February 15-23
If there was anything that Chief Inspector Van Veeteren hated, it was press conferences.
The similarity with sitting in the dock during a trial was striking, and the kind of defense you managed was a bit too reminiscent of a guilty man's dodgy evasions. There was something about the very atmosphere on these occasions that seemed to him to express both the general public's latent (and now often openly expressed) fear of the violence inherent in modern society, and its lack of faith in the ability of the police force to put an end to it.
It was just the same this time around. The conference room on the first floor was full to overflowing with journalists and reporters, sitting, standing, taking photographs, and trying to outdo one another in the art of asking biased and insinuating questions.
He had been press-ganged to accompany Hiller and sit behind a cheap, rectangular table overloaded with microphones, cords, and the obligatory bottles of soda water that for some unfathomable reason were always present whenever high-ranking police officers made statements in front of cameras-Reinhart maintained that it had something to do with sponsorship, and it was not impossible that he was right.
Reinhart was often right.
However, the sponsorship Van Veeteren received from the chief of police was virtually nonexistent. As usual, once the questions started to come, Hiller leaned back in his chair with his arms crossed and a sphinxlike expression on his face. He was only too happy to leave all the answers to the chief inspector, who, he was careful to stress, was the person responsible for the investigation. Hiller was merely the administrator and coordinator.
But he provided the introductory information himself, formally dressed in his midnight-blue suit and emphasizing each point by means of forceful tapping on the table by a silver ballpoint pen.
“The murder victim is a certain Karel Innings,” he explained. “According to what we have been able to ascertain, he was shot dead in his home in Loewingen at some time between half past twelve and half past one yesterday, Wednesday. Innings happened to be alone in the house, being home sick with a stomach complaint, and so far we have no definite clues concerning the killer. The victim was hit by a total of five bullets-three in the chest and two below the belt-and the weapon appears to have been a Beringer-75. There are clear indications that the gun was the same one as was used in two previous cases during the last few weeks… the murders of Ryszard Malik and Rickard Maasleitner.”
He paused for a moment, but it was obvious that he had more to say, and no questions were fired at him yet.
“It is thus possible that we are dealing with a so-called serial killer; but there is also a clear link between the people who have lost their lives so far. All three are members of a group who spent their military service in the years 1964 and 1965 at the Staff College here in Maardam, an institution that was later relocated to Schaabe. Our efforts are currently concentrated on trying to discover the precise significance of this link, and of course also providing the best possible level of protection for the remainder of that group.”
“Have you any clues?” interrupted a young woman from the local radio station.
“All questions will be answered shortly by Chief Inspector Van Veeteren, who is sitting here beside me,” Hiller explained with a smile. “But before I throw the meeting open to the floor, just let me point out that you will be given access to all the information we possess at present, and I sincerely hope that we are all on the same side in the hunt for the ruthless murderer we are evidently up against. Thank you.”
The chief of police had said his piece. Van Veeteren leaned forward over the table and glared at the audience.
“Fire away,” he said.
“Was it the same method in this case as well?” said somebody.
“How come the police didn't provide some kind of protection, if it was known that the victim would be one of that group?” wondered somebody else.
“With regard to the method…,” Van Veeteren began.
“Has the level of protection been increased?” interrupted a third.
“With regard to the method,” Van Veeteren repeated, unperturbed, “it was a little different this time. The victim, Innings, that is, evidently invited the perpetrator into his house and offered him tea… Or her. This naturally suggests…”
“What does that suggest?” yelled a red-haired reporter in the third row.
“It can suggest that he was acquainted with the murderer. At any rate, it seemed that he was expecting him to call.”
“Is it one of the others in the group?” asked somebody from the Allgemejne.
“We don't know,” said Van Veeteren.
“But you have interrogated the whole group?”
“Of course.”
“And will do so again?”
“Naturally.”
“Protection?” somebody repeated.
“We don't have unlimited resources,” explained Van Veeteren. “It obviously requires vast manpower to keep thirty people under observation all around the clock.”
“Is it a madman?”
“A person is presumably not totally sane if he goes out and kills three people.”
“Was there any sign of a struggle at Innings's place? Had he tried to defend himself or anything like that?”
“No.”
“What theories do you have? Surely you have more than just this to go on?”
“Do you have a suspect?” the redhead managed to interject.
Van Veeteren shook his head.
“At this stage we don't have a suspect.”
“Is it a man or a woman?”
“Could be either.”
“What's all this about music being played over the telephone?”
“There are indications that suggest the murderer keeps calling his victims for some time before shooting them. He calls them and plays a particular tune over the phone to them.”
“What tune?”
“We don't know.”
“Why? Why does he ring?”
“We don't know.”
“What do you think?”
“We're working on various different possibilities.”
“Had Innings received one of these phone calls?”
“We haven't clarified that as yet.”
“If he had, surely he'd have contacted the police?”
“You would think so.”
“But he hadn't?”
“No.”
There was a pause. Van Veeteren took a sip of soda water.
“How many police officers are working on this case at the moment?” asked Würgner from Neuwe Blatt.
“All available officers.”
“How many is that?”
Van Veeteren did the calculation.
“About thirty Of various ranks.”
“When do you think you'll be able to close the case?”
Van Veeteren shrugged.
“It's not possible to say.”
“Has it got something to do with the armed forces? The link seems to suggest that.”
“No, I would hardly think so,” said Van Veeteren after a moment's thought.
An elderly and unusually patient editor of a crime-magazine program on one of the television channels had been waving his pen for a while, and now managed to get his oar in.
“What exactly do you want help with? Pictures and stuff?”
Van Veeteren nodded.
“Yes,” he said. “We'd like you to publish photographs and names of all the men in the group, and to write about the telephone calls. Ask the general public to pass on to us any possible tips they may have.”
“Why didn't you release the pictures and so on earlier? You must have known about it after the second murder, surely?”
“It wasn't definite,” said Van Veeteren with a sigh. “It was only an indication.”
“But now it's definite?”
“Yes.”
A gigantic man with a long, gray beard-Van Veeteren knew him to be Vejmanen on the Telegraaf-stood up at the back of the room and bellowed in a voice reminiscent of thunder: “Okay. The interviews with Innings's relatives and friends! What results have they produced?”
“We are still conducting them,” said Van Veeteren. “You'll get the details tomorrow.”
“How kind of you,” thundered Vejmanen. “And when do you think we'll have the next victim?”
Van Veeteren blew his nose.
“Our intention is to pick up the killer before he strikes again,” he explained.
“Excellent,” said Vejmanen. “So shall we say that you are in no particular hurry? This business is going to be newsworthy for four or five days at least… Possibly a whole week.”
He sat down, and appreciative laughter could be heard here and there in the audience.
“If I understand it rightly,” said a woman whose clothes and makeup suggested that she was attached to some television program, “you will be providing some kind of protection to all the remaining members of this group. But at the same time, one of them might be the murderer. Won't that be a pretty intricate task?”
“Not really,” said Van Veeteren. “I can promise you that we shall cease to protect the murderer from himself the moment we know who he is.”
“Have you made a profile of the killer?” shouted somebody from the back.
“I can't say we have.”
“Will you be making one?”
“I always make a profile of the perpetrator,” said Van Veeteren, “but I don't normally send it out into the ether.”
“Why not?” asked somebody.
The chief inspector shrugged.
“I don't really know,” he said. “I suppose I hold the old-fashioned view that one ought to stick to the facts when it comes to the media. Theories are best suited to the inside of my head. At least, my theories are. Any more questions?”
“How long is it since you failed to solve a case?”
“About eight years.”
“The G-file?”
“Yes. You seem to know about it… As you can all hear, the level of questioning has sunk. I think we'd better leave it at that.”
“What the hell?” exclaimed the red-haired reporter.
“As I said,” said Van Veeteren, rising to his feet.
“For Christ's sake, this is incredible!” said Reinhart when he, Münster, and Van Veeteren gathered in the chief inspector's office ten minutes later. “The murderer rings the doorbell, is let in, sits down on the sofa, and drinks a cup of tea. Then takes out a gun and kills him. Incredible!”
“And then simply goes away,” Münster added.
“Conclusion?” demanded Van Veeteren.
“He knew him,” said Münster.
“Or her,” said Reinhart.
“You mean the bullet in the balls suggests a her?”
“Yes,” said Reinhart. “I do.”
“But it's hardly any less incredible if it's a woman,” said Münster.
There was a knock on the door and Heinemann came in.
“What are you doing?” he asked as he perched cautiously on the window seat.
“These two are standing here saying it's incredible all the time,” muttered the chief inspector. “I'm just sitting and thinking.”
“I see,” said Heinemann.
“What's everybody else doing?” asked Reinhart.
“Rooth and deBries have gone off to interview the neighbors in a bit more detail,” said Heinemann. “ Moreno and Jung were going to take his workplace, I think you said.”
“That's right,” said Van Veeteren. “There doesn't seem to be much point in looking for a murderer among his relatives and friends in this case, but we have to hear what they have to say. Somebody might have noticed something. You can take this little lot, Münster…”
He handed a list to Münster, who read it as he walked slowly backward through the door.
“Heinemann,” said the chief inspector, “I suggest you continue searching for links… Now you've got an extra one to work on. Let's hope there's a lower common denominator than the whole group.”
Heinemann nodded.
“I think there will be,” he said. “I'm thinking of asking Hiller for a bit of help in getting me permission to look at their bank details.”
“Bank details?” said Reinhart. “What the hell for?”
“There's no harm in having a look,” said Heinemann. “If these three have been up to something, the odds are it won't withstand all that much daylight. And such things usually leave traces in bank accounts. Is there anything else you want me to do, Chief Inspector?”
“No,” said Van Veeteren. “You might as well keep on doing what you've been doing.”
Heinemann nodded. Put his hands in his trouser pockets and left Van Veeteren and Reinhart on their own.
