35

He stayed at home on Friday.

Woke up at about nine and plugged the telephone in again.

Looked up the travel agents in the yellow pages, and before getting out of bed, he had booked his ticket. An Australian Airways flight on Thursday, December 5, departure time 7:30 a.m. Open return.

Then he unplugged the telephone again and got up to have breakfast.

Sat at the kitchen table. Listened to the rain. Chewed at a justifiably thick sandwich of whole-grain bread with cheese and cucumber. The morning paper was spread out in front of him, and suddenly, he had that feeling.

A feeling of well-being. He tried to suppress it, but it was there all the time, warm and persistent and totally unambigu-ous. A feeling of gratitude for the infinite riches of life.

No matter what happened, seven days from now he would be having breakfast on the balcony of his hotel room in Sydney. Thumbing absentmindedly through a guide to the Great Barrier Reef. Lighting a cigarette and turning his face up to the sun.

By then he would either have captured a murderer, or resigned his job.

It was a game with only winners. A morning dripping with freedom. No dog throwing up in front of the refrigerator. No wife thinking of moving back in with him. The door locked.

The telephone unplugged.

He recalled Farrati and the frilly knickers. Dammit all, life was a symphony.

Then he thought about Mitter. And Eva Ringmar, whom he had never met while she was still breathing. She was the one it was all about.

And he realized that the symphony was in a minor key.

He had finished reading the newspaper by eleven. He ran a bubble bath, put on a Bach cello suite at high volume, lit a candle on the lavatory seat, and slid down into the water.

After twenty minutes he hadn’t moved a fin, but a thought had floated up to the surface of his brain.

A thought had been born thanks to a mixture of the water’s warmth, the candle’s flame, and the harsh tone of the cello.

It was a terrible thought. A possibility he would prefer to dismiss. Drown. Blow out. Switch off. It was the image of a murderer.

No, he hadn’t cornered him yet. But there was a way.

An accessible path that he merely needed to follow to its end. Keep going for as long as possible, and see what lay concealed at the destination.

In the afternoon he lay down on the sofa and listened to more Bach. Slept for a while and woke up in darkness.

Got up, switched off the tape recorder, and plugged the telephone back in.

Two calls.

The first was to Beate Lingen. She remembered him-she said she did, and he could hear it in her voice. Nevertheless, he managed to get himself invited to tea on Saturday afternoon.

She had an hour, would that be enough?

That would be fine, he said. She was only an intermediate stop, after all.

The other was to Andreas Berger. Once again, he was in luck. Berger answered the call. Leila was out with the children.

He could speak uninhibitedly, and that was a requirement.

“I have a question that is very personal. I have a question that I think could be the key to this whole tragedy. You don’t need to answer if you don’t want to.”

“I understand.”

Van Veeteren paused. Searched for the right words.

“Was Eva. . a good lover?”

Silence. But the answer was audible in the silence.

“Will you. . will you use whatever I say in some way or other? I mean. .”

“No,” said Van Veeteren. “You have my word.”

Berger cleared his throat.

“She was. .” he began hesitantly. “Eva made love like no other woman in existence. I haven’t had many, but I think I can say that even so. She was. . I don’t know, words seem so inadequate. . She was angel and whore. . woman and mother. . and friend. She satisfied everything. Yes, everything.”

“Thank you. That explains a lot. I shall not use what you have said in any improper way.”

Saturday brought with it a pale blue sky and thin, scudding clouds. A sun that seemed cold and distant, and a wind from the sea. He spent the morning walking by the canals, and noticed to his surprise that he could breathe. The air weighed little; there was a whiff of winter in it.

At about two he took the tram to Leimaar. Beate Lingen lived in one of the newly built apartment houses on top of the ridge. High up, on the sixth floor, with a view over the whole town. Over the plain, and the river as it meandered its way to the coast.

She had a glazed balcony with infrared heating and tomato plants, and they sat out there all the time, drinking her Russian tea and eating thin Kremmen biscuits with jam.

“I spend most of my time out here when I’m at home,” she said. “If there was room, I think I’d move my bed out here as well.”

Van Veeteren nodded. It was a remarkable place. Like sitting in a warm glass cage, hovering untrammeled above the world. With a view of everything, yet completely divorced from everything.

I’d like to write my memoirs in a place like this, he thought.

“What do you want to know, Chief Inspector?”

He reluctantly allowed himself to be returned to reality.

“Miss Lingen, if I remember rightly, you knew Eva Ringmar at school. This time, that’s the period I’m most interested in. Let me see, it was. .”

“Muhlboden. The local high school.”

“And you were in the same class?”

“Yes. Between 1970 and 1973. We took the school-leaving exam in May.”

“Were you born in Muhlboden?”

“In a little village just outside. I was bused in.”

“And Eva Ringmar?”

“The same. She lived out at Leuwen, I don’t know if you are familiar with the place?”

“I’ve been there.”

“Yes, quite a lot of us lived outside the town: it’s a big school. Serves a very large district, I believe.”

“How well did you know her?”

“Not at all, really. We didn’t go around together. We were never in the same gang-you know how it is. You’re all in the same class, sit in the same room every day, but you know nothing at all about most of your classmates.”

“Do you know if she. . if Eva had a boyfriend around that time, somebody she was pretty steady with?”

