The Return

28

From a distance, Münster estimated Leonore Conchis’s age to be somewhere between thirty and thirty-five.

When he came nearer and they shook hands over the smoked-glass counter, it was clear that he would have to add at least twenty years in order to get a little closer to the truth.

Perhaps it was this illusory circumstance that led her to submit to Münster’s questions in the rather dimly lit office; they sat back at opposite ends of a sofa that was so long, they had to raise their voices in order to converse.

So much for youth, Münster thought. A shadowy concept.

It had taken some considerable time to find her. She had changed her address more than ten times since living with Leopold Verhaven for a few months at the end of the seventies. And she had also changed her name.

But only once. She was now called di Goacchi, and for the last eighteen months she and her ancient Corsican husband had been running a boutique selling garish ladies’ clothing in the center of Groenstadt.

“Leopold Verhaven?” she said, crossing one black-nylon clad leg over the other. “Why do you want to interrogate me about Leopold Verhaven?”

“This isn’t an interrogation,” Münster explained. “I’d simply like to ask you a few questions.”

She lit a cigarette and adjusted her blood-red leather skirt.

“Fire away, then,” she said. “What do you want to know?”

I’ve no idea, Münster thought. It’s just that Van Veeteren instructed me to find you.

“Tell me about your relationship with him,” he said.

She exhaled smoke through her nostrils and looked bored to tears. Evidently she was not excessively positive toward the police in general, and it was clear to Münster that there was no point in trying to change that attitude.

“I don’t think it’s much fun either, having to root about in this kind of business,” he said. “Can we get it out of the way pretty quickly, so that I can leave you in peace again?”

That did the trick, it seemed. She nodded and wet her lips with an exaggerated and well-practiced movement of the tongue.

“All right. You want to know if he qualifies as a murderer of women. I’ve been asked that before.”

Münster nodded.

“So I gather.”

“I don’t know,” she said. “We were only together for a few months. I bumped into him by accident just as my second marriage hit the rocks. I was shattered and needed a man to look after me. To bring me back to life, you might say.”

“Could he do that, then?”

She shrugged.

“Are you married, Inspector?”

“Yes.”

“So I don’t need to mince words?”

“Not in the least,” Münster assured her.

“OK.” She pulled a face that might have been a smile. “He was a brutal lover. I enjoyed that at first, it was more or less what I needed, I suppose; but it became wearing in the long run. All that frantic fucking is only good for the first few times, and then you want to take things a bit more calmly, a bit more sensitively and more sophisticated—you know what I mean. Obviously, a really rough screw can ginger up an aging relationship; but having that all the time isn’t much good, no thank you.”

“Exactly,” said Münster, with a gulp. “But he went at it like a bull all the time, did he?”

“Yes,” she said. “It became too much like hard work. I left him after a few months. It was a hell of a dump to live in as well, in the middle of the woods and all that. But maybe that’s also what I needed just then…. Trees and nature and so on.”

I find it a bit hard to imagine you in his henhouse, Münster thought, and found that he was having trouble keeping his face straight.

“So he was a bit rough, but he didn’t display any serious violence, did he?”

“No,” she said firmly. “He was an introverted and uncultured person, but I never felt frightened of him, or anything like that.”

“You knew he’d been found guilty of murder?”

She nodded.

“He told me after our first night. And explained that he didn’t do it.”

“Did you believe him?”

She hesitated, but only for a second.

“Yes,” she said. “I don’t believe Leopold Verhaven would kill a woman like that. He was an oddball, that’s for sure, but he wasn’t a murderer. I explained that during the second trial as well, but nobody paid any attention, of course. He was condemned in advance.”

Münster nodded.

“You haven’t been in contact with him since your relationship came to an end?”

“No,” she said. “Who killed him? That’s what you’re trying to find out, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” said Münster, “that’s exactly it. Have you any idea?”

She shook her head.

“Not the slightest,” she said, stubbing out her cigarette. “Will that be all, Inspector? I have a business to attend to.”

“Yes, I think that’s all,” said Münster, handing her his card. “Give me a call if you remember anything that could be of significance.”

“What might that be?” she asked.

I’ve no idea, thought Münster as he dragged himself up off the sofa.

It had started raining by the time he emerged into the square. A thin and warm early summer drizzle that felt like a cleansing bath, almost. And a rather pleasant contrast to Leonore di Goacchi. He stood for a moment and let the gentle drops rinse his face, before unlocking the car and clambering in.

A two-hour drive back.

Not an especially productive afternoon, it had to be admitted. But that was how things usually went. In every single case, more or less. Questions, questions and more questions. A never-ending procession of conversations and interviews and interrogations, every one of them at first glance just as pointless and unproductive as the last, until that important detail emerged. Most often when one least expected it. That link, that little unexpected reply…That sudden but faintly glowing sign in the darkness that one couldn’t afford to overlook. It was important not to rush past it in this overgrown thicket of irrelevant and tiresome details.

He yawned and drove out of the square.

But surely what he had just been through couldn’t have contained anything important?

Apart from another little support for the theory that Verhaven was innocent, that is. And we’d come to that conclusion already, in any case. Or had we?

He concentrated on the future instead.

Two days ahead, to be precise. That was when Van Veeteren would be released from hospital, if the predictions were to be believed; and even if Münster and Rooth had hoped to clear up this case on their own, by this stage they had waved good-bye to any such aspirations. More or less, at least.

We might as well let time take its course and leave it to the chief inspector to take the case by the scruff of the neck, Münster thought. From Friday onward, that is. It was hard to predict precisely what that would involve, although there had been a few hints. Certain observations he hadn’t been able to avoid making during that last visit.

Only little things, it was true, but clear nevertheless. Also, a sort of glow in the darkness, come to think of it…The silly and annoying air of mystery Van Veeteren always adopted, for instance. The irritation and touchiness. The humming and hawing and muttering.

The usual signals, in fact.

Only faint indications, but clearly audible and visible to anybody who’d been associated with him for a while.

The chief inspector was at the incubation stage, as Reinhart had put it on one occasion, quite independently of Verhaven and his chicken shed and all that.

Perhaps they should place him under a light? Münster couldn’t help smiling to himself as he drove.

To speed things up. Wasn’t that what Verhaven had done with his hens, after all?

Or was it simply that being cooped up in the ward was driving him round the bend? Münster wondered. In any case, the staff at the hospital deserved a medal—for putting up with him. For not having thrown him out or dumped him in the dirty-linen basket. He must remember to give them a bunch of flowers when he collected Van Veeteren on Friday. No harm in improving the image of the forces of law and order…

But then he abandoned all thought about work. Thought about Synn and the evening off that lay in store. That was a much more pleasant topic.

A visit to the theater and a candlelit dinner at Le Canaille. Grandma and Grandad doing the babysitting. Their little flat in the town center afterward. Oh, life had its golden moments now and again.