The Return

6

When he got there, they were busy packing stuff into the patrol wagons.

“Good evening, Chief Inspector,” said Inspector le Houde. “Is there anything special you want?”

Van Veeteren shook his head.

“I just thought I’d take a look. Have you abandoned the fingertip search now?”

“Yes,” said le Houde. “We had orders to that effect. Seems fair enough. Not much hope of anything turning up, I don’t suppose.”

“Have you found anything?”

Le Houde gave a laugh. Took out a handkerchief and wiped his brow.

“Quite a lot,” he said, pointing at a collection of black plastic sacks in the patrol wagon with the back doors open. “Six of those. We’ve collected everything that didn’t ought to be in a forest…from an area equal to about twenty soccer fields. It’ll be fun going through it all.”

“Hmm,” said Van Veeteren.

“We’ll be sending a bill to Behren’s Public Cleansing Department. It’s their job after all.”

“Do that,” said Van Veeteren. “Anyway, I’ll have a scout come around.”

“Good luck,” said le Houde, closing the doors. “We’ll be in touch.”

He followed the path. That was where the group from the day nursery had walked, if he understood it rightly. It wasn’t much of a path, mind you, not more than a couple of feet wide, full of roots and sharp stones and all kinds of bumps and potholes. The local police were doubtless right: The murderer had come from a different direction. The probability was that he’d parked on the bridle path on the other side of the little ridge that ran right through the woods—then he must have carried, or dragged, his load fifty or sixty yards through the undergrowth, uphill. The woods were not very well maintained, it was fair to say—so it was quite a task. Unless there had been more than one person involved, the murderer must have been pretty big and strong. Hardly a woman, nor an elderly man: Surely that was a reasonable conclusion to draw?

He reached the spot. The red and white tape still cordoned off the relevant stretch of ditch, but there were no longer any guards on duty. He stopped three or four yards short of the tape and spent half a minute studying the grim plot, wishing he had a cigarette.

Then he stepped over the ditch and made his way toward the bridle path. The murderer’s route, in all probability. It took him seven or eight minutes and resulted in several scratches on his face and hands.

If we’d found him right away, he thought, we could have followed his route inch by inch.

That was impossible now, of course.

Impossible, and not of much interest either, presumably. If they ever did get to the bottom of this, a few broken twigs weren’t going to make any difference. There was no doubt at all that as things stood now, this crime and its perpetrator were far, far away from their grasp. In both time and space.

Not to mention the victim.

He started walking toward the village again.

It suddenly struck him: What if nobody misses him? What if nobody has noticed that he’s disappeared?

Nobody at all.

The thought stayed with him. And if that little fat girl hadn’t happened to see him, years could have passed by without anybody missing him. Or finding him. It could have been an eternity. And meanwhile the process of decay and all the rest of it would have wiped out all trace of him. Why not?

Apart from the odd bone, of course. And a grinning skull. Yorick, where are those hanging lips…. No, come to think of it, there was no head.

And nobody would have needed to lift a finger.

A totally unnoticed death.

It was not a pleasant thought. He tried to dismiss it, but the only thing that replaced it was the clinically lit operating table and a limp, anesthetized body—his own.

And the stranger dressed in green, brandishing razor-sharp knives over his stomach.

He quickened his pace. Darkness had started to fall, and twenty minutes later as he stood outside the railroad station buying a pack of cigarettes, he also felt the first drop of rain on his hand.