The Return

21

Van Veeteren snorted as he finished reading C. P. Jacoby’s summary and analysis of the Beatrice case in the issue of Allgemejne dated Sunday, June 22, 1962. He stabbed angrily at the white button on his bedside table, and after half a minute the night nurse appeared in the doorway.

“I want a beer,” said Van Veeteren.

“This isn’t a restaurant,” said the woman wearily, brushing a strand of hair from her face.

“So I’ve noticed,” said Van Veeteren. “But the fact is that Dr. Boegenmutter, or whatever the hell his name is, has told me to drink a beer or two. It assists the healing process. Stop being awkward and fetch me a bottle.”

“It’s turned midnight. Shouldn’t you go to sleep instead?”

“Sleep? I’m busy with a criminal investigation. You should be damned grateful. I’m after somebody who murdered women. And right now you are obstructing the investigation. Well?”

She sighed and went off, returning after a couple of minutes with a bottle and a glass.

“There’s a good girl,” said Van Veeteren.

She yawned.

“Do you think you can manage to pour it out yourself?”

“I’ll do my best,” Van Veeteren promised. “I’ll ring if I spill anything.”

The cold beer trickling down his throat was most invigorating. He had lain in bed thinking about this moment, trying to imagine the taste and indeed the whole experience while reading through the last four or five newspaper cuttings, and now that it had come, there was no doubt that the actual enjoyment lived up to expectations.

He belched contentedly. Divine nectar, he thought. Let’s see now, what do I know?

Not a lot. A fair amount from the quantative point of view. The newspaper coverage of the first trial had been comprehensive, to say the least. He had only read a small portion, but Münster’s selection seemed to have been well chosen and representative: a wide range of speculation and guesses regarding Verhaven’s character coupled with fairly detailed accounts of court proceedings. And the longer it went on, the more specific the conclusions drawn about the impending verdict.

Guilty. Verhaven must be guilty.

There were not many facts available. Just as he had suspected, the technical proof was rudimentary. Nonexistent, to put it bluntly. The case ought to have depended mainly on circumstantial evidence, but there wasn’t much of that either. Strictly speaking, there was a gaping void in both those areas.

No concrete proof.

Not much in the way of circumstantial evidence pointing toward Verhaven.

Nothing.

But he had been found guilty even so.

After discreet legal proceedings behind the scenes, no doubt, Van Veeteren thought, raising the bottle to his lips. I’d give a lot to have taken part in those.

But what the hell was it that got him convicted? Obviously, the media and vociferous public opinion had created a certain amount of pressure, but surely the machinery didn’t usually succumb so readily to that?

No, there must have been some other reason.

His character.

The kind of man that Leopold Verhaven was. His past. His behavior in court. The overall impression he had made on the jury and the legal bigwigs. That’s what it was all about.

That’s what got him convicted.

Verhaven was an eccentric. Having scrutinized him through the eyes and magnifying glasses of all these journalists, Van Veeteren could hardly come to any other conclusion. He was very much a loner, a man from whom it was the easiest thing in the world to disassociate oneself.

An odd man out.

A murderer? It was not difficult to take the short step from the former judgment to the latter, that was something Van Veeteren had learned over many long years; and once you had taken that step, it was not easy to retract it.

And the role?

Was that the key? The strange circumstance that practically every journalist had homed in on. The fact that Verhaven didn’t seem uncomfortable with the role of accused. On the contrary. He seemed to enjoy sitting in the dock with all that attention focused on him. Not that he had strutted or swaggered, but nevertheless: There was something about the way he conducted himself, a solitary and forceful actor playing the role of the tragic hero. That was how he was perceived, and that was how he had wanted to be perceived.

Something of that sort, in any case.

Was that the reason he was convicted?

If only I’d been there and seen him, I would have had no doubt, Van Veeteren thought as he emptied the bottle.

What actually happened was apparently simple and beyond argument.

Verhaven had returned home that Saturday, at about five o’clock, according to what he and others said. Beatrice had gone off somewhere, and that’s all there was to it. But that was his version. Nobody else had set eyes on either of them later that day. The electrician, Moltke, had left Beatrice at about one o’clock in the afternoon, and Verhaven had been seen in the village the next day, shortly after six on Sunday evening. That was all. The period between those two sightings was a blank.

