Hour of the Wolf

FOUR
18

Jochen Vlaarmeier had been driving buses between Maardam and Kaustin for more than eleven years.

Six trips in each direction. Every day. Apart from his days off in accordance with the company rota. And the occasional week’s holiday, of course.

The first and last trip of every day were pointless, in a way. But only in a way. There was no sensible reason to drive out to Kaustin at half past six in the morning, and no sensible reason to drive back from there twelve hours later. But the bus spent its nights in the garage in Leimaar Alle, and Vlaarmeier had nothing against driving an empty bus now and then. Nothing at all. Over the years he had begun more and more to regard passengers as an annoying aspect of his work, and he reckoned the evening drive back to Maardam among the best parts of his life. No traffic on the roads. An empty bus and another day’s work over and done with. What more could anybody ask for?

On Sundays the number of trips was reduced to four. Two in each direction. He drove out to Kaustin at nine a.m. — an empty bus was always guaranteed — and returned at ten o’clock with a cargo of four farmers’ wives on their way to morning service in Keymer Church. Because their own church wasn’t good enough, for some reason. Or perhaps their village church wasn’t functioning any more. Vlaarmeier had no time for things sacred ever since he lost a girlfriend to a callow theology student thirty years ago.

At two o’clock he would drive the farmers’ wives back home again. By then they would have partaken of coffee and cakes at Heimer’s cafe in Rozenplejn.

Always the same four. Two dumpy little women, two emaciated and hunched up. He had often wondered why the company didn’t arrange for a taxi instead. It would have been much cheaper.

This cold Sunday — 29 November — there were only three, as fru Willmot, one of the dumpy ones, had flu. This was announced by the windswept fru Glock when she clambered aboard outside the school.

Thirty-eight degrees and two swollen tonsils, she informed him. A running cold and aches and pains all over. Just so that he knew.

It was also fru Glock who screamed so loudly that he almost drove into the ditch. It happened shortly before the long bend into the village of Korrim, and it sounded as if a seagull had flown into Vlaarmeier’s ear.

He managed to get the bus back on course, and glanced at the inside mirror. The old lady was half-standing and hammering away with her hand on the side window.

‘Stop the bus!’ she screeched. ‘Oh my oh my, stop for God’s sake!’

Jochen Vlaarmeier slammed on the brakes and pulled up at the side of the road. Oh hell, he thought. One of them has had a stroke.

But when he looked at the back of the bus he could see that all of them were hale and hearty. Or at least, in no worse a condition than usual. The two sitting further back were gaping open-mouthed at fru Glock who was still hammering on the window and yelling incomprehensibly. He sighed, left his cabin and walked towards her.

‘Calm down now,’ he said. ‘Take it easy. What on earth’s got into you?’

She stopped screaming. Swallowed twice, making her false teeth click, and stared at him.

‘A body,’ she said. ‘A woman… Dead.’

‘What?’ said Vlaarmeier.

She pointed towards a black-looking field behind the bus.

‘Over there. At the side of the road. A body.’

Then she flopped down on the seat with her head in her hands. The other two ladies came striding along the centre aisle and started crossing themselves somewhat doubtfully.

‘A body?’ said Vlaarmeier.

She knocked on the window again and pointed. Vlaarmeier thought for a moment. Then he opened the pneumatic door, got out of the bus and started walking back along the edge of the road.

He found her after about twenty-five metres. Diagonally over the shallow ditch that separated the road from the newly ploughed field was the body of a woman. It was wrapped up in what looked like a sheet

… A very dirty sheet, its edges flapping slightly in the breeze, that left one leg and part of her upper torso bare. Two large, white breasts and arms spread out at unnatural angles. She was lying on her back, her face staring straight up at the sky but largely hidden by her wet, reddish hair that seemed to have stuck fast to it somehow.

Oh Christ, thought Vlaarmeier. For Christ’s bloody sake. Then he sicked up the whole of his substantial breakfast — both the porridge and the sausage and eggs — before staggering back to the bus in order to telephone for help.

By the time Chief Inspector Reinhart and Inspector Moreno got to the village of Korrim it had started snowing. Large white flakes were floating diagonally down and melting on the wet, black soil.

A patrol car with two constables, Joensuu and Kellermann, was already on the spot. Joensuu was standing on the road next to the dead woman, with his back towards her and his arms folded over his chest. Legs wide apart, and uncompromising. Kellermann was standing beside the bus, pen and notebook in hand, talking to the driver and passengers. Three old women were standing pressed up against each other by the side of the yellow bus, as if they were trying to keep one another warm. All three were wearing dark-coloured overcoats and ghastly hats. They reminded Reinhart of crows, their feathers ruffled, jumping around on the road looking for scraps of food. The driver was marching nervously up and down, smoking.

