The Weeping Girl by Håkan Nesser Read Free Book Online Page B

have to go back and continue the interrogation on Monday?’ said Mikael Bau. ‘Is that what you’re saying?’
    Moreno nodded, and took another sip of wine. She felt that she was starting to feel a bit drunk – but what the hell? she thought. It was the first evening of her four-week-long holiday
after all, and she couldn’t remember when she’d last allowed herself to drink away her inhibitions. It must have been years ago. What inhibitions, incidentally?
    She could sleep in tomorrow. Take a towel, saunter down to the beach. Lie down and lap up the sun all day. Have a good rest and let Mikael look after her, just as he’d said he would
do.
    And an hour or two’s work the day after tomorrow wasn’t all that much of a problem, surely? In the afternoon – so it wouldn’t affect her lie-in.
    ‘That’s right,’ she said. ‘Just a couple of hours. He wasn’t as cooperative as he said he was going to be, that scumbag Lampe-Leermann.’
    ‘Scumbag?’ said Mikael with a frown. ‘I take it the inspector is talking off the record.’
    Off the record? she thought as she shuffled around and tried to make herself comfortable on the sagging plush sofa. I suppose so – but for God’s sake, I’m on holiday after all!
Mikael was lolling back at the other end of the outsize piece of furniture, and they had just about as much bodily contact as was compatible with a comfortable digestion process. He’d found a
suitable fish, needless to say, just as he’d promised to do. Not just any old fish either: a sole that he’d cooked à la meunière with a divine white wine sauce and
crayfish tails. It was such a luxurious delight that she’d found it quite difficult to really enjoy it. The problem was striking a balance between gorging herself and doing justice to his
culinary skills. Something to do with her ability to really let herself go, presumably . . . But why should that be a problem?
    When she admitted as much, he’d simply burst out laughing and shrugged.
    ‘Just eat,’ he said. ‘You don’t need to talk blank verse.’
    She drank another slug of wine. Leaned her head back on the cushion and realized that she had a sort of idiot smile on her lips. It didn’t seem willing to go away.
    ‘Franz Lampe-Leermann is a scumbag,’ she declared. ‘Off or on the record, it makes no difference.’
    Mikael looked mildly sceptical.
    ‘But why does it have to be you, and nobody else? Surely anybody can interrogate a scumbag?’
    ‘Presumably for the same reason that I’m lolling back here,’ said Moreno. ‘He likes me. Or rather, he likes women more than he likes men.’
    ‘Really? And so he can dictate how he’s going to be treated, can he? Is this the police force’s new softly-softly approach?’
    ‘I suppose you could say that. In any case, he prefers me to the local chief of police, and I have to say that I understand him. Vrommel isn’t exactly a breath of fresh air . .
.’
    ‘Vrommel?’
    ‘That’s his name. A stiff sixty-year-old, stiff-collared, stiff-necked pain in the neck and everywhere else you can think of . . .’
    She hesitated, surprised at how easily the words flowed over her lips. It must be that sauce, she thought. Summer, sun and Sauvignon blanc . . .
    ‘I know who he is,’ said Mikael.
    ‘Who?’
    ‘Vrommel, of course.’
    ‘You do? How can you know who Vrommel is?’
    Mikael flung out his arm and spilled a little wine.
    ‘The house,’ he explained. ‘This one. Don’t forget that I’ve lived here in the summer for the whole of my life. I know Port Hagen better than the back of my hand.
Lejnice as well . . . That’s the Big City in these parts.’
    Moreno thought for a moment.
    ‘I see. But the chief of police? I assume this means that you are involved in criminal activities . . . You and your family, that is.’
    Mikael growled cryptically.
    ‘Hmm,’ he said, ‘Not exactly. I happen to remember Vrommel because he came here once. It must have been at the beginning of