The Stranglers Honeymoon

34

Five minutes before Inspector Rooth was due to meet Karen deBuijk, he was seized by acute depression.

He had just entered the square Grote Torg from Zwillesteeg, and very nearly fallen into the arms of Jasmina Teuwers. He would have had nothing against that — in different circumstances. They had both attended Italian classes, and also met as a couple three times in November and December — at a cafe, a cinema and a restaurant, in that order, and although those meetings could best be described as very slow progress, there had nevertheless been some progress made.

Or at least, Rooth thought that was the case.

Until this grey, damp, windswept January morning when their eyes had met and he felt as if his heart had just burst.

Jasmina Teuwers had not been alone. Anything but. She was very obviously in close contact with a superficially handsome type in a light-brown ulster and with a ponytail. His arm was wrapped around her shoulders, they were gazing into each other’s eyes, and laughing at some shared joke.

Until she became aware of Rooth for just a fraction of a second.

A podgy lady with a dachshund blundered her way in between him and the loving couple, and they didn’t even need to pretend they hadn’t seen one another. Rooth and Teuwers, that is. They continued on their way as if nothing had happened. Tra la perduta gente.

A ponytail! Rooth thought when the analytical side of his brain started working again some five seconds later. Bloody hell!

Frailty, thy name is woman!

He staggered on across the square as far as Olde Maarweg. Karen deBuijk lived in one of the old warehouses that had been converted into flats from the mid-1990s onwards — way beyond the means of a mere detective inspector, for instance. DeBuijk’s flat comprised just one large room, but it was at least fifty square metres, and the exposed wooden beams in the ceiling were ideal if one had any intention of hanging oneself.

Thought Rooth as he sat down together with his depression in a basket chair under a roof window. The sky was grey, he noted. He cleared his throat and took a notebook and pencil out of his briefcase as if in a dream.

I’ve done this ten thousand times before, he thought. I wonder how many bloody notebooks I’ve filled and how many bloody pencils I’ve worn out?

How many pointless questions I’ve churned out, and how many daft answers I’ve written down?

Karen deBuijk had left him alone for a moment, but now came back in carrying a ridiculously small tray with two ugly coffee cups. And a dish of what looked like dog biscuits. She sat down in the other basket chair, crossed her legs and smiled faintly and somewhat insecurely at him. He registered that she was pretty. Suntanned and blonde-haired.

The devil’s illusion, he thought. From today onwards I shall never ever look at a woman again.

‘Well?’ she said, and he realized that it was time to get started.

‘I’m not feeling too good,’ he said.

That wasn’t what he had intended saying, but he could hear for himself that those were the words he produced.

‘I can see that,’ said deBuijk. ‘Have a drink of coffee.’

‘Really?’ said Rooth. ‘Can you really see that?’

‘Yes. . But I thought you’d come to talk about Ester Peerenkaas rather than the state of your soul.’

‘I don’t have a soul,’ said Rooth.

‘If you can feel lousy, that must mean you have a soul. That’s where the pain comes.’

Rooth thought that one over. It sounded plausible.

‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Just a drop. But what the hell, Ester Peerenkaas it is. What do you think?’

‘What do I think?’

‘Yes.’

‘About what?’

‘About all kinds of things. About what’s happened, for instance. About that man she had begun meeting. You spent a couple of weeks with her on one of the Canary Islands recently: my experience tells me that in those circumstances women tend to talk to each other. But correct me if I’m wrong — I don’t understand women.’

She laughed, but put her hand over her mouth — as if laughing was wrong in the circumstances. A friend who had gone missing and a depressed police officer.

‘Please forgive me. But you’re funny. It’s true, of course.’

‘What’s true? That I’m wrong?’

‘No, that we talked quite a lot while we were on holiday.’

‘What about?’

‘About everything under the sun, of course.’

‘What, for instance?’

She paused, and took a bite of a dog biscuit.

‘That little spot of danger, for instance.’

‘That little spot of danger?’ said Rooth.

‘Yes.’

‘Go on.’

‘That little spot of danger,’ said deBuijk again, sucking in her lower lip like a little schoolgirl, and looking too enchanting for words. . ‘What it is that makes one interested in a man, but which is also. . well, dangerous. Exciting.’

‘You don’t say,’ said Rooth, starting to draw a matchstick man with horns in his notebook. ‘What exactly do you mean?’

‘That’s the way it is with men,’ said deBuijk, and it struck him that she had effortlessly struck a chord of intimacy that he didn’t feel he had earned, and that some idiotic impulse told him to destroy.

