The Stranglers Honeymoon

53

Chief Inspector Yakos didn’t look much more cheerful.

‘He’d been asleep in bed with his mistress, that confounded taxi driver,’ he said. ‘That’s why we haven’t heard from him until this morning.’

He leaned forward, supporting himself with his hands on his knees, and breathed heavily. Münster looked around. The view was stunningly beautiful, and it was hard to shake off the feeling of unreality that hovered in the clear morning light. . The feeling that he was in bed, dreaming, or perhaps taking part in some surrealistic film. To make things worse he had slept badly, unlike the taxi driver, all alone in his austere hotel room. It had been three o’clock before he finally dozed off.

Now it was half past ten. They were a few kilometres outside the town. The sun had risen a hand’s breadth over the top of the mountain ridge, casting light onto the lower, barren slopes, and the olive groves down by the coast, and the scattered whitewashed dwellings on the other side of the sound. The bluish silhouettes of little islands faded away in the west towards the horizon, which was as sharp as a drypoint engraving, despite the fact that the sea and the sky were very nearly the same blue colour. Closer to them, a few hundred metres further along the road, were the equally sharply outlined ruins of a building — some sort of mill, Münster guessed — flanked by two olive trees.

And even closer, parked alongside the low, half-eroded stone wall that separated the road from the precipice was a purple scooter, a Honda. Registration number BLK 129.

Münster adjusted his police gun and turned to look over the edge. Straight ahead of them was a ravine — two steep sides forming a deep and rocky V deep down into the hillside with its point a long way below them, some thirty or forty metres at a guess, covered by a mass of prickly bushes and piles of rubbish. Completely inaccessible to everyone and everything.

Nevertheless the steep sides were crawling with people. Young men dressed in black with ropes and pickaxes and lots of other equipment. A helicopter was hovering over them, shattering the silence of the magnificent landscape. Münster turned his head a little more and observed Van Veeteren, standing two metres away from him with an unlit cigarette in his mouth. He also looked as if he had slept badly.

Or perhaps it was just the disappointment and frustration that was engraved in his grim facial expression. Disappointment at not having been able to capture Maarten deFraan alive.

Ever since they had heard from Yakos about the discovery shortly before eight o’clock, the Chief Inspector had been irritable and tetchy. Münster guessed — hoped, perhaps? — that it was the arrogant reference to Pascal that gave him a bad taste in his mouth. Among other things.

For Maarten deFraan was dead. Very dead. The idea of sitting face to face with him and poking around in his murky psychology would never become reality. Neither for Van Veeteren nor for anybody else.

Chief Inspector Yakos wiped the sweat off his glistening head with a towel. He had just clambered back up to the road from the finding-place, and the patches of sweat under his arms were as large as elephant’s ears.

‘Would you like to go down and take a look?’ he asked, looking at Van Veeteren and Münster in turn.

‘I don’t think that’s necessary,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘But I’d be grateful if you could give us a detailed description. I assume photographs will be taken?’

‘Hundreds,’ said Yakos. ‘No, forget about all the climbing. It looks horrific down there. Absolutely horrific.’

He paused, as if he were tasting the word to make sure it was the right one.

‘Two bodies. Or rather, to be precise, one body and a skeleton. Dr Koukonaris says the skeleton could be anything from three to thirty years old: but of course we’ll get a more accurate assessment when all the analyses have been made. In any case, everything seems to indicate that it’s a woman.’

‘It’s his wife,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘Her name is Christa deFraan and she’s been lying there in that ravine since August 1995.’

Chief Inspector Yakos stared briefly at him with circumflex-shaped eyebrows, while blowing out a thin stream of air from between his lips.

‘Really?’ he said. ‘Well, if you say so. Anyway, the other body is of more recent vintage. A man who has been lying there for a day at most. There is no reason to doubt that it is Professor deFraan, who you have been hunting. But he has been badly mauled, so we can’t be certain of that yet. .’

‘Mauled?’ said Van Veeteren. ‘How has he been mauled?’

Yakos inhaled deeply on his cigarette and gazed out over the sea.

‘Do you want details?’

‘Yes please.’

‘Don’t blame me. . But of course you’ll have to take a look at him when we’ve recovered him from the ravine. Horrific, as I said.’

‘We’ve gathered that,’ said Van Veeteren with a trace of irritation in his voice. ‘Please tell us about it now.’

Yakos nodded.

‘In the first place, he’s been shot through the head. Entrance hole through one temple, exit hole through the other one. We haven’t found a gun, but it is a pretty large-calibre weapon — nine millimetres, perhaps. We’re still looking for it, of course.’

‘Of course,’ said Van Veeteren.

‘But that’s not the worst injury,’ said Yakos.

‘No?’

‘Presumably he had injuries from the fall,’ said Münster.