“He's not so thick,” said Reinhart. “It's mainly a question of tempo.”
Van Veeteren took out a toothpick and broke it in half.
“Reinhart,” he said after a while. “Will you be so kind as to explain something for me?”
“Shoot,” said Reinhart.
“If it's as Heinemann says and these three have had some kind of criminal past together, and that they know very well… er, knew very well… who the perpetrator is, why the hell did Innings let him in and serve him tea before allowing himself to be shot?”
Reinhart thought for a while, digging away with a matchstick at the bowl of his pipe.
“Well,” he said eventually. “He-or she, I mean-must have been in disguise, I assume. Or else…”
“Well?”
“Or else they know who it is, but don't know what the person looks like. There's a difference. And it was a long time ago, of course.”
Van Veeteren nodded.
“Have you any cigarettes?”
Reinhart shook his head.
“Afraid not.”
“Never mind. Just a few more questions, so that I know I'm not barking up the wrong tree. If it really is just a small group that the killer is after, Innings must have known that his turn would be coming. Or suspected it, at least. Isn't that right?”
“Yes,” said Reinhart. “Especially if he was going to be the last one.”
Van Veeteren thought about that for a few seconds.
“And must have known who the killer is?”
“Who's behind it all, in any case. A slight difference again.”
“Is there any possibility do you think, that Innings wouldn't recognize one of the group?”
Reinhart lit his pipe and thought that one over.
“They haven't seen one another for thirty years,” he said. “We know what they all look like nowadays, but they don't. They may just have that old photograph to go on… And their memories, of course.”
“Go on,” said Van Veeteren.
“Even so, I think I'd recognize the blokes I did National Service with. Without any trouble at all, in fact.”
“Same here,” said the chief inspector. “Especially if I'd been prepared for it. So, conclusion?”
Reinhart puffed away at his pipe. “If we're talking about a small group,” he said, “then the murderer is an outsider. It could be a contract killer, of course, but I think that's hardly likely.”
Van Veeteren nodded.
“Yes,” said Reinhart. “As I've said before, I'm inclined to think that the murderer is a woman, and as far as I know, there isn't a woman in the group.”
“You're sometimes bloody brilliant at observing things,” said the chief inspector.
“Thank you. There's one thing we mustn't forget, though.”
“What's that?”
“There's nothing to stop it being a woman who intends to kill the whole lot of 'em.”
“There's nothing much to stop a woman doing anything at all,” sighed Van Veeteren. “Apart from us. Shall we get this thing solved now, then?”
“Let's. It's about time,” said Reinhart.
The distance to Loewingen, the latest murder scene, was not much more than thirty kilometers, and as he settled down in the car, he regretted that it wasn't a bit farther. A few hours' driving wouldn't have done him any harm; even when he got up, he'd felt the unfulfilled need for a long and restful journey. Preferably through a gray, rain-sodden landscape, just like this one. Hours in which to think things over.
But in fact it was minutes instead-he managed to stretch it to half an hour by taking the alternative route via Borsens and Penderdixte, where he had spent a few summers as a seven- or eight-year-old.
There were two reasons why he had postponed his visit until Friday. In the first place, Münster and Rooth had already spoken to Ulrike Fremdli and the three teenagers on Wednesday evening, and it might be a good idea not to give the impression that the police were hounding them every day. And in the second place, he'd had plenty to occupy himself with yesterday even so.
You could say that again. During the afternoon he and Rein-hart had addressed the delicate business of organizing protection for the as-yet-not-murdered (as Reinhart insisted on calling them).
The five living abroad were without doubt the easiest ones to sort out. After a brief discussion it was decided quite simply to leave them to their own devices. This was made clear in the letter circulated to everybody concerned, which urged them to turn to the nearest police authority in whatever country they were living in, if they felt threatened or insecure in any way.
There are limits, after all, Reinhart had said.
As for those still in the country but outside the Maardam police district, something similar applied. Reinhart spent more than three hours telephoning colleagues in various places and simply instructing them to protect Mr. So-and-So from all threats and dangers.
It was not a pleasant task, and afterward Reinhart had gone to Van Veeteren's office and requested a job with the traffic police instead. The chief inspector had rejected this request, but told Reinhart that he was welcome to throw up in the wastepaper basket if he felt the need.
It was one of those days.
In the Maardam police district there were now thirteen possible victims left, and to look after them Van Veeteren assembled-if one were to be honest-a ragbag of constables and probationers, and left it to the promising and enthusiastic Widmar Krause to instruct and organize them.
When he had done that and leaned back for a moment, Van Veeteren tried to make a snap judgment of how effective this expensive protection would really be, and concluded that if it had been a condom he'd been assessing, to put it brutally, they might just as well have gone ahead without it.
But fictitious-or simulated-protection was nevertheless preferable to nothing at all, he tried to convince himself, with covering his own back in the forefront of his mind.
Then Van Veeteren, Reinhart, and Münster spent the rest of the afternoon and evening discussing the murderer's character and identity, and working out a system for how the interviews with the as-yet-not-murdered should be conducted (and in this context as well, they decided to leave those living abroad to their own devices, at least for the time being). Increasingly frequently they were interrupted by the duty officer or Miss Katz, rushing in with so-called hot tips from the general public, which had started flowing in despite the fact that the press conference was only a few hours old.
By about eight, Reinhart had had enough.
“Fuck this for a lark!” he exclaimed, and threw away the sheet of paper he'd just read. “It's impossible to think if we have to keep beavering away like this all the time.”
“You could buy us a beer,” said Van Veeteren.
“All right. I expect you'll want cigarettes as well?”
“Just a few at most,” said the chief inspector modestly.
This was in fact what occupied his thoughts for the first half of the drive to Loewingen.
I ought not to smoke, he thought.
I drink too much beer.
Neither habit is good for me, certainly not the cigarettes. In connection with an operation for bowel cancer almost a year ago, an innocent doctor had said that an occasional glass of beer wouldn't do him any harm-Van Veeteren had immediately committed this advice to memory, and he knew that he would never forget it, even if he lived to be a hundred and ten.
Incidentally, wasn't it the case that an occasional cigarette could stimulate the thought processes?
Whatever, I ought to play badminton with Münster more often, he thought. Go out jogging now and then. If only I could get rid of this damned cold!
It was only after he'd passed the farm in Penderdixte where he'd spent some of his childhood that he changed tack and started thinking about the investigation. This accursed investigation.
Three murders.
Three men shot in cold blood.
In rather less than a month.
This last one was without doubt more than a bit rich. No matter how much he thought about it, changed the angle or reassessed it, he simply couldn't make it add up.
The questions were obvious.
Was there in fact a smaller group within the group? (“I hope to God there is!” Reinhart had let slip over a beer the previous evening; and, of course, that was significant. Reinhart was not in the habit of placing himself in the hands of the sacred.)
If not, and if the murderer was intending to kill all of them-well, they must be dealing with a lunatic. With an incomprehensible, irrational, and presumably totally mad motive. Nobody can have an acceptable (in any sense of the word) reason for killing thirty-three people, one after the other.
Not according to Chief Inspector Van Veeteren's yardstick, in any case.
A cold and calculating lunatic like that would be the opponent they feared more than any other; they had all been touchingly in agreement on that.
But if there really was a smaller group?
Van Veeteren fished up two toothpicks from his breast pocket, but after tasting them, he dropped them on the floor and lit a cigarette instead.
In that case, he thought after the first stimulating drag, Innings should (must?) have known that he belonged to that little group and was in danger. Without doubt.
But nevertheless he had invited the murderer into his house, and allowed himself to be shot without raising an eyebrow. Why?
And that wasn't all-he knew he could extend the argument further without exploding it: there was another crux.
If it was implausible to believe that Innings would invite in somebody he knew was intending to kill him, he can't have suspected anything. But if he knew he was in danger, it seemed beyond the bounds of possibility that he would invite a stranger into his house.
Ergo, the chief inspector thought as he slowed down behind a farmer on a tractor, the person Innings invited to tea and allowed himself to be murdered by must be somebody he trusted.
“That must be right, okay?” he said aloud to nobody in particular as he overtook the enthusiastically gesticulating farmer. “Somebody he knew, for Christ's sake!”
That was as far as he got.
He sighed. Inhaled deeply but was repulsed by the taste. He felt like a poor idiot who had been released from the asylum but was now drooling over a three-piece puzzle that had been thrust into his hand as a test to pass before being allowed back into society.
It was not an attractive image, but the images that flitted through his mind rarely were.
Hell and damnation, Van Veeteren thought. I hope Reinhart can solve this one.
Loewingen was a sprawling little town with a few industries, even fewer apartment blocks, and masses of individual houses and villas. Despite an ancient town center from the Middle Ages, this was one of those towns you simply lived in-one of many insufferable, monocultural wastelands of the late twentieth century, Van Veeteren thought as he finally found the housing development he was looking for. Uniform, boring, and safe.
Well, the extent to which it was safe might be arguable.
Ulrike Fremdli welcomed him, and ushered him to a seat on the same sofa the murderer must have sat on exactly two days earlier. She was a powerful-looking woman with neat brown hair and a face he reckoned must have been beautiful once upon a time. She seemed to be reticent and somewhat prim, and he wondered if she was taking sedatives-he thought he recognized the symptoms.
“Would you like anything?” she asked curtly.
He shook his head.
“How are you?” he asked.
She gave him a penetrating look.
“Bloody awful,” she said. “I've sent the kids to my sister. I need to be alone.”
“You'll manage?”
“Yes,” she said. “But please ask your questions and get it over with.”
“How long had you known each other?”
“Since ′86,” she said. “We moved in together eighteen months ago. We had a lot of trouble with his former wife before that.”
Van Veeteren thought for a moment. Decided to skip as much as possible and not beat about the bush.
“I'd like to make this as brief as possible,” he said. “I take it you think the same way. I aim to catch whoever murdered your husband, and I'd like some answers to a few very specific questions.”
