The Stranglers Honeymoon

14

Ewa Moreno took an early flight and was in Chadow by eight o’clock.

The town was shrouded in smoke from the factory chimneys, sea mist and the grey light of dawn which seemed to be reflecting her own inner landscape. November, Monday morning and blocked sinuses. She had a quick breakfast in the lugubrious cafeteria in the airport terminal, as no food had been served on the flight, and took a taxi to Pelikaanallé, where Barbara Traut lived.

Three children had just been sent off to various schools, and fru Traut asked Moreno if she could have a shower before they started their conversation — she had hardly slept a wink during the night, she explained, and after all, they had the whole morning at their disposal.

Moreno abandoned all hope of catching the eleven o’clock flight back home, and assured fru Traut that there was no hurry. She sat down at the half-cleared breakfast table with yet another cup of tea and the local morning paper, which was called the Kurijr. She glanced absent-mindedly through its pages, and wondered — as she had done on the plane — about points of contact between Barbara Traut and herself.

Or point of contact, rather: on the basis of what little she had seen of fru Traut, she hoped there was only one.

Having lost a sister.

On her own part Inspector Moreno had not actually lost a sister — not in the horrendous way that her hostess had, at least. But it was over three years since she had heard from Maud, and there were certainly reasons to assume that she was unlikely to appear again in Moreno’s life. Good reasons.

No, not good ones. Awful reasons. Rootlessness. Drugs. A constant shortage of money and consequential prostitution — plus some sort of warped and inadequate relationship with her family that presumably was at the bottom of it all, and that Moreno preferred not to think about: all those desperate factors that seemed somehow to be legion among her generation, and dragged Maud relentlessly down into the cold, man-eating swamp that seemed to claim so many victims in the late twentieth century. That was simply the way it was. Perhaps she was clinging to a sort of life in one of those big cities where there was still a need for broken people with no safety net who could be ruthlessly exploited. In the social machinery that nobody was servicing any more, or bothered to oil.

As she had seen it described somewhere.

Or perhaps she’s dead, Moreno thought. Vanished in the anonymous and unidentified way that people, young people, are simply wiped off the ethnographical map of the new Europe. Victims, victims of the post-modern age.

Without leaving any trace behind.

Lives as substantial as footprints in water.

Yes, Maud has no doubt vanished for ever, she decided with the same cold bitterness as always. Dead, or enduring a living death. There was nothing Moreno could do about it: a continuation of the amusing and happy thirteen-year-old that had been her little sister when she flew the nest was simply non-existent. Moreno had realized that several years ago: the fact that she thought about it now was simply due to the parallel she had now come across. What happened to be on today’s agenda. Barbara Traut and Martina Kammerle.

And echoed by the dull greyness of the November day. She recalled something Van Veeteren had said a few years ago. We must unfortunately be aware, he had maintained, that for many people, life ends before they die.

All she could do was to bow down once again before the Chief Inspector’s superior wisdom. And it seemed there was plenty to suggest that Barbara Traut’s sister belonged to this category. To those who hadn’t had much of a life before she lost it and passed over into the next one.

Assuming of course that the scant amount of information that had so far emerged turned out to be true.

But why anybody should help her along the way in such a hideous fashion was another question. Murder her. Why would anybody have wanted to get rid of Martina Kammerle?

And what had happened to her daughter?

Good questions, thought Inspector Moreno as she sipped her cup of tea. Hopelessly good.

And of course the reason why she was hanging around in the Trauts’ over-decorated kitchen, waiting for the shower to come to an end, was to receive an answer to those questions.

‘Martina and I never really got on,’ said Barbara Traut, blowing her nose. ‘I ought to make that clear from the start, even if it sounds awful at a time like this.’

She was a morose woman who seemed to exude a sort of self-justified dissatisfaction, both in her facial expression and in her voice. As if the world had failed to fulfil her expectations of it. Her shower had taken a long time, and Moreno gathered that making herself up had no doubt been a laborious process. She seemed to be about forty-five. Pale and somewhat colourless, but with hair of many colours that seemed to need non-stop care. She put on water for more tea and coffee, produced some biscuits and muffins and a third of a rillen cake from the pantry, breathing hard and chainsmoking all the while.

‘We’ve gathered that things were not all they might have been,’ said Moreno. ‘But it’s important that we get a good idea of her life and general circumstances to begin with, and you are the obvious person to turn to. We haven’t yet found anybody in Maardam who knew her well.’

