Borkmann's point

8

In the clear light of morning and with a fresh breeze blowing in from the sea, Kaalbringen seemed to have forgotten that it was terror stricken. Van Veeteren had a late breakfast on his balcony and observed the teeming crowds in Fisherman’s Square down below. There were obviously more than delica cies from the depths of the sea being sold from the stalls under their colorful awnings-more like everything under the sun.

Saturday morning was market day; the sun was shining and life went on.

The clock in the low limestone church struck ten, and Van Veeteren realized that he had slept for almost eleven hours.

Eleven hours? Did that really mean, he asked himself, that what he needed in order to get a good night’s sleep was a mur der hunt? He contemplated that theory as he tapped the top of his egg. It seemed absurd. And what was that insidious feeling that had taken possession of him this peaceful morning? He’d noticed it when he was in the shower, tried to rinse it away, but out here in the salty air it had returned with renewed strength.

Spun esoteric threads of indolence around his soul and whis pered seductive words in his ears…

It was that he had no need to exert himself.

The solution to this case would come to him of its own accord. Strike him as a result of some coincidence. A gift from the heavens. A deus ex machina!

A mercy devoutly to be wished, thought Van Veeteren. Fat chance!

But the thought was there nevertheless.

Cruickshank and Muller were sitting in the foyer, waiting for him. They had been joined by a photographer, a bearded young man who brandished a flash gun at his face the moment he emerged from the lift.

“Good morning, Chief Inspector,” said Muller.

“It looks like it,” said Van Veeteren.

“Can we have a chat after the press conference?” asked Cruickshank.

“If you write what I tell you to write. One word too many and you’ll be banned for two years!”

“Of course,” said Muller with a smile. “Usual rules.”

“I’ll be at Sylvie’s between noon and half past twelve,” said Van Veeteren, handing in his room key at reception.

“Sylvie’s? What’s that?” asked the photographer, taking a new picture.

“You’ll have to work that out for yourselves,” said Van Veeteren.

Detective Chief Inspector Bausen took charge of the assem bled journalists and immediately stamped his authority on the proceedings. He started by waiting for several minutes until you could have heard a drop of sweat fall in the packed conference room. Then he started to speak, but stopped the moment anybody whispered or coughed and fixed the perpetrator with a beady eye. If anybody dared to interrupt him, he delivered the warning that a repeated offense would result in the sinner’s being ejected from the room forthwith by Kropke and Mooser.

And he himself would help out if need be.

But he answered calmly and methodically the questions that were put to him, adopting a precisely judged degree of superiority that exposed and established the limited intellec tual faculties of the questioner. Always assuming he had any.

The man must have been an actor, thought Van Veeteren.

“When do you think you will have the murderer under lock and key?” asked a red-nosed reporter from the local radio station.

“About ten minutes after we’ve found him,” said Bausen.

“Have you any theories you’re working on?” wondered Malevic, chief reporter on de Journaal.

“How else do you think we operate?” asked Bausen. “We’re not working for a newspaper.”

“Who’s actually in charge of the investigation?” asked the man sent by the Neuwe Blatt. “Is it you or DCI Van Veeteren?”

“Who do you think?” responded Van Veeteren, contemplat ing a comprehensively chewed toothpick. He didn’t answer anything else, referring all direct questions to Bausen by nod ding in his direction. If he was smiling inwardly, nobody could have told that from the expression on his face.

After twenty minutes most of the questions seemed to have been asked, and Bausen began issuing instructions.

“I want the local newspapers and the radio to urge every body who was in town last Tuesday night between eleven o’clock and midnight, give or take a few minutes, in the area around The Blue Ship, Hoistraat, the steps down to Fisher man’s Square and the Esplanade leading to the municipal woods to get in touch with the police from tomorrow onward.

We’ll have two officers on hand at the station to deal with all the information we receive, and we shall not turn a blind eye if anybody who was out then fails to report to us. Don’t forget that we’re dealing with an unusually violent killer.”

“But won’t you have a vast number of responses?” some body wondered.

“When you’re hunting a murderer, Miss Meuhlich,” said Bausen, “you have to accept a few minor inconveniences.”

“What do you think, Chief Inspector?” asked Cruickshank.

“Just between you and me.”

“You, me and two others, if I’m not much mistaken,” said Van Veeteren. “I don’t think anything.”

“The Bausen guy seems to like throwing his weight around,” said Muller. “Do you think you’ll be able to work with him?”

