[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
adamant in rejecting any attempt to help.
One hour, he repeated, checking his watch. I ll walk
down to the church under my own steam. The slope is in the
right direction, so there shouldn t be a problem.
Wouldn t it be best if . . . , began Münster, but Van
Veeteren interrupted him.
t h e r e t u r n
Stop nannying me, damn you! I ve had enough of that. If I
haven t turned up at the church by half past ten, you can drive
up and see where I ve got to!
All right, said Münster. But be careful.
Clear off, said Van Veeteren. Is the door open, by the
way?
The key s hanging from a nail under the gutter, said
Münster. On the right.
Thanks, said Van Veeteren.
Münster got back into the car, managed to turn around
in the narrow road and set off through the trees toward the
village.
It s amazing, he thought. We must have spent a hundred
hours sniffing around this place. But I wouldn t be at all sur-
prised if he found something we d missed.
Not surprised in the least.
Van Veeteren stayed by the roadside until Münster s white
Audi had vanished among the trees. Then he forced his way
though the hedge and took possession of The Big Shadow.
The garden was overgrown, no two ways about that. He
stuck a toothpick in his mouth and looked around. He began
walking around the house but was forced to give up about
halfway when he found himself up to the armpits in nettles.
No matter, he thought. It wasn t too difficult to get an impres-
sion of what it must have looked like once upon a time. A plot
of land taken over by man around the middle of the last cen-
tury, tamed by plow and harrow, a lot of hard work and tender
loving care. But now well on the way back into the arms of
Mother Nature. Aspen and birch saplings had eaten into large
chunks of the orchard; paved areas, the cellar and outhouses
were lost in undergrowth and covered in moss; and the big
2 2 9
barn, which had presumably been the famous poultry farm,
would surely not survive many more winters. It was very clear
that a border had been crossed the limit beyond which it was
no longer possible to reclaim what nature had taken hold of.
Not for an old lag living on his own, at least.
The Big Shadow?
With hindsight it was obvious that the house name was
prophetic. He found the key, and after considerable effort suc-
ceeded in opening the door. He had to bend down so as not to
hit his head on the door frame, and inside there was only just
sufficient headroom for him to stand upright. He recalled hav-
ing read in the newspapers about a month ago that the aver-
age height of people had shot up remarkably over the past
hundred years. His own six feet two inches would presumably
have been considered abnormal when the first settlers moved
into this house.
Two rooms and a kitchen on the ground floor. A narrow,
creaking staircase led up from a three-foot-square hall to a loft
full of old newspapers, broken furniture and other junk. A
faint smell of soot and sun-warmed dust clung to the raft-
ers. He sneezed several times, then went back down to the
kitchen. He felt the big iron stove, as if expecting to find it hot.
Examined the bad reproduction of an almost equally bad origi-
nal landscape painting hanging over the sofa, then entered the
living room. The cracked windowpanes. A sideboard. Table
and four ill-matched chairs. A sofa and a typically 1950s televi-
sion set. A sagging bookshelf with getting on for a hundred
books, most of them cheap crime novels or adventure stories.
On the wall to the right of the stove was a mirror and a framed
black-and-white photograph of a runner breaking the finish-
ing tape. His face seemed tormented, almost tortured. At first
he thought it was Verhaven himself, but when he went up to it
and examined it more closely, he saw the caption and recog-
t h e r e t u r n
nized the man: Emil Zatopek. The Czech locomotive, as he
was called. The self-torturer. The man who overcame the pain
barrier.
Had he been Verhaven s ideal?
Or was it just typical of the time? Zatopek had been the
king of the track in the early fifties, if his memory served him
rightly. Or one of them, at least.
He left the living room for the bedroom and stood gazing
at the double bed that, despite its modest size, took up almost
all the floor space.
But a double bed? Yes, of course, Verhaven had lived with a
lot of women. Not all of them had been murdered. At least,
he assumed not.
Was this your bedroom, then? muttered Van Veeteren,
fumbling for a new toothpick. Did you get one night s sleep
as a free man, or didn t he even allow you that?
He left the bedroom.
What the hell am I doing here? he thought suddenly. What
am I kidding myself that I can sort out by strutting around
here? Even if I begin to form an impression of what Verhaven
was really like, that s not going to get me one inch closer to
the answer.
The answer to the question of who murdered him, that is.
