Mind's eye

III

37

The town of Friesen seemed not to have bothered to get out of bed this gray, misty November Sunday. On the stroke of half past two he parked outside the railway station, and it only took him a couple of minutes to find the restaurant Poseidon, which was in a basement on the north side of the market square.

The premises were barren and deserted, but even so he was careful to choose an enclosed booth in a far corner. Sat down and ordered a beer. The waiter was chubby and completely bald, and reminded Van Veeteren of a film gangster he had seen many years ago.

In a whole series of movies, no doubt; but his name escaped him. Both the name of the character and of the actor.

And as he sat there, waiting for Ulrike deMaas, a new feeling started to creep up on him: that this was the right place, the very place.

That this is where he ought to have come a long time ago, for a conversation with this old friend of Eva’s. He could feel it in the atmosphere, in the damp emptiness. As if this restaurant and this Sunday afternoon had been waiting for him. If this had been a movie, what was lying in store for him would have been the inevitable key scene; the one that could have been edited and used over and over again. Showing short flash-backs, each one lasting only a second or two, from the whole story so far. . It was all very clear now, the whole thing; but this was also the kind of knowledge that he usually would prefer not to be aware of. This intuition that seemed to affect only himself, and could almost persuade him to imagine that he was some kind of a vehicle for a higher level of justice; a tool that was never wrong, not even in the twenty-first case. .

However, it was nothing to brag about. He recalled how he had once found a rapist by locking himself up in his office and playing patience for half an hour. That wasn’t something to include in lectures addressed to new recruits.

He sipped his beer slowly, and waited. Sat like an imper-turbable godfather in the dirty yellow light shining down onto the table. Baldy had been to light a candle in order to indicate that this booth had been claimed, but apart from that it remained in the shadows, waiting, like Van Veeteren, for Ulrike deMaas.

She arrived shortly after three, exactly as she had promised. A slim, dark woman in a duffel coat and a rust-red shawl. She had finished work at the museum at three o’clock; it was located on the other side of the square, and it didn’t take long to turn off the lights and lock up. Van Veeteren assumed that the number of visitors was similar to that at Poseidon; it was Sunday, and the first Sunday in Advent, at that: people no doubt had better things to do than visiting local museums and restaurants.

“Chief Inspector Veeteren?”

“Van Veeteren. Please sit down. You are Ulrike deMaas, I take it?”

She nodded, took off her duffel coat, and hung it over her chair.

“Please excuse me for suggesting that we should meet here rather than in my home, but things are a bit hectic just at the moment, and you said you wanted to talk in peace and quiet. . ”

She smiled timidly.

“I couldn’t imagine a better place than this,” said Van Veeteren. “What would you like?”

Baldy had slunk out from the shadows.

“To eat?” she wondered.

“Of course,” said Van Veeteren. “I’ve been driving for two hours, and will have to spend another two hours driving back home. A stew in the autumnal darkness is the very least I require. Choose whatever you like. The state is paying.”

She smiled again, a little more sure of herself now.

Removed a band from her hair and released a shower of chest-nut. Van Veeteren reminded himself that he was an ancient cop with only ten years left before retirement.

She lit a cigarette.

“You know, Chief Inspector, when I read about her death, it was as if. . well, not quite as if I’d expected it, but I wasn’t shocked or dismayed, or whatever it is one ought to have been.

Isn’t that strange?”

“Perhaps. Could you explain in more detail?”

She hesitated.

“Eva was. . she was that sort of person, in a way-she lived a high-risk life. Well, maybe that’s overstating it, but there was something. . something dramatic about her.”

“Did you know her well?”

“As well as anybody, I think. In those days, I mean. We never met later. We were in the same class for six years-the last three years at our junior school in Leuwen, and three years at high school in Muhlboden. We saw quite a lot of each other at high school; there were four or five of us in the same group. We used to call it our gang.”

“Girls?”

“Yes, a gang of girls. There was generally only two or three of us when we did something together. The others would be preoccupied with boys at the time, but who was doing what kept changing.”

“I’m with you. Did Eva have many boyfriends in those days?”

“No, she was probably the most careful of all of us. Yes, I’d say that was beyond doubt, but. .”

“But what?”

