The Weeping Girl (13 page)

‘There’s no memorial plaque at least,’ said Mikael. ‘Thank God for that.’

He released the clutch pedal and they started moving forward again. Moreno wound up the window, and noticed that she had goose pimples on her forearms.

‘I don’t remember what happened next – the outcome of the trial and so on. It must have been held in the autumn, after we’d moved back to Groenhejm.’

‘But he was the one who did it, was he?’ Moreno wondered. ‘That teacher. Did he confess?’

Mikael drummed on the wheel with his fingers before answering.

‘Yes, it must have been him. What happened sent him round the bend. He was sitting beside the body when they found it, as I said. Didn’t try to run away. But they couldn’t get
much sense out of him. But what does this business of the girl and her mother have to do with all this? Can you enlighten me? You’re not suggesting that there’s a link, are
you?’

Moreno didn’t answer immediately. She tried to run through everything inside her head one more time first, but it was difficult to draw any conclusion different from the one she’d
drawn already.

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘But in a way I think it probably is. Mikaela Lijphart was going to visit her father, who for some reason she hadn’t seen since she was
two. Something had happened then, that’s how she put it:
something had happened
. Her father was evidently in a care home just outside Lejnice. Everything seems to suggest it has to
do with this Winnie Maas business. Do you know if he had any children, this teacher? A little daughter, for instance . . . Aged about two or thereabouts.’

‘I’ve no idea,’ said Mikael. ‘How the hell could I know? But I do recall reading something about the court case later on . . . While it was taking place. Apparently it
wasn’t possible to cross-examine him. Either he would break down, sobbing, or he’d just sit there as silent as the grave. I probably remember that because it was the exact phrase the
reporter used: “as silent as the grave”.’

‘So he must have been a psychiatric case, irrespective of the verdict – is that what you’re saying?’

‘Presumably. Sidonis, did you say?’

Moreno nodded. ‘Do you know it?’

‘Only by name,’ said Mikael. ‘All children know the name of the nearest loony bin, don’t they?’

‘I’m sure they do,’ said Moreno. ‘So that explains that, then. What an uplifting story . . .’

They drove in silence for a couple of minutes.

‘Ergo,’ said Mikael eventually. ‘Correct me if I’m wrong. The girl comes here to visit her father, the murderer, whom she hasn’t seen since she was two years old.
She meets him, talks to him for a few hours, then disappears. Is that what you’ve been brooding over all day?’

‘Not quite,’ said Moreno. ‘It was you who told me her father could call himself a murderer – only a few minutes ago. How’s your short-term memory?’

Mikael didn’t respond. Merely changed the rhythm of his drumming, and sat there in silence again.

‘What are we going to do?’ he asked just as a sign saying
Port Hagen 6
flashed past Moreno’s window.

Moreno thought for a few seconds. Then:

‘Turn back,’ she said.

‘Eh?’

‘Turn back. We must go and speak to Vrommel.’

‘Now?’ said Mikael. ‘It’s nearly half past nine. Can’t we leave it until tomorrow? I suspect he hasn’t read
King of the Royal Mounted
either.’

Moreno bit her lower lip and pondered for a moment.

‘All right,’ she said. ‘Tomorrow it is.’

15 July 1999

Vrommel was doing heel-raising exercises.

‘Achilles tendons and calves,’ he explained. ‘You’ve got to keep your body in trim as well. On a day like this I thought you’d be lying on a towel on the
beach.’

‘This afternoon,’ said Moreno. ‘I just thought I’d ask if the Lijphart girl had turned up.’

‘Unfortunately.’

‘Unfortunately not?’

‘Unfortunately not.’

‘Could we sit down for a bit?’ suggested Moreno. ‘I actually met the girl on the train, and so perhaps—’

‘A routine matter,’ interrupted Vrommel. ‘Nothing you need worry about. If she doesn’t get in touch today we’ll send out a Wanted notice tomorrow.’

He continued stubbornly raising himself up and down on his toes. After every raise he emitted a brief guttural grunt, and the colour of his face confirmed that he wasn’t cheating, but
putting his heart and soul into it.

He’s not compos mentis, Moreno thought, leaning on the edge of the desk. Another one of ’em. Ah well . . .

‘What do you think has happened?’ she asked.