“You can bet your life,” said Van Veeteren.

“Have you anything to go on?”

“You can write that we have.”

“But you haven’t, in fact?”

“I never said that.”

“How long is it since you last had to leave a case unsolved?” asked Cruickshank.

“Six years,” said Van Veeteren.

“What was that, then?” asked the photographer, curious.

“The G-file…” Van Veeteren stopped chewing and stared out of the window.

“Oh, yes, I remember,” said Cruickshank. “I wrote about that one-”

Two young ladies came in and were about to sit at the next table, but Muller drove them away.

“Sit in the corner instead,” he urged them. “There’s a terrible stink here!”

“Well,” began Cruickshank, “are we dealing with a mad man, or is it planned?”

“Who says that madmen don’t plan?” said Van Veeteren.

“Is there a link between the victims?”

“Yes.”

“What is it?”

“…”

“How do you know?”

“Give me a Danish pastry!”

“Will there be any more top brass coming?”

“If necessary.”

“Have you any previous experience with ax murderers?” wondered the photographer.

“I know a fair amount about murderers,” said Van Veeteren.

“And everybody knows how an ax works. How long can your esteemed journals afford to do without your services and leave you here in Kaalbringen? Six months?”

“Ha ha,” said Muller. “A few days, I should think. Unless it happens again, that is.”

“It’ll be some time before that, no doubt.”

“How do you know that?”

“Thank you for the coffee,” said Van Veeteren, standing up.

“I’ll have to leave you now, I’m afraid. Don’t stay up too late, and don’t write any rubbish!”

“Have we ever written rubbish?” asked Cruickshank.

“What the hell are we doing here?” wondered the photog rapher when Van Veeteren had left them on their own.

What the hell am I doing here? thought Van Veeteren, and clambered into the passenger seat next to Bausen.

“It’s not a pretty sight,” said Bausen. “I think I’ll stay out here and do a bit of planning.”

Van Veeteren followed the limping pathologist.

“Meuritz,” he said when they had entered the room. “My name’s Meuritz. Actually based in Oostwerdingen, but I gener ally do one day a week here as well. It’s been a bit more than that lately.”

He pulled the trolley out of the deep freeze, and removed the sheet with an extravagant gesture. Van Veeteren was re minded of something Reinhart had said once: There’s only one profession. Matador. All the rest are substitutes and shadows.

Bausen was right, no doubt about it. Even if Ernst Simmel hadn’t exactly been a handsome specimen of a man while on this earth, neither the Axman nor Meuritz had done anything to improve the situation. He was lying on his stomach, and for reasons that Van Veeteren didn’t fully understand but which were no doubt pedagogical, Meuritz had placed the head at ninety degrees to the neck in an upward direction, so that the incision was clearly visible.

“A pretty skillful blow, you have to give him that,” he said, poking into the wound with a ballpoint pen.

“Skillful?” wondered Van Veeteren.

“Look at this!”

Meuritz held out an X-ray film.

“This is Eggers. Note the angle of entry! Only a couple of degrees difference. They were exactly the same depth, inciden tally…”

Van Veeteren scrutinized the picture of the maltreated white bones against a black background.

“… lands from above, diagonally from the right.”

“Right-handed?” asked Van Veeteren.

“Presumably. Or a left-handed badminton player. Who’s used to playing forehands way out on the backhand side, if you follow me.”

“I play three times a week,” said Van Veeteren.

Who was it who had said something about tennis balls not so long ago?

Meuritz nodded and pushed his glasses up onto his forehead.

“Is it the same weapon?” asked Van Veeteren. “Take that ballpoint out of his throat, if you don’t mind.”

Meuritz wiped his pen clean on his white coat and put it in his breast pocket.

“Definitely,” he said. “I can even claim to be able to describe it-an ax with a very sharp blade, sharpened by an expert no doubt. Five inches deep and quite wide. Maybe six inches, pos sibly more.”

“How do you know that?”

“It penetrated exactly the same distance in both cases, and then it was stopped by the handle. If the blade had been deeper, the skull would certainly have been severed. Have you seen the things butchers use to cut up bones with?”

Van Veeteren nodded. Began to regret the fact that he’d eaten three Danish pastries at Sylvie’s luxury cafe.

“Time of death?”

“Between half past eleven and half past twelve, roughly speaking.”

“Can you be more precise?”

“Closer to half past eleven-twenty to twelve, if you were to really press me.”

