The Stranglers Honeymoon

17

A picture of the murdered Martina Kammerle appeared in the three most important Maardam newspapers on Tuesday — the Telegraaf, the Allgemejne and the Neuwe Blatt — and by four o’clock, in response to the police’s appeal for tips and assistance, three people had telephoned the switchboard and been passed on to Chief Inspector Reinhart in person.

The first was a social worker by the name of Elena Piirinen. She reported that on and off — mostly off — she had been in contact with Martina Kammerle until about a year ago, when she changed jobs and was given more administrative work. The assistance she had given Martina Kammerle had mainly been in connection with financial matters: Piirinen had helped her to apply for various grants, and also — once or twice — arranged for her to receive regular social care. But she was adamant that she had not had much of an insight into her client’s private life. However, it was horrendous that she had been murdered.

Reinhart agreed, and wondered if she had any more concrete tips to give him.

No, she hadn’t, she assured him. She had decided to get in touch because she thought it her duty as a responsible citizen to do so, nothing else. Reinhart thanked her for her laudable public spirit, and said he might be in touch again if developments in the investigation suggested that it might be helpful to do so.

Number two was a certain fru Dorffkluster, who had lived next door to the Kammerles in Palitzerlaan in Deijkstraa for five years, but unfortunately had even less information to impart than Elena Piirinen. Fru Dorffkluster was eighty-seven years old, and recalled clearly that there were two small, badly brought-up boys in the neighbouring family, and that Martina Kammerle herself had been a very successful television presenter who liked to play golf and ride thoroughbred Arabian horses in her spare time. She presented one of those question-and-answer programmes that everybody watched, and that changed its name more often than a cat scratched itself. . Or a pig. Some sort of quiz. .

Reinhart also thanked this public-spirited citizen, and thought briefly about his own mother who had passed away at this lady’s age, eighty-seven. That was six years ago, and he recalled that whenever he visited her in hospital during her final months she always thought he was her father rather than her son. Which certainly made their conversations somewhat bizarre — but not without interest even so.

Perhaps that is what ought to happen in one’s twilight years, he thought. A right to populate one’s environment with the people one wanted to be surrounded by, and talk to. So that everything can be cleared up before it is time to pass over to the other side. After all, it was often one’s environment that caused the most distress when one’s memory started dancing around, Reinhart thought as he lit his pipe. Yes indeed. Of course Mum was as mad as a hatter, but she was in no pain.

The third person who phoned in that day with information about Martina Kammerle was also a woman. Her name was Irene Vargas, she was in her forties, if he was able to judge her voice correctly, and he realized immediately that she had information to impart that justified a face-to-face interview rather than a one-dimensional telephone conversation. As he had seventeen irons in the fire at the time, he contacted Münster and arranged a meeting between him and fröken Vargas in the intendent’s office an hour later. Irene Vargas lived in Gerckstraat, a ten-minute walk from the police station, but needed to sort out a few errands first.

Nothing could be simpler.

‘Please sit down,’ said Münster, gesturing towards the visitor’s chair.

Irene Vargas thanked him, and sat down. Looked around the room a little anxiously, as if wanting to make sure she wasn’t locked in. Münster had the overall impression that she radiated an aura of anxiety. She was a thin woman of about his own age, with pale skin, pale hair and pale clothes. He guessed that she was afflicted by some chronic illness — fibromyalgia or a mild form of rheumatism, perhaps — but it could just be because he had read an article about hidden suffering in one of Synn’s magazines the other evening.

In any case, she had not come to talk to him as a patient.

‘You phoned us,’ he began. ‘Chief Inspector Reinhart, who you spoke to, is unfortunately busy and out of his office, but no doubt we can get by without him. My name’s Münster.’

Vargas met his gaze, and nodded somewhat hesitantly.

‘Would you like something to drink? I can arrange for tea or coffee, or-’

‘No thank you, that’s not necessary.’

Münster cleared his throat.

‘Well, if I understand it rightly, you have some information about Martina Kammerle, who was found dead in her home the other day.’

‘Yes,’ said Vargas. ‘I knew her slightly.’

