Hour of the Wolf

25

On Wednesday, 9 December it was plus ten or eleven degrees, and the sky was high and bright.

The sun seemed to be surprised, almost embarrassed at having to display itself in all its somewhat faded nudity. Van Veeteren phoned Ulrike Fremdli at work, was informed that she would be finished by lunchtime, and suggested a car trip to the seaside. They hadn’t seen the sea for quite some time. She accepted straight away: he could hear from her voice that she was both surprised and pleased, and he reminded himself that he loved her. Then he reminded her as well.

The living must look after one another, he thought. The worst possible outcome is to die without having lived.

As he sat in the car outside the Remington dirt-brown office complex he wondered if Erich had lived. If he had managed to experience the fundamentals of life, whatever they might be. He had read somewhere that a man must do three things during his life: raise a son, write a book and plant a tree.

He wondered where that had come from. In any case, Erich had not achieved the first two of those requirements. Whether or not he had planted a tree he had no idea, of course: but it didn’t seem all that likely. Before he had time to think about how far he himself fulfilled those requirements, he was interrupted by Ulrike flopping down in the seat beside him.

‘Isn’t it lovely?’ she said. ‘What a marvellous day!’

She kissed him on the cheek, and to his surprise he found that he had an erection. Life goes on, he thought, somewhat confused. Despite everything.

‘Where would you like to go?’ he asked.

‘Emsbaden or Behrensee,’ she said without hesitation. She had evidently been thinking about it ever since he’d rung.

‘Emsbaden,’ he said. ‘I have a bit of a problem with Behrensee.’

‘Why?’

‘Hmm,’ he said. ‘Something happened there a few years ago. I’d rather not be reminded of it.’

She waited for an explanation, but there wasn’t one. He started the car and drove off instead.

‘My secretive lover,’ she said.

They spent an hour wandering around the dunes, then had a late lunch at the De Dirken inn, almost adjacent to the lighthouse in Emsbaden. Lobster tails in dill sauce, coffee and carrot cake. They spoke about Jess and Ulrike’s children and their future prospects.

And eventually also about Erich.

‘I remember something you said,’ Ulrike told him. ‘Then, when you’d found the woman who murdered Karel.’

Karel Innings was Ulrike’s former husband, but not the father of her children. They had been the product of her first marriage to an estate agent, who had been a good and reliable paterfamilias until his inherited alcoholism got the better of him.

‘We never found her,’ Van Veeteren pointed out.

‘But you found her motives,’ said Ulrike. ‘In any case, you maintained that from her point of view — in one sense at least — killing my husband had been justified. Do you remember that?’

‘Of course,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘But it was only true in a way. From a very individual, limited point of view. It’s a distortion if you put it like you did.’

‘Isn’t that always the case?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Isn’t it always the case that the murderer — or any other criminal, come to that — thinks that his crime is justified? Doesn’t he have to think that to himself anyway?’

‘That’s an old chestnut,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘But you are right in principle, of course. A murderer always justifies his motives — acknowledges them also, naturally. Mind you, it’s a different matter if somebody else points them out. There are reasons for everything we do, but the dogma of original sin never seems to convince members of the jury nowadays. They are much more thick-skinned than that.’

‘But you believe in it?’

He paused for a moment and gazed out over the sea.

‘Naturally,’ he said. ‘I don’t defend evil deeds, but if you can’t understand the nature of crime… the motives of a criminal… well, you won’t get very far as a detective. There is a sort of twisted logic which is often easier to discover than the logic that governs our everyday actions. As we all know, chaos is the neighbour of God: but everything’s usually neat and tidy in hell…’

She laughed, and took a bite of her carrot cake.

‘Go on.’

‘All right, since you ask me so nicely,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘Anyway, this malicious logic can affect us all when we are trapped in a corner. It’s not a problem to understand why an Islamic brother murders his sister because she’s been going to discotheques and wants to be a Westerner. No problem at all if you are familiar with the background. But the fact that the deed itself is so disgusting that the very thought of it makes you want to throw up, and that your spontaneous reaction is to take the killer and demolish a skyscraper on top of him — well, that’s something else. Something completely different.’

He fell silent. She eyed him gravely, then took hold of his hand over the table.

‘A crime is born in the gap between the morality of society and that of the individual,’ said Van Veeteren, and immediately wondered if that really was generally true.

‘And if they find Erich’s murderer,’ said Ulrike. ‘Will you understand him as well?’

He hesitated before answering. Gazed out over the beach again. The sun had gone away, and the weather was as it presumably was before some god or other hit on the idea of creating it. Plus eight degrees, slight breeze, white cloud.

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘That’s why I want to meet him face to face.’

She let go of his hand, and frowned.

‘I can’t understand why you want to expose yourself to something like that,’ she said. ‘Sitting opposite your son’s murderer. Sometimes I just don’t understand you.’

‘I’ve never claimed that I do either,’ said Van Veeteren.

And I’ve never said that I wouldn’t want to put a bullet between those eyes either, he thought; but he didn’t say so.

On the way home Ulrike came up with a suggestion.

‘I’d like us to invite his fiancee to dinner.’

‘Who?’ said Van Veeteren.

‘Marlene Frey. Let’s invite her to dinner tomorrow evening. At your place. I’ll ring and talk to her.’

Such a thought had never struck him. He wondered why. Then he felt ashamed for two seconds before saying yes.

‘On condition that you stay the night with me as well,’ he said.

Ulrike laughed and gave him a gentle punch on the shoulder.