‘Really?’ he said in a neutral tone.

‘That man, Brugger. She talked a bit about him. Only a bit, mind you. She said she felt ambivalent about him.’

‘Ambivalent?’ said Rooth, drawing a vertical line right through the middle of his matchstick man’s head.

‘Yes. She said she felt attracted to him, but at the same time there was something that made her feel unsure. I suppose she didn’t quite know what to make of him.’

‘Perhaps that little spot of danger wasn’t all that little?’ Rooth suggested.

‘Yes, maybe. . Ugh.’

‘Did she say anything about what he looked like?’

‘No, only that he was rather attractive. I think she said his hair was dark.’

‘And she’d only met him once?’

‘Yes.’

‘When was that?’

‘At Keefer’s in December.’

‘What was he wearing?’

‘She didn’t say.’

‘Job?’

‘I think he had a business.’

‘What sort of business?’

‘I don’t know. But he was self-employed. I don’t really know what he did. We didn’t talk all that much about him. It was mainly on the plane home — she was going to meet him a few days later. . Are you really sure that he has something to do with her disappearance?’

Rooth took a dog biscuit.

‘Pretty sure,’ he said. ‘Various things point in that direction.’

‘What sort of things?’

She hasn’t read Musil either, Rooth thought. We have something in common, at least.

‘I can’t go into that, I’m afraid,’ he said. ‘What else did she have to say about Brugger?’

‘Not a lot, in fact. She talked about their advert — hers and Anna Kristeva’s. I didn’t know they went in for that kind of thing. . Anyway, we talked more about that than about Brugger.’

Rooth munched away at the biscuit, and thought hard.

‘Why did she feel ambivalent about him?’ he asked. ‘Surely she must have said something more about that?’

DeBuijk also thought hard.

‘No, I don’t think so. Maybe “ambivalent” is a bit over the top. . She claimed that she liked the man when she met him. They sat talking for quite some time at that restaurant, it seems, and then she spoke to him on the phone once or twice, and. . well, she evidently wasn’t sure how interested in him she really was. Whether or not there was a solid basis to build on.’

‘I see,’ said Rooth, examining his matchstick-man who now had both a tail and large breasts. ‘You say they spoke on the phone: do you know if she rang him, or whether it was the other way round?’

‘How on earth would I know that?’

‘I’m only asking in an attempt to discover if she had his telephone number.’

‘Ah,’ said deBuijk. ‘No, I haven’t the slightest idea, as I said before. What. . What do you think has happened? I mean-’

‘It’s too early to have any theories about that,’ said Rooth.

How many times have I churned out that line, he wondered. Or words to that effect. It must be several hundred. He turned over to a new page in his notebook, and sat quietly for a while.

‘She could defend herself,’ said deBuijk out of the blue.

‘Eh?’ said Rooth.

‘Defend herself. Ester could do that.’

‘Against men?’

Jujitsu? he wondered. Karate? Tear gas?

‘A woman can find herself in difficult situations,’ explained deBuijk.

‘You don’t need to tell me that,’ said Rooth. ‘I’ve been a police officer for twenty years. How could she defend herself?’

‘There are all sorts of ways,’ said deBuijk.

‘I know,’ said Rooth.

‘Ester used hydrofluoric acid.’

‘Hydrofluoric acid?’

‘Yes. She always carried a little bottle in her handbag which she could throw into the face of a man if he went too far. . She showed me it.’

Good God, thought Rooth, wondering if it was usual practice. Did lots of women wander around with bottles of hydrofluoric acid in their pretty little handbags? Or some similar brew. Had Jasmina Teuwers been sitting there, fingering a similar little bottle, when they had dinner at Mefisto’s a few days before Christmas?

‘I see,’ he said. ‘It sounds horrendous. . That kind of stuff can produce terrible injuries, can’t it?’

DeBuijk shrugged.

‘I don’t really know. But I suppose that’s the point.’

‘Has she ever used it?’

‘No. . But she’s a tough cookie, our Ester. When it comes to men, that is. Nowadays. I take it you know about how her ex ran off with their daughter?’

‘Yes,’ said Rooth. ‘I know about that.’

There followed a few seconds of silence once again, and deBuijk squirmed uneasily in her chair.

‘Ugh,’ she said. ‘I’m scared stiff something has happened to her. . Something awful. She’s simply not the type to hide herself away like this for such a long time. Do you really have no idea if. .?’

