to acquire a work permit that very same winter, had several short-term jobs and worked on a number of different business projects in New York and New Jersey, as well as Cleveland and Chicago. In 1982 he had married a woman by the name of Philomena McNaught and moved to Denver. At some point during the summer of 1983 his wife disappeared while on a car journey in Bethesda Park in the Rocky Mountains: Hennan was suspected of having had something to do with her disappearance, but there was no proof and he was never charged. In June 1984 Philomena McNaught was declared officially dead, and Hennan collected 400,000 dollars from an insurance policy on her life. Both the Denver police (and, judging by the formulation of the report, Van Veeteren guessed that Chief Lieutenant Horniman had been personally involved in the case – deeply involved, it seemed) and the insurance company’s detectives had made a formidable effort to investigate the circumstances surrounding fru Hennan’s fate, but had failed to produce sufficiently incriminating evidence to take Hennan to court. The marriage between Jaan G. Hennan and Barbara Delgado took place a month after the insurance payment was made, and about a year later Hennan liquidated his firm G Enterprises, which had been devoted mainly to the importation of conserved fruit from south-east Asia. The couple continued to live in Denver until they emigrated to Europe in the March of that same year.

Van Veeteren read through the report twice.

Then he stood in front of the open window and lit a cigarette.

Incredible, he thought. Absolutely incredible.

And now the bastard is planning a repeat performance.

After lunch Reinhart and Münster had also acquainted themselves with Horniman’s report, and they assembled in the Chief Inspector’s office to discuss it.

‘One thing is crystal clear,’ said Reinhart as he filled his pipe. ‘I haven’t come across anything more suspicious than this in the whole of my career. If Hennan isn’t guilty I shall kiss the ground the Chief Inspector stands and walks upon. And the inspector as well, come to that.’

Münster recalled the promise Van Veeteren had made about clipping his toenails, but refrained from joining in the competition to do more and more outrageous things.

‘It’s so obvious that you have to be astonished,’ he said instead. ‘How the hell does he dare?’

The Chief Inspector flopped down on his desk chair.

‘That’s the problem,’ he sighed. ‘He seems to be prepared to dare anything at all, and he knows damned well that we have the problem of proving anything.’

Reinhart nodded.

‘In fact you can kill off a large number of women,’ he said, ‘provided you do it in the right way. What’s the name of that English king? Henry the what . . . ?’

‘Eighth,’ said Van Veeteren.

‘The Eighth, yes. But he wasn’t after insurance money, if I remember rightly. He just wanted male heirs. He hadn’t studied genetics.’

‘And he didn’t need to worry too much about laws and regulations and CID officers either,’ said Münster. ‘Things were a bit different in those days.’

‘Are you suggesting that our friend G is worried about the law?’ wondered Van Veeteren sarcastically. ‘That’s a new one on me.’

‘Not worried about,’ said Münster. ‘But aware of.’

Reinhart lit his pipe.

‘In any case, we don’t need to draw up a list of possible suspects,’ he said. ‘Every cloud has its silver lining. Anyway, what do we do next? Arrest the bastard? That’s the least one could ask for.’

The Chief Inspector dug down into his breast pocket for a toothpick and looked grim.

‘I’m not so sure about that,’ he said. ‘G knows of course that he’ll be arrested sooner or later. He’s prepared for the whole rigmarole – he’s been through it all before, dammit, in the land of milk and honey. As a sort of rehearsal. We’ll have to get in touch with this Horniman character – maybe there’s something else that we can get our teeth into . . .’

‘Some hope,’ said Reinhart. ‘But of course, I can phone him if you like.’

‘Please do,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘The paradox is of course that this report doesn’t change our views all that much. We’re just that bit more certain what kind of a person G is, and ninety-nine jurymen out of a hundred would be convinced of his guilt. But that doesn’t help us. What matters in a court of law is proof, not belief, as you gentlemen may be aware: so that’s what we have to produce. Proof.’

‘Beyond reasonable doubt,’ muttered Reinhart, blowing out a cloud of smoke. ‘This case feels almost classical in a way – or do I mean clinical?’

‘I couldn’t care less what you mean,’ said the Chief Inspector. ‘But what we need to do in any case is to prove how he goes about throwing his wife down into that swimming pool. And as far as I can see there is one possibility that is more likely than any of the others. Don’t you think?’

‘An accomplice,’ said Münster.

‘Exactly. We must find the bastard who did this on his behalf – or else we must destroy his restaurant alibi. This Verlangen seems very dodgy, to say the least . . .’

