The Return

13

“Welcome to the gang,” said Rooth.

DeBries flopped down onto the chair and lit a cigarette. The smoke immediately started to irritate Rooth’s eyes, but he decided to put a brave face on it.

“I would be grateful if my good friend the inspector would be so kind as to put me in the picture,” said deBries. “Slowly and clearly, if you don’t mind. I was sitting wide awake in a car all night, keeping an eye on a house.”

“Did anything come of it?” Rooth wondered.

“I should say so,” said deBries. “The house is still there. How long have you been growing that thing, by the way?”

“What thing?”

“That thing you have on your face…It reminds me of something, but I can’t put my finger on it. Oh yes, that’s it! Pat Boone!”

“What the hell are you on about?”

“My guinea pig, of course. That I had when I was a boy. He caught some virus or other and his fur fell out. He looked a bit like that just before he died.”

Rooth sighed.

“Very funny,” he said. “How old are you?”

“Forty, feel like eighty. Why?”

Rooth scratched his armpits thoughtfully.

“I’m just wondering if you remember the Beatrice murder…. Or if you were too little and gormless even then.”

DeBries shook his head.

“Sorry,” he said. “Maybe we should get started. No, I don’t remember the Beatrice murder.”

“I remember it only too darned well,” said Rooth. “I was ten or eleven. Nineteen sixty-two it was. Read about it in the papers every single day for months while it was going on. Well, a month at least. We used to talk about it at school, in the lessons and during the breaks. Oh yes, I’ll be damned if it isn’t one of the clearest memories I have of my childhood.”

“I was only eight,” said deBries. “There’s a big difference between eight and ten…. I didn’t live here then either. But I read about it afterward, of course.”

“Mm,” muttered Rooth, blowing back a cloud of smoke. “There was something about the whole mood. I remember my father going on about that Leopold Verhaven at our kitchen table, when we were having dinner. It wasn’t exactly usual for him to talk about such things, so we knew that it must be something very special. Everybody was interested in that murder. Every man jack. Believe you me!”

“I’ve gathered,” said deBries. “A bit of a witch hunt, wasn’t it?”

“Not just a bit,” said Rooth.

DeBries got up and stubbed out his cigarette in the washbasin.

“Start at the beginning,” he said.

“The athletics business, you mean? You know he was a leading sprinter in the fifties?”

“Yes,” said deBries. “But start with the murders.”

Rooth went back a few pages in the notepad on the desk in front of him.

“All right,” he said. “We’ll start on April sixteenth, 1962. That’s the day when Leopold Verhaven tells the police that his fiancée has disappeared. Beatrice Holden. In fact she’s been missing for nearly ten days by that time. They’ve been living together for a year and a half, or thereabouts…living together in that house in Kaustin. Without getting married, I should make clear, perhaps.”

“Go on,” said deBries.

“About a week later she’s found murdered in the forest a few miles from there. The police put a lot of resources into it, of course, and before long the suspicion is that Verhaven himself might have something to do with it. There are plenty of pointers in that direction, and at the end of the month he’s arrested and charged with murder. The trial gets under way.”

“His name was in the papers right from the start, isn’t that right?”

“Yes, indeed. They’d named him in connection with the disappearance of the girl—he was a bit of a celebrity after all—and now they saw no reason to hold back. Unless I’m much mistaken it’s the first time in our country that a man who was only a suspect has been named in print. Maybe that’s what blows it up to such proportions. I think the papers published every word uttered in court…. All those reporters—from all parts of the country—they were staying at Konger’s Palatz, the whole crowd, and they would hold court every night…. The defense counsel was there as well, incidentally. Quenterran, he was called, an odd name. I suppose you could say it was the first mass media murder. It must have been hellish for any thinking person, but I didn’t understand that at the time. I was only eleven after all.”

“Hmm,” said deBries. “And he was found guilty.”

“Yes. Although he denied it. June twentieth it was. I remember it was the week before the holidays began, and we heard it on the wireless at school.”

“Incredible,” said deBries. “How long did he get?”

“Twelve years,” said Rooth.

DeBries nodded.

“Got out in 1974. And when did it start all over again?”

“Nineteen eighty-one. He’d gone back home and reopened his chicken farm.”

“Chicken farm?”

“Yes. Or egg farm, or what the devil you want to call it. They hadn’t broken him, not in the least. He’d started his feathery farm before the Beatrice affair happened. He was a bit of a pioneer, I think, with artificial lighting in the henhouse, so that they thought it was day when it was night and all that sort of thing. That shortened the day by two hours and made them lay more quickly, or something of the sort….”

“Who’d have thought it?” said deBries. “Clever devil.”

“Oh yes,” said Rooth. “Used to sell his eggs in Linzhuisen and here in Maardam as well. The Covered Market mainly, if I remember rightly. He got back on his feet again; he always did.”

“Strong?” said deBries.

“Yes,” said Rooth, pausing to think for a moment. “That was just it. Superhumanly strong, in a way.”

He paused again and deBries lit another cigarette.

“What about the Marlene murder?” he asked, blowing a thin wisp of smoke over the desk. Rooth coughed.

“Goddamn chimney,” he said. “Well, they found another woman’s body in the same bit of forest. Almost the very same place, in fact. And a few months later he was inside again. That was twenty years after the first occasion.”

“Did he confess this time?”

“Confess? Did he hell! Didn’t give an inch. He’d had it off with the girl a few times, that was all, he claimed. There was another show trial, but we’ll take that another time. He’s a one-off, in any case…. Was a one-off, I should say.”

“Meaning what?”

“Nobody else in this country has ever been found guilty of first degree twice, despite denying it. Totally unique.”

DeBries pondered.

“Psychiatric report?” he asked.

“Both times,” said Rooth. “Fit as a fiddle, they reckoned. No doubt about it.”

“Did he rape them as well?”

Rooth shrugged.

“I don’t know. No traces of sperm at all events. But they were both naked when found. Strangled, by the way, both times. Same method, more or less.”

“Hmm,” said deBries, clasping his hands behind his head. “And now he’s bought it as well. Something fishy there, I can’t help thinking. Where’s Münster, to jump from one thing to another?”

Rooth sighed.

“At the hospital,” he said. “Surely you don’t think our detective chief inspector can resist a goody like this.”

“A goody?” said deBries. “For fuck’s sake.”