Borkmann's point

46

When he drove out of the parking lot behind The See Warf, it was no later than half past seven, and the sun had barely risen over the high coast to the east. A clear day seemed to be in store, and he was rather looking forward to sitting behind the wheel for a few hours.

Sitting there and traveling through an autumnal landscape with glowing colors and the sharp contours of a drypoint engraving. Perhaps he could pretend that he was an ordinary person on some mundane errand-on the way to Bochhuisen to give a lecture on modern management techniques. Check ing the sulfur dioxide emissions from some obscure chemical factory. Meeting a relative at the airport.

Or whatever ordinary folk did.

Sometime in March he had hemmed and hawed and won dered if he ought to change his car, or be satisfied with buying a better auto stereo system. He’d gradually come around to the latter option, and as he now crawled along Kaalbringen’s narrow alleys he was grateful that he had made such a sensible decision. He would never have been able to afford the extra few thousand he’d invested in some very exclusive loudspeak ers if he’d had to buy a new car as well.

As things were now, the value of his stereo system was far more than anybody could be expected to give for the rest of his old Opel, and he preferred it that way.

The car was a means of transport. The music was a luxury.

No doubt about which ought to be given priority.

He selected something Nordic for this morning. Cold, clear and serene. Sibelius and Grieg. He inserted the CD, and as the first notes of Tuonela enveloped him, he could feel how the hairs on his arms bristled.

It was dazzlingly beautiful. Like being in Lamminkainens cave and the whole mountain echoing with this inspiring music. For the first time in weeks-indeed, ever since he had come to Kaalbringen-he managed to exclude the Axman from his thoughts. Forget him. Just sat there, lost in the music… inside a dome of crystal-clear sound, as the mists lifted and disappeared over the extensive, rolling countryside.

After a stop at a mundane and gloomy roadside cafe on a level with Urdingen, however, there was a sea change. He realized that instead of traveling farther away, it was now a question of coming closer. His starting point was dropping farther and far ther behind, his destination looming… rising, falling… as ever. He had passed the crown of the hill. He would soon be there. The time was out of joint, and everything would click into place.

Or fall apart. This damn case!

And although he tried once again to distance himself from it, to banish it from his mind, it kept popping up in his con sciousness, not in the form of thoughts, speculations or con clusions, but as images.

All the way through the “Hall of the Mountain King” and “Anitra’s Dance” flowed a constant stream of sharp, unre touched photographs. They throbbed their way forward with a regular and persistent but quite slow rhythm. Like one of those old film strips from a history lesson at school, it struck him. There was plenty of time to evaluate each individual image, although the content was rather different, of course.

Ernst Simmel’s head at an unnatural angle on the patholo gist’s marble table, and the latter’s ballpoint pen poking around inside the open gullet.

The lawyer Klingfort’s trembling double chin when he gaped in surprise.

The hall carpet soaked in blood in Maurice Ruhme’s apart ment. And the butcher’s ax, the origin of which they had never managed to establish.

Louise Meyer, Eggers’s heavily made-up whore, whom he had spent a whole afternoon trying to interview, but she was so high that it was totally impossible to get through to her.

The ice-cold eyes of Jean-Claude Ruhme, and Inspector Moerk’s beautiful hair when she entered the room with the Melnik report in her hand…

Dr. Mandrijn and his wife carting that deformed creature around the grounds at the Seldon Hospice.

And Laurids Reisin. An imagined and persistent image of the man who didn’t dare to set foot outside his home.

And the Axman.

The image of the Axman himself. Still blurred in outline and unidentifiable, but if Van Veeteren really was on the right track now, it was only a matter of an hour or so before the image emerged with all the clarity that could be wished for.

A few little checks. Confirmation of a nasty suspicion, and it would all be over.

Perhaps.

He was sitting behind his desk, twiddling his mustache. Slim, in a black suit and with thin hair combed back, he was more reminiscent of a funeral director than anything else. That was precisely how Van Veeteren remembered him; in fifteen years he seemed to have aged by one, or at most two months. There was no sign of his having been operated on only a week ago.

With a slight, somewhat acid smile he welcomed his visitor and indicated the visitor’s chair, which was directly in front of the immaculately tidy desk.

“What the devil’s all this about, then?”

Van Veeteren recalled that the man was reputed to be inca pable of opening his mouth without swearing. He turned the palms of his hands in the direction of the ceiling and tried to look apologetic.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “Just let me have a look at the material

I came here to see… it’s a rather delicate matter.”

“Like hell it is!” He opened a desk drawer and took out a brown folder.

“Here you are. You’re welcome to the damn thing!”

Van Veeteren took the folder and wondered for a moment if he ought to read it there and then, on the visitor’s chair, but when he looked at the man in black he knew that the matter was over and done with. Finished! He remembered also that his host had never been one to indulge in superfluous details conversation and that sort of thing. He stood up, shook hands and left the office.

The whole visit had taken less than two minutes.

People who claim I’m bad tempered ought to meet this happy guy, thought Van Veeteren as he hurried down the stairs.

He crossed the street and opened his car, then took the briefcase from the backseat and put the folder inside it. He looked around. Some fifty yards away, on the corner of the street, was what appeared to be a cafe sign.

Just the thing, he thought, and set off for it.

He waited until the waitress had left before opening the folder on the table in front of him. He leafed through a few pages and nodded. Leafed some pages backward and nodded again.

Lit a cigarette and started reading from page one.

He didn’t need to keep going for long. Confirmation came as early as page five; maybe it wasn’t quite what he’d expected, but dammit, it was confirmation even so. He put the papers back in the folder and closed it.

Well, I’ll be damned, he thought.

But the motive was far from being clear, of course. What the hell did the other two have to do with all this? How the hell…?

Ah, well, it would become clear eventually, no doubt.

He checked his watch. Just turned one.

Thursday, September 30. Chief of Police Bausen’s last day but one in office. And all of a sudden, the case was on its way to being solved.

Just as he’d suspected from the start, it was hardly the result of laborious routine investigations. Just as he’d thought, the solution had come to him more or less out of the blue. It felt a little odd, he had to concede; unfair almost, although there again, it was hardly the first time this kind of thing had hap pened. He’d seen it all before, and had realized long ago that if there was any profession in which virtue never got its due reward, it was that of police officer.

Justice has a certain preference for cops who lounge around and think, instead of working their butts off, as Reinhart had once put it.

But what struck him above all else was how reluctantly he would want to look back on this case in the future. His own contribution was certainly nothing to be proud of. Quite the opposite. Something to draw a line under and then forget immediately, for Christ’s sake.

Not quite as usual, in other words.