The Return Read online

  The chief inspector shrugged.

  “No idea. I expect they’re buried somewhere—I’m inclined to hope they stay wherever they are. Just think if they find them a hundred years from now and start a new investigation! I sometimes get the feeling that this is a case that could go on forever.”

  Münster nodded and opened his car door.

  “Anyway, that’ll have to be it for now,” he said. “I’d better get home and pack. We’re off tomorrow.”

  “Italy?” asked Van Veeteren.

  “Yes. Two weeks in Calabria and one in Tuscany. When are you going on holiday?”

  “August,” said Van Veeteren. “I haven’t really started to think about it yet, but I suppose that’s not necessary. July is usually rather a good month to spend in Maardam. Calm and peaceful. All the idiots are away on holiday. Don’t take that personally, by the way.”

  “That would never occur to me,” said Münster. “All the best!”

  “Have a good holiday,” said Van Veeteren. “Take good care of your lovely wife. And the kids, of course. It’ll be badminton time again, come September.”

  “It certainly will,” said Münster.

  Once again he drove up to The Big Shadow. Never got out of the car. Merely sat there, contemplating the overgrown house and garden while smoking a cigarette and drumming his fingers on the steering wheel.

  What a goddamn awful business, he thought.

  And now all those involved were dead. Just as in a Shakespearean tragedy. Beatrice Holden and Marlene Nietsch. Arnold and Anna Jahrens. And Verhaven himself, of course.

  But justice had been done after all. Insofar as that was possible, that is. Nemesis had claimed her due. That was the only way of looking at it.

  And who were left?

  Verhaven’s ancient sister, who had played no part at all in the events.

  Andrea Jahrens, or Välgre, as she was called nowadays. The daughter, with two children of her own.

  You could say they were the only survivors, in fact; Mrs. Hoegstraa would soon join the others six feet down.

  Survivors, and completely ignorant of the whole business. Needless to say, there was no reason why they should be informed.

  He would never dream of doing so.

  Never.

  And as he drove slowly back down the hill for the last time to the village, which was wallowing sleepily if misleadingly in the summer sunshine, he thought about what he had said to Münster.

  Not everything is what it seems.

  Kaustin—the village of murders.

  Then it struck him that he hadn’t really told Münster the whole truth. The real reason why he’d stopped by at the Czermaks that afternoon was, of course, not because he had noticed the wheelchair ramp—that was something he’d picked up in passing. No, the real reason was more prosaic than that, and just now he was beginning to feel the same symptom.

  He’d been thirsty.

  Ah well, he thought, possessed by a sudden if brief attack of cheerfulness, and an obvious risk of repeating himself: Not everything is what it seems.

  He sped up and started thinking instead about that borderline that he’d at long last overstepped.

  A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Håkan Nesser was awarded the 1993 Swedish Crime Writers’ Academy Prize for new authors with his novel The Wide-Mesh Net; he received the academy’s Best Novel Award in 1994 for Borkmann’s Point and in 1996 for Woman with Birthmark. In 1999, he was awarded the Glass Key Award by the Crime Writers of Scandinavia for the best crime novel of the year, Carambole. His novels have been published to acclaim in nine countries. Nesser was born in 1950 in Sweden, and he now divides his time between Sweden and New York.

  A NOTE ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR

  Laurie Thompson taught Swedish at the University of Wales and was editor of Swedish Book Review from its launch in 1983 until 2002. He has been a full-time literary translator for several years and has translated some forty books from Swedish. He was born in York, but now lives in rural west Wales with several cats and a Swedish wife.

  ALSO BY HÅKAN NESSER

  Borkmann’s Point

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Translation copyright © 2007 by Laurie Thompson

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Pantheon Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. Originally published in Sweden as Återkomsten by Albert Bonniers Forlag AB, Stockholm, in 1995. Copyright © 1995 by Håkan Nesser.

  Pantheon Books and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Nesser, Håkan, [date]

  [Återkomsten. English]

  The return : an Inspector Van Veeteren mystery / Håkan Nesser ; translated from the Swedish by Laurie Thompson.

  p. cm.

  I. Thompson, Laurie, 1938– II. Title.

  PT9876.24.E76A8413 2007

  839.73'74—dc22 2006024011

  www.pantheonbooks.com

  eISBN: 978-0-375-42483-0

  v3.0