Why don’t they sit inside the bus instead? Reinhart wondered. Haven’t they noticed that it’s snowing?

He ordered Moreno to go and assist Kellermann, and approached Joensuu in order to look at what he needed to look at.

For two seconds at first. Then he closed his eyes for five. And then looked once more.

That was what he always did. He didn’t know if it made things any easier, but it had become a sort of ritual over the years.

Anyway, a dead woman. Almost certainly naked, but inadequately wrapped up in something looking like a sheet, exactly as Vlaarmeier had said on the telephone. She was lying more or less flat on her back, her head resting on a clod of earth, her feet just reaching as far as the narrow strip of grass verge. Red toenails in the midst of all the mess, he noted: it looked almost surreal, or at any rate intensified the impression of unreality. Quite a well-built body, as far as he could judge. Somewhere between thirty and forty, it seemed, but that was only a guess, of course. Her face was largely hidden by her longish, dark red hair. Snowflakes were falling on the woman as well — as if the sky had wanted to cover up what it preferred not to see, it struck him. A tactful shroud. That was typical of the thoughts that usually occurred to him on occasions like this. Words, phrases, images: the same vain attempt to cover up the truth that the sky was busy with, more or less.

‘What a bloody mess,’ said Joensuu. ‘A good-looking woman. Not now, of course…’

‘How long have you two been here?’ asked Reinhart.

Joensuu checked his watch.

‘Fourteen minutes,’ he said. ‘We got the call at ten thirty-nine. We were here by fifty-eight.’

Reinhart nodded. Clambered down from the road, bent over the body and studied it for a few seconds.

‘Blood,’ said Joensuu without turning round. ‘There’s blood on the sheet. And on her head. Somebody’s clocked her one there.’

Reinhart stood up and clenched his fists in his pockets. The sheets — for there seemed to be two — were stained not only by soil and dirt: there was a series of stripes and drops of blood over one of her shoulders, and as Kellermann had said, her hair on the left side of her head and face was clogged with something that could hardly be anything else but blood.

Although he supposed it could possibly be brain substances.

Two more cars arrived. Reinhart greeted Intendent Schultze, who weighed 120 kilos and was acting head of the scene-of-crime team.

‘It’s snowing,’ he said grimly. ‘That’s a damned nuisance. We’ll have to set up a canopy.’

Reinhart stayed there for a while and watched Schultze’s assistants hammering thin metal poles into the soft ground, then stretching a thin sheet of canvas a metre over the body. He wished them good luck with their analyses and went to the bus. Told Kellermann to go and help Joensuu and to cordon off the scene of the crime.

And also to do whatever they could to assist Schultze and his men.

Moreno seemed to have already squeezed out of the bus driver and his passengers what little contribution they could make. They had travelled past in the bus, and one of them had happened to see the body, that was about it. After checking their names and addresses, Reinhart told them they could continue on their way. But a bit of a palaver ensued, since none of the women wished to continue to Keymer Church — the service was already under way — and eventually Vlaarmeier rolled over and agreed to turn the bus round and take them back to Kaustin instead.

The timetable had gone to pot ages ago anyway, and there were no other passengers to take into consideration. There never were on a Sunday.

Half an hour later Reinhart and Moreno also left the scene. They had with them a record of the first oral report from Schultze: the dead victim was a red-headed woman of average height, round about thirty-five years old. She had been killed by several blows to the side and back of the head, probably during the night or in the early hours of the morning. It couldn’t have been any later than four a.m. in view of the state of rigor mortis. She was completely naked, apart from the two sheets she had been wrapped up in, and it seemed highly likely that the body had been dumped on the verge from a car. Nothing that could be of value for the investigation had been found, but the scene-of-crime team were still creeping around and searching, and would continue to do so for several more hours yet.

Both underneath and around the canopy that had been set up.

Just as Reinhart and Moreno were clambering into their car, the green body bag was being lifted into another car for transport to the Forensic Laboratory in Maardam. No unauthorized spectators had turned up at the scene, and the few cars that had passed by during these godforsaken Sunday hours had been waved on authoritatively by Joensuu or Kellermann. Or both.

The snow continued to fall.

‘The first of Advent,’ said Reinhart. ‘It’s the first of Advent today. A nice setting. We ought to light a candle.’

Moreno nodded. The thought occurred to her that Good Friday and death on the cross might be more appropriate; but she said nothing. She turned her head and looked out over the barren landscape and the occasional large snowflakes drifting down over the dark soil. Grey. Only shades of grey for as far as the eye could see. And hardly any light. She’d intended to have a lie-in this morning. Then sit up in bed with a newspaper, and spend two hours over breakfast. Go for a swim in the afternoon.

