The G File Read Online Free PDF Page A

All he would need to do was to nip out of the rear of the building and vanish. No problem.
    But why would he want to do that? He didn’t even know he was being watched.
    And the man keeping him under observation had no idea why he was doing so.
    Good God, thought Maarten Verlangen as he closed the car door. Give me two reasons for staying sober in this world we live in.
    At half past twelve Jaan G. Hennan went out for lunch. Verlangen left his car once again, and followed him over the square and to a restaurant called Cava del Popolo. Hennan chose a window table, while Verlangen sat down in a booth further back in the premises. There were not many customers, despite the fact that it was lunchtime. The shadow had a good view of the person he was shadowing, and optimistically ordered two beers to go with the pasta special of the day.
    Hennan sat there for forty minutes, and all that happened was that he read a newspaper, ate some kind of fish soup and drank a small bottle of white wine. Verlangen also managed a coffee and a cognac, and it was with a pious hope of being able to sleep for an hour or even an hour-and-a-half that he walked back to his car.
    And that is exactly what happened in fact. He woke up at about half past two when the sun finally forced its way through the clouds and found its way in through his dirty windscreen. It was like an oven inside the car, and he noticed that his intake of alcohol had begun to hammer nails into his skull. He checked that Hennan’s dark blue Saab was still parked where it had been before, then walked down to the kiosk in front of the town hall and bought a beer and a bottle of mineral water.
    When he had finished drinking them it was ten minutes past three. The sun had continued to dominate the afternoon, and his clothes were clinging stickily to his body. Hennan had appeared in the window again for a few seconds with a telephone receiver apparently glued to his ear, and a traffic warden had been snooping around in the hope of being able to allocate a ticket. But that was all.
    Verlangen took off his socks and put them in the glove compartment. Living felt slightly easier, but not a lot. He lit his twenty-fifth cigarette of the day, and wondered if he could think of something to do.
    After number twenty-six, the building had still not exploded and it had not become any cooler. Verlangen walked as far as the telephone kiosk outside the butcher’s and phoned his employer. She answered after one-and-a-half rings.
    ‘Good,’ she said. ‘It’s good that you’ve rung. How’s it going?’
    ‘Excellent,’ said Verlangen. ‘Like a dance. I didn’t think there was much point in ringing the first morning. He’s in his office, and he’s been there all day, in fact.’
    ‘I know,’ said Barbara Hennan. ‘I’ve just spoken to him on the telephone. He’s coming home in an hour.’
    ‘You don’t say?’ said Verlangen.
    ‘Yes I do. That’s what he said, at least.’
    I see, thought Verlangen. So why the hell should I hang around here, waiting for death to knock on my door?
    ‘I think you can pack it in for today,’ said fru Hennan. ‘We’ll be together all evening, so it will be okay if you start keeping an eye on him again tomorrow afternoon.’
    ‘Tomorrow afternoon?’
    ‘Yes. If you are in place after lunch tomorrow, and keep an eye on what he gets up to during the afternoon and the evening . . . especially in the evening . . . Well, it’s especially important for me that you don’t let him out of your sight then.’
    Verlangen thought that over for two seconds.
    ‘I’m with you,’ he said. ‘Your wish is my command. I’ll give you another report the day after tomorrow, will that be okay?’
    ‘That will be fine,’ said Barbara Hennan, and hung up.
    He stayed for a moment or two in the stuffy telephone kiosk, then noticed that the female traffic warden’s funereal grey uniform was approaching, and he hurried off to his car.
    Life, where is thy sting? he