‘I’ve already promised that,’ she said. ‘Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Jurg’s away at a school camp.’

‘Excellent,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘I sleep so damned badly when you’re not there.’

‘I don’t come to you in order to sleep,’ said Ulrike.

‘Excellent,’ said Van Veeteren again, unable to think of anything better to say.

Chief of Police Hiller clasped his hands on the pigskin desk pad and tried to establish eye contact with Reinhart. Reinhart yawned and looked at a green, palm-like thing that he seemed to recall he knew the name of, once upon a time.

‘Hmm, well,’ said Hiller. ‘I happened to bump into the chief inspector this morning… I mean The Chief Inspector.’

Reinhart shifted his gaze to a benjamin fig.

‘It’s taken its toll on him, this business with his son. I think you should be aware of that. Not so strange. After all these years and all the rest of it… Anyway, I think it’s a point of honour, this business. We really must solve this case. It mustn’t slip though our fingers. How far have you got?’

‘Quite a way,’ said Reinhart. ‘We’re doing all we can.’

‘Well, yes,’ said Hiller. ‘I don’t doubt that for a moment, of course. Everybody — and I mean everybody — must feel the same way about it as I do. That it’s a point of honour. If we have to allow a few murderers to go free, one of them must on no account be this one. Not in any circumstances. Do you need more resources? I’m prepared to lean over backwards, a long way backwards. Just say the word.’

Reinhart said nothing.

‘As you know I never interfere in your operational work, but if you want to discuss the way things are going with me, just say the word. And resources, as I said. No limits. Point of honour. Is that clear?’

Reinhart got up from the spongy visitor chair.

‘Crystal clear,’ he said. ‘But you don’t solve equations by using tanks.’

‘Eh?’ said the chief of police. ‘What the devil do you mean by that?’

‘I’ll explain some other time,’ said Reinhart, opening the door. ‘I’m in a bit of a hurry, if you’ll excuse me.’

Jung and Moreno were sitting in his office, waiting for him.

‘Greetings from the Fourth Floor,’ said Reinhart. ‘The master gardener has a new suit again.’

‘Has he been on the telly?’ Jung wondered.

‘Not as far as I know,’ said Moreno. ‘But perhaps he’s going to?’

Reinhart flopped down on his chair and lit his pipe.

‘Well?’ he said. ‘What’s the situation?’

‘I still haven’t got hold of her,’ said Jung. ‘She’s with her boyfriend somewhere. She won’t be back at work until tomorrow afternoon. I’m sorry.’

‘Damn and blast,’ said Reinhart.

‘Who are you talking about?’ asked Moreno.

‘Edita Fischer, of course,’ said Reinhart. ‘That nurse who implied to the other nurse that Vera Miller had implied something… Huh, what a wishy-washy set-up, for Christ’s sake! Any luck with the list of doctors?’

‘Tip-top,’ said Moreno, handing him the file she’d had on her knee. ‘You have there the names and photographs of all the hundred-and-twenty-six doctors who work at the Gemejnte. Plus a handful who left during the last year — they are all marked. Date of birth, date of appointment, medical qualifications, specialist training and everything else you could possibly want to know. Even civil status and family members. They are well organized at Gemejnte Hospital.’

‘Not bad,’ said Reinhart, leafing through the files. ‘Not bad at all. Are they split up according to clinic and ward as well?’

‘Of course,’ said Moreno. ‘I’ve already put a cross by those who worked on Ward Forty-six, Vera Miller’s ward. There are six doctors permanently linked, and another seven or eight who work there from time to time. There’s quite a lot of movement from ward to ward, not least among the specialists — anaesthetists for instance.’

Reinhart nodded as he continued thumbing through the documents, studying the series of smiling faces of men and women in white coats. It was evidently part of the routine to be photographed in this way. The background was the same in most of the pictures, and everybody — the vast majority in any case — were sitting with their heads at the same angle and their mouths fixed in a broad smile. Apparently the same photographer: he wondered what awful joke he must have told them to make them all roar with laughter the way they seemed to be doing.

‘Not bad,’ he said for the third time. ‘So here we have the murderer complete with photograph and personal details down to shoe size. It’s just a pity we don’t know which of them it is. Which one of the hundred-and-twenty-six…’

‘If we’re still sticking to Rooth’s hypothesis,’ said Moreno, ‘we can eliminate forty of them.’

‘Really?’ said Reinhart. ‘Why?’

‘Because they are women. But I don’t know how we should proceed with this — it seems a bit much to interrogate the whole lot of them, rather than thinning them down a little. Even if they look friendly enough in the photos, they might well be rather more difficult to deal with in reality. Especially when they catch on to what we suspect them of… Not to mention esprit de corps and goodness knows what else.’

Reinhart nodded.

‘Let’s start with those most closely connected,’ he said. ‘Only them for the time being. What was it you said? Six attached to the clinic and a few more who keep dropping in. We ought to be able to deal with them before Jung’s witness turns up again. Who should we send to deal with this?’

‘Not Rooth,’ said Jung.

‘Okay, not Rooth,’ said Reinhart. ‘But I can see two reliable police officers before my very eyes just now. Get on with it — good hunting.’

He closed the file and handed it back. As Jung left the room first, he was able to put a question to Inspector Moreno.

‘Have you been sleeping well lately?’

‘Better and better,’ said Moreno, and she actually smiled. ‘What about you?’

‘I get my deserts,’ said Reinhart, cryptically.