She nodded.
“It's important that I get honest answers.”
“Fire away.”
“All right,” said Van Veeteren. “Do you think he knew he was in danger?”
“I don't know,” she said after a tense pause. “I honestly don't know.”
“Was he worried, these last few days?”
“Yes, but you might say there were reasons why he should be.”
Her deep voice trembled slightly, but not much.
“I'll tell you what I think,” said Van Veeteren. “I think Innings was one of a smaller group, and it's the members of that group the murderer is out to kill.”
“A group?”
“Yes, a few of the National Servicemen who got up to something thirty years ago… Possibly later as well. In any case, there must be a link between some of the thirty-five. What do you think?”
She shook her head.
“I've no idea.”
“Did he ever talk about his military service?”
“Never. Well, we spoke about it recently, of course, but not much.”
Van Veeteren nodded.
“If you think of anything that might suggest a link of the kind I've mentioned, will you promise to get in touch with me?”
“Yes, of course.”
He gave her his business card.
“You can phone me direct, that's easier. Anyway, next question. Can you tell me if your husband was in touch with any new contacts during the week before it happened? Did he meet anybody you didn't know, or people he didn't normally mix with?”
She thought it over.
“Not as far as I know.”
“Take your time. Think it through day by day, that usually helps.”
“He met people at work as well… We see each other only in the evenings, really.”
“Let's concentrate on the evenings. Did he have any visitors these last few days?”
“No… no, I don't think so. Not that I noticed, at least.”
“Did he go out at all in the evening?”
“No. Hang on, yes: last Friday. He went out for a few hours last Friday.”
“Where?”
“Somewhere in town. Some restaurant or other, I think. I was asleep when he came back home.”
“Who was he out with?”
She shrugged.
“I don't know. Some friends from work, I expect. Burgner, perhaps.”
“He didn't say anything about it?”
“Not as far as I recall. We had visitors-my brother and his family-who arrived quite early on Saturday, so I don't think we ever got around to discussing it.”
“Did he often go out on his own?”
She shook her head.
“No. Once a month, at most. The same as me, in fact.”
“Hmm,” said Van Veeteren. “Nothing more?”
“Do you mean, was he out any other evening?”
“Yes.”
“No, he was at home… let me think… yes, Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday.”
Van Veeteren nodded.
“Okay,” he said. “Do you know anything about those telephone calls?”
“I've read about them,” she said. “The officers who were here on Wednesday asked me about that as well.”
“And?”
“No, nothing.”
“Do you think he received any?”
“I don't know.”
“Okay,” said Van Veeteren, leaning back on the sofa. “Then I have only one more question. Do you suspect anybody?”
“What?” she exclaimed. “What the hell do you mean?”
Van Veeteren cleared his throat.
“One of the things that confuses us,” he explained, “is that he invited the murderer in without any more ado. That suggests he knew the person concerned. If he did, then you might as well. You've been together for ten years, after all.”
She said nothing. He could tell by looking at her that this hadn't occurred to her until now; but he could also see that she didn't have an answer.
“Will you promise me to think about it?”
She nodded.
“Please think as well about whether he might have felt under threat. That's an extremely important question-and it could be that the tiniest detail gives us a clue that'll put us on the right track.”
“I understand.”
He stood up.
“I know you're going through hell,” he said. “I've been stomping around in tragedies like this for more than thirty years. You're welcome to contact me even if you only want to talk. Otherwise I'll be in touch again in a few days.”
“Our life together was so good,” she said. “I suppose we ought to have realized that something that worked so well couldn't last forever.”
“Yes,” said Van Veeteren. “That's more or less the way I look at life as well.”
When he paused in the street outside and tried to imagine the route the murderer would have taken, it struck him that he rather liked her.
Quite a lot, if truth be told.
“Knowing what I know now,” said the editor in chief, Cannelli, “quite a lot of things fall into place.”
“What, for example?” Jung wondered.
“That there was something bothering him.”
“How was that noticeable?”
Cannelli sighed and gazed out the window.
“Well,” he said, “I had a few longish chats with him… about headlines, pictures, and suchlike. That was routine, several times a week. But there was something about his concentration that struck me. He seemed to be thinking about something else all the time…”
“How long had you known him?”
“Five years,” said Cannelli. “Since I took charge of the newspaper after Windemeer. He was good-Innings, that is.”
Jung nodded.
“Do you know if he met anybody outside his usual circle of contacts lately? If somebody-or something-cropped up here at work that could possibly be connected with his unease?”
He realized that this was a pretty silly question, and Cannelli responded to his apologetic smile with a shrug of the shoulders.
“We produce a newspaper, Inspector. People are running in and out all day long… I'm sorry, but I don't think I can help you.
Jung thought for a moment.
“Okay,” he said eventually, closing his notebook. “If you think of anything and all that…”
“Of course,” said Cannelli.
Moreno was sitting in the car, waiting for him.
“How did it go?” she asked.
“Pretty pointless.”
“Same here. How many did you talk to?”
“Three,” said Jung.
“Four for me,” said Moreno. “But I think one thing is crystal clear.”
“What's that?”
“He knew he was in danger. He was behaving oddly, that's what everybody says.”
Jung nodded and started the car.
“At least, that's what they all say with hindsight,” he said. “What a shame that people never react in time.”
“Yes indeed,” said Moreno. “Mind you, if we were to take care of everybody who seems a bit worried, we probably wouldn't have much time to devote to anything else.”
“Absolutely right,” said Jung. “How about a coffee? It's good for the nerves.”
“Okay,” said Moreno.
She dithered for a day and a half.
She had read about it for the first time on Thursday evening-in one of the newspapers on the bus on the way home-but it wasn't until much later the same night that her suspicions were aroused. In the middle of a dream that vanished immediately into the shadows of the subconscious, she woke up and could see it in her mind's eye.
The occupied telephone booth in the hall. The back pressed up against the tinted gray glass. The tape recorder pressed against the receiver.
It had happened only once, and that was at least three weeks ago now. But the image persisted. That Tuesday evening. She had intended to phone a fellow student to ask about something, but had seen immediately that it was occupied. It can't have lasted more than three or four seconds-she had simply opened her door, noted that the phone booth was occupied, and gone back into her room.
Five minutes later, it was free and she'd been able to make her call.
It was remarkable that this brief, totally meaningless sequence should have stayed with her. Now, when she had been woken up by it, she couldn't recall having thought about it before at all.
And, of course, it was precisely that-these vague, unlikely circumstances-that made her hesitate.
On Friday afternoon she had bumped into her on the stairs. There was nothing unusual about that, either-it was a banal, everyday occurrence-but when she woke up with a start early that Saturday morning, the two trivial images had somehow combined.
Melted into each other and roused a horrible suspicion.
She ought really to have consulted Natalie first, but Natalie had gone home to her parents for the weekend, and her room was empty However, after an early jog in the park (which was cut short because of the rain), a shower, and breakfast, she had made up her mind.
Something prevented her from using the telephone in the hall (was it fear? she asked herself later), and instead she used a public phone booth by the post office to call the police.
It was 9:34, and the call and her information were registered by Constable Willock, who promised to pass it on to the senior officers on the case and report back to her eventually.
She returned to her room to study and wait.
Her conscience was clearer, but she had a nagging feeling of unreality.
Reinhart sighed. He had spent the last ten minutes trying to perform the trick of half lying down on a standard office chair, but the only notable result was that he now had a backache. At the base of his spine and between his shoulder blades. Van Veeteren was sitting opposite him, slumped over his desk, which was littered with paper, files, empty coffee mugs, and broken toothpicks.
“Say something,” said Reinhart.
Van Veeteren muttered and started reading a new sheet of paper.
“Hot air, nothing else,” he said after another minute and crumpled it up. “There's no substance in this, either. Loewingen is a suburb for the middle classes, in case you didn't know. All the wives work, and all the kids attend nursery school. The nearest neighbor at home when the murder took place was six houses away, and she was asleep. This case is not exactly gliding smoothly along the rails.”
“Asleep?” said Reinhart, with a trace of longing in his voice. “But it was one in the afternoon, for Christ's sake!”
“Night nurse at the Gemejnte Hospital,” Van Veeteren explained.
“So there are no witnesses, is that what you're saying?”
“Exactly,” said the chief inspector, continuing to leaf through the papers. “Not even a cat.”
“He certainly seems to have been worried,” Reinhart pointed out after a moment of silence. “Everybody has commented on that. He must have known that he was in trouble.”
“Certainly,” said Van Veeteren. “We can assume we're looking at a small group.”
Reinhart sighed again and abandoned the chair. Stood gazing out the window instead.
“Bloody rain,” he said. “I ought to be reborn as a swamp. Haven't you found anything at all to work on?”
There was a knock on the door and Münster came in. He nodded and sat down on the chair Reinhart had just vacated.
“He was out last Friday night,” said Van Veeteren.
“Innings?” asked Münster.
“Yes. Maybe we should check up on what he was doing. He was probably having a beer with a few colleagues, but you never know.”
“How can we check up on that?” asked Reinhart.
Van Veeteren shrugged.
“Hmm,” he said. “We'll put Moreno and Jung on it. They can ask a few questions at his workplace again. See if they can find somebody who was with him. And then, I wonder…”
“What do you wonder?” asked Reinhart.
“In town, I think she said… He was at a restaurant in town, his wife thought. Did she mean Loewingen or Maardam?”
“Loewingen's not a town, it's a dump,” said Reinhart.
“Could be,” said Münster. “But there are a few restaurants there even so.”
“Yes, yes,” muttered Van Veeteren. “That'll be Jung and Moreno 's headache. Where are they, by the way?”
“At home, I expect,” said Reinhart. “I've heard it said that it's Saturday today.”
“Go back to your office and ring them and wake them up,” said Van Veeteren. “Tell them I want to know where he was and with whom by Monday afternoon at the latest. How the hell they do that is up to them.”