‘No,’ said fru Traut, blinking away the tears that threatened to well up into her eyes. ‘She led a pretty solitary life.’

‘But she used to be married, I gather?’

‘To Klaus, yes. He was a big support for her, no doubt about that; but he died. Since then — that was 1996 — things haven’t been easy for her. I assume and hope you’ve found Monica?’

Moreno shook her head.

‘I’m afraid not. Have you any idea where she might be?’

‘Me? No, I haven’t a clue. We didn’t socialize, I haven’t seen the girl since Klaus’s funeral. She was twelve then. A really nice girl, poor thing.’

‘Klaus Kammerle died in a car accident, is that right?’

‘Yes. Drove off the road and into a tree. Somewhere between Oostwerdingen and Ulming — there wasn’t much left of him. . They say he fell asleep at the wheel.’

‘They say?’ said Moreno. ‘Do you mean you are not convinced?’

‘No, no, of course not,’ said fru Traut. ‘Certainly not. It was at night, and he was on his way home from some course or other. No doubt he just dozed off.’

Moreno took another sip of tea, and changed tack.

‘Let’s concentrate on your sister,’ she said. ‘How was she? Was she in difficulty?’

Fru Traut inhaled deeply and coughed.

‘Difficulty? You can say that again. She swung this way and that like a weathercock — that was her problem, and it started while she was still at school. . She was always in a mess. Manic depressive — do you understand what that means?’

Moreno nodded and made a note.

‘Before she met Klaus she was taken into care several times. There are medicines to treat the condition, but she never took them as she should. Refused to take any tablets when she was feeling good, and of course, she suffered as a result. When she was on a high she would start up one daft project after another, and behaved in such a way that nobody could put up with her. Then she would fall to pieces, get into a state of anxiety, and she tried to commit suicide. It was like that all the time. She cut her wrists several times as well, but that was mainly cries for help and they managed to save her.’

‘But things got better when she met Klaus, is that right?’

‘Yes. At least there was always somebody close to her who could ride her punches and make sure that she kept going. I don’t know, but I suspect that she got pregnant the very first time they met. In any case, she told me about both things at the same time — that she was pregnant and they were going to get married. That was 1984. I think she’d had a few abortions before then, incidentally. Or one at least. .’

‘But you didn’t start socializing with them then? When they were going to start a family?’

Fru Traut paused and stirred another lump of sugar into her coffee.

‘They came here once,’ she said. ‘Stayed for an hour and a half and had lunch. Monica was three or four. But that’s all, I’m afraid. She wasn’t easy to be together with, my sister. Klaus didn’t always have an easy time either.’

‘What was he like?’

‘Calm. As safe as a parking place, as far as I could tell. Maybe things would have turned out all right, if only he’d been able to keep going. .’

Her voice started to tremble, and she blew her nose again.

‘What a bloody mess,’ she said. ‘I can’t get it into my head that somebody would have wanted to murder her. What kind of a lunatic could have done such a thing? Do you have any idea?’

‘Not yet,’ said Moreno. ‘The body’s been lying there in the flat for quite a long time — that makes things more complicated.’

‘Didn’t anybody go and ask about her?” asked fru Traut with a sob — she had been crying silently now for a while. ‘Wasn’t there anybody who wondered where she’d been all that time?’

‘We don’t know,’ said Moreno.

‘But what about Monica? Where is she? Are you suggesting that she’s also dead and that nobody’s bothering about her either?’

Moreno suddenly felt how the bitterness of this large woman was beginning to infect her as well.

Was that really possible? she thought. That a mother and her daughter could vanish, without anybody asking about their disappearance for a whole month? Surrounded by lots of people in the centre of a town?

And this was supposed to be civilization?

She looked down at her notebook and tried to concentrate.

‘Do you know anything at all about her circle of friends?’ she asked. ‘Any names of people she used to mix with?’

‘No. I know nothing at all about things like that.’

‘But you used to phone her occasionally. Isn’t that right?’

‘Yes, of course. I used to ring her at least once every month. To find out how she was and so on. But I hardly ever found out anything at all. And she never phoned me. Never — can you believe that? Since Klaus died I haven’t received a single telephone call from my little sister.’

‘I understand,’ said Moreno. ‘But have you any idea whether she had any friends at all? I mean, you did speak to her now and again.’

Fru Traut frowned even more intensely, and thought for a moment.