He would have had plenty of time. For all sorts of things. One of the medical examiners had been in no doubt that Beatrice had confronted her killer at some point on Saturday or Sunday. She had been strangled and raped. Or the other way around, presumably? Raped and strangled. She was naked; intercourse had taken place, but there was no trace of sperm.

But, thought Van Veeteren, if the killer had been somebody else, that meant it was definite that the murder had taken place on Saturday afternoon—between one o’clock and five o’clock, or thereabouts. Between the moment Moltke had set off for home and Verhaven’s return.

Or at least that she had been abducted during that time.

Irrefutable?

Certainly, he decided. He glared mournfully at the empty bottle, then turned to the transcript from the court proceedings. Day two of the trial. The prosecutor, Hagendeck, cross-questioned the accused, Leopold Verhaven.

May twenty-fourth. Half past ten in the morning.

H: You have pleaded not guilty to killing your fiancée, Beatrice Holden. Is that correct?

V: Yes.

H: Can you tell us a little about your relationship?

V: What do you want to know?

H: How you met, for instance.

V: We bumped into each other in Linzhuisen. We were at school together. She came home with me.

H: That first time? You started a relationship right away?

V: We knew each other previously. She needed a man.

H: When did she move in with you?

V: A week later.

H: So that would be…

V: November 1960.

H: And she has been living with you ever since?

V: Yes, of course.

H: All the time?

V: She visited her mother and her daughter occasionally.

Stopped over in Elming for the odd night. But more or less all the time, yes.

H: Were you engaged?

V: No.

H: You didn’t intend to get married?

V: No.

H: Why not?

V: That wasn’t why we lived together.

H: Why did you live together, then? [Verhaven’s reply erased]

H: I see. Did you fall out at all?

V: Sometimes.

H: Did you fight?

V: Now and again, I suppose.

H: Did you beat her at all?

V: Yes. She liked it.

H: She liked you beating her?

V: Yes.

H: How do you know? Did she say so?

V: No, but I know she liked it.

H: How can you know that if she never said anything?

V: You can tell. They show it.

H: What do you mean by “they”?

V: Women.

H: Did she hit you as well?

V: She tried, but I was stronger than she was.

H: Did you drink a lot of hard liquor together?

V: No, not all that much.

H: But it did happen?

V: Yes. We used to have a few drinks on a Saturday, seeing as I had Sunday off.

H: Off? Didn’t you have to look after the hens?

V: Yes, of course; but I didn’t have to go to market.

H: I see. Can you tell us what happened on Saturday, March thirtieth? The week before Beatrice disappeared, that is.

V: We drank a bit. Fell out. I hit her.

H: Why?

V: She annoyed me. I think she wanted a bit of a beating.

H: How did she annoy you?

V: She was being difficult.

H: You beat her so badly that she had to take refuge with a neighbor. It was three in the morning. She had no clothes on. What do you say to that?

V: She was drunk.

H: But that doesn’t mean she wanted a bit of a beating, does it?

[No reply from Verhaven]

H: Don’t you think that was overstepping the mark, beating your fiancée so violently that she had to flee to a neighbor for safety?

V: She didn’t need to go. She was drunk and hysterical. She came back again later, after all.

H: What about the following week? Did you beat her several times?

V: No, not that I recall.

H: Not that you recall?

V: No.

H: Why should you forget something like that?

V: I’ve no idea.

H: What did you do when you got back home on Saturday, April sixth?

V: Made a meal and ate it.

H: Nothing else?

V: Saw to the hens.

H: Where was Beatrice when you got home?

V: I don’t know.

H: What do you mean by that?

V: That I don’t know.

H: Shouldn’t she have been at home?

V: Maybe.

H: Had you arranged anything?

V: No.

H: She hadn’t planned to go anywhere?

V: No.

H: To visit her mother and daughter, for instance?

V: No.

H: Were you surprised that she wasn’t at home when you returned?

V: Not especially.

H: Why?

V: Nothing much surprises me.

H: Tell us what you did the rest of the day.

V: Nothing much.

H: What, exactly?

V: I sat around at home. Watched television. Went to bed.

H: And you still didn’t wonder where your fiancée was?

V: No.

H: Why didn’t you wonder?

V: They come and go.

H: What do you mean?

V: Women. They come and go.

H: Tell us what you did on Sunday.

V: I was at home. I didn’t do anything much. Saw to the hens.

