The Inspector and Silence Read Online Free PDF Page B

a scrap of paper.
    ‘Thank you,’ said Reinhart. ‘Anyway, duty calls. Do have a pleasant lunch.’
    ‘Thank you,’ said Van Veeteren.
    ‘Come in,’ said Hiller.
    ‘I’m in already,’ said Van Veeteren, sitting down.
    ‘Please take a seat. I take it it’s generally agreed that Reinhart looks after this lunatic?’
    ‘Yes, of course.’
    ‘Hmm. You’re going on holiday at the end of this month, aren’t you?’
    Van Veeteren nodded. Hiller fanned himself with a memorandum from the Interior Ministry.
    ‘And then what? You can’t really be serious?’
    Van Veeteren said nothing.
    ‘You’ve had your doubts before. Why should I believe you’ll actually do it this time?’
    ‘We shall see,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘You’ll get my final decision in August, but it looks like coming off this time. I just thought I’d better inform you. You like being informed, after all.’
    ‘Hmm,’ said the chief of police.
    ‘What did you want me for?’ asked Van Veeteren.
    ‘Ah yes, there was something.’
    ‘That’s what Reinhart said.’
    ‘A chief of police called from Sorbinowo.’
    ‘Sorbinowo?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Malijsen?’
    ‘No, I think it’s his stand-in while he’s on holiday . . .’
    Hiller took a sheet of paper from a folder.
    ‘. . . Kluuge. He sounded a bit inexperienced, and he’s evidently been saddled with a disappearance.’
    ‘A disappearance?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘But surely there must be help available closer to home?’
    Hiller leaned over his desk and tried to frown.
    ‘No doubt. But this Kluuge chappie has evidently been instructed to turn to us if anything should crop up. By the real chief of police, that is. Before he went on holiday. A Wilfred Malijsen. Is he somebody you know?’
    Van Veeteren hesitated.
    ‘I have come across him, yes.’
    ‘I thought as much,’ said Hiller, leaning back in his chair. ‘Because he mentioned you specifically as the man he wants to go there and help out. To be honest . . . to tell you the truth, I have the feeling there’s something fishy behind this, but as you’ve evidently talked Reinhart into taking on the other business, you might just as well go there.’
    Van Veeteren said nothing. Snapped a toothpick in two and stared at his superior.
    ‘Just to find out what’s going on, of course,’ said Hiller. ‘One day, or two at most.’
    ‘A disappearance?’ muttered the chief inspector.
    ‘Yes,’ said Hiller. ‘A little girl, if I’ve understood it rightly. Come on now, what more can you ask for, dammit all? There can’t be a more idyllic place to be in than Sorbinowo at this time of year . . .’
    ‘What did you mean by something fishy behind this?’
    For a brief moment it looked as if the chief of police blushed.
    But it’s probably just his daily cerebral haemorrhage, Van Veeteren thought, then realized that was an expression he’d borrowed from Reinhart. He stood up.
    ‘All right,’ he said. ‘I suppose I’d better go there and see what’s happening.’
    Hiller handed over the sheet of paper with the details. Van Veeteren glanced at it for two seconds, then put it in his pocket.
    ‘That hortensia’s looking a bit miserable,’ he said.
    The chief of police sighed.
    ‘It’s not a hortensia,’ he explained. ‘It’s an aspidistra. It ought to be coping well with the heat, but it obviously isn’t.’
    ‘Then there must be something else it can’t cope with,’ said Van Veeteren, turning his back on the chief of police.

6
     
    Among the information on the sheet Hiller had given him was Sergeant Kluuge’s private telephone number. The chief inspector waited until he’d got home before ringing it. A young woman answered promptly, and announced that the acting chief of police was in the shower at the moment, but perhaps the caller could try again a little later. Van Veeteren explained who he was, and suggested that instead the sergeant should call him as soon as possible, if he really did have something of importance to