Hour of the Wolf

8

When Jung and Rooth parked outside the Trattoria Commedia at about two o’clock on Sunday afternoon it had stopped raining for the moment. Two forensic officers were still working on the abandoned Peugeot, supervised by Inspector le Houde: the car had been cordoned off by red-and-white police tape, as had the spot where the body was found some ten metres away. Plus a narrow corridor between the two. Rooth paused and scratched his head.

‘What do they think they’ll find in the car?’

‘I’ve no idea,’ said Jung. ‘He’d had it on loan for a few months from that jailbird mate of his — maybe he’s involved as well in some way?’

‘It can’t have been Elmer Kodowsky who bashed his head in,’ said Rooth. ‘He hasn’t been out on parole for eight weeks — it would be hard to get a better alibi than that.’

‘I dare say you’re right,’ said Jung. ‘Shall we go in and attack the barman then, or do you intend standing here and searching for nits a bit longer?’

‘I’ve finished now,’ said Rooth. ‘God, but I don’t like this bloody business. I don’t like it when crimes affect one of us. Somebody like VV should have the right to immunity, for fuck’s sake.’

‘I know,’ said Jung. ‘Don’t go on about it. Let’s go in and do our job, then we can go for a coffee somewhere.’

‘All right,’ said Rooth. ‘I’m with you there.’

The barman’s name was Alois Kummer, and he looked anything but happy.

He was young, suntanned and athletic-looking, so Jung didn’t really understand why. They sat down opposite him in the bar, which was deserted — as long as no customers turned up they might just as well sit here and talk. Both Jung and Rooth agreed on that, and apparently herr Kummer as well, as he made no objection.

‘So you were on duty last Tuesday evening, is that right?’ Jung began.

‘Only until nine o’clock,’ said Kummer.

‘Let’s concentrate on that time,’ said Rooth. ‘Did you have many customers?’

Kummer displayed his teeth. They looked strong and healthy, and presumably were expressing an ironic grin.

‘How many?’ asked Jung.

‘A dozen or so,’ said Kummer. ‘At most. Can I get you anything?’

Jung shook his head. Rooth laid out the photographs on the counter.

‘What about this person?’ he asked. ‘Was he there? Don’t answer until you’re sure.’

The barman studied the pictures for ten seconds, pulling at his earring.

‘I believe so,’ he said.

‘You believe so?’ echoed Rooth, ‘Are you religious?’

‘I like it,’ said Kummer. ‘Yes, he was here. He sat eating at one of the tables through there. I didn’t pay much attention to him.’

‘At what time?” asked Jung.

‘Between five and six, or thereabouts… Yes, he left at about a quarter past six, just before Helene arrived.’

‘Helene?’ said Jung.

‘One of the girls in the kitchen.’

‘Have you got something going with her, then?’ Rooth wondered.

‘What the hell has that got to do with it?’ said Kummer, starting to look annoyed.

‘You never know,’ said Rooth. ‘Life is a tangle of remarkable connections.’

Jung coughed and changed the subject.

‘Was he alone, or was there anybody else with him?’ he asked.

‘He was on his own,’ said Kummer without hesitation.

‘All the time?’ Rooth asked.

‘All the time.’

‘How many diners did you have altogether? Between five and six o’clock, that is.’

Kummer thought for a moment.

‘Not many,’ he said. ‘Four or five, perhaps.’

‘It doesn’t seem to be high season just now, does it?’ said Rooth.

‘Would you like to play golf in weather like this?’ Kummer wondered.

‘Golf?’ said Rooth. ‘Isn’t that a sort of egg-rolling on a lawn?’

Kummer made no reply, but the tattoo on his forearm twitched.

‘He didn’t come over here to sit in the bar, then?’ said Jung, trying to get the interview back on course. ‘For a drink or whatever?’

Kummer shook his head.

‘How many were there in the bar?’

‘Two or three, perhaps… I don’t recall for certain. One or two customers popped in and only stayed for a couple of minutes, I think. As usual.’

‘Hmm,’ said Jung. ‘When he left — this lone diner, that is — you didn’t notice if anybody followed him, did you? Very soon afterwards, I mean?’

