Borkmann's point

11

It wasn’t only the radio station and the local press that had taken Chief of Police Bausen’s orders ad notam. On Sunday, several national newspapers issued a serious exhortation to the conscientious burghers of Kaalbringen to go to the police without delay with any scrap of information that might possi bly lead to the rapid capture of the Axman.

When Inspector Kropke and Constable Mooser compiled the results of the general public’s first day of sleuthing, quite a lot of things were crystal clear. It is true that Kropke had not had time to prepare any overhead projector transparencies before he addressed his colleagues in the conference room that evening, but everything was neatly set out in his notebook with detachable pages and dark-blue leather covers:

1) In the course of the day, forty-eight persons had reported to the police station and testified about various aspects of the evening of the murder. Of them, eleven had been interrogated previously. Six of the remaining thirty seven were considered to be irrelevant because they were in the wrong part of town (three), or had been out at the wrong time (two) or had got the date wrong (one-old

Mrs. Loewe, a widow, had been out to buy some cat food on the Monday morning, and had observed and noted down several mysterious characters with axes hidden under their overcoats).

2) The remaining forty-two witnesses, of all ages, had been without exception in the area-Langvej, Hoistraat,

Michel’s Steps, Fisherman’s Square, Harbor Esplanade, municipal woods-at some time between 2300 and 2400 hours. Everyone’s name, address and telephone number had been meticulously recorded, and they had also been forbidden by Kropke to leave the town and its environs for the coming week, in case any of them should be required to present themselves for supplementary questioning. (A measure that smacked very much of abuse of power, of course, but Van Veeteren suppressed his objections. He was not in charge of the investigation, after all.)

3) All the witnesses had at some time or other and in various locations noticed one another, in accordance with an extremely complicated and potentially even more involved pattern that Kropke had failed to program into his PCB 4000, despite repeated attempts. (The fact that this had led to a degree of annoyance and frustration was something Constable Mooser could not have failed to appreciate during the late afternoon, the hierarchy and pecking order of the police force being what it is.)

4) The earlier evidence provided by Miss deWeutz and

Mrs. Aalger, who had been conducting a conversation in

Dooms Alley and had noticed Ernst Simmel walking across the square, had now been confirmed by four new witnesses. Two couples, who had crossed the square at around about 2320, albeit in different directions, had also noticed a lone pedestrian who, now that they came to think about it, could be identified as the deceased property developer.

5) Two teenagers on scooters (as likely as not in circumstances that placed them somewhat to the wrong side of the letter of the law) had ridden across the square toward the Esplanade about a minute later, and claimed to have passed a person who, to all appearances, seems to have been Simmel.

6) A courting couple, of which the lady for certain reasons wished to remain anonymous and therefore preferred to confirm the man’s account by telephone rather than appearing in person at the police station, had been sitting, or more likely semi-recumbent, in a car down by the marina between approximately 2300 and 0100, and at 2330 or thereabouts had seen a man smoking at the edge of the quay, scarcely more than ten yards away from their car. Both were more or less convinced that it was Ernst Simmel.

7) Up in Hoistraat, three new witnesses (to add to the other two) had seen the murdered man on the way from

The Blue Ship. In addition, all three had observed one or possibly two unaccompanied male persons; in all probability this was a case of witnesses observing one another.

8) One lone witness had seen an unaccompanied man come out of Hoistraat and walk down Michel’s Steps sometime between 2310 and 2315, in all probability Ernst Simmel. It is true that the distance between the witness and the person observed was some twenty yards; but since the man was under a streetlight at the time, the witness had been able to register a fairly clear picture of him. The most interesting aspect of this picture was probably that the man in question had been wearing a hat with a broad brim, which had kept his face shaded. This was one of the facts suggesting that this sighting was actually of the murderer; if that really was the case, it was the only direct sighting thus far. No male person wearing a hat had figured in any of the other reports submitted by the citizens of Kaalbringen frequenting their town by night.

The name of the witness was Vincent Peerhoovens, and unfortunately he had been somewhat inebriated at the time of his observation and hence not entirely reliable-a fact he freely admitted and one that was confirmed by several of the other witnesses. Nevertheless, his account must naturally be regarded as extremely interesting with regard to further investigations.

9) Perhaps the most significant piece of evidence to emerge on this Sunday-which had been Chief Inspector

Bausen’s view, at least, when he passed comment on the material summarized by Kropke-came from four young people in their early teens who had been strolling through the woods from the harbor toward Rikken-in other words, the very path the investigation was concerned with. They appeared to have passed by the scene of the murder shortly after 2340. Since Ernst Simmel had been smoking a cigarette down by the marina about ten minutes earlier, according to witness number six, and since none of the young people appeared to have seen him, it could be concluded that when they passed the scene of the crime, the murderer had just struck and was presumably crouching over his victim in the bushes, waiting for them to go away. (On realizing this, one of the girls had burst into a fit of hysterical sobs-the very girl, incidentally, for whose sake they had avoided contacting the police sooner. Her father was the pastor at the local Assembly of God; and at the time in question, she ought to have been at home in bed at her friend’s house [another of the girls in the party of young people] instead of wandering about in the woods with a group of boys.)

Whatever, this piece of evidence suggested that the time of the murder could most probably be fixed at 2340 give or take a minute or so.

“That’s about it, more or less,” said Kropke, closing his note book.

“We ought to give Meuritz a cigar,” said Van Veeteren. “It looks as if he was spot-on regarding the time of death. What I want to know is how the murderer managed to cross the square. I mean, there were-let me see-six or seven people there at the critical moment.”

“Eight,” said Kropke. “At least eight. He probably walked along the arcade. There’s a line of columns along the western side of the square, the Waalska Building-I don’t know if you’ve noticed them, Chief Inspector. The lighting is pretty bad there. None of our witnesses went that way.”

“As if built for a murderer,” sighed Bausen. “Well, gentle men, what do you think? A good day?”

Mooser scratched himself behind the ear with a pencil and yawned. Kropke studied his notes. Van Veeteren drained the last drops from his cardboard cup and registered that there was a world of difference between stale, lukewarm coffee and white Meursault.

“Hard to say,” he said. “At least we’ve acquired a great deal of information. And tomorrow is another day.”

“Monday,” Mooser made so bold as to point out.

“He could have been waiting there in the woods,” said

Kropke, who had evidently been following his own line of thought. “We shouldn’t dismiss that possibility out of hand.”

“Nevertheless,” said Van Veeteren, “I think I’d like to con duct a series of little interviews now. Unless our leader has other tasks lined up for me, of course?”

“None at all,” said Bausen. “Good police officers know how to keep themselves usefully occupied.”

Mooser yawned again.