‘Maybe we could get him to shut up?’ suggested Reinhart.

‘That would probably not be impossible,’ said Van Veeteren with a nod. ‘But maybe a bit unethical. He’s important for the alibi after all . . . But you have to agree that it’s remarkable that the victim created an alibi for the murderer in this way . . .’

‘And that to crown it all, it’s very much in Verlangen’s interest for us to nail Hennan,’ said Münster. ‘Yes, I have to agree that it’s remarkable.’

‘The gods are playing games with us,’ said Van Veeteren, tossing a used toothpick out of the window. ‘But I think it will be difficult for us to maintain that Hennan left Columbine’s for a whole hour – with or without Verlangen. Remember that we have to prove that he did so, not simply show that he had the opportunity. And besides, our private dick wasn’t the only one who noticed his presence.’

No one spoke for a while.

‘There are not many unknowns in this equation,’ said Reinhart eventually, looking thoughtful. ‘We have more or less all the cards in our hand, and yet—’

‘Like hell we have,’ interrupted the Chief Inspector in irritation. ‘We have only one card in our hand; a very large and very scornful joker by the name of Jaan G. Hennan, who enjoys taking the mickey out of us.’

‘All right,’ agreed Reinhart. ‘That’s the way it looks. When are you thinking of interrogating him?’

The Chief Inspector pulled a face.

‘Soon.’

‘I hope so,’ said Reinhart. ‘Don’t underestimate your interrogation skills. He might break down and confess.’

‘Do you really think so?’ said Van Veeteren.

‘No. But shouldn’t we perhaps keep an eye on him anyway? If we’re not going to bring him in immediately.’

Van Veeteren stood up to signal that perhaps they had been discussing the situation for long enough now.

‘Already done,’ he said. ‘I’ve had him followed since yesterday morning.’

‘Really?’ said Münster. ‘Who’s the shadow?’

‘Constable Kowalski.’

‘Kowalski!’ exclaimed Reinhart. ‘Why the hell Kowalski? He’s about as subtle as . . . as a randy Labrador after a bitch on heat.’

‘Exactly. That’s why,’ said Van Veeteren.

Reinhart thought for a moment.

‘I get it,’ he said.

Meusse the pathologist stroked his hand over the top of his head and adjusted his spectacles.

‘Have you finished?’ asked Van Veeteren.

‘As close to finished as you could hope.’

‘And?’

‘Hmm. There was one thing above all else that you wanted to know, if I understood you rightly?’

‘That’s correct,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘Let’s hear it.’

‘It’s not possible to be sure,’ explained Meusse. ‘But then again, it’s not possible to exclude anything either. The injuries are bound to be pretty extensive after a dive like that.’

‘So it’s possible that she might have been knocked unconscious first?’

‘I don’t regard that as out of the question, as I said. But that’s all I can say. In any case, she landed head-first.’

‘Would it be complicated to push her over and get that result?’

‘Not at all. Especially not if she was unconscious to start with.’

‘I understand,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘Anything else?’

‘What do you want to know? Degree of intoxication? Stomach contents?’

‘I know that already.’

‘Perhaps there’s one thing,’ said Meusse, flicking through the file lying on the table in front of him. ‘She had given birth.’

‘Given birth?’ said Van Veeteren.

‘Yes,’ said Meusse. ‘Only one child, presumably. I thought that might be worth mentioning.’

‘Really?’ said Van Veeteren. ‘It could be. Was that all?’

Meusse shrugged.

‘Of course not. You have the full report in this file. Here you are, no need to say thank you.’

I ought to have offered him a beer, realized the Chief Inspector after he had left the office.

A child? he thought when he had returned to his room. Did it say anything about any children in Horniman’s report?

He read it for the third time, and established that there was no such mention.

The G File.

Shouldn’t there have been something about that? he wondered, but he had no time to reach a conclusion on that point. He realized that it was gone four o’clock, and high time he was in the conference room for the run-through.

The run-through after two days of intensive work on the Hennan case.

He didn’t really like that description, but was well aware that this was how he would always refer to it. Both while it was under investigation, and in the future.

The G File
.

‘If we are going to stick to the normal procedure,’ began Van Veeteren, ‘we should start with the technical evidence. But we don’t have any yet. I’ve just spoken to le Houde, and there will be a report on Monday or Tuesday. They have been going through Villa Zefyr with a fine-tooth comb for a day and a half, but as they don’t know what they are looking for I find it hard to believe that we shall achieve a breakthrough on that front.’