‘I don’t think she had any friends,’ she said. ‘No, she was a pretty lonely person. In the old days she often used to bring new people into her life when she was in a manic phase, but I think she stopped that. . I gather that’s a normal development.’

‘Did you use to speak to her daughter as well?’

‘Never. If she was the one who answered the phone, she always used to hand over to her mother the moment she realized it was me. If Martina wasn’t at home, she would say so and put down the receiver without more ado. It would be a lie to pretend that I felt appreciated, let’s face it.’

‘And if your sister had met a new man, that’s not something she would have told you about?’

‘It would never have occurred to her to do so.’

‘This autumn, for instance?’

‘No. Not a word. I haven’t heard her mention a man since Klaus died. But no doubt she had a few. One of them even answered.’

‘You mean he answered the phone when you rang?’

‘Yes.’

‘When was that?’

Fru Traut shrugged.

‘I don’t remember. Last summer, I suppose.’

‘Just that one occasion?’

‘Yes.’

‘And he didn’t mention his name?’

‘No.’

Moreno turned over a page in her notebook. Fru Traut lit another cigarette.

‘So your sister didn’t have a steady job, is that right?’

‘I think she was on sick leave. Long-term or half-time or something along those lines. No, she hasn’t really been able to cope with a job since Klaus left the scene.’

‘But she used to work before that, did she?’

‘On and off. Mostly off. She was a hotel receptionist for a while. Then a cleaner at a hospital. . I think she worked in an office for a while as well. She didn’t have any educational qualifications — she didn’t even finish her GCEs. She just couldn’t cope with anything formal.’

‘Do you know if she had a doctor. . A therapist or a psychologist who used to see her regularly?’

‘I’ve no idea,’ said fru Traut, scratching her lower arm where she had some kind of rash. ‘I wouldn’t have thought so. Martina had trouble in coping with anything that required regular attendance. She always used to think that people were letting her down although in fact it was the other way round.’

‘I think I understand,’ said Moreno. ‘I’m sorry to keep harping on, but can you really not recall any name at all when it comes to your sister’s circle of friends? There must surely be somebody. If you think really hard?’

Fru Traut took the challenge ad notam and sat there quietly for half a minute.

‘No,’ she said eventually. ‘I’ll be damned if I can think of a single person at all.’

Just over an hour after Inspector Moreno left the Traut mansion in Chadow, she was very nearly run over.

A pale sun had begun to force its way through the thick cloud, the mists had lifted, and she decided to walk to the little airport. It was several kilometres away from the town, but she had a good two hours to fill.

The last of those kilometres was along a very busy road with only a narrow shoulder for cyclists and pedestrians, and it was there it happened. A motorcyclist suddenly cut in directly in front of a large long-distance lorry, and Moreno had to jump into the ditch and escaped being hit by a whisker.

The only tangible outcome of the incident was that she got her feet wet, but she also received a sharp reminder of the inherent fragility of life, and when she turned into the road leading to the little airport, thankfully much safer for pedestrians, she suddenly found herself longing for Mikael Bau.

A strong and powerful longing for him to wrap his arms around her and give her a big hug, and she promised herself to contact him the moment she got home that evening.

The feeling of being weak and vulnerable had of course to do with both her sinuses and the conversation with Barbara Traut, she was aware of that.

And with the murdered Martina Kammerle, whose life and death somehow seemed remarkably petty. She couldn’t shake off that impression — it was as if the poor woman’s brutal end had merely been a grotesquely exaggerated exclamation mark after a totally pointless and insignificant existence.

When Moreno was at secondary school — and hence was roughly the same age as the murdered woman’s missing daughter — she used to have two maxims printed on a piece of paper pinned over her bed:

It’s up to you to give significance to your life.

It’s better to regret what you have done,

than what you never did.

She knew that the second saying was a quotation from Nietzsche; she wasn’t sure where the first one came from, but that didn’t matter. Just now, as she walked through the almost white sunshine on her way to Chadow’s little airport, she felt that the words were of immense topical significance.

So topical, in fact, that she didn’t dare to wait until evening before telephoning Mikael Bau. She did so as soon as she entered the terminal building instead.

Needless to say he wasn’t at home, but she left a message on his answering machine: that she was longing to be with him, and that he should prepare something tasty as she intended to call round at his place for dinner that evening.

At about nine o’clock or thereabouts.

When she had switched off her mobile, she felt a little bit alive at last.