‘No,’ said Kummer. ‘How the hell would I be able to remember that?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Jung. ‘But the fact is that he was killed out there in the car park only a few minutes after leaving here, so it would help us a lot if you could try to remember.’

‘I’m doing my best,’ Kummer assured them.

‘Excellent,’ said Rooth. ‘We don’t want to demand the impossible of you. Is there anything at all that evening that you recall? Something that was different, somehow or other? Or remarkable?’

Kummer pondered again.

‘I don’t think so,’ he said. ‘No, everything was as usual. It was pretty quiet.’

‘Had he ever been here before, this person?’ asked Jung, tapping his pen on the photographs.

‘No,’ said Kummer. ‘Not while I’ve been working here, at any rate.’

‘You seem to have a good memory for faces.’

‘I usually remember people I’ve met.’

‘How long have you been working here?’

‘Three months,’ said Kummer.

Rooth noticed a bowl of peanuts a bit further along the bar counter. He slid off his chair, and went to take a handful. The bartender observed him with a sceptical frown. Jung cleared his throat.

‘That car,’ he said. ‘The Peugeot out there in the car park — that’s been there all the time since Tuesday, has it?’

‘They say so,’ said Kummer. ‘I never gave it a thought until today.’

‘You’re better at faces than at cars, is that right?’

‘That’s right,’ said Kummer.

‘What was the weather like last Tuesday evening?’

Kummer shrugged.

‘Overcast, I suppose. And windy. Mind you, the bar is indoors, as you may have noticed.’

‘You don’t say,’ said Rooth, taking the rest of the peanuts.

‘How do you get here?’ Jung asked. ‘Do you also use the car park? I mean, you don’t live in Dikken, do you?’

Kummer shook his head and displayed his teeth again.

‘I generally come by tram,’ he said. ‘I sometimes get a lift with Helene or one of the others. But none of the staff uses the car park. There are a few private parking places round the back.’

‘How many staff are there here?’ Rooth asked.

‘A dozen or so,’ said Kummer. ‘But only three or four of us are on duty at any one time. As we’ve already said, it’s low season at this time of year.’

‘Yes, as we’ve already said,’ said Rooth, looking round the deserted bar. ‘So you don’t know who the murderer is, then?’

Kummer stood up straight.

‘What the hell do you mean? Of course I don’t bloody well know. It’s not our fault if somebody gets attacked in our car park.’

‘Of course not,’ said Rooth. ‘Anyway, thank you for your cooperation, but we’d better be moving on now. We might well be back.’

‘Why?’ asked Kummer.

‘Because that’s the way we work,’ said Jung.

‘Because we like peanuts,’ said Rooth.

Moreno and Reinhart went together to Ockfener Plejn on Sunday evening. It was only a few blocks from the police station, and despite the wind and the driving rain, they went on foot.

‘We need to give our minds a good soaking and blow away all the dust,’ explained Reinhart. ‘And it would be no bad thing if our internal and external landscapes were in harmony.’

‘How did he take it?’ Moreno asked.

Reinhart thought it over before answering.

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I’ll be damned if I know. But he didn’t have much to say for himself, that’s for sure. Mun-ster found it hard to cope. It’s such a bloody mess.’

‘Was he on his own?’

‘No, he had his new woman with him, thank God.’

‘Thank God for that,’ agreed Moreno. ‘Is she okay?’

‘I think so,’ said Reinhart.

They came to the old square, and located the property. One of a row of cramped houses with high, narrow gables: pretty run-down, filthy frontages and badly maintained window frames. A few steps led up to the front door, and Moreno pressed the bell push next to the handprinted name plate.

After half a minute and a second ring, Marlene Frey opened the door. Her face seemed to be a little swollen, and her eyes were about three times as red and tearful as they had been when Moreno interviewed her in her office at the police station that morning. Nevertheless, the frail-looking woman displayed signs of willpower and strength.

Moreno noted that she had changed her clothes as well. Only a different pair of jeans and a yellow jumper instead of a red one, it was true: but perhaps that indicated that she had begun to accept the situation. Understood that life must go on. Nor did she give the impression that she had been taking sedatives — although that was hard to judge, of course.