H: And where did you think Beatrice was?

V: I don’t know.

H: It wasn’t that you knew where she was?

V: No.

H: It wasn’t that you knew she was lying dead in the forest, murdered? Nearly a mile into the forest?

V: No.

H: So you didn’t kill her, which would explain why you didn’t wonder where she was?

V: No, that’s not how it was. It wasn’t me who killed her.

H: But you didn’t miss her on Sunday?

V: No.

H: You didn’t check to see if she’d gone to her mother’s, for instance?

V: No.

H: Do you have a telephone, Mr. Verhaven?

V: No.

H: So you weren’t the least bit worried about Beatrice?

V: No.

H: And what about the following week? Didn’t you miss her then, either?

V: No.

H: You never wondered where she might have gone to?

V: No.

H: Did you think it was a relief, not to have her around? [No reply from Verhaven]

H: I repeat: Did you think it was a relief not to have her around?

V: At first, perhaps.

H: Did your fiancée have a job at that time?

V: Not just then.

H: Where did she work when she was employed?

V: At Kaunitz’s. The garden center in Linzhuisen. But only occasionally.

H: When did you tell the police that your fiancée, Beatrice Holden, was missing?

V: On Tuesday, the sixteenth.

H: Where?

V: In Maardam, of course.

H: And what made you report her missing on that particular day? If you weren’t worried?

V: It just occurred to me. As I was driving past the police station.

H: So you still didn’t think something might have happened to her?

V: No. Why should I?

H: Don’t you think it would be natural to think that?

V: No. She usually got by.

H: But she didn’t on this occasion.

V: No, not on this occasion.

H: How did you hear that she’d been found dead?

V: The police came and told me.

H: How did you react to that?

V: I was sorry.

H: Sorry? Sergeant Weiss maintains that you didn’t react at all. That you simply thanked him and asked him to go away.

V: Why should I cry on his shoulder? I can get by.

H: Don’t you think you’ve been acting rather strangely since Beatrice Holden disappeared?

V: No, I don’t think so.

H: Do you understand that other people might think so?

V: I don’t know what other people think. They can think whatever they like as far as I’m concerned.

H: Really? And you are absolutely certain that it wasn’t you who killed your fiancée?

V: It wasn’t me.

H: Did you often go to the part of the forest where her body was found?

V: No.

H: Have you ever been there?

V: I might have been.

H: But not that weekend when she disappeared?

V: No.

H: What do you think about her death, Mr. Verhaven?

V: Nothing.

H: You must have some idea about how she died?

V: Some man or other, of course. Some sick type who can’t find himself a woman.

H: You don’t regard yourself as somebody like that?

V: I have no difficulty in finding myself women.

H: Thank you. No further questions at present.

Van Veeteren stuffed the bundle of papers into the narrow space under the top of his bedside table. It was very nearly one o’clock.

I’d better get some sleep, he thought.

Verhaven?

If only he’d been present at the trials! At the very least he could have spent an hour or two in court in connection with the Marlene case, when he’d played a minor role in the investigation. It might have been enough, actually seeing him in the flesh.

A few minutes watching him in the dock and he’d have known. Known if the nagging worry at the back of his mind was something to follow up. If there was any justification for it at all, or if Verhaven really was the primitive man of violence he’d been portrayed as being.

Guilty or not guilty, then?

It was impossible to say. Impossible then, impossible now.

But no matter what, there was no getting away from one fact: Somebody had been lying in wait for him when he was released from prison.

Somebody had killed him and butchered his body. Somebody had tried to ensure that they wouldn’t be able to identify him. That must surely have been the intention?

And finally: Somebody must have had a reason.

What?

That was another question that still remained. Untouched and unanswered.

He switched off the light. Closed his eyes, and before he knew it, he had started dreaming about Jess and the twins. In French.

It was astonishing what his mind was capable of in the early hours of the morning….

Mind you, their visit to the ward the previous afternoon had hardly passed unnoticed.

A cracked windowpane, a split cuticle, a demolished infusion stand and other minor calamities. He had noticed that the smiles on the faces of the staff had become somewhat strained as time went by. As the noise level increased and accidents became more frequent.

How the hell does she manage? he wondered, allowing himself a faint smile as he slept. She must have inherited some of her father’s mental strength, presumably.

Sans doute, oui.