The Inspector and Silence Read Online Free Page B

Kluuge could sign up to the second part of that assessment.
    On his way out of the door, Malijsen had paused and been serious for a few moments. Checked the torrent of words and raised an eyebrow.
    ‘Are you sure you can cope with this?’
    Kluuge had snorted quietly. Not rudely. Not nervously.
    ‘Yes, of course.’
    Nevertheless Malijsen had looked a bit doubtful and taken a card out of his wallet.
    ‘For Christ’s sake don’t disturb me unless you really have to! There’s a public telephone in the village, of course, but I need these weeks to get over Lilian.’
    Lilian was Malijsen’s wife, stricken by cancer; after many years of more or less unbearable suffering she had finally given up the ghost and departed from this world. Drugged up to the eyeballs, and a shadow of a shadow . . . That was in the middle of March. Kluuge had attended the funeral with Deborah, who had noted that the chief of police had shed the occasional tear, but not excessively.
    ‘If the shit hits the fan, you can always get in touch with VV instead,’ Malijsen explained. ‘He’s an old colleague of mine, and he owes me a favour.’
    He handed over the card and Kluuge put it in his breast pocket without so much as glancing at it. A quarter of an hour later, he sat down behind the imposingly large desk, leaned back and looked forward to three weeks of calm and prestigious professional activity.
    That was six days ago. Last Friday. Today was Thursday. The first call had come last Tuesday.
    The second one yesterday.
    Oh hell, Kluuge thought and stared at the card with the very familiar name. He drummed on it with his finger, thinking back to what happened two days ago.
    ‘There’s a woman who’d like to speak to you.’
    He noted that Miss Miller avoided addressing him as ‘Chief of Police’. She’d been doing that right from the start; at first it had annoyed him somewhat, but now he just ignored it.
    ‘A telephone call?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Okay put her through.’
    He lifted the receiver and pressed the white button.
    ‘Is that the police?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘A little girl has disappeared.’
    The voice was so faint that he had to strain his ears to catch what she was saying.
    ‘A little girl? Who am I speaking to?’
    ‘I can’t tell you that. But a little girl has disappeared from Waldingen.’
    ‘Waldingen? Can you speak a bit louder?’
    ‘The Pure Life Camp at Waldingen.’
    ‘You mean that sect?’
    ‘Yes. A little girl has disappeared from their confirmation camp in Waldingen. I can’t say any more. You must look into it.’
    ‘Hang on a minute. Who are you? Where are you calling from?’
    ‘I must stop now.’
    ‘Just a minute . . .’
    She had hung up. Kluuge had thought the matter over for twenty minutes. Then he asked Miss Miller to look up the number for Waldingen – after all, there was nothing there apart from an old building used as a centre for summer camps. After a while he had given them a call.
    A soft female voice answered the phone. He explained that he’d been informed that one of the confirmands had disappeared. The woman at the other end of the line sounded genuinely surprised, and said that nobody had been missing at lunch two hours previously.
    Kluuge thanked her, and hung up.
    The second call had come yesterday. Half an hour before the end of office hours. Miss Miller had already gone home, and the phone had been switched through to the chief of police’s office.
    ‘Hello. Chief of Police Kluuge here.’
    ‘You haven’t done anything.’
    The voice sounded a little louder this time. But it was the same woman, no doubt about it. The same tense, forced composure. Somewhere between forty and fifty, although Kluuge acknowledged that he was bad when it came to guessing age.
    ‘Who am I speaking to?’
    ‘I rang yesterday and reported that a little girl had disappeared. You’ve done nothing about it. I assume she’s been murdered. If you don’t do something, I’ll be forced to turn to the