‘Hello again,’ said Moreno. ‘Have you managed to get any sleep?’

Marlene Frey shook her head.

Moreno introduced Reinhart, and they went up the stairs to the second floor.

Two small rooms and a cramped, chilly kitchen, that was all. Wine-red walls and a minimum of furniture, mainly big, colourful floor cushions to sit or lie down on. A few big, green plants and a couple of posters. In the bigger room two wicker chairs and a low stool stood in front of a calor gas stove. Marlene Frey sat down on the stool, and invited Moreno and Reinhart to sit on the wicker chairs.

‘Can I offer you anything?’

Moreno shook her head. Reinhart cleared his throat.

‘We know that this is extremely difficult for you,’ he said. ‘But we have to ask you a few questions even so. Say if you don’t feel up to it, and we can come tomorrow instead.’

‘Let’s get it over with now,’ said Marlene Frey.

‘Have you got anybody staying with you?’ Moreno asked. ‘A girlfriend, for instance?’

‘A friend is due this evening. I’ll get by, you don’t need to worry.’

‘So you lived here together, is that right?’ Reinhart asked, moving a bit closer to the stove. It was evidently the only source of heat in the whole flat, so it was important not to be too far away from it.

‘Yes,’ said Frey, ‘we live here. Or lived…’

‘How long had you been together?’ Moreno asked.

‘Two years, more or less.’

‘You know who his father is, I take it?’ said Reinhart. ‘It’s not relevant, of course, but it makes it all rather more unpleasant from our point of view. Even if-’

‘Yes, I know,’ said Frey, interrupting him. ‘They didn’t have much contact.’

‘We’d gathered that,’ said Reinhart. ‘Was there any at all? Contact, that is?’

Frey hesitated before answering.

‘I’ve never met him,’ she said. ‘But I think… I think things were getting a bit better recently.’

Reinhart nodded.

‘Did they meet at all?’ Moreno wondered.

‘Erich went to see him a few times during the autumn. But that’s irrelevant now.’

Her voice shook a little, and she stroked the palms of her hand quickly over her face, as if to switch it off. Her red hair looked dyed and not very well cared for, Moreno noted, but there were no obvious signs of drug abuse.

‘Let’s concentrate on last Tuesday,’ said Reinhart, taking out his pipe and tobacco, and receiving an encouraging nod from Marlene Frey.

‘Erich drove out to that restaurant in Dikken,’ said Moreno. ‘Have you any idea why?’

‘No,’ said Frey. ‘No idea at all. As I said this morning.’

‘Was he working?’ Reinhart asked.

‘A bit of this, a bit of that,’ said Frey. ‘He did odd jobs as a carpenter and painter and labourer… On various building sites and similar. Most of it was the black economy, I’m afraid, but that’s the way it is nowadays. He was good with his hands.’

‘What about you yourself?’ Moreno asked.

‘I’m attending a course for the unemployed. Economics and IT and that kind of crap, but I get a grant for doing it. I do the odd hour in shops and supermarkets when they’re short-staffed. We get by in fact… Or got by. Financially, that is. Erich worked at a printing works as well now and then. Stemminger’s.’

‘I understand,’ said Reinhart. ‘He had a bit of form, if one can put it like that…’

‘Who doesn’t?’ said Frey. ‘But we were on the straight and narrow, I want you to be quite clear about that.’

It looked for a moment as if she were about to burst into tears; but she took a deep breath and blew her nose instead.

‘Tell us about last Tuesday,’ said Reinhart.

‘There’s not a lot to say,’ said Frey. ‘I attended my course in the morning, then I worked for a few hours in the shop in Kellnerstraat in the afternoon. I only saw Erich here at home between one and two — he said he was going to help somebody with some boat or other, and then he had something to see to in the evening.’

‘A boat?’ said Reinhart. ‘What sort of a boat?’

‘It belongs to a good friend,’ said Frey. ‘I assume he was helping with fitting it out.’

Moreno asked her to write down the friend’s name and address, which she did after consulting an address book she fetched from the kitchen.