Yakos nodded grimly.

‘Yes, he doesn’t have many unbroken bones, according to the doctor, so it’s obvious he’s fallen from up here. Or been pushed. . But those are not the injuries I’m referring to.’

He inhaled once again, and seemed to hesitate.

‘Go on,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘The intendent and I have fifty years in the branch between us so you don’t need to censor your description.’

‘All right, if you insist. His body is almost naked and full of injuries in addition to those caused by the fall. There are stab wounds and slashes by a knife all over the place, and what seems to be corrosion, especially in his face — or what is left of his face. He is unrecognizable. His eyes have been dug out, and his. . his penis and testicles have been cut off. His hands and feet are tied together with a nylon cord — his hands behind his back. Several of his nails have been pulled out. And in addition he has burns on large parts of his body, especially his chest and stomach — it looks as if somebody has poured petrol over him and set fire to it. Everything suggests that he has been tortured. . down there. .’

He pointed to a narrow ledge a few metres down the precipice. Münster noted a few black patches on stones, and sooty remains of some sort of cloth or clothing.

‘If that happened before or after the bullet went through his brain, well, we don’t know that yet. I have. . I must say that I’ve never seen anything worse than this.’

He fell silent. Münster swallowed and looked up at the helicopter, which was flying away over the mountain ridge with something dangling on a rope underneath its grey-green bodywork. Van Veeteren stood there motionless, gazing down into the ravine with his hands behind his back. Somebody down below shouted something in Greek and was answered by Chief Inspector Yakos.

No, thought Münster. Why climb down there and look at that unless you were forced to? We’ll be faced with it soon enough anyway.

One of the police officers climbed up onto the road carrying a plastic bag containing some dark object Münster was unable to identify. Yakos accepted it and handed it over to Van Veeteren, who looked at it for two seconds before returning it to the young police officer. Yakos gave him a brief instruction in Greek and he clambered into one of the police cars lined up along the side of the road.

‘For Christ’s sake!’ said Van Veeteren.

Yakos nodded.

‘His penis. I told you it was horrific. What sort of a lunatic could have done that? Did you expect to find something like this? What on earth has been going on?’

It was doubtless no more than half a minute before Van Veeteren replied, but it seemed to Münster like an eternity. The shades of blue in the perfect morning that surrounded them on all sides became slightly lighter. A lone cicada started chirruping listlessly, a bird of prey flew in from the coast and more or less took over the space previously occupied by the helicopter. Chief Inspector Yakos threw his half-smoked cigarette down onto the edge of the road and stamped on it.

Münster began rehearsing the whole of this confounded case in his head, very rapidly. Almost against his will. Speedily and rhapsodically the images flashed past in his mind’s eye: the cramped flat in Moerckstraat, the dead priest and his bisexual friend, Monica Kammerle’s mutilated body in the dunes at Behrensee, the conversation with Anna Kristeva and all the others involved in this agonizingly drawn-out tragedy. . The lapel badge in the shoe up in Wallburg, the Succulents and the veiled woman. Ester Peerenkaas. Nemesis. Had she got there in time, or what was one to think?

And the murderer himself. Professor Maarten deFraan. Who had evidently killed his wife almost six years ago at the very spot where they were standing now, and then continued along the same lines. . Another four people had lost their lives, just in order to. . in order to what? Münster thought. What was it that had lain hidden at the back of his insane mind? Was there an explanation at all? Was there any point in looking for one? For the derangement, as Van Veeteren used to call it.

Eventually, perhaps, Münster thought wearily. Just now I don’t understand this case. But I do understand that it is closed.

He realized immediately that his latest assumption was also an over-hasty conclusion, but he didn’t have time to revise it before Van Veeteren cleared his throat and addressed Yakos’s query.

‘What has been going on?. .’ he said slowly. ‘Hmm, God only knows. But if we really want to know, we shall have to wait for the postmortem results, of course. That body has been mutilated. . The question is whether it happened before or after the bullet went through his brain. . Either or, as it were. Personally, I have to admit that I couldn’t care less which.’

Chief Inspector Yakos stared at him in genuine surprise.

‘Couldn’t care less? Forgive me, but I don’t understand what you are saying. That man has been murdered, and-’

‘Thank you,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘You don’t need to enlighten me. But there is a possibility that he took his own life, don’t forget that. . And that those mutilations of his body were administered afterwards. When we get the postmortem results, we’ll know the answer to that.’

‘Why?’ wondered Yakos. ‘Why on earth should anybody want to. .’

Van Veeteren put a hand on his shoulder.

‘My dear friend,’ he said. ‘If you come to our hotel this evening, I’ll tell you a story.’

Chief Inspector Yakos hesitated for a moment. Then he nodded, shrugged, and gazed out to sea.

‘It’s a lovely morning,’ he said.