What an awful expression, he thought.

“I’ve been thinking about that,” said Beate Lingen. “I remember there was an incident in class three-the final year, that is, in the fall-when a boy had an accident. It wasn’t a lad from our class, I think he was a year older, in fact; but I have the impression that Eva was mixed up with it somehow or other.”

“How?”

“I don’t really know. I think it was something to do with a party of some kind. Some of the girls from our class were there, in any case, and there was an accident.”

“What sort of an accident?”

“This boy died. He fell over a cliff. They were in a holiday cottage at Kerran-there are quite a few escarpments out there, a geological fault, I think they say-I seem to remember they found his body the next morning. I assume strong drink played a part as well. . ”

“But are you quite sure that Eva was present?”

“Yes, she must have been there. They tried to hush it all up, I seem to recall. Nobody wanted to talk about what had happened. It was as if. . as if there was something shameful, in fact.”

“And it was an accident?”

“Excuse me? Er, yes. . Of course.”

“There were never any, er, suspicions?”

“Suspicions? No. What kind of suspicions?”

“Never mind,” said Van Veeteren. “Miss Lingen, did you ever speak to Eva Ringmar about what happened? Later, I mean. In Karpatz, or when you used to see each other here in Maardam?”

“No, never. We didn’t really spend time with each other in Karpatz. We just met occasionally, as you do when you’re in the same class. It was more of an obligation, I think, almost. .

She had her own circle of friends, and so did I, come to that.”

“But then in Maardam. Did you used to talk about your school days?”

“No, not really. We might have mentioned a teacher, but as I say, we moved in different circles. There wasn’t a lot to talk about.”

“Did you have the impression that Eva Ringmar was reluctant to talk about the past?”

She hesitated.

“Yes. .” she said eventually. “I suppose you could say that.”

Van Veeteren said nothing for several seconds.

“Miss Lingen,” he said eventually, “I’m very keen to hear about certain matters from that period-the high school years in Muhlboden. Do you think you could give me the name of somebody who was close to Eva Ringmar at that time?. .

Somebody who knows more about her than you do? Preferably several.”

Beate Lingen thought about that.

“Grete Wojdat,” she said after a while. “Yes. . Grete Wojdat and Ulrike deMaas. They were great pals, I know that.

Ulrike was from the same place, I think: Leuwen. They came to school on the same bus, in any case.”

Van Veeteren made a note of the name.

“Have you any idea of where they are now?” he wondered.

“If they’ve got married and changed their name, for instance?”

Beate Lingen thought that over again.

“I know nothing at all about Grete Wojdat,” she said. “But Ulrike. . Ulrike deMaas, I met her a few years ago, in fact. She was living in Friesen. . She was then, in any case. . married, but I think she kept her maiden name.”

“Ulrike deMaas,” said Van Veeteren, underscoring the name. “Friesen. . Do you think it’s worth a visit?”

“How on earth would I know, Inspector?” She looked at him in surprise. “I don’t even have the slightest idea about what you’re trying to find out!”

I think you ought to be grateful for that, Miss Lingen, Van Veeteren thought.

When he left it was dark, and the wind was blowing stronger.

When he came to the tram stop he found that it was in posses-sion of a gang of soccer hooligans shrieking and yelling, in their red-and-white scarves and woolly hats. Van Veeteren decided to walk instead.

As he passed through the Deijkstraat district he crossed over Pampas, the low-lying area just to the south of the municipal forest, where, once upon a time, he had set out on his checkered career as a police officer. When he came to the corner of Burgerlaan and Zwille, he paused and contemplated the dilapidated property next to the Ritmeeters brewery.

It looked exactly as he remembered it. The facade cracked and disintegrating, the plaster flaking away. Even the obscene graffiti at street level seemed to be from another age.

There was no light in either of the two windows on the third floor, just as had been the case that mild and fragrant summer evening twenty-nine years ago when Van Veeteren and Inspector Munck had broken into the flat after a hysterical telephone call. Munck had gone in first and taken the volley of shots from Mr. Ocker in his stomach. Van Veeteren had sat on the hall floor, holding Munck’s head while the man bled to death. Mr. Ocker was lying on the floor three meters farther into the apartment, shot through the throat by Van Veeteren.

Mrs. Ocker and their four-year-old daughter were found by the ambulance team: strangled and stuffed into a wardrobe in the bedroom.

He tried to recall when he had last heard anything from Elisabeth Munck. It must have been many years ago; despite the fact that he had very nearly become her lover, in a desperate attempt to make amends and build bridges and come to terms with his own distorted feelings of guilt.

He continued strolling over the Alexander Bridge, while asking himself why he had chosen this particular route. For Christ’s sake, there were plenty of memories to keep the Burgerlaan 35 story alive: it wasn’t necessary to dig up anything new.

It was several minutes after half past five when he entered his office on the fourth floor, and a mere fifteen minutes later he had established contact with Ulrike deMaas. Spoken to her on the telephone, and arranged a meeting for the following day.

Then he phoned the police garage and ordered the same car as he’d had the previous Sunday. When that was sorted out, he switched off the light and remained seated in the darkness with his hands clasped behind his head.

Strange how everything fell into place.

It’s as if somebody were pulling the strings, he thought.

It wasn’t a new thought, and as usual he cast it aside.

Загрузка...