Hour of the Wolf

FIVE
29

If you look at it from a purely quantitative point of view, Chief Inspector Reinhart thought during a brief smoking break at about eleven o’clock on Saturday morning, we don’t need to be ashamed of the work we’ve put in.

There was plenty of evidence to back up that thought. After hearing what Edita Fischer had to say, they suddenly found themselves with so many doctors to interview that Rooth, deBries and Bollmert were all pressed into duty as well. To be sure, if he were honest with himself Reinhart regarded the whole rigmarole as grasping at straws: but as there were no other straws lying around (and in view of Chief of Police Hiller’s generous promise of unlimited resources), they had to follow everything up, of course. Nobody called the operation ‘Rooth’s hypothesis’ any more — least of all Rooth himself once it had become clear that he would have to work on both Saturday and Sunday.

The New Rumford Hospital was rather smaller than the Gemejnte, but even so it employed 102 doctors — 69 of whom were men. With this new group, they were naturally unable to pretend they were simply looking for impressions of the murdered nurse Vera Miller — among other reasons due to the simple fact that nobody could be expected to have any impressions.

With the possible exception of the murderer himself, as deBries very rightly pointed out: but he would presumably not be especially keen to unburden himself simply because he’d been asked a few polite questions. Everybody in the investigation team was agreed on that score.

Instead, Reinhart decided to proceed with all his cards laid on the table. There was information to suggest that Vera Miller might have been having an affair with a doctor at one of the two hospitals: did anybody know anything about this? Had anybody heard any rumours? Could anybody contribute any guesses or speculations?

The latter question was perhaps on the borderline of bad taste, but what the hell? If you asked a hundred people to guess, Reinhart thought, there could well be somebody who guessed right.

For his part Inspector Jung had never counted this type of mass interrogation among his favourite tasks (informal conversations like the one he’d had with Nurse Milovic were an entirely different category, of course), and when he met Rooth for a well-earned coffee break in the afternoon, he took the opportunity of thanking him for the weekend’s stimulating work.

‘A pity you picked on the doctors, of all people,’ he said.

‘What are you on about?’ said Rooth, swallowing a bun.

‘Well, if you’d hit upon a shop-assistant hypothesis instead, we’d have had ten times as many nice interviews to carry out. Or a student hypothesis.’

‘I’ve already told you I don’t know what a hypothesis is,’ said Rooth. ‘Am I not allowed to drink my coffee in peace?’

As had been the case with conversations with Erich Van Veeteren’s friends and acquaintances, all the new interviews were recorded; and when Reinhart contemplated the pile of cassettes on his desk on Sunday evening — especially if he were to combine them with those from the earlier interviews — the material began to acquire a scope comparable to that in the investigation into Prime Minister Palme’s murder.

Borkmann’s point? he thought. The Chief Inspector had talked about that some time ago. Was it not true to say that the quantity of evidence had long since superseded the quality? Without his having noticed. Did he not already know what he needed to know? Surely the answer… or answers?… were contained (and hidden) in the vast mass of investigation material already collected? Somewhere.

Perhaps, he thought. Perhaps not. How could one possibly know? Intuition as usual? Bugger that for a lark.

A little later on the Sunday evening they had a run-through meeting. Reinhart bore in mind Hiller’s insistence that there should be no holding back of resources, and in order to help his colleagues survive had purchased four bottles of wine and two large savoury sandwich layer cakes. Since there were only six officers involved, he felt he had followed the chief of police’s exhortations to the letter.

Not even Rooth was able to eat the last half of the sandwich layer cake.

It was always possible to summarize work done in terms of quantity. And they did just that.

In the course of two-and-a-half days six detective officers had interviewed 189 doctors, 120 of them male, 69 female.

None of those questioned had confessed that he (or she) had murdered Vera Miller — or even that they had had a sexual relationship with her.

Nobody had fingered anybody else as a possible candidate (although it was not clear if this was a result of the legendary so-called esprit de corps). Not so much as a guess, so Reinhart had no need to worry about taking into consideration the ethical aspect of it all. Something for which he was grateful.

None of the six police officers had conceived any direct suspicions in the course of their conversations — at least, not in connection with what they were trying to discover. If Chief Inspector Reinhart wanted to check the judgement of his colleagues in this respect, all he needed to do was to listen to the tapes. On the assumption that he restricted himself to just one run-through of each interview, that would take him in round figures a total of fifty-two hours.

Not counting pauses while cassettes were changed, visits to the toilet and sleep. In the aftermath of the sandwich layer cakes, he thought he might well be able to cut back on breaks for refreshments.

‘It’s not a lot,’ said Rooth. ‘To coin a phrase. The results, I mean.’

‘Never in the history of human endeavour have so few had so many to thank for so little,’ said Reinhart. ‘Hell’s bells. How many have we left?’

‘Twenty-eight,’ said Jung, checking with a document. ‘Five on secondment somewhere else, six on holiday, nine on days off and not in town… Seven on sick leave and one about to give birth in half an hour’s time.’

‘Shouldn’t she be added to the list of those on sick leave?’ wondered Rooth.

‘She’s certainly not on holiday, that’s for sure,’ said Moreno.

There was also another arithmetical sum to be solved, involving rather fewer unknowns. The so-called Edita Fischer trail. Moreno and Jung, who had shared responsibility for the Rumford Hospital investigation, had worked out exactly which day it was that Vera Miller had gone there with the pulmonary emphysema patient. And precisely how many male doctors had been on duty that day, and on which wards. Unfortunately Vera Miller had taken the opportunity of having lunch in the large staff canteen, where she could theoretically have met anybody at all — but the sum of all their efforts had been a comparatively small number of doctors.