‘No,’ lied Rooth. ‘I’m afraid not. But we’re working all out to get to the bottom of this business.’

She hesitated for a moment, then she looked him in the eye and said:

‘Do you think she’s. . dead?’

Yes, Rooth thought. I think so.

‘No,’ he said. ‘She’s gone missing. That’s not the same thing.’

‘Really?’ said deBuijk.

Huh, what the hell can I say? he thought.

‘There are lots of other possible explanations,’ he said.

Can you give me a single one, Mr Detective Inspector? he asked himself when he emerged into the street again.

Just one single explanation that would imply Ester Peerenkaas was still alive?

What had Reinhart suggested? Sun and champagne in the South Pacific?

That would have to be the only possibility. He couldn’t think of any others, and as he crossed over Grote Torg the image of Jasmina Teuwers and that bloody ponytail cropped up again.

Evening classes in Italian! thought Inspector Rooth as he kicked to one side a fat pigeon that hadn’t enough sense to get out of his way.

Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch’entrate!

He was damned if next week he wouldn’t go there and stick that notice on the classroom door. Abandon hope, all ye who enter here!

Then he would never set foot inside the building again.

‘Can you explain what happened?’ asked Jung, leaning over the counter.

The woman on the other side sighed deeply, as if his question incorporated some sort of attack on the peace and quiet of her working environment.

‘It’s not exactly rocket science,’ she said. ‘You just put them in, and then you take them out — assuming you’ve had a written answer, that is.’

‘Put them in and take them out?’ said Jung. ‘What do you mean by that?’

She shook her head almost imperceptibly, presumably in response to what she perceived to be his mental capacity, and raised her head from the computer.

‘People place an advert and provide a contact address. Punters respond, and after a few days the advertisers come to collect the responses.’

‘I see. So these responses stay here with you for that short period of time?’

‘Yes, of course. I don’t know what the practice is as far as other newspapers are concerned, but here at Allgemejne we’ve been using the same system for twenty-five years. Any responses that haven’t been collected after a month are thrown away.’

‘Do you get a lot of these adverts?’

‘A lot? You can bet your life we do. A few thousand a week, at the very least.’

‘Wow,’ said Jung. ‘So we’re looking for a response that presumably came in towards the end of November last year. I assume it’s impossible to find out any details about it now?’

‘Too right,’ said the woman. ‘It will have been either collected or thrown away. What kind was it, incidentally?’

‘Kind?’

‘Boats or stamps or pets or dating or-’

‘Dating, I’d have thought,’ said Jung.

‘What kind?’ she asked again.

‘The usual. .’ said Jung.

‘Him looking for her, or vice versa?’

‘Vice versa.’

‘Huh,’ said the woman. ‘Those are the most popular ones in fact. About ten a day.’

‘So many?’ said Jung. ‘How many responses do they usually get?’

He realized that the hope of finding any clues about Amos Brugger in this way had long since flown out of the window; but he was beginning to get curious.

‘That depends,’ said the woman. ‘Young women get twenty to thirty per week. Older ones ten to fifteen. But now I really must get on with my work. I assume you’ve had answers to all your questions?’

‘Yes, thank you very much,’ said Jung. ‘I had no idea there were so many people indulging in. . in this kind of activity.’

‘Huh,’ muttered the woman. ‘There’s no end of lonely people around.’

That certainly seems to be the case, thought Jung as he settled down in his car again. Paradoxically enough, that seemed to be the lowest common denominator among people. Loneliness.

Why on earth did I come here at all? he asked himself. Anna Kristeva had said they had thrown away the response from Amos Brugger — as they had done with all the other letters hoping to exploit the favours on offer from her and Ester Peerenkaas. He would never have even dreamt that the newspaper would retain a copy.

Besides, he had been acting on his own initiative. Reinhart hadn’t told him to follow it up — although he might well have given it his blessing.

That morning’s meeting had convinced him that now was the time to act on one’s own initiative. And to chase after straws.

After a while Jung realized he was sitting in his car with his hands on the steering wheel, staring out through the windscreen at the rain. Sitting there and thinking about that Kerran-Brugger character.

He probably doesn’t have a wide circle of friends either, he thought, thinking back to his conversation in the newspaper office. Perhaps he’s the most lonely bastard of them all. Yes, that’s highly likely to be the case.

It was hardly an earth-shattering thought. Murderers were seldom good mixers.

He realized he was feeling cold. Dawn had passed over into dusk. He checked his watch, started the car, and drove off to collect Maureen from work.