‘That something he had to see to in the evening,’ said Reinhart when the boat business was over and done with. ‘What was that about?’

Marlene Frey shrugged.

‘I don’t know.’

‘Was it a job?’

‘I assume so.’

‘Or something else?’

‘What do you mean by that?’

‘Well… Something that wasn’t a job.’

Frey took out her handkerchief and blew her nose again. Her eyes narrowed.

‘I understand,’ she said. ‘I understand exactly what’s going on. It’s only for his celebrated father’s sake that you’re sitting here being so damned polite to me. If it weren’t for that you’d treat him like any other yob you care to name. And you’d treat me like a drugged-up whore.’

‘Steady on…’ said Moreno.

‘You don’t need to put on a show,’ said Frey. ‘I know the score. Erich had a lot on his conscience, but he’s packed all that in during the last few years. Neither of us shoot up nowadays, and we’re no less law-abiding than anybody else. But I suppose it’s a waste of time trying to make the fuzz believe that?’

Neither Moreno nor Reinhart responded. Marlene Frey’s outburst remained hanging for a while in the warm silence over the calor gas stove. But this was shattered when a tram clattered past in the street outside.

‘Okay,’ said Reinhart. ‘I understand what you’re saying and you may be right. But now we’re where we are, and it’s a bit bloody annoying if we get told off for treating people decently for once.. I think we know where we stand now, without going on and on about it. Shall we continue?’

Marlene Frey hesitated for a moment, then nodded.

‘Dikken,’ said Reinhart. ‘Why did he have to go there? You must have some idea, surely?’

‘It could’ve been anything at all,’ said Frey. ‘I suppose you’re fishing for something to do with drugs, but I can swear that it had nothing to do with that. Erich gave all that stuff up even before we started living together.’

Reinhart gave her a long, hard look.

‘All right, we’ll accept that,’ he said. ‘Was he going to get something out of it? Money, I mean… Or was he just going to meet a friend out there, for instance? Or do somebody a favour?’

Frey thought for a while.

‘I think it was a job,’ she said. ‘Some sort of job.’

‘Did he say he was going out to Dikken?’

‘No.’

‘Nor what it was about?’

‘No.’

‘Not even a hint?’

‘No.’

‘And you didn’t ask?’

Frey shook her head and sighed.

‘No,’ she said. ‘Erich and I could have seven or eight different jobs in any given week — we hardly ever talked about it.’

‘Did he say when he’d be back?’ asked Moreno.

Frey thought that over again.

‘I’ve been thinking about that, but I’m not sure. I had the impression he’d be back home at around eight or nine in any case, but it’s not definite that he actually said that. Who bloody cares anyway?’

She bit her lip, and Moreno saw that her eyes had filled with tears.

‘Cry,’ she said. ‘It’s possible to cry and talk at the same time, you know.’

Frey immediately heeded this advice. Moreno leaned forward and stroked her arm somewhat awkwardly, while Reinhart squirmed uncomfortably in his chair. Fumbled with his pipe and managed to light it.

‘Names?’ said Moreno when the sobbing became less violent. ‘Did he name any names in connection with what he was going to do last Tuesday evening?’

Frey shook her head.

‘Do you know if he’d been there before? If he went there regularly?’

‘To Dikken?’ She couldn’t help laughing. ‘No, it’s not exactly our kind of place out there, wouldn’t you say?’

Moreno smiled.

‘Had he been worried about anything recently? Had anything special happened that you could possibly link with the accident?’

Frey wiped her eyes with the sleeve of her jumper and thought again.

‘No,’ she said. ‘Nothing I can think of.’

‘Had he met any new acquaintances lately?’

‘No. Erich knew an awful lot of people… Of all kinds, you might say.’

‘I understand,’ said Reinhart. ‘This Elmer Kodowsky, for instance, whose car he borrowed?’

‘For instance, yes,’ said Frey.

‘Have either of you had any contact with him lately?’

She shook her head.

‘He’s inside. I don’t know where. He was an old friend of Erich’s, I’ve never met him. I’ve only seen him once or twice.’