‘We’d be grateful for anything you can tell us,’ said Münster. ‘We’ve found it hard to find anybody who knew her.’

‘Martina was quite a solitary person.’

‘We have gathered that.’

‘She didn’t know many people. She didn’t really know me either, come to that. We met at the hospital three or four years ago. We attended the same little therapy group, but we haven’t seen much of each other since then. . We’re not exactly friends, as they say.’

‘But you did meet occasionally?’

‘Never by arrangement. But we sometimes bumped into each other in town. I’ve never been to her flat, but she did come to my place for tea, three years ago.’

‘Did you talk on the phone?’

‘Very rarely nowadays. More frequently when we first got to know each other — we used to chat a few times a month then.’

‘When did you last speak to her?’

‘In August. That’s why I phoned you. The rest might not be very important — nor this either, perhaps, but. .’

‘In what circumstances did you meet Martina Kammerle in August?’

Vargas swallowed, and stroked a few strands of her sparse hair behind her ears.

‘It was in town. We just bumped into each other, and I mean that literally. It was one evening in the middle of August, the fifteenth or sixteenth I’d guess. I was on the way to the Rialto cinema with a woman friend of mine, and we were a bit late. We hurried round a corner in Rejmer Plejn, and I literally bumped into Martina, who was coming from the other direction.’

Münster nodded encouragingly.

‘Go on,’ he said.

Vargas shrugged.

‘Well, there’s not much more to say, but the policeman I spoke to on the phone evidently thought it was important. .’

‘It certainly is,’ said Münster. ‘Then what happened? Did you stop and talk for a while?’

‘Not really,’ said Vargas with a somewhat guilty smile, as if she now felt she ought to have done. ‘There were only a few minutes to go before the film started, and. . Well, to be honest, I didn’t really want to talk to her. Martina seemed to be a bit high, I could see that, and she could go on a bit. .’

‘High?’ said Münster.

‘I mean manic, of course. Nothing to do with drugs or anything like that. . I assume you know she was a manic depressive?’

‘Yes,’ said Münster. ‘We are aware of that. So you were with a friend. What about Martina? Was she alone, or was she also with a friend?’

‘She was with a man,’ said Vargas.

The way she pronounced the word ‘man’ made Münster suspect that this was a fact she had struggled for some time to come to terms with. Probably without success.

‘A man?’ he said. ‘Did you recognize him?’

‘No.’

‘But you spoke briefly to them?’

‘Not to him. We just spoke about bumping into each other, Martina and I. Laughed a bit and agreed that it was funny. And after ten or fifteen seconds, we continued on our way to the cinema, my friend and I. I’m sorry if you had the impression I had something more important to tell you. I tried to explain that to the chief inspector, but he-’

‘Don’t worry about that,’ said Münster encouragingly. ‘You can never tell what is significant and what isn’t as early as this in an investigation. But let’s concentrate on this man. . Did you have the impression that. . that they were a couple, as it were? Monica Kammerle and him?’

‘I think so,’ said Vargas after a second’s hesitation. ‘But that’s only the impression I got. He might just have been somebody she knew.’

‘And she didn’t introduce him?’

‘No.’

‘You don’t happen to know if she was having an affair at this time?’

Vargas shrugged again.

‘I have no idea. I hadn’t spoken to her for nearly six months.’

‘Do you know anything about other men in her life? After that tragic accident involving her husband, that is.’

‘No. Although she did mention once that she’d been with somebody, but we never discussed it. I don’t think she had any steady relationships.’

‘But occasional ones?’

‘Now and then, yes, that’s possible. I do know she picked up a bloke for a one-night stand once. We were at a restaurant together, and she pulled him. It was rather painful, in fact.’

‘When was that?’

‘Maybe three years ago. . Yes, it was while we were still attending that group.’

‘I see,’ said Münster. ‘Let’s go back to that collision in August — you weren’t introduced to the man?’

‘No,’ said Vargas. ‘As I said, my friend and I rushed off to the cinema.’

‘And you’d never seen him before?’

‘No.’

‘What did he look like?’

She thought for a moment.