He was overcome with exhaustion and sat down at the
kitchen table. Closed his eyes and watched the flickering yel-
low light that floated past from right to left. Always from right
to left: He wondered what that might be due to. They had
warned him that he would have moments of weakness, but he
hadn t fully realized that they would be as treacherous as this,
practically making his legs give way under him.
He rested his head in his hands. Reinhart always said you
should never try to think about anything important when
your head s not right. It s better to shut down altogether,
otherwise you ll only fill it with a lot of garbage.
2 3 1
An unusually ugly tablecloth, he thought therefore, when
he had opened his eyes again. But it seems somehow familiar.
Didn t Aunt K. have one like it when I visited her in summer
about the beginning of the fifties? In that boathouse heated by
the summer sun, where you could hear the water lapping
under the floorboards. It felt a long way away from The Big
Shadow in both time and space, but it must have been around
the time when Verhaven left his father here in Kaustin to lead
his own independent life.
Forty years ago, or thereabouts.
And then things turned out the way they did. . . .
That s life, Van Veeteren thought. One big goddamn
lottery!
Or wasn t it like that, in fact? Were there directions and
patterns?
A determinant?
Münster leaned against the old gravestone and looked at the
clock.
Ten minutes past ten. There were voices inside his head
stubbornly urging him to go to the car and immediately drive
back to The Big Shadow. The chief inspector had been on his
own for more than an hour at this point recently operated
on, weak and sickly; it could be regarded as irresponsible not
to keep an eye on him.
But there were other voices as well. Van Veeteren hadn t
actually insisted on any more than one hour of solitary ma-
jesty, although he had set the limit at half past ten. Münster
had to choose between arriving too soon and arriving too late.
An awkward choice, certainly; but if he stuck to the later time,
at least he would escape being told off for disturbing the chief
inspector s holy thought processes. If Van Veeteren turned out
to be unconscious somewhere among all the junk, that would
t h e r e t u r n
be a serious matter, to be sure. But he d rather turn up as
an angel of mercy than as an unwelcome and premature
intruder.
Münster closed his eyes. From inside the church came
the muted, monotonous chanting of today s sermon. He had [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
zanotowane.pl doc.pisz.pl pdf.pisz.pl szkicerysunki.xlx.pl
adamant in rejecting any attempt to help.
One hour, he repeated, checking his watch. I ll walk
down to the church under my own steam. The slope is in the
right direction, so there shouldn t be a problem.
Wouldn t it be best if . . . , began Münster, but Van
Veeteren interrupted him.
t h e r e t u r n
Stop nannying me, damn you! I ve had enough of that. If I
haven t turned up at the church by half past ten, you can drive
up and see where I ve got to!
All right, said Münster. But be careful.
Clear off, said Van Veeteren. Is the door open, by the
way?
The key s hanging from a nail under the gutter, said
Münster. On the right.
Thanks, said Van Veeteren.
Münster got back into the car, managed to turn around
in the narrow road and set off through the trees toward the
village.
It s amazing, he thought. We must have spent a hundred
hours sniffing around this place. But I wouldn t be at all sur-
prised if he found something we d missed.
Not surprised in the least.
Van Veeteren stayed by the roadside until Münster s white
Audi had vanished among the trees. Then he forced his way
though the hedge and took possession of The Big Shadow.
The garden was overgrown, no two ways about that. He
stuck a toothpick in his mouth and looked around. He began
walking around the house but was forced to give up about
halfway when he found himself up to the armpits in nettles.
No matter, he thought. It wasn t too difficult to get an impres-
sion of what it must have looked like once upon a time. A plot
of land taken over by man around the middle of the last cen-
tury, tamed by plow and harrow, a lot of hard work and tender
loving care. But now well on the way back into the arms of
Mother Nature. Aspen and birch saplings had eaten into large
chunks of the orchard; paved areas, the cellar and outhouses
were lost in undergrowth and covered in moss; and the big
2 2 9
barn, which had presumably been the famous poultry farm,
would surely not survive many more winters. It was very clear
that a border had been crossed the limit beyond which it was
no longer possible to reclaim what nature had taken hold of.
Not for an old lag living on his own, at least.
The Big Shadow?