Vrommel sank down on his heels, and stayed there. Took two deep breaths and started head-turnings. From right to left. Left to right. Slowly and methodically.

‘Nothing,’ he said.

‘Nothing?’ said Moreno. ‘But the girl’s disappeared.’

‘Girls do disappear,’ said Vrommel. ‘Always have done. They come back a little redder in the cheek.’

What the hell . . . ? Moreno thought, but managed to twist her lips into something she hoped might be interpreted as a smile. Albeit a stiff one. And a brief one.

‘So you don’t think it has anything to do with that other business from a few years ago?’

‘Oh, you know about that, do you?’

‘A bit. It was pretty sensational, I gather . . .’

Vrommel said nothing.

‘I’d have thought there might be some sort of link . . . Somehow or other.’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘No? But wouldn’t it be an idea to talk to the staff at the Sidonis home even so? Ask how the meeting between father and daughter went . . . Where she went afterwards, that kind of
thing.’

‘Already taken care of.’

‘Really?’

Silence. Right, left. Breathing out, breathing in.

‘Vegesack went out there last night. Why are you poking around in this business, Inspector? Do you think I don’t know how to do my job?’

‘Forgive me,’ said Moreno. ‘Of course not. It’s just that I was a bit taken by the girl. I met her quite by chance on the train when I was on my way here. You were the
one in charge of the investigation sixteen years ago, is that right?’

‘Who else?’ said Vrommel. ‘What do you do in the way of physical training?’

Talk about changing the subject, Moreno thought, and smiled genuinely.

‘Oh, I go jogging, and to the gym,’ she said.

‘Gym!’ snorted Vrommel. ‘A bloody silly newfangled racket.’

Moreno decided not to take the bait.

‘What did Vegesack have to say?’ she asked instead.

‘Nothing at all,’ said Vrommel, twisting his head so far to the right that Moreno could hear his cervical vertebrae creaking.

‘Nothing at all?’

‘He hasn’t delivered his report yet,’ said Vrommel. ‘He takes the morning off on Thursdays. Looking after his ancient mum, or something of the sort. Another bloody silly
newfangled racket.’

Moreno wasn’t sure if the chief of police was attacking motherhood itself, or the fact that there were still people who accepted a certain amount of responsibility for their parents. She
also began to feel that it was becoming more and more difficult to remain in the same room as Vrommel without giving him a kick between the legs or suggesting he should go and take a running jump .
. . So she cleared her throat and stood up instead. Thanked him for being so cooperative. So extremely cooperative.

‘No problem,’ said Vrommel. ‘Code of honour. Go and lie down in the sun now. We’ll do all that’s required of us, in accordance with the rulebook.’

Kiss my arse, thought Moreno when she had emerged into the sunlight. Code of honour! In accordance with the rule-book! Oh yes! She didn’t doubt for one second that Chief
of Police Vrommel knew precisely what to do in a situation like this.

How to handle girls who disappeared then turned up again a little redder in the cheek.

She crossed over the square and sat down at a table in the pavement area of Cafe Darm. Ordered a cappuccino and freshly pressed orange juice and continued to wonder what to do next –
Vegesack wasn’t due back at the police station until one o’clock, she had already established that after a chat with fröken Glossmann in reception. Then she suddenly caught sight
of Sigrid Lijphart sitting only a couple of tables away.

She hesitated for a moment, then took her cup and glass and asked if she might join fru Lijphart.

Of course. Fru Lijphart didn’t look as if she had slept very well that night – hardly surprising, after all. She seemed to have been crying, Moreno thought, repressing an impulse to
place her hand on fru Lijphart’s arm.

She wasn’t quite sure why she had repressed that impulse, but it seemed obvious that the explanation had to do with her profession as a police officer rather than her being a woman. It
wasn’t always easy to reconcile these two natures side by side within her. She had thought about that before. Many a time.

‘How are you feeling?’ she asked cautiously.

Fru Lijphart took out a handkerchief and blew her nose.

‘Not so good,’ she said.

‘I understand,’ said Moreno.

‘Do you?’ said fru Lijphart. ‘Do you have children of your own?’

Moreno shook her head. ‘Not yet.’

Yet?
She gave a start and wondered why that phrase had just popped out of her mouth. Noted that whatever else it might be, it wasn’t a police expression – rather some sort
of Freudian slip: so the balance between her natures seemed to have been restored.