‘And you yourself haven’t felt threatened in any way?’ Moreno asked.

‘Me?’ said Frey, looking genuinely surprised. ‘No, definitely not.’

There followed a brief silence. Frey leaned forward, closer to the stove, and rubbed the palms of her hands together in the waves of heat floating upwards.

‘You waited for rather a long time before contacting the police,’ said Reinhart.

‘I know.’

‘Why?’

She shrugged.

‘Perhaps it’s the way it is in cases of this sort. Or what do you think?’

Reinhart said nothing.

‘Had either of you any contact with Erich’s mother?’ asked Moreno.

‘No,’ said Frey. ‘None at all. But I would like to speak to his father — please tell him that if you happen to see him.’

‘Really?’ said Reinhart. ‘What do you want to say to him?’

‘I’ll tell him that when I see him,’ said Frey.

Afterwards they spent some time in Cafe Gambrinus, trying to sum up their impressions.

‘Not much in the way of lines to follow up yet,’ said Reinhart. ‘Or what do you think? Damn and blast.’

‘No, not a lot,’ said Moreno. ‘Although it does seem as if he had a date with his murderer out at Dikken. Even if he didn’t really know what was going to happen. The odd thing is that he sat in the restaurant by himself, waiting. Assuming we can trust what Jung and Rooth say, that is. That could suggest that the person he was waiting for didn’t turn up according to plan.’

‘Possibly,’ said Reinhart ‘But it could have happened much more straightforwardly, we mustn’t forget that.’

‘What do you mean?’ said Moreno, taking a sip of her mulled wine.

‘A no-frills robbery,’ said Reinhart. ‘A junkie with a hammer who thought he could do with a bit of cash. The victim’s pockets were emptied, even his fags and keys were nicked — that ought to tell us something.’

Moreno nodded.

‘Do you think that’s what happened?’ she asked.

‘Maybe, maybe not,’ said Reinhart. ‘Besides, it doesn’t need to have been the same person — the one who killed him and the one who went through his pockets, that is. The character who rang to report finding the body didn’t exactly give the impression of being a blue-eyed innocent, did he?’

‘Hardly,’ said Moreno. ‘But in any case, I’m inclined to think it wasn’t just a case of a mugging that went wrong. I reckon there’s more to it than that — but whether or not I think that because of who the victim was, I don’t know… I suppose it’s a bit warped to think along those lines.’

‘A lot of thinking is warped when you look closely at it,’ said Reinhart. ‘Intuition and prejudice smell pretty much alike in fact. But we can start off with this, no matter what.’

He took out the well-thumbed address book Marlene Frey had lent them — on condition they returned it as soon as they had copied it.

‘This must mean that they really were on the straight and narrow path nowadays,’ said Moreno. ‘Who hands a whole address book over to the police of their own accord if they have something on their conscience?’

Reinhart leafed through the book and looked worried.

‘There’s a hell of a lot of people in here,’ he said with a sigh. ‘I think we’d better talk to her again and get her to narrow it down a bit.’

‘I’ll do that tomorrow,’ Moreno promised. ‘Anyway, I think I ought to be moving on. I don’t think we’re going to lay any golden eggs this evening.’

Reinhart looked at the clock.

‘I’m sure you’re right,’ he said. ‘But one thing is crystal clear in any case.’

‘What’s that?’ wondered Moreno.

‘We must solve this. If we don’t solve another single bloody case between now and the next century, we must make absolutely certain that we sort out this one. That’s the least we can do for him.’

Moreno leaned her head on her hands and thought.

‘If it were anybody else, I’d think you were nattering on in the spirit of romanticized boy scout mentality,’ she said. ‘But I must admit that I agree with you. It’s bad enough as it is, but it’ll be even worse if we let the murderer get away with it. Will you be contacting him tomorrow? I suppose he’ll want to know how things are going.’

‘I’ve promised to keep him informed,’ said Reinhart. ‘And I shall do just that. Whether I want to or not.’

Moreno nodded sombrely. Then they emptied their glasses, and left the cafe and the town and the world to their fate.

For a few hours, at least.