“With pleasure,” said Reinhart, walking to the door. Just then Miss Katz appeared with two bundles of paper.
“Tips from the detective known as the general public,” she explained. “A hundred and twenty since yesterday afternoon. Constable Krause has sorted them out.”
“How?” asked Münster.
“The usual categories,” snorted Van Veeteren. “Daft and slightly less daft. Can you run through them, Münster, and come back to me an hour from now?”
“Of course,” sighed Münster, picking up the papers.
Ah well, the chief inspector thought when he was alone again. The wheels are turning. What the hell was it I'd thought of doing myself?
Ah yes, an hour down in the sauna, that was it.
“I'm going away for a bit,” said Biedersen.
“Oh, are you?” said his wife. “Why?”
“Business,” said Biedersen. “I'll probably be away for a few weeks, at least.”
His wife looked up from the burners on the stove she was busy cleaning with the aid of a new product she'd found in the shop yesterday and which was said to be more effective than any other brand.
“Oh, will you?” she said. “Where are you going?”
“Various places. Hamburg among others. There are quite a few contacts I need to follow up.”
“I understand,” said his wife, and started scrubbing again, thinking that she didn't at all. Understand, that is. But it didn't matter, of course. She had never interfered in her husband's affairs-running an import company (or was it two now?) was a complicated and not especially appealing business. Nothing for a woman like her. Ever since they married, they had been in agreement about one thing: they would each look after their own side of family life. He would look after the finances, and she would take care of the home and the children. All of whom had fled the nest now, and formed their own families on more or less similar lines.
Which in turn gave her time to devote herself to other things. Such as stove-top burners.
“How's it going?” she asked.
“How's what going?”
“Well, your business. You seem to have been a bit stressed these last few days.”
“Nonsense.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, of course.”
“That's good to know. But you'll keep in touch, won't you?”
“Naturally.”
But when he'd left, she found herself still wondering if there hadn't been something wrong nevertheless. Ever since-she worked it out-Tuesday evening, when he'd come home rather late and in a bit of a nervous state, he had been unusually irritated and touchy.
And then they had found one of his old National Service mates murdered, and that had knocked the stuffing out of him, she could see that. Even if he hadn't wanted to admit as much, of course.
So perhaps it was a good thing for him to get away from it all for a while. Good for all concerned, as they say. There were things she also didn't want to admit as well, such as not objecting to having their large house to herself for a change. She had nothing against that at all, she decided, and put a little extra elbow grease into her scrubbing.
When the chief inspector came back from the sauna, Münster was already sitting in his office, waiting. It looked as if he'd been there for quite a while, in fact, as he'd had time to supply himself with a mug of coffee and the morning paper.
“So,” said the chief inspector as he sat down at his desk. “Let's hear it, then.”
Münster folded up his newspaper and produced three pale yellow cards.
“I think it would be best if somebody else went through the material as well,” he said. “It's a bit difficult to keep awake when you have to read so much rubbish. One guy has evidently called three times and claimed that his mother is the murderer.”
“Really?” said Van Veeteren. “And you're sure he isn't telling the truth?”
“Pretty sure,” said Münster. “He's well into his seventies, and his mother died in 1955. And then there's somebody who claims to have been present at the time… in Innings's house, that is… and seen exactly what happened. The killer was a gigantic immigrant with a scimitar and a black patch over one eye.”
“Hmm,” said Van Veeteren. “Do you have anything a bit more credible to tell me?”
“Yes, I certainly do,” said Münster. “Several things we ought to follow up. These three are probably the most interesting ones.”
He handed over the cards, and the chief inspector read them while working a toothpick from one side of his mouth to the other.
“I'll take this one,” he said. “You can check the other two. Give the rest of the interesting ones to Reinhart, and he can arrange follow-ups.”
Münster nodded, drank up his coffee, and left the room.
Van Veeteren waited until the door was closed, then looked at the card again and dialed the number.
“Katrine Kroeller?”
“Just a moment, please.”
There was a pause of half a minute or so, then he heard a girl's voice in the receiver. No more than nineteen or twenty at most, he thought.
“Hello, Katrine Kroeller here.”
“My name is Chief Inspector Van Veeteren. You've reported an observation in connection with an investigation we are busy with. Can I come and have a chat with you?”
“Yes… yes, of course. When will you be coming?”
“Now,” said Van Veeteren, looking at the clock. “Or at least in twenty minutes or so. Your address is Parkvej 31, is that correct?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, I'll see you shortly, Miss Kroeller.”
“Yes… you're welcome. I hope…”
“You hope what?”
“I hope you're not just wasting your time.”
“We shall see,” said Van Veeteren, and hung up.
If only she knew how much of our time is wasted, he thought. Then he wriggled into his jacket and set off.
She was waiting for him at the gate. As he thought, she was about twenty-she looked very Nordic, with a blond ponytail and a long neck. She was carrying an umbrella, and she escorted him carefully along the paved path to the front door at the gable end of the large two-story house, making sure he didn't need to step on the soaking-wet lawn.
“It's not all that easy to find your way here,” she explained. “There are four of us renting rooms. Mrs. Klausner, our landlady lives on the ground floor.”
Van Veeteren nodded. Both the house and the garden suggested well-heeled upper middle class; but, of course, there were always people hovering at the edge of their social class, he reminded himself. People who had to take in lodgers and resort to similar ways of making ends meet.
“Let's hear it,” he said when he had sat down in her room, with its sloping ceiling and blue wallpaper. “If I understand the situation rightly, you saw a woman using a tape recorder in a phone booth.”
She nodded.
“Yes, outside here in the hall. It's there for the tenants to use. I saw her inside there, holding a tape recorder against the receiver… One of those little cassette things.”
“Who?”
“Miss Adler, the woman who lives next to me.”
“Adler?” said Van Veeteren.
“Yes. Maria Adler. There are four of us, but I don't know her at all. She keeps to herself.”
“When was this?”
“Three weeks ago, or thereabouts.”
“Just the once?”
“Yes.”
“How come you remember it?”
She hesitated.
“I don't really know, to tell you the truth. I hadn't given it a second thought. But then it came back to me when I read about those murders in the newspaper.”
Van Veeteren nodded and thought for a moment. She seemed to be a reliable witness, that was obvious. Calm and sensible, not inclined to exaggerate or be hysterical.
And slowly, very slowly, the thought began to sprout in his case-hardened consciousness. That this could be it. If this pale girl knew what she was talking about-and there was no reason to think she didn't-it was not impossible that the murderer was right here. Ryszard Malik's and Rickard Maasleitner's and Karel Innings's murderer. In the very next room. He could feel his pulse beating in his temples.
In this respectable villa in the respectable district of Deijk-straa. Surrounded by doctors, lawyers, successful businessmen, and God only knows who else.
A woman, then, just as Reinhart had predicted-yes indeed, there was a lot to support that thesis… Perhaps most of all this feeling he had, which he always seemed to have when something was happening. A little signal saying that now, now things were suddenly getting serious, after all those days of hard work and despair.
And it was winking at him this very moment.
The signal. That red warning light.
Naturally, there were plenty of other reasons for using a tape recorder in a telephone booth; he was the first to admit that. It was simply that he didn't want to believe them, had no desire to do so. He wanted this to be the breakthrough, that was the bottom line.
“So she's in there?” he said, indicating with his head.
She nodded.
“Maria Adler?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know if she's there at the moment?”
Katrine Kroeller shook her head. Her ponytail waved back and forth.
“No. I haven't seen her today. But she's very quiet, so it's possible she's in.”
Van Veeteren stood up and tried to work things out. If he were to follow the police rule book, the correct procedure in this situation would naturally be to phone for reinforcements. There ought to be several officers involved. The woman in that room could very well be the person who had shot dead, in cold blood, three of her fellow human beings during the last month. She had a gun, and presumably ammunition, and she didn't normally miss.
He didn't even have his police weapon with him. As usual, it ought to be said.
So of course he ought to phone. It wouldn't take long for a few more officers to get here.
He looked around.
“May I borrow this?” he said, picking up an oblong-shaped wooden statuette standing on a bookshelf. Presumably African. Easy to handle. Three-quarters of a kilo, or thereabouts.
“Why?”
He didn't answer. Stood up and went out into the hall. Katrine Kroeller followed him hesitantly.
“The next door here?”
She nodded.
“Go back to your room.”
She reluctantly did as she was told.
With his left hand he slowly depressed the door handle. His right hand was clutching the statuette. He noticed that he was still sweating a little after the sauna.
The door opened. He burst in.
It took him less than two seconds to register that the room was empty.
More than empty.
Abandoned. The tenant who had been living here had left and had no intention of returning.
She had moved somewhere else.
“Shit!” he exclaimed.
Stood motionless for a few more seconds, looking at the barren room.
No personal belongings. No clothes. No dishes drying in the kitchenette alcove. The bed made in such a way that you could see there were no sheets. Just a pillow, a blanket, and a quilt.
“Shit!” he muttered again, and went back out into the hall.
Miss Kroeller peeped out through her door.
“She's done a runner,” said Van Veeteren. “Go and fetch… what's the name of your landlady?”
“Mrs. Klausner.”
“Yes, that's the one. Tell her I want to speak to her in your room immediately. When did you last see Miss Adler, by the way?”
Katrine Kroeller thought for a moment.
“Er, yesterday, I think. Yes, yesterday afternoon.”
“Here?”
“Yes, on the staircase. We just happened to pass.”
Van Veeteren pondered that.
“Okay, fetch Mrs. Klausner. Is it possible for me to use this telephone?”
She opened the door of the booth and keyed in her personal code.
“It's all yours,” she said.
“Thank you,” said Van Veeteren, and dialed the number to the police station.
Two minutes later, he was talking to Reinhart.
“I think we've found her,” Van Veeteren said. “But she's done a runner.”