‘I’m so worried,’ said fru Lijphart, scraping her coffee cup against the saucer. ‘So really, really worried. Something . . . Something must have happened to her. Mikaela
would never . . . No, so many days have passed now.’

Her voice broke. Her body shuddered violently – like the after-effects of an attack of sobbing, Moreno thought – then she straightened her back and tried to collect herself.

‘I’m sorry. It’s just that it’s so hard.’

‘I understand,’ said Moreno again. ‘If I can do anything to help, just say the word.’

Fru Lijphart looked at her in surprise.

‘You are . . . Are you a police officer here in Lejnice?’

Moreno smiled.

‘No, Maardam. I’m here on holiday. It’s just that I had to see the chief of police about a certain matter.’

‘I see.’

There followed a moment’s silence, and Moreno had time to ask herself what that
I see
might mean. If her interpretation was right, it seemed to indicate a certain degree of relief
that Moreno wasn’t a member of Vrommel’s normal staff.

Very understandable, in that case.

‘Have you tried to do anything off your own bat?’ she asked.

Fru Lijphart shook her head.

‘No. I’ll meet Vrommel and that constable of his at one o’clock . . . No, I don’t feel that I can go round talking to people in this town. Not after what happened.
I’ve sort of turned my back on it all . . . Left it behind me. I simply wouldn’t be able to look it in the face again now.’

‘I don’t suppose you know where Mikaela intended to spend the night, do you?’

Fru Lijphart looked unsure.

‘I’ve no idea,’ she said. ‘She just upped and left. Naturally . . . naturally it was a sort of punishment on her part – that’s how I interpret it, at least.
Punishing me for not having told her sooner. And punishing Helmut as well, perhaps. He’s my husband, Mikaela’s stepfather. A sort of demonstration, I reckon. She simply said she was
going to come here and meet him, then she left. But I know that she wouldn’t keep out of touch like this. I don’t suppose everybody knows their own children inside out, but I
do.’

‘So you don’t think that this is part of the demonstration? Leaving you to stew for a while?’

‘No.’ Fru Lijphart shook her head emphatically. ‘Absolutely not. Obviously I was prepared for her to stay away for a day and maybe a night as well, but not as long as this.
It’s now . . . it’s now nearly a week. Good Lord, why doesn’t he do something, that damned chief of police?’

Moreno thought it best not to respond to that, so she said nothing for a while and tried to look benignly neutral.

‘And you don’t want to go and talk to your ex-husband?’ she asked in due course.

Fru Lijphart gave a start as if she had just burnt her fingers.

‘To Arnold? Talk to Arnold? No, I can’t see what good that would do.’

‘You could find out what they talked about, for instance,’ said Moreno. ‘Mikaela and him.’

Fru Lijphart didn’t answer at first, looked as if she were contemplating the difference between the plague and cholera.

‘No,’ she said eventually. ‘I don’t think that whatever has happened had anything to do with that. Besides, that police constable has been to talk to him, so
there’s no point in anybody else doing so.’

‘What actually happened?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Sixteen years ago. What happened?’

Fru Lijphart looked genuinely surprised.

‘You must know, surely.’

‘Only what was said at the police station,’ she lied.

‘You’re not from here?’

‘Maardam, as I said.’

Fru Lijphart fished a cigarette out of her handbag. Put it into her mouth and lit it in so clumsy a fashion that Moreno realized that she was not a regular smoker.

‘He had sex with a sixteen-year-old,’ she said after the first puff. ‘A pupil of his.’

Moreno waited.

‘He made her pregnant, then he killed her. My husband. I’m talking about the person I was married to, the father of Mikaela. Note that.’

‘That’s terrible,’ said Moreno. ‘It must have been horribly traumatic for you.’

Fru Lijphart eyed her for several seconds, apparently assessing her.

‘There was only one thing to do,’ she said. ‘Close the door and start all over again. That’s what I did. I knew that I had to create a new life for myself, for me and my
daughter. If we were going to keep our heads above water. There are some things you can’t do anything about. You just have to turn your back on them. I hope you understand what I’m
saying.’

Moreno nodded vaguely. Wondered if she really did. Understand, that is. If she agreed with this sorely tried woman that there were certain things that couldn’t – shouldn’t
– be faced up to. Understood or forgiven. They should simply be forgotten.