With hindsight it was obvious that the house name was
prophetic. He found the key, and after considerable effort suc-
ceeded in opening the door. He had to bend down so as not to
hit his head on the door frame, and inside there was only just
sufficient headroom for him to stand upright. He recalled hav-
ing read in the newspapers about a month ago that the aver-
age height of people had shot up remarkably over the past
hundred years. His own six feet two inches would presumably
have been considered abnormal when the first settlers moved
into this house.
Two rooms and a kitchen on the ground floor. A narrow,
creaking staircase led up from a three-foot-square hall to a loft
full of old newspapers, broken furniture and other junk. A
faint smell of soot and sun-warmed dust clung to the raft-
ers. He sneezed several times, then went back down to the
kitchen. He felt the big iron stove, as if expecting to find it hot.
Examined the bad reproduction of an almost equally bad origi-
nal landscape painting hanging over the sofa, then entered the
living room. The cracked windowpanes. A sideboard. Table
and four ill-matched chairs. A sofa and a typically 1950s televi-
sion set. A sagging bookshelf with getting on for a hundred
books, most of them cheap crime novels or adventure stories.
On the wall to the right of the stove was a mirror and a framed
black-and-white photograph of a runner breaking the finish-
ing tape. His face seemed tormented, almost tortured. At first
he thought it was Verhaven himself, but when he went up to it
and examined it more closely, he saw the caption and recog-
t h e r e t u r n
nized the man: Emil Zatopek. The Czech locomotive, as he
was called. The self-torturer. The man who overcame the pain
barrier.
Had he been Verhaven s ideal?
Or was it just typical of the time? Zatopek had been the
king of the track in the early fifties, if his memory served him
rightly. Or one of them, at least.
He left the living room for the bedroom and stood gazing
at the double bed that, despite its modest size, took up almost
all the floor space.
But a double bed? Yes, of course, Verhaven had lived with a
lot of women. Not all of them had been murdered. At least,
he assumed not.
Was this your bedroom, then? muttered Van Veeteren,
fumbling for a new toothpick. Did you get one night s sleep
as a free man, or didn t he even allow you that?
He left the bedroom.
What the hell am I doing here? he thought suddenly. What
am I kidding myself that I can sort out by strutting around
here? Even if I begin to form an impression of what Verhaven
was really like, that s not going to get me one inch closer to
the answer.
The answer to the question of who murdered him, that is.
He was overcome with exhaustion and sat down at the
kitchen table. Closed his eyes and watched the flickering yel-
low light that floated past from right to left. Always from right
to left: He wondered what that might be due to. They had
warned him that he would have moments of weakness, but he
hadn t fully realized that they would be as treacherous as this,
practically making his legs give way under him.
He rested his head in his hands. Reinhart always said you
should never try to think about anything important when
your head s not right. It s better to shut down altogether,
otherwise you ll only fill it with a lot of garbage.
2 3 1
An unusually ugly tablecloth, he thought therefore, when
he had opened his eyes again. But it seems somehow familiar.
Didn t Aunt K. have one like it when I visited her in summer
about the beginning of the fifties? In that boathouse heated by
the summer sun, where you could hear the water lapping
under the floorboards. It felt a long way away from The Big
Shadow in both time and space, but it must have been around
the time when Verhaven left his father here in Kaustin to lead
his own independent life.
Forty years ago, or thereabouts.
And then things turned out the way they did. . . .
That s life, Van Veeteren thought. One big goddamn
lottery!
Or wasn t it like that, in fact? Were there directions and
patterns?
A determinant?
Münster leaned against the old gravestone and looked at the
clock.
Ten minutes past ten. There were voices inside his head
stubbornly urging him to go to the car and immediately drive
back to The Big Shadow. The chief inspector had been on his
own for more than an hour at this point recently operated
on, weak and sickly; it could be regarded as irresponsible not
to keep an eye on him.
But there were other voices as well. Van Veeteren hadn t
actually insisted on any more than one hour of solitary ma-
jesty, although he had set the limit at half past ten. Münster
had to choose between arriving too soon and arriving too late.
An awkward choice, certainly; but if he stuck to the later time,
at least he would escape being told off for disturbing the chief
inspector s holy thought processes. If Van Veeteren turned out
to be unconscious somewhere among all the junk, that would
t h e r e t u r n
be a serious matter, to be sure. But he d rather turn up as
an angel of mercy than as an unwelcome and premature
intruder.
Münster closed his eyes. From inside the church came
the muted, monotonous chanting of today s sermon. He had [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]