‘I don’t really remember,’ she said. ‘Quite tall, quite powerfully built, I seem to recall. But pretty ordinary at the same time. There was nothing especially remarkable about him, in any case. No, I can’t really describe him.’

‘Try,’ Münster urged her.

‘Darkish — well, fairly dark. Between forty and fifty, maybe. .’

‘Beard? Glasses?’

‘No. Er, yes, maybe a little beard. .’

‘Would you recognize him if you saw him again?’

Vargas sucked in her lips, and said nothing for a while.

‘I suppose I might do,’ she said. ‘But I doubt it. . He looked pretty much like everybody else.’

‘And you’d never met him before?’

‘I don’t think so, no.’

‘Were they holding on to each other? Arm-in-arm or anything like that?’

‘I don’t remember. . No, I don’t think so.’

‘And Martina Kammerle said nothing at all about him?’

‘No, I’m sure she didn’t.’

‘Have you spoken to any of your friends about this?’

‘No. My best friend’s in Australia at the moment. She won’t be back until March. She’s an artist.’

‘I understand,’ said Münster again, wondering at the same time what there was to understand.

He leaned back on his desk chair and switched off the tape recorder he’d switched on when Vargas entered the room.

‘Okay,’ he said. ‘I think we’ll leave it at that for the time being. Many thanks for coming to help us along the way, fröken Vargas. If you remember anything else, don’t hesitate to contact us again. It’s possible we might be in touch with you again.’

‘Thank you,’ said Irene Vargas. ‘Sorry I had so little to offer.’

Yes, thought Münster after she had gone. It really wasn’t much at all.

Martina Kammerle had been out walking with a man in Maardam in the middle of August.

That was all. And to make matters worse, that was more or less the sum total of what they had discovered about the case in general so far.

Intendent Münster sighed. He got up and walked over to the window. Stood there, as he usually did when an investigation seemed to be stuck in the mud. Perhaps he was trying to create a sort of illusion of having an overview by gazing out over the town: that was a thought that had occurred to him before. In any case, it looked pretty grey out there. It was only half past three, but darkness was already on the way in. Rain was in the air, he noticed — but was doubtless waiting for the right moment to bucket down, when people were going home from work. That was what usually happened.

Reinhart nodded grimly.

‘So they admit that they’ve been behaving like donkeys, do they?’ he said. ‘That’s something to be grateful for, I suppose.’

‘They don’t put it quite like that,’ said Krause. ‘But basically, that’s what they are saying. It’ll be the welfare officer who’s made the scapegoat — she was the one who arranged the school transfer. But you have to wonder. .’

He hesitated and leafed through his notebook.

‘What?’ said Rooth. ‘What do you have to wonder?’

Krause tried to glare at him, but seemed to realize that he was too young to glare.

‘Whether it was pure chance that she disappeared when she did,’ he said instead. ‘Or if they are connected, as it were. . That Monica Kammerle vanished because she was changing schools. Of course it must have to do with what happened to her mother, but why did Monica leave Bunge Grammar School at exactly the same time?’

Nobody had any immediate comment to make about that. The question was presumably something nobody had thought about before — or at least, it was for Moreno. As she thought it over, she allowed her eyes to wander around the room and noted that all her colleagues who had been on the case were still there: Reinhart, Münster, Jung, Rooth, Krause and herself. The meeting was taking place in Reinhart’s office, and they had just been hearing the reports on their sallies into the world of education. Her own and Krause’s.

‘Coincidence,’ decided Reinhart, clasping his hands behind the back of his head. ‘Even if I’m sceptical about the concept, I think we are dealing with two things which just happened to take place at the same time — but for Christ’s sake correct me if I’m wrong. It’s pretty bad luck for that welfare officer as well, let’s not forget that. In normal circumstances they would surely have discovered that the girl was missing rather earlier?’

‘Yes,’ said Krause. ‘No doubt they would. I agree with the chief inspector, by the way. And I don’t think she made the most of the opportunity to vanish purely because it presented itself. She doesn’t seem to be that type. But of course, I’m only guessing.’