Thirty-two, to be precise. Jung was in favour of eliminating all those who had passed their fifty-fifth birthday, but Moreno refused to go along with such a prejudiced suggestion. Grey temples were not to be underestimated. Especially if they were on doctors. In any case they had met twenty-five of this ‘high potency’ group (Jung’s term), none of whom had behaved in a remotely suspicious manner nor had anything of interest to say.

That left seven. One on holiday. Four on days off, not in town. Two off sick.

‘It must be one of them,’ said Jung. ‘One of those seven. It sounds like a film — shall we lay bets?’

‘You’ll have to find somebody else to bet against,’ said Moreno. ‘I agree with you.’

When the others had gone home, Reinhart shared the last bottle of wine with Moreno. Rooth was also present, but had fallen asleep in a corner.

‘This is a right bugger,’ said Reinhart. ‘I don’t know how many times I’ve said it during this investigation… Sorry, these investigations!.. But we’re getting nowhere. I feel as if I were working for some bloody statistics institute. If we’d thought of asking them about their political views and drinking habits as well, we could no doubt have sold the material to The Gazette ’s Sunday supplement. Or some public opinion firm or other.’

‘Hmm,’ said Moreno. ‘ The Chief Inspector used to say that one had to learn how to wait as well. To have patience. Perhaps we ought to think along those lines.’

‘He used to say something else as well.’

‘Really?’ said Moreno. ‘What?’

‘That you need to solve a case as quickly as possible. Preferably on the very first day, so that you don’t have to lie awake thinking about it all night. For Christ’s sake, it’s five weeks now since we discovered the body of his son. I don’t like admitting it, but the last time I met Van Veeteren I felt ashamed. Yes, ashamed! He explained to me that the whole thing was based on a blackmailing scam

… There’s no doubt that he’s right, but still we’re not getting anywhere. It’s a right bug- No, I’ll just have to learn to live with it.’

‘Do you think she was the blackmailer?’ asked Moreno. ‘Vera Miller, that is.’

Reinhart shook his head.

‘No, for some reason or other I don’t think so. Despite the fact that the story about her being linked to a doctor rings true. Why should a woman about whom nobody has a bad word to say stoop to something like that?’

‘Blackmail involves a weakness of character,’ said Moreno.

‘Exactly,’ said Reinhart. ‘Both axe murderers and wife beaters have a higher status in prison. Blackmail is one of the most… immoral crimes there is. Not the worst, but the lowest. Cheap, if that word still exists in this context.’

‘Yes,’ said Moreno, ‘I think you’re right. So we can exclude Vera Miller. And we can also exclude Erich Van Veeteren. Do you know what we have left?’

Reinhart poured out the last drops of wine.

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I’ve thought about that as well. We’re left with a blackmailer. And his victim. The victim is the murderer. The question is: has the blackmailer been paid yet?’

Moreno sat quietly for a while, swirling her glass.

‘I don’t understand how Vera Miller became involved in this,’ she said. ‘But if we establish that she’s linked with Erich, well we have

… I suppose we have somebody who has murdered twice in order to avoid paying. If the blackmailer isn’t as daft as the proverbial brush, he will have raised the price a bit and… Well, I’d suppose he was living a bit dangerously.’

‘I’d have thought so,’ agreed Reinhart.

He emptied his glass and lit his pipe for the tenth time in the last hour.

‘That’s what’s so bloody annoying,’ he said. ‘That we don’t know what’s behind it all. The motive for the blackmail. We have a series of events, but we don’t have the first link in the chain…’

‘Nor the last,’ said Moreno. ‘We presumably haven’t seen the last round between the blackmailer and his victim yet, don’t forget that.’

Reinhart looked at her with his head resting heavily on his hands.

‘I’m tired,’ he said. ‘And a bit drunk. That’s the only reason why I haven’t said that I’m quite impressed. By your reasoning, that is. A bit, anyway.’

‘ In vino veritas,’ said Moreno. ‘But we could be quite wrong as well. It doesn’t have to be blackmail, and there doesn’t have to be a doctor involved… And perhaps there’s no connection at all between Vera Miller and Erich Van Veeteren.’

‘Oh, don’t start that,’ groaned Reinhart. ‘I thought we were just getting somewhere.’

Moreno smiled.

‘It’s midnight,’ she said.

Reinhart sat up on his chair.

‘Ring for a taxi,’ he said. ‘I’ll wake Rooth up.’

When he got home both Winnifred and Joanna were sound asleep in the double bed. He stood in the doorway for a while, looking at them and wondering what he had done to deserve them.

And what the payment would be…

He thought about The Chief Inspector ’s son. About Seika. About Vera Miller. About what would happen to Joanna in fifteen to twenty years’ time when young men began to take an interest in her… All kinds of men.

He noticed that the hairs on his lower arms were standing on end when he tried to imagine that, and he carefully closed the door. Took a dark beer out of the refrigerator instead, and flopped down on the sofa to think things over.

To think about what, if anything, there was he could be absolutely sure about regarding the Van Veeteren and Miller cases.

And what he could be fairly sure about.

And what he thought.

Before he had got very far, he fell asleep. Joanna found him on the sofa at six o’clock the following morning.