“Oh, shit!” said Reinhart. “Where?”
“Deijkstraa. Parkvej 31. Get yourself here with some of the forensic guys. Fingerprints, the lot. Münster as well. I'll be expecting you twenty seconds from now.”
“We'll be there in ten,” said Reinhart, and hung up.
“What time is it?” asked Van Veeteren.
“Half past five,” said Reinhart.
“All right. Let's have a summary, Münster. And those of you who've been lounging around at home, sit up and listen carefully.”
For the last half hour the investigation team had been all present and accounted for-apart from Jung and Moreno, who had succeeded in remaining incommunicado all afternoon. It was still Saturday, February 17, and they had achieved a breakthrough.
Or a possible breakthrough, at least.
Münster leafed through his notepad.
“This woman,” he began, “calling herself Maria Adler, moved into Mrs. Klausner's house-into one of the four rooms she has to let-on Sunday, January fourteenth. A month ago, in other words. She said she had enrolled for a three-month economics course at the Elizabeth Institute. There is in fact such a course, which started on January fifteenth, but it lasts for only six weeks, and they've never heard of Maria Adler. When she moved in she paid the rent for half the occupation in advance, she never mixed with any of the other tenants, and she seems to have vacated her room once and for all yesterday afternoon, or possibly yesterday evening. The reason why we know about her is that Katrine Kroeller-one of the other tenants-had seen her with a tape recorder pressed up against the receiver in a phone booth, and she let us know about it after having read in the newspapers about that telephone music… Well, that's about it, more or less.”
“Is that all we have to go on?” asked deBries after a pause. “It doesn't sound all that convincing…”
“That's all we have so far,” said Reinhart. “But she's the one, I can feel it in my bones.”
“So far we've found four different Maria Adlers nationwide,” said Münster, “but she's not any of them. I expect we'll find another one or two, but I've no doubt we can assume that she has been using a false name.”
“Didn't this landlady check up on what kind of people she let rooms to?” asked Rooth.
“Mrs. Klausner assumes the best in people,” Reinhart explained. “She doesn't know how old she was, nor where she came from-nothing… She assumed the best because her prospective tenant paid half the rent in advance.”
“Our technicians have gone over the room with a fine-tooth comb,” said Münster. “So we can take it that we have her fingerprints, at least. And if she's on our database, we can identify her.”
“Are you saying she simply cleared off?” asked Heinemann, holding up his glasses against the ceiling light to check that his polishing had been effective.
“Yes,” said Van Veeteren. “That's what's so damned frustrating. If only that girl had phoned us yesterday instead, we'd have had her by now.”
“Typical,” said Rooth. “What does she look like?”
Reinhart sighed.
“That bloody artist is in my office with Mrs. Klausner, the girl who rang us, and another of the tenants. He's been sketching away for over an hour now, but he says he needs a bit more time…”
“A photofit picture?” said deBries. “Don't we have an actual photo?”
“No,” said Münster. “But it's not really what you would call a photofit picture. They've seen her every day, more or less, for over a month. It will be just as accurate as a photograph.”
“And it will be in every damn tabloid tomorrow morning,” Reinhart growled.
“Hmm,” said Heinemann. “But what if it isn't her after all? It could just be somebody who's run away from her husband. Or something of the sort. As far as I understand it, there's nothing definite…”
Van Veeteren blew his nose, long and loud.
“Damned cold,” he said. “Yes, you're right, of course. But we'll take the risk. I also have the distinct impression she's the one.”
“If she's innocent, no doubt we'll be hearing from her,” Reinhart said.
“But the opposite also applies,” said deBries. “If we hear nothing from anybody, we can assume that she's the one.”
“We can also assume that she'll change her appearance a bit,” said Münster.
“I'm sure you're right,” said Van Veeteren.
Nobody spoke for a while.
“I wonder where she's gone to,” said Rooth.
“And why,” said Reinhart. “Dammit all, there are so many important questions. Why did she do a runner just now?”
“The day before we received the tip,” said Münster.
“Interesting,” said Rooth. “But it could mean that she's finished what she set out to do, of course.”
“A possibility,” said Van Veeteren, contemplating a toothpick bitten away beyond recognition. “Her task might have been to kill these three, and she's done just that.”
“Has anybody checked her alibi?” Rooth asked. “Just in case. Might she have been away at precisely these times?”
“We've started,” said Van Veeteren. “We'll let the artist finish his drawings first, then we'll have another go at these ladies. But I don't really think they are going to be of much help. They don't seem to have any idea of what the rest of them in that house are up to. The landlady reads two novels per day, and Maria Adler didn't mix with the others. If anybody were to bump into her at the relevant time, it would be pure coincidence. Or an unfortunate happening, one should perhaps say.”
“I get you,” said Rooth.
“How much longer does that artist need?” asked Reinhart. “Surely he doesn't need half a day to create a face? Is there any more coffee?”
“Rooth,” said the chief inspector. “For Christ's sake, go and find out what's happening. Tell him we have to have a picture soon if we're going to be able to place it in the newspapers.”
“Okay,” said Rooth, rising to his feet. “Wanted, dead or alive.”
“Preferably alive,” said the chief inspector.
“That was the last one,” said Jung, looking at the list. “What do you think?”
“I suppose we'll have to hope it was Klumm's Cellar,” said Moreno. “If not, he must have been in Maardam.”
“Good God,” said Jung. “How many restaurants are there in Maardam? Two hundred?”
“If you include pubs and cafés, it's probably twice as many as that,” said Moreno. “It's a great task, this one. It was such fun talking to all his workmates before we were given it. Why did you join the police?”
“People who are no good at anything become police officers,” said Jung. “Anyway shall we see if we can find this waiter? We might just get lucky. Then we'd better ring round and see if we can find somebody who was with him… Before we start on Maardam, that is. Or what do you think?”
Moreno nodded and consulted her notebook.
“Ibrahim Jebardahaddan,” she read. “Erwinstraat 16… That's just before you come to that sports field, I think.”
Fifteen minutes later Jung rang the doorbell of an apartment on the first floor of a rather shabby three-story block. Fifties, or early sixties. Crumbling plaster and mainly foreign names on the list in the entrance. A bronze-skinned woman on the far side of middle age opened the door.
“Hello… who are you looking for?” she said with a timid smile and a pronounced foreign accent.
“Ibrahim Jebardahaddan,” said Jung, who had been practicing both in the car and on the stairs.
“Please come in,” she said, ushering them into a large room containing about a dozen people of various ages, sitting on chairs and sofas. Some children were playing on the floor. Faint music in a minor key played by stringed instruments was coming from hidden stereo speakers. A low, square table was laden with bowls of exotic-looking food emitting warm, aromatic fragrances that seemed almost tangible.
“Smells good,” said Jung.
“Perhaps we ought to mention that we are police officers,” said Moreno.
“Police officers?” said the woman, but there was no trace of fear in her voice. Only surprise. “Why?”
“Routine inquiries,” said Jung. “We're trying to find out about a certain person who might have had a meal at the restaurant Ibrahim evidently works at…”
A young man had stood up and was listening.
“That's me,” he said. “I work at Klumm's Cellar. What's it all about? Perhaps we should go to my room?”
His accent was less pronounced than the woman's. He led them through the hall and into a small room containing not much more than a bed, a low chest of drawers, and some large cushions. Jung showed him the photograph of Innings.
“Can you say if this person visited your restaurant last week, on Friday evening?”
The young man cast a quick glance at the photograph.
“Is that Innings?”
“Yes.”
“Yes, he did. He had a meal at our place last Friday. I saw on TV that he'd been killed. And in the newspapers. I recognize him.”
“Are you sure?” asked Moreno.
“A hundred percent. I've already told my friends that I saw him there. I was the one who served him as well. A few days before he was shot. Yes, Friday it was.”
“Good,” said Moreno. “Do you know who was with him?”
Jebardahaddan shook his head.
“No, I didn't see him so clearly. It was a man, but he had his back toward me, if you see what I mean… I don't know if I'd recognize him again.”
Jung nodded.
“It doesn't matter. Presumably it was one of his friends-we can check on that in other ways. Anyway thank you very much.”
The woman who had let them in appeared in the doorway with the same timid smile.
“Have you finished? Then you must come and eat with us. This way please.”
Moreno looked at the clock. Then at Jung.
“Why not?” she said. “Thank you very much. We'd love to.”
“We certainly would,” said Jung.
Van Veeteren stared at the picture. Reinhart, Münster, and deBries were crowded behind him.
“So this is what she looks like?” said the chief inspector.
It was a very well-drawn portrait, no question about it. A woman somewhere between thirty-five and forty it seemed. Quite short, straight hair. Thin lips and a somewhat bitter expression around her mouth. Round glasses, a slightly introverted look. Straight nose. Quite a few wrinkles and marks on her skin.
“He says the eyes were the most difficult,” said Rooth. “So much depends on the moment. Her hair is brown… mousy, if you like.”
“She looks a bit haggard,” said Reinhart. “With a bit of luck we might find her in police records.”
“Have they finished fingerprinting?” Heinemann asked.
“I think so,” said Münster. “There must be masses of them; she's been living there for a month, after all. I suppose it'll be best if deBries takes care of that, as usual?”
DeBries nodded. Van Veeteren picked up the picture and scrutinized it from close quarters.
“I wonder…,” he muttered. “Manon's spring… yes, why not?”
“What are you on about?” Reinhart wondered.
“Nothing,” said Van Veeteren. “Just thinking aloud. Anyway, Münster: make sure this picture goes out to every damned newspaper in the land.”
He rummaged around among the papers on his desk.
“Together with this communiqué,” he added. “Apart from that, I think the best thing we can do now is to go home and get some sleep. I want you all back here tomorrow morning at ten o'clock. We'll be swamped with tips and speculations. With a bit of luck, we'll get her tomorrow.”