‘The worst thing is that we still don’t have a clue what’s happened to her,’ said Münster. ‘Where the hell is the girl?’

‘You mean you believe she’s still alive?’ said Moreno in surprise.

‘Not believe,’ he said. ‘Hope.’

Reinhart dug a document out of the pile of papers on his desk.

‘Let me just inform you about this,’ he said, ‘before we hear what Rooth and Jung have to say. We’re busy sifting through old cases that are a bit like the one we’re wrestling with just now. I’ve had some help from Intendent Klemmerer from Missing Persons — both solved and unsolved cases. Out-and-out stranglers aren’t all that common, after all. We’ve only had fifteen of them in the whole country during the last ten years — I thought that was a sufficient time span. Twelve are solved, three as yet unsolved, and I’ve just received a hundred-and-twenty pages of data about all those cases from Klemmerer. I’ll try to glance through them before tomorrow. A fundamental thought is that we can’t be sure that Martina Kammerle is the murderer’s first victim — she could be number two or number five or number any-bloody-thing. Please make any comments you might have now, by all means: but we shall be coming back to this topic tomorrow when I’ve done a bit of weeding out.’

‘Did you say twelve-three?’ asked Rooth.

‘Yes,’ said Reinhart. ‘It’s possible that several of those cases are nothing like ours, so those numbers are likely to shrink a bit. This is a shot in the dark, of course, but when we have so few damned facts to go on, it seems well worth a try. Don’t you think?’

‘No doubt about that,’ said Rooth. ‘The solved cases must be quite easy to check on, in any case. It’s just a matter of hauling in the stranglers and squeezing an alibi out of them.’

‘It might not be all that easy,’ said Jung. ‘We don’t know exactly when she died.’

‘That’s true,’ said Reinhart. ‘But if they’ve been found guilty of murder we can cross our fingers and hope they are still under lock and key. But in any case, Rooth’s probably right: the unsolved cases are the most interesting ones. But as I said, we shall go into that tomorrow. Tell us what you’ve been doing all day in Moerckstraat instead!’

‘With pleasure,’ said Rooth, opening his briefcase. ‘Let’s see. Comrade Jung and yours truly have been sweating away and going through the flat where the murder took place with a fine-tooth comb, searching for names. As you can imagine that involved both patience and cunning — but to cut a long story short, here are the results!’

He produced a bundle of photocopies, and handed them round.

‘Forty-six names, all of them originally handwritten by either mother or daughter Kammerle. We’ve listed them in alphabetical order. The letters in brackets after individual names indicate where they were found. K equals kitchen. M means mother’s bedroom — or the murder room, if you prefer that. D is the daughter’s room, and L the living room. We’ve edited out several names from inside schoolbooks or of public figures such as Winston Churchill, Socrates and Whitney Houston. Maybe I should mention that more than half the names come from a little address book in the victim’s bedside table. So, any questions?’

‘This verges on the impressive,’ said Moreno, looking at the sheet of paper she had just been handed. ‘If we’re lucky, the murderer’s name will be one of these. But of course, we have no idea which.’

‘Exactly,’ said Rooth. ‘One out of forty-six. We’ve had worse odds than that, I suspect.’

‘We certainly have,’ said Reinhart. ‘Anyway, take the lists home and work your way through them. Obviously we shall have to investigate every single name in due course, but we’re not going to start this evening. Is there anything else we need to discuss before we draw the curtains?’

‘Just one thing, perhaps,’ said Jung. ‘Shouldn’t we put the girl’s picture in the newspapers as well? And on the telly? Surely there’s no need to keep quiet about her disappearance any more.’

‘That’s already been taken care of,’ said Reinhart. ‘She’ll be in tomorrow’s papers — and maybe even on the late news this evening.’

‘I have the feeling we’ll have this bastard cornered any time now,’ said Rooth. ‘Today we’ve been as efficient as an earthquake.’

‘Does anybody else have an intelligent thought?’ asked Reinhart, looking round the room. ‘If not, you’re welcome to clear off. We’ll meet under a cold star tomorrow morning — and never fear, we’ll solve this case sooner or later.’

Later, Münster thought. I’ll put money on that.