“Have you come across anything like this before?” Van

Veeteren indicated the pale blue corpse.

“No. You never stop learning in this business.”

Although it was three and a half days since Ernst Simmel’s body had been found, and almost four days since he’d been murdered, the scene of the crime had not lost its attraction.

The police had sealed it off with red-and-white tape and warn ing notices, but a trickle of people was still flowing past this woodland corral, a narrow stream of Kaalbringen citizens who didn’t want to miss the opportunity of seeing the white mark ers in among the bushes and the increasingly dark-colored patch of human blood on the path.

Constable Erwin Bang had been given the task of maintain ing order and keeping the most curious at bay, and he carried out this mission with all the dignity and attention to detail that his 160-pound frame allowed. The moment there were more than two visitors at a time, he would get them moving.

“Come on! Move it! Keep going!”

It seemed to Van Veeteren that Bang was handling the situ ation as a spot of traffic policing more than anything else. But that was of minor significance, of course.

“Can you keep the spectators at bay so that the chief inspec tor and I can take a look in peace and quiet?” asked Bausen.

“Right, that’s it. Move along!” bellowed Bang, and flocks of jackdaws and wood pigeons panicked and took to the air.

“Quickly now! This is a crime scene investigation!”

You can go and have a cup of coffee,” said Bausen when they were on their own. “We’ll be here for about half an hour.

I think we can remove the tape and stuff then. You can take it all back to the station.”

“Will do!” said Bang, giving a smart salute. He embarked on his amended duties, and strode off in the direction of the Esplanade and the harbor cafe.

“Well,” said Bausen, plunging his hands into his pockets.

“That was Constable Bang.”

Van Veeteren looked around.

“Hmm,” he said.

Bausen produced a pack of cigarettes from his pocket.

“Would you like one?”

“No,” said Van Veeteren, “ but I’ll have one even so. Can we try a little experiment?”

“Your word is my command,” said Bausen, lighting two cig arettes and handing one of them to Van Veeteren. “What do you want to do?”

“Let’s walk along the path for twenty or thirty yards. Then I’ll come back with you following me, and I’ll see if I can hear you.”

“OK,” said Bausen. “But I’ve tested that already. The path has been trampled down by so many feet, it’s damn hard. You won’t hear a thing.”

They carried out the experiment, and Bausen’s prediction proved to be absolutely correct. The distant murmur of the sea and the rustling of the wind in the trees was sufficient to mask any other noise. Bausen had more or less been able to put his hand on Van Veeteren’s shoulder before he’d noticed he was even there.

“And that’s how it happened,” said Bausen.

Van Veeteren nodded.

“I take it you’ve made a thorough search?” he said.

“Of the crime scene? We most certainly have! We’ve vacu umed every single blade of grass. Not a thing! Just blood, and more blood. It’s dry, you see. Hasn’t rained for three weeks. No soft ground anywhere, no footprints. No, I don’t think we’re going to get any leads of that sort. It looks as if he wiped his weapon clean at one spot, but that’s all.”

“What about the Eggers case?”

“The same story. We were very interested in a cigarette end for a long time, but it turned out to be two days old. It occu pied several officers for a week.”

“Has Meuritz had backup from forensic officers, by the way?” asked Van Veeteren.

“Four of them. Not that I think he needed them. Damn competent doc, even if he can be a bit difficult to work with.”

Van Veeteren bent down and studied the stained grass.

“Have you heard of Heliogabalus?” he asked.

“The guy with the blood on the grass?”

“That’s the one. Roman emperor, 218–222. Killed people because he liked to see red against green. An uncompromising aesthete, no doubt about it. Although blood doesn’t keep its color all that well, it has to be said-”

“No,” said Bausen. “Not really the right motive in this case, anyway. It must have been pitch-black here last Tuesday night.

Two lights in sequence along the path were out.”

“Hmm,” said Van Veeteren. “We’ll eliminate Heliogabalus, then. It’s always good to be able to cross a name off the list.”

Some would-be detectives from the general public were approaching from the Rikken direction. Bang must have put in place some kind of barrier down by the harbor, as they’d been left in peace for nearly ten minutes. Bausen checked his watch.

“Half past four,” he said. “I have a leg of mutton in the freezer. Only needs some roasting. How about it?”

Van Veeteren hesitated.

“If you allow me a couple of hours at the hotel first.”

“Of course,” said Bausen. “You’re welcome at the nest around seven. I hope we’ll be able to sit outside.”