“I wonder,” said Reinhart.
“So do I,” said the chief inspector. “I'm just trying to spread a little optimism and a belief in the future. Good night, gentlemen.”
Sunday, February 18, announced itself with warm breezes and a vague promise of spring. For anybody who had time to detect promises.
Van Veeteren got up at six, despite the fact that he had been listening to Sibelius and Kuryakin until late into the night. He fetched the Allgemejne from the letter box and established that the picture of Maria Adler was on the front page. Then he went to the bathroom and took a long shower, constantly adjusting the tap to make it increasingly cold, and tried to envisage the coming day.
That it would be long-another in a succession of long days-was beyond all doubt, of course; but he also knew there was a little chance. A possibility that it might be the last day of this investigation. Regarding the arrest, that is. Actually capturing the murderer. Then other things would kick in, other wheels would begin to turn-interrogation, charging, custody, and all the other formal procedures of the legal process, but that was a different matter. The hunt would be over. It would mean that his own role had come to an end, somebody else would take over ultimate responsibility Other officers, better equipped for such a role. Was that really what it was all about? he wondered. Was it really just those ingredients that drove him-getting his teeth into the prey and placing it at the feet of the red-jacketed hunter, black-robed judge? The bloodhound instinct?
Nonsense! he decided, and had a final rinse in icy cold water. These arbitrary analogies.
He left the shower and turned his attention to breakfast instead. Freshly brewed coffee, yogurt, and four slices of toast with butter and strong cheese. He had always found it difficult to feel really hungry in the morning, but today he forced himself. He knew he shouldn't begin today with coffee and a cigarette, as had been his custom for many years when forced to get to grips with the world and life at daybreak.
But on the other hand, he thought as he studied the picture in the newspaper, this chance, this suspicion he had that today might be crowned with success was not particularly strong. Perhaps no more than a pious hope, a chimera, something he needed in order to raise the strength to go to work on a Sunday morning in February.
Who the hell wouldn't need such a stimulus?
In any case, the woman he knew so far only as Maria Adler aroused his respect. If “respect” was the right word to use in the context.
There was something impressive about her. And frightening, of course. The feeling that she had full control over what she was doing was incontestable. Her way of striking and then withdrawing, over and over again, suggested both coldness and decisiveness. She had remained concealed in Mrs. Klausner's house for a month, had carried out her operations with unerring precision, and now she had disappeared. And as he stared at her everyday, slightly enigmatic face, he tried to analyze what this disappearance might imply.
Perhaps-as somebody had pointed out-it simply meant that she had finished. Her intention had been to murder just these three persons, for some reason the police as yet had not the slightest idea of, and since the task was accomplished, she had chosen to leave the stage.
Or-he thought as he scattered a generous amount of muesli over his yogurt-she realized it would be too risky to stay in the house. She knew (how?) that it was time to leave her hiding place.
Or-a thought one couldn't dismiss out of hand-she had chosen to move a little closer to her next victim. Take up a better striking position, as it were. Malik and Maasleitner and Innings had all been within easy distance of Deijkstraa-the first two in Maardam itself, the third only a few miles away. If it was in fact the case that Miss Adler had several more people on her list, and they belonged to the group who lived in different parts of the country (or even abroad), well, there was naturally a good reason for finding a new base from which to operate.
Van Veeteren started on the toast. If there were any other possibilities in addition to those three, he hadn't been able to think of them. He realized that number two did not necessarily exclude numbers one or three, of course; none of them seemed to him any more probable than the others.
Perhaps she had finished murdering.
Perhaps she had sensed the closing in of her pursuers.
Perhaps she was on her way to victim number four.
By a quarter past eight he had finished both his breakfast and his newspaper. When he contemplated the pale and by no means especially threatening sky through the balcony door, he decided to walk to the police station for a change.
His cold seemed to have given up the ghost, and he thought he had good reason to extend the good start to this day of rest-especially as he was unlikely to get much of that.
Things turned out to be rather worse than he had feared.
By lunchtime the picture of the wanted woman calling herself Maria Adler had reached every nook and cranny of the whole country and those who had managed to avoid it could only have been the blind and anyone sleeping off the effects of their Saturday night boozing.
According to Inspector Reinhart's understanding of the situation, that is.
By as early as eleven o'clock, the number of calls had passed the five-hundred mark, and by not much more than an hour later, that figure had doubled. Four operators were at the switchboard receiving calls; a couple of officers made a preliminary assessment and sorted them into two (later three) groups according to urgency, whereupon the material was sent upstairs to the fourth floor, where Van Veeteren and the others tried to make a final assessment and decide on what further action to take.
Another three women (to add to Münster's four) had called to say their name was Maria Adler. None of them had anything at all to do with the murders and could prove it, and none of them seemed to be too happy at being called Maria Adler at the present time. A poor woman up in Frigge, the wife of the lord mayor, was called something entirely different, but evidently looked exactly like the picture in the newspapers-she had been reported by four different people in her hometown, and had phoned the police in tears, both locally and at the headquarters in Maardam. The lord mayor himself was intending to sue.
However, the majority of all the calls came from the Deijkstraa area. All of them claimed-no doubt correctly-that they had come across this Miss Adler in various places during the month she had been living in Mrs. Klausner's house. In the supermarket. At the post office. In the street. At the bus stop on the Esplanade… and so on. No doubt most of these sightings were also correct; but, needless to say they were of little value to the investigation.
What they were looking for were two types of information, as had been stressed in the press release and repeated in the newspapers and the broadcast-news bulletins.
First: information that could (directly or indirectly) link the wanted woman to any of the murder scenes.
Second: evidence to indicate where Miss Adler had gone after leaving Mrs. Klausner's house on Friday afternoon.
By noon only a regrettably small number of calls had been received in those categories. There might have been indications suggesting that Maria Adler had taken a northbound train round about six o'clock on Friday evening. One witness claimed to have seen her in the station, another standing on a platform where he was waiting for a friend-a woman who didn't quite look like the picture of her in the mass media, but might well have been her even so.
If these two claims were correct, the train in question must have been the 1803, and shortly after half past noon Van Veeteren decided to send out a follow-up message to the mass media, urging anybody who had been traveling on that train and might have seen something to get in touch with the police.
A few hours later a handful of passengers had contacted the police, but what they had to say was hardly of significance. It sounded more like a collection of irrelevant details and guesses, and there were therefore grounds for believing that the train line (as Reinhart insisted on calling it) was not very promising.
By three o'clock, the officers in charge of the investigation were beginning to show the strain. They had spent the day in two rooms, Van Veeteren's and Münster's offices, which were next to each other, and the piles of paper and empty coffee mugs had increased steadily for six hours.
“Hell's bells,” said Reinhart. “Here's another call from the old witch who's seen our woman in Bossingen and Linzhuisen and Oosterbrügge. Now she's seen her in church at Loewingen as well.”
“We ought to have a better map,” said deBries. “With flag pins or something. I think we've had several tips from Aarlach, for instance. It would make things easier…”
“You and Rooth can fix one,” said Van Veeteren. “Go to your office so that you don't disturb us.”
DeBries finished off his Danish pastry and went to fetch Rooth.
“This is a real bugger of a job, sheer drudgery,” said Reinhart.
“I know,” said Van Veeteren. “No need to remind me.”
“I'm beginning to think she's the most observed woman in the whole country. They've seen her everywhere, for Christ's sake. In restaurants, at football matches, parking lots, cemeteries… in taxicabs, buses, shops, the movies…”
Van Veeteren looked up.
“Hang on,” he said. “Say that again!”
“What?” asked Reinhart.
“All those places you chanted.”
“What the hell for?”
Van Veeteren made a dismissive gesture.
“Forget it. Cemeteries…”
He picked up the telephone and called the duty officer. “Klempje? Get hold of Constable Klaarentoft without delay! Yes, I want him here in my office.”
“Now what are you onto?” asked Reinhart.
For once things went smoothly and half an hour later Klaa rentoft stuck his head around the door after knocking tentatively.
“You wanted to speak to me, Chief Inspector?”
“The photographs!” said Van Veeteren.
“What photographs?” wondered Klaarentoft, who took an average of a thousand a week.
“From the cemetery, of course! Ryszard Malik's burial. I want to look at them.”
“All of them?”
“Yes. Every damned one.”
Klaarentoft was beginning to look bewildered.
“You've still got them, I hope?”
“Yes, but they've only been developed. I haven't printed them out yet.”
“Klaarentoft,” said Van Veeteren, pointing threateningly with a toothpick. “Go down to the lab this minute and print them! I want them here within an hour.”
“Er, yes, of course, will do,” stammered Klaarentoft, and hurried out.
“If you can do it more quickly, so much the better!” yelled the chief inspector after him.
Reinhart stood up and lit his pipe.
“Impressive issuing of orders,” he said. “Do you think she was there, or what are you after?”
Van Veeteren nodded.
“Just a feeling.”
“Feelings can be helpful at times,” said Reinhart, blowing out a cloud of smoke. “How are Jung and Moreno doing, incidentally? With Innings and that Friday evening, I mean.”
“I don't know,” said Van Veeteren. “They've found the right place, it seems, but not whoever was with him.”
“And what's Heinemann doing?”
“He's in his office nosying into bank-account details, apparently,” said Van Veeteren. “Just as well, this would be a bit much for him.”
“It's starting to be a bit much for me as well, to tell you the truth,” said Reinhart, flopping back down on his chair. “I have to say I'd prefer her to come here in person and give herself up. Can't we put that request in the next press release?”
There was a knock on the door. Münster came in and perched on the edge of the desk.
“Something occurred to me,” he said. “This woman can hardly be older than forty That means she would have been ten at most when they were at the Staff College…”
“I know,” muttered Van Veeteren.
Reinhart scratched his face with the stem of his pipe.
“And what are you trying to say in view of that?”
“Well,” said Münster, “I thought you'd be able to work that out for yourself.”