“In some strange way she had more reason than the rest of us to be careful. That sounds odd, but she always used to jump into things with both feet, as it were, and she had to keep herself on a tight rein to make sure she wasn’t injured. . or hurt, perhaps I should say. She was strong and fragile at the same time, if you see what I mean.”

“Not really, no,” Van Veeteren admitted.

“She changed quite a lot when we were at high school as well. I barely knew her when we were at school in Leuwen.

She and her brother Rolf-they were twins-were more or less inseparable. Their father died at some point around that time. I think that was good from her point of view. He was a heavy drinker. I wouldn’t be surprised if he beat them-her mother as well, I suspect.”

“How did Eva change at high school?”

“She became more open, sort of. Made some good friends.

Started to live, you might say.”

“Thanks to her father’s death?”

“Yes, I think so. The close link with Rolf seemed to become looser as well. I think they’d probably needed each other mostly as a sort of protection against their father.”

“Rolf moved away later on, is that right?”

“Yes, he also went to high school, in a parallel class, but he soon left. Went to sea instead. . Eventually settled down in America, I seem to recall.”

Van Veeteren nodded.

“Do you remember the names of any boys Eva went with?”

“Hmm, I’ve been thinking about that since you called, but the only two I can remember, ones she had a close relationship with, if you see what I mean, were Rickard Antoni, who was in the same class as us-that was right at the end, just before we left school. I think it only lasted for a few weeks; in any case, she’d left him when she started at university in the fall.

He was with another girl by then, Kristine Reger, a friend of mine. They got married eventually.”

“And who was the other one?”

“The other one?”

“Yes, you said you remembered two boys that Eva had a relationship with.”

“Paul Bejsen, of course. The one who died.”

“Can you tell me about it?”

She sighed deeply. Lit another cigarette and sat quite still for a while, her head resting on one hand.

She’s pausing in order to brace herself, he thought. To overcome her reluctance.

“It was the All Saints Day holiday in our last year,” she began. “One of the boys in our class, Erwin Lange his name was, had a holiday cottage-or rather, his parents had a holiday cottage-not far from Kerran. It’s lovely, dramatic countryside out there, with moors and crags and ravines; I don’t know if you’ve ever been there?”

Van Veeteren shook his head.

“Anyway, we had a party. I think there were about twenty of us, most of them from our class, but some others as well.

Eva had been with this Paul Bejsen for a few months. He was a bit older; he’d already passed his school-leaving exam. But they were having a real relationship, I know that.”

“Was he her first lover?”

Ulrike deMass hesitated.

“Well, I don’t know who else her first could have been. .

And yet. .”

“Go on.”

“And yet you couldn’t help feeling she’d been through it all before, that she was quite experienced, in fact.”

“Why did you have that feeling?”

“I don’t know. It’s just something you notice. We girls, we women if you like, notice it, anyway. You can tell if a girl’s been to bed with a boy before.”

Van Veeteren nodded. She might be right.

“What happened that evening?”

“There was quite a lot of strong drink on the go, a fair amount of hash and stuff, but nobody went off the rails, you might say. We had great fun, in fact. We were gathered around a big bonfire in the yard all night, we grilled a pig, we drank and we sang, and. . well, you get the picture. Couples would get together and wander off now and then, into the house or behind a bush. I know at least two girls who lost their virginity that night.”

She paused briefly.

“I was one of them.”

Van Veeteren exchanged his toothpick for a cigarette.

“I was eighteen years of age, for Christ’s sake! It was about time. Anyway, the next morning we found out what had happened, and it was one hell of a bloody awful morning, as you can no doubt imagine. We were all woken up by the police; I think it couldn’t have been any later than about half past seven.

Twenty young people with hangovers and only a couple of hours’ sleep in their bodies. The police came with a neighbor.

He’d found a dead body at the bottom of a precipice. I think. .

I think that was the morning quite a few of us grew up.”

She said nothing for a few seconds.

“I certainly did, at least. I lost my virginity and a good friend that same night.”

“Were you a very good friend of Paul Bejsen’s?”

“Well, perhaps not; but I knew him quite well. He was a nice lad, likable and gifted. Everybody liked him. I expect several girls were in love with him.”

“You as well?”