Had intended. That’s not the way things turned out. She would have to spend the day working instead. All day, most probably: especially if they succeeded in identifying the dead woman. Interrogations and interviews with her nearest and dearest. Questions and answers. Tears and despair. It wasn’t especially difficult to see the whole thing in her mind’s eye. While Reinhart led the way over the narrow, wet road, muttering and cursing to himself, she began to hope that they wouldn’t find out who she was… That the anonymous dead woman would remain anonymous for a few more hours. A whole day, even. It was probably a thought that would make things easier for those nearest and dearest, whoever they might be; but hardly compatible with her work as a detective officer. It didn’t fit in with the long-established rule that the first few hours of an investigation were always the most important ones — fitted in better, much better, she had to admit, with a vague hope that she might be able to spend a few hours at the swimming baths in the afternoon despite everything.

It was wrong to falsify one’s motives, Moreno thought with a sigh. That had been one of The Chief Inspector ’s favourite sayings, one she found it impossible to forget. Why is it that I always want to take a shower after looking at a dead body? she wondered out of the blue. Especially if it had been the body of a dead woman. Must have something to do with empathy…

‘I wonder why he left her there,’ said Reinhart, interrupting her train of thought. ‘In the middle of this flat plain. It would make more sense to have hidden her up in the forest instead.’

Moreno thought that one over.

‘Maybe he was in a hurry.’

‘Could be. In any case, there must surely be blood in his car. He must have had a car. If we can find it, there must be proof of his guilt there. What do you think?’

‘Nothing at all at the moment,’ said Moreno with a shrug.

‘We can always hope,’ said Reinhart. ‘Hope that her husband, or whoever it was that did it, has rung to confess. It seems to be… Yes, I have the feeling that he’s sitting in Krause’s office at this very moment.’

‘You think so?’ said Moreno.

‘Yes, I do,’ said Reinhart. ‘Sitting there, waiting for us. Hungover and half crazy… Saturday night, a bit too much to drink

… A quarrel, some infidelity, and then he appears with the iron in his hand. Yes, the poor bastards. You have to feel sorry for the human race.’

‘Yes, you’re right,’ said Moreno. ‘Perhaps we ought to light a candle.’

There was no killer waiting for them, either in Krause’s office or anywhere else in the police station. Nor did anybody report a missing woman with red toenails and red hair during the next few hours. At half past one Reinhart and Moreno received a set of photographs from the scene of the crime, and shortly afterwards came a rather more detailed report from the doctors and forensic officers.

The dead woman was 172 centimetres tall and weighed 62 kilos. She had dark red hair, both on her head and round her pudenda; she had never given birth, but she had partaken of sexual intercourse in close proximity to the murder. Before the murder, thought both Reinhart and Moreno without needing to discuss the matter. There was a lot of sperm in her vagina — another piece of certain proof for when they caught the perpetrator. Freeze the sperm and run a DNA test. Mind you, it didn’t necessarily follow that they were the same person of course — the man who had sex with her not long before she died, and the man who made sure that she did. Die. But of course it was highly likely that the two were identical. That was the view of both Reinhart and Moreno.

Healthy teeth and no obvious distinctive features. She had been killed by three heavy blows to the side of her head and one to the back of it. The relatively large amount of blood was due to the fact that one of the blows to the side of her head had split an artery in her temple. The location of the murder was unknown, but it was definitely not the place where she was found. The exact time of death could not yet be established for certain, but it appeared to be somewhere between two o’clock and four o’clock in the early hours of Sunday morning. No clothes or belongings had been discovered at the place where the body was found, nor any other objects. The alcohol content in the woman’s blood was 1.56 per thousand.

‘She was drunk, then,’ said Reinhart. ‘Let’s hope that made it less horrendous for her. Fucking hell.’

Moreno put down the report from the Forensic Laboratory.

‘We’ll get a more detailed report this evening,’ said Reinhart. ‘Meusse is pulling out all the stops. Shall we take a few hours off?’

By the time Moreno set off on foot for the swimming baths in Birkenweg, the snow had turned into rain. Dusk was beginning to descend over the town, even though it was only three o’clock, and she thought once again about what Reinhart had said about lighting a candle.

But when she saw the body of that unknown woman lying out at Korrim in her mind’s eye, it seemed to her that she preferred the darkness.

It was one of those days, she decided. A day that couldn’t cope with opening up properly. Or a day when she herself couldn’t cope with opening up properly. A day that could be survived best by keeping your senses and consciousness as much in the dark as possible, leaving only narrow cracks through which to communicate with reality.

One of those days. Or perhaps it was the time of year?

The life of an oyster, she thought as she opened the heavy entrance door of the swimming baths. I wonder what her name was. I wonder if she could have been me.