It took Klaarentoft less than forty minutes to produce the photographs, and when he had put them on Van Veeteren's desk he lingered in the doorway, as if waiting for a reward of some kind. A coin, a candy, a few grateful and complimentary words at least. The chief inspector grabbed hold of the pictures, but Reinhart had noticed the hesitant giant.
“Hmm,” he said.
Van Veeteren looked up.
“Well done, Klaarentoft,” he said. “Very good. I don't think we need you anymore today.”
“Thank you, Chief Inspector,” said Klaarentoft, and left.
Van Veeteren leafed through the shiny photographs.
“Here!” he bellowed suddenly. “And here! I'll be damned!”
He skimmed quickly through the rest.
“Come here, Reinhart! Just look at these! That's her, all right.”
Reinhart leaned over the desk and studied the pictures of a woman in a dark beret and light overcoat tending a grave not far from Malik's; one was in profile, the other almost full face. They were evidently taken with only a short interval between: the photographer had simply changed his position. She was standing by the same grave and seemed to be reading what it said on the rough, partly moss-covered stone. Slightly bent, and one hand holding back a plant.
“Yes,” said Reinhart. “That's her, by God.”
Van Veeteren grabbed the telephone and called the duty officer.
“Has Klaarentoft left yet?”
“No.”
“Stop him when he appears, and send him back up here,” he said, and hung up.
Two minutes later Klaarentoft appeared in the doorway again.
“Good,” said Van Veeteren. “I need enlargements of these two, can you do that?”
Klaarentoft took the pictures and looked at them.
“Of course,” he said. “Is it…”
“Well?”
“Is it her? Maria Adler?”
“You can bet your life it is,” said Reinhart.
“I thought there was something odd about her.”
“He has a keen nose,” said Reinhart when Klaarentoft had left.
“Yes indeed,” said Van Veeteren. “He took twelve pictures of the clergyman as well. We'd better arrest him right away.”
“At last,” said Reinhart when he snuggled down behind Win-nifred Lynch in the bath. “It's been a bastard of a day. What have you done?”
“Read a book,” said Winnifred.
“A book? What's that?” said Reinhart.
She laughed.
“How's it going? I take it you haven't caught her?”
“No,” said Reinhart. “More than thirteen hundred tips, but we don't know where she is or who she is. It's a bugger. I thought we might even solve it today.”
“Hmm,” said Winnifred, leaning back against his chest. “All she needs is a wig. No suspicions, even?”
“She's probably gone northward,” said Reinhart. “She might have taken a train. We'll be talking to a guy tomorrow who thinks he might have been in the same coach as she was. He rang just before I left.”
“Any more?”
Reinhart shrugged.
“I don't know. We don't know about the motive, either.”
She thought for a moment.
“You remember I said it would be a woman?”
“Yes, yes,” said Reinhart, with a trace of irritation.
“A wronged woman.”
“Yes.”
She stroked his thigh with her fingers.
“There are many ways of wronging a woman, but one is infallible.”
“Rape?”
“Yes.”
“She was ten years old at most when they left the Staff College,” said Reinhart. “Can't be more than forty now-what do you think…?”
“No, hardly,” said Winnifred. “Awful, but there's something of that sort in the background, believe me.”
“Could well be,” said Reinhart. “Can't you look a bit deeper into your crystal ball and tell me where she's hiding as well? No, let's forget this for a while. What was the book you read?”
“ La Vie Devant Soi,” said Winnifred.
“Emile Ajar?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“I think I need a child.”
Reinhart leaned his head against the tiles and closed his eyes. Sensed two completely irreconcilable images flashing through his brain, but it all happened so quickly that he never managed to grasp their significance.
Assuming they had any.
“May I give you one?” he said.
“If you insist,” she said.
“She could well have taken that train,” said Münster. “He seems pretty sure of what he's talking about.”
“Good,” said Van Veeteren. “Where did she go to?”
Münster shook his head.
“Alas,” he said. “He got off in Rheinau, but she didn't. So… somewhere farther north than Rheinau, it seems.”
“There must be more people who saw her?” said Reinhart.
“You'd have thought so. In any case, there was somebody else in the same coach, according to Pfeffenholtz.”
“Pfeffenholtz?”
“Yes, that's his name. There was somebody else there all the way from Maardam. A skinhead. And it seems he was still there after Rheinau.”
“Wow,” said Reinhart.
“Dark glasses, Walkman, and a comic book,” said Münster. “Between eighteen and twenty about. Eating candy all the time, and a cross tattooed over his right ear.”
“A swastika?” Reinhart asked.
“Evidently,” sighed Münster. “What should we do? Send out a ‘wanted’ notice?”
Van Veeteren grunted.
“A swastika and candies?” he said. “Good God, no. Somebody else can go chasing after neo-Nazi puppies. But this Pfeffen-berg…”
“Holtz,” said Münster.
“Okay, okay, Pfeffenholtz. He seems to know what he's talking about?”
Münster nodded.
“Okay,” said Van Veeteren. “Go back to your office and pick out the ones from the Staff College who might fit in. The ones who live north of Rheinau, in other words. Fill me in when you've done that.”
Münster stood up and left the room.
“Have you thought about the motive?” Reinhart wondered.
“I've spent the last month wondering about that,” muttered the chief inspector.
“Really? What do you reckon, then? I'm starting to think in terms of rape.”
Van Veeteren looked up.
“Go on,” he said.
“It must be a woman looking for revenge for something or other,” Reinhart suggested.
“Could be.”
“And rape would fit the bill.”
“Could be,” repeated the chief inspector.
“Her age makes it a bit complicated, though. She must have been very young at the time. Only a child.”
Van Veeteren snorted.
“Younger than you think, Reinhart.”
Reinhart said nothing and stared into thin air for a few seconds.
“My God,” he said eventually. “That's a possibility, of course. Sorry to be so thick.”
“No problem,” said Van Veeteren, and reverted to leafing through papers.
DeBries arrived at the same time as Jung and Moreno.
“Can we take mine first?” said deBries. “It won't take long.”
Van Veeteren nodded.
“She's not in criminal records.”
“A pity” said Reinhart. “Still, as things are now it probably wouldn't help us if we knew who she was. But it could be interesting, of course.”
“Innings?” said Van Veeteren when deBries had left the room.
“Well,” began Moreno. “We've fixed the restaurant. He had a meal at Klumm's Cellar out at Loewingen, but we haven't managed to find out who he was with.”
“Good,” said Van Veeteren. “That was no doubt the intention. How carefully have you checked?”
“Extremely carefully,” said Jung. “We've spoken to all his colleagues and friends, and all his relatives up to seven times removed. None of them was out with Innings that Friday evening.”
The chief inspector broke a toothpick in half and looked pleased. As pleased as he was able to look, that is, which wasn't all that much. Nevertheless, Reinhart noticed his state.
“What's the matter with you?” he asked. “Don't you feel well?”
“Hmm,” said Van Veeteren. “But you have the witness from the restaurant, I gather?”
“Only a waiter,” said Moreno. “And he didn't get to see much of the person Innings was with. A man aged between fifty and sixty, he thought. He had his back toward the waiter most of the time, it seems.”
“You can bet your life he had,” said Van Veeteren. “Anyway take those photographs of the group who attended Staff College together. The new ones, of course. Ask him if he thinks he can point anybody out.”
Jung nodded.
“Do you think Innings was eating with one of them, then?”
Van Veeteren looked inscrutable.
“Moreover,” he said, “be a bit generous when you ask him if he can identify anybody. If he's not sure, get him to pick out the three or four most likely even so.”
Jung nodded again. Moreno looked at the clock.
“Today?” she asked hopefully. “It's half past four.”
“Now, right away,” said Van Veeteren.
Shortly after Van Veeteren got home, Heinemann phoned.
“I've found a connection,” he said.
“Between what?”
“Between Malik, Maasleitner, and Innings. Do you want me to tell you about it now, over the phone?”
“Fire away,” said Van Veeteren.
“Okay,” said Heinemann. “I've been going through their bank records, all three of them-it's more awkward than you might think. Some banks, Spaarkasse, for instance, have some routines that are highly peculiar, to say the least. It can't be much fun dealing with financial crimes, but I suppose that's the point…”
“What have you found?” asked Van Veeteren.
“Well, there's a similarity.”
“What, exactly?”
“June 1976,” explained Heinemann. “On June eighth, Malik takes out ten thousand guilders from his savings account at the Cuyverbank. On the ninth, Maasleitner draws an identical amount from the Spaarkasse. The same day, Innings is granted a loan by the Landtbank for twelve thousand…”
Van Veeteren thought for a moment.
“Well done, Heinemann,” he said eventually. “What do you think that implies?”
“You can never be sure, I suppose,” said Heinemann. “But a spot of blackmail might not be out of the question.”
Van Veeteren thought again.
“You see where we need to go from there, I suppose?”
Heinemann sighed.
“Yes,” he said. “I suppose I do.”
“You need to check and see if anybody else in the group made a similar transaction at the same time.”
“Exactly,” said Heinemann. “I'll start on that tomorrow.”
“Don't sound so miserable,” said the chief inspector. “You can start with the ones who live up north-with a bit of luck that might be enough. Have a word with Münster, and he'll give you a list tomorrow morning.”
“All right,” said Heinemann. “I have to go and look after the kiddies now.”
“Kiddies?” asked the chief inspector in surprise. “Surely your children are grown up now?”
“Grandchildren,” said Heinemann, and sighed again.
Well, well, Van Veeteren thought as he replaced the receiver. We're getting there, the noose is tightening.
He fetched a beer from the fridge. Put on the Goldberg Variations and leaned back in his armchair. Placed the photographs on his knee, and began to study them with a slight feeling of admiration.
Thirty-five young men.
Five dead.
Three of them thanks to this woman's efforts.