“No. Not then. Had been, perhaps.”

“What had happened?”

Ulrike deMaas raised her shoulders, as if she suddenly felt cold.

“They’d been out on the moor, he and Eva. She’d told him it was over between them, for some reason or other. Left him out there. I don’t know, he must have been pretty drunk, I suppose, but that was one of the things that were hushed up, of course. In any case, he’d done away with himself. Thrown himself over a precipice. Strangely enough, he’d picked the right place. Macabre, it was. According to local folklore, Vejme Klint used to be the suicide precipice-you know, the place where old people used to go many years ago when they began to feel that their life was coming to an end. So that they didn’t become a burden on their families. .”

She shook her head.

“It was a terrible business, Chief Inspector. And there’s never been a heavier lid placed over anything boiling as much as that. His parents were very religious, Reformerde Kirk, and m i n d ’ s e y e

he was an only child. . Well, I’m sure you understand the circumstances. Muhlboden is not a very big place.”

Van Veeteren nodded.

“What about the police investigation? You must all have been interrogated?”

“Yes, we all had to turn up at the police station and tell our version of what happened. . Separately, at different times.

That took several days, and we were excused lessons. But there wasn’t much we could say, of course.”

“He didn’t leave a letter?”

“No.”

“How did Eva Ringmar take it?”

“Hard. Really hard, I think. If I remember rightly she stayed at home for the rest of the term. . Or most of it, at least. Yes, she was there for the end-of-term ceremonies, I remember now. We were in the choir, both of us; she hadn’t practiced anything, of course, but that didn’t matter. It was just the usual songs. . ”

She paused again.

“It’s the first Sunday in Advent today. It’s twenty years since it happened. I hadn’t thought about that. May I. . may I ask you a question, Chief Inspector?”

“Of course.”

“Why are you raking over this old business-surely you don’t think it has anything to do with, with. .”

“With what, Miss deMaas? Or is it Mrs.?”

“Somewhere in between, I suppose. . With what has happened now, of course. The murders of Eva and her husband. Surely you don’t think there’s a connection?”

“Miss deMaas,” Van Veeteren decided, “if there’s anything I’ve learned in this job, it’s that there are more connections in the world than there are particles in the universe.”

He paused and allowed her green eyes to observe him.

“The hard bit is finding the right ones,” he added eventually.

“Have you managed to do that?” she’d asked, just before they’d said their good-byes in the square. “Found the right connections, I mean?”

“I think so,” he’d said. “I just need to study the components a little more carefully in order to be sure.”

He had not been quite clear about what he meant when he said that. . Her eyes had been so big and serious, and it didn’t sound so silly. . Besides, why was it essential to think before speaking? Had he not learned over the years that it could just as well be vice versa?

Let the words come out, they always conceal something, as Reinhart kept saying.

She had given him a hug and thanked him for the meal, and it occurred to him that she was the second woman in this investigation that he could have fallen for.

If he had been at an appropriate age, that is. And the type to fall.

It took half an hour of driving to shake off these unbidden emotions, but that still left him with plenty of time to think over what he had been told, and to plan his next step.

There was not far to go now, he could feel it. One, possibly two more interviews. A few specific questions to the right person, and the whole background ought to be clear.

Then all that remained would be to pin down the key player in the drama. The person playing the leading role. .

The murderer.

He sighed, and felt his disgust rising.

The weariness and hopelessness.

How many were they, when it came to the crunch? How many people had lost their lives because of this compulsive, this perverted. .?

He wasn’t sure.

Two. . quite certainly.

Three. . most probably.

Four. . possibly.

Even more?

He considered that to be not unlikely. After all the years he had spent on the shady side of society, there was not a lot that he considered to be unlikely.

But nevertheless. What if he didn’t confess?

What if he had become so hardened that he denied everything when confronted by Van Veeteren?

That was not very likely, but it was possible, of course. In that case they would have to dig out proof for the whole cart-load of shit!

He cursed out loud and increased his speed. . But then he remembered the circumstances.

Proof?

That wasn’t his problem. That was something the rest of them could sort out-Munster and Reinhart and Rooth-

while he sat back under the palm trees in Brisbane.

Were there palm trees in Brisbane?

He put Handel on, and increased his speed even more.