The G File by Håkan Nesser

Hennan?
    Was he under any obligation to do so?
    Hardly. He had been working on the case for three days (or at least been on hand in Linden for three days), his daily rate had been three hundred guilders and he had been given a thousand by fru Hennan. Bearing in mind his hotel bill and other odds and ends, one could say that the pay more or less covered his input.
    Perhaps it would be as well to leave it at that. Forget about the elegant American woman and her shady husband, and devote his attentions to something else.
    But on the other hand: another thousand for a few days of less than strenuous effort was not to be sniffed at. Especially as he had no other commitments at the moment. Apart from a so-called ‘pay by results’ job he had been toying with for several months: a gang of graffiti-producing vandals had been making a nuisance of themselves in Linden, and local shop-owners had clubbed together to offer a reward of 5,000 guilders to anybody who could apprehend them. But although Verlangen had one or two possible names and a few possible faces in mind, there was a long way to go before he could collect the reward.
    He sighed. Opened the day’s first beer and decided on one final compromise in the Hennan question: first he would glance through the Saturday and Sunday editions of
Neuwe Blatt
, and then make another call to Villa Zefyr.
    The article was on page five of the Saturday edition.
    Woman found dead
was the headline, and he read the short text with roughly the same feelings he used to have at the Gerckwinckel pub when he realized that the sweaty, red and swollen face in the mirror over the toilet was his own.
    Was it possible? he wondered.
    Who else could it be, for Christ’s sake?
    A woman aged about 35, it said.
    Of American origin.
    Found dead at the bottom of an empty swimming pool.
    On the outskirts of Linden. Unclear circumstances, but as far as one could tell she had thought the pool was full and dived in from a considerable height.
    No witnesses of the accident. No suspicions of foul play.
    Verlangen read the article – no more than sixteen lines in a single column – three times while drinking the beer and smoking another cigarette.
    American woman?
    How many American women could there be in Linden? Not many, he thought.
    And he remembered that diving tower. What an incredibly pointless way to die.
    Hell’s bells, he thought. What the devil is the significance of this?
    Thursday night? Dammit all, that was the night he had sat and . . .
    For a few seconds Maarten Verlangen could feel his mind changing into that famous tablet of soap in the bathroom that it was impossible to grasp hold of, and that not even a louse could cling to. After another deep draught of beer, however, he managed to restore a modicum of order into his thoughts, and two possible courses of action crystallized out.
    Or at least, two first moves in two possible courses of action.
    Either he could phone the police – that would of course be the most sensible thing to do.
    Or he could drive out to Linden one more time and see what he could find out there.
    After five seconds of simulated thinking, he chose the second alternative. He could ring the police at a later stage, and it would be stupid to get involved before he had established that it really was the right woman. That it was in fact Barbara Clarissa Hennan who had been found lying dead in the swimming pool.
    No sooner said than done. He left his office and half-ran to his car.
    ‘Really?’ said Van Veeteren. ‘Is it that bad?’
    He listened intently to what was emerging from the telephone receiver with the expression on his face becoming ever more gloomy. Like a trough of low pressure, thought Inspector Münster, who was sitting opposite his superior and running the tip of his tongue over a back tooth from which he had lost part of a filling the previous evening. An English toffee – it wasn’t the first time.
    ‘I see,’ muttered Van Veeteren. ‘Ah well, I suppose