This woman in a dark beret and a light overcoat, with the trace of a smile on her face. Leaning over a gravestone. A birthmark on her left cheek-he couldn't recall seeing that on the picture the artist had drawn, but then it was no bigger than a little fingernail.
Klaarentoft had made an excellent enlargement in any case, and as Van Veeteren sat in his chair, studying her face, he suddenly had the impression that she had raised her gaze a little. Peered over the top of the gravestone and looked at him.
A bit cheeky, he thought. A little bit roguish even, but at the same time, serious.
And very, very determined.
How old are you, in fact? he wondered.
And how many do you have on your list?
But then everything came to a dead stop.
The distinct feeling that the investigation, which was now entering its second month, had been on the right track over the weekend-caused by such developments as the discovery of Maria Adler in the house in Deijkstraa and the visit to the restaurant by Innings-turned out to have been a little hasty Instead of gathering pace and culminating in the capture of the man-or rather, woman-behind the three murders, the sum of all the efforts being made gave the impression of something slowly but inevitably trickling out into the sand.
“We're drifting out to sea,” asserted Reinhart on Thursday morning. “Land behind!”
And the chief inspector was forced to agree. The so-called train line-suggesting that Maria Adler had traveled on the 1803 northbound train from Maardam Central Station-could be neither confirmed nor disproved. Pffeffenholtz's evidence, strong as it was, was uncorroborated. No candy-eating skinhead had been in contact. Nor any other passenger. Perhaps Miss Adler had indeed traveled to somewhere north of Rheinau, or perhaps not.
But even if she had, as Reinhart pointed out, what the devil was there to say that she was still there? And that her move was because of the intentions imputed to her?
Nothing at all, he announced, answering his own rhetorical question.
On Tuesday afternoon, in accordance with Van Veeteren's instructions, Jung and Moreno interviewed Ibrahim Jebardahad-dan again in Leuwingen. The young Iranian was at first very doubtful about his ability to pick out anybody, but when Moreno explained that it was especially important and serious, he picked out five people from the Staff College group that he thought might possibly have been sitting opposite Innings on the Friday in question.
When the chief inspector saw the list of names, he did not appear pleased with the result, and so Jebardahaddan was summoned to the police station on Thursday for another session with the photographs.
This time the five photographs he had picked out were mixed with not only some of the others from the group, but also pictures of about thirty other people who had nothing to do with the case, and the witness managed to pick out only two of the five faces he had chosen previously. Both of them lived south of Maardam, one of them as far distant as South Africa.
After Ibrahim Jebardahaddan had left the police station on unsteady legs, Moreno remarked that this was the first time she had seen him wearing glasses. The general consensus was that the restaurant line was a dead end, at least for the present.
As for contact with the as-yet-not-murdered (to use Rein-hart's term), the group had now been reduced to twenty-five (excluding those living abroad), and on Wednesday the investigation team was due to hear the results of the latest interviews with them. The judgment that Karel Innings had been a person roughly halfway between Malik and Maasleitner was more or less universal. A generally liked, sociable, and positive young man, most of them recalled. With no strong links to either Malik or Maasleitner.
As far as anybody could remember.
Some of the group had declined to make any comment at all for some unknown reason, according to the local police authorities. Some had also declined the offer of some form of protection or guarding, and three had been impossible to contact because they were not at home.
The link between the three victims was thus restricted to the banking transactions in June 1976, unearthed by Heinemann, but as yet he had been unable to find any similar transactions entered into at that time by any other members of the group.
“Much more awkward than you would think,” he explained when he reported to the Friday meeting reviewing the case. “Generally speaking we have to get specific permission for every single account we want to investigate.”
“Ah well,” sighed the chief inspector. “We know whose interests they're looking after. Where are we now, then? What does Reinhart have to say?”
“We haven't moved from the same spot,” said Reinhart. “It's nine days since Innings was murdered. And a week since Miss Adler flew the coop from Deijkstraa. She's had plenty of time to hide herself away, that's for sure.”
“I think she's finished,” said Rooth.
“I don't,” said Reinhart.
“We could keep a special eye on those on Münster's list,” suggested deBries. “The ones who live up north, that is.”
“Do you think it's worth the effort?” asked the chief inspector.
“Of course it isn't,” said Reinhart. “The only thing we ought to be concentrating on at the moment is a long, free weekend.”
“Is there anybody who objects to Inspector Reinhart's proposal?” asked Van Veeteren wearily, whereupon a gravelike silence descended on the senior investigative team.
“Okay,” said Van Veeteren. “Unless anything special turns up, we'll assemble again here on Monday morning at nine o'clock. Don't forget that we have over two thousand more tips to work through.”
A few hours later, when the chief inspector was about to enter the club in Styckargränd, he was met in the lobby by the manager, Urwitz, carrying in his arms a hopelessly drunk consultant from one of the local hospitals, a specialist in infectious diseases.
“We have to send him packing,” he explained. “We can't stop him from singing and weeping and upsetting the ladies.”
Van Veeteren nodded and helped the manager to lug the doctor up the stairs to a waiting taxi. These things happen, he thought. They dumped their burden in the backseat.
“Where to?” asked the driver, looking skeptical.
Urwitz turned to Van Veeteren.
“Do you know him?”
“Only in passing,” said Van Veeteren with a shrug.
“He maintains that his wife is entertaining her lover, so he can't go home. Can that be true?”
“No idea,” said the chief inspector. “But if he has a wife, it's probably as well not to send him home in this state no matter what.”
The manager nodded, and the driver looked even more thoughtful.
“Make up your minds, or take him out again,” he said.
“Take him to the police station at Zwille,” said Van Veeteren. “Pass on greetings from VV and tell them to be nice to him and let him sleep it off.”
“VV?” asked the driver.
“Yes, that's right,” said Van Veeteren, and the taxi moved off.
“O tempora! o mores!” sighed Urwitz, and escorted Van Veeteren down into the basement.
“You look a bit miserable,” remarked Mahler as the chief inspector sat down at the table. “Are you fasting for Lent already?”
“I lead an ascetic life all year round,” said Van Veeteren. “A match?”
“Of course,” said Mahler, starting to set up the pieces. “So the elusive lady continues to be elusive, according to what I've heard.”
Van Veeteren made no reply, but drank half a glass of beer instead.
“And that incident we spoke about,” said Mahler. “Have you found it?”
The chief inspector nodded and adjusted his pieces.
“I think so,” he said. “But until I can fix the date, all I can do is be miserable and mark time.”
“I understand,” said Mahler. “Or rather, I don't,” he added after a while.
“It doesn't matter,” said Van Veeteren. “I've decided to lie low and wait for a few days in any case. Let her make a move…”
“Shoot another one?”
“I hope not,” sighed Van Veeteren. “Speaking of moves…” “All right,” said Mahler, leaning forward over the board and starting his concentration routine.
When Van Veeteren left the club, shortly after half past midnight, he had two draws and a win under his belt, and since it wasn't raining, he was inclined to think-despite all the setbacks in the current investigation-that life was just about managing to keep its head above water.
When he came to Kongers Plejn, however, he had it brought home to him that this was a somewhat hasty judgment. He had just turned the corner and found himself in the midst of a gang of bellowing young men who had evidently been lying in wait for a suitable victim.
“Gotcha, you fucking ancient old bastard!” growled a broad-shouldered youth with close-cropped red hair as he forced Van Veeteren up against the wall. “Your money or your prick?”
My prick, Van Veeteren had time to think before another youth slapped his face with the back of his hand. The chief inspector could taste the blood on his tongue.
“I'm a police officer,” he said.
This information was greeted with roars of laughter.
“Police officers are our favorites,” said the youth pressing him up against the wall, and the others sniggered in delight.
The one who had hit him tried again, but this time Van Veeteren parried, at the same time thrusting his knee up between the close-cropped redhead's legs. The youth doubled up and groaned.
Van Veeteren delivered a right hook and succeeded in hitting somebody in the nasal region. He heard clearly how something gristly was rendered even more gristly, and as far as he could judge, the damaged area was not in his own hand.
The injured youth retired, but that was naturally the end of Van Veeteren's successes. The three remaining-and uninjured-youths forced the chief inspector down on all fours and began beating him up.
Van Veeteren curled up like a hedgehog, and as the punches and kicks were landing on him, all he could think of was: Silly little brats! Where are your daddies now, damn them?
After a while-it probably was no more than ten or fifteen seconds-they went away and left him. Ran off shouting and yelling.
“Hell and damnation…,” muttered Van Veeteren as he slowly got to his feet. He could feel he was bleeding from his lips and from a wound over his eyebrow; but when he started moving his arms and legs, he was able to establish that he was relatively unharmed.
He scanned the empty square.
Where the hell are all the witnesses? he thought, then resumed his walk home.
A little later, when he examined himself in the bathroom mirror, it occurred to him that it had been absolutely right to put the investigation on ice over the weekend.
An officer in charge looking like this could hardly be a source of inspiration for his team.
Then, in his capacity as a private citizen, he phoned the police and reported the assault. He also insisted, in his capacity as a detective chief inspector, that he should be the one to interrogate any of the young delinquents the police managed to find.
“Were they immigrants?” asked the duty constable.
“No,” said Van Veeteren. “Bodybuilders, I'd say. Why should they be immigrants?”
He received no answer.
When he had washed and gone to bed, he was surprised to note, on reflection, that he hadn't felt in the least bit scared during the whole of the incident.
Indignant and annoyed, but not scared.
I suppose I'm too old for that, he thought.
Or perhaps it needs something worse than that to put the wind up me.
Or then again-it occurred to him just as he was about to fall asleep-perhaps I'm no longer scared of anything on my own account.
Only for others.
For society For future developments.
For life?
Then he recalled a silly riddle Rooth had come up with the other day:
QUESTION: How do you make a random-number generator nowadays?
ANSWER: You pour two beers into a bodybuilder.
Then he fell asleep.