Borkmann's Point: An Inspector Van Veeteren Mystery Page 13

  And about how he would cope with this new emptiness that seemed to have replaced the previous one, and sometimes felt like an enormous vacuum inside him. Insistent and almost endless. But inside him.

  I have dug a hole in order to fill another one, he thought.

  And this new one is so much bigger. Give me a sign, Bitte!

  “A spectacular place,” said Van Veeteren, looking around.

  “The terrace is best,” said Bausen. “You’re sitting on top of the world, as it were.”

  Van Veeteren sat down. Thought fleetingly about The Blue Ship. It was quite empty up here as well, but perhaps it was different in the evenings. At the moment, there was only a solitary gentleman with a newspaper by the picture window, and a few women in hats just in front of the grand piano. A waiter dressed in black bowed and handed over two menus bound in leather.

  “Lunch,” said Van Veeteren. “Now it’s my turn. Get enough inside you to keep you going for a while. We all work best on a full stomach—think best, at least.”

  “I wasn’t born yesterday,” said Bausen.

  “I can’t take any more of this,” said Beate Moerk. “If I have to talk to another single doctor, I’ll strangle him.”

  “Go back to the car and wait,” said Münster. “I’ll deal with this Mandrijn person—he’s due in five minutes.”

  “Is he the one who lived in Simmel’s house?”

  Münster nodded.

  “OK,” said Beate Moerk. “Give him what he deserves. I’m going to lie down on the backseat under the blanket.”

  “Good,” said Münster.

  “My name is Inspector Kropke,” said Kropke.

  “Funny first name,” said the woman, with a yawn. “But come in, even so.”

  “So you lived next door to the Simmels in Las Brochas?”

  “I certainly did.”

  “Did you mix with them socially as well?”

  “I wouldn’t say that.”

  “Why not?”

  She raised her eyebrows a little.

  “Why not? Because we had no desire to mix with them, of course. We met at the occasional party, naturally, but the bottom line was that they didn’t have any style. My husband had quite a lot to do with Ernst, but I could never make her out.”

  “Her?”

  “Yes, the wife... Grete, or whatever her name is.”

  “Were there any... improprieties as far as the Simmels were concerned?”

  “Improprieties? What do you mean by that?”

  “Well, did you hear anything... did they have any enemies, was there anything illegal, for instance? We’re trying to find a motive, you see—”

  “My dear Inspector, we don’t go ferreting about for such things in Las Brochas. We leave everybody in peace there. Lots of people have moved there precisely to get away from all the interfering authorities who can’t stop sticking their noses into other people’s business.”

  Style? thought Kropke.

  “So that’s the way it is,” he said. “Maybe you think we shouldn’t give a toss about tracking down murderers and that kind of thing?”

  “Don’t be silly. Go and do your job. That’s what you’re paid to do, after all. But leave honest folk in peace. Was there anything else?”

  “No, thank you,” said Kropke. “I think I’ve had enough.”

  “Name and address?” said Bang.

  “Why?” asked the twelve-year-old.

  “This is a police investigation,” said Bang.

  “Uwe Klejmert,” said the boy. “The address is here.”

  Bang noted it down.

  “Where were you on the evening of Wednesday, September eighth?”

  “Is that last week? When the Axman murdered Maurice Rühme?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then I was at home.”

  “Here?”

  “Yes. I watched Clenched Fist till ten o’clock. Then I went to bed.”

  “Did you notice anything unusual?”

  “Yes, my sister had made my bed.”

  “Nothing else?”

  “No. Did he scream?”

  “Who?”

  “Rühme.”

  “I don’t think so,” said Bang. “I didn’t hear anything, in any case, and I was the first on the scene. Are your parents not at home?”

  “No,” said the boy. “They’re at work. They’ll be home around six.”

  “All right,” said Bang. “Tell them to report to the police if they think they might have some significant information.”

  “Signi... ?”

  “Significant. If they’ve seen or heard anything odd, that is.”

  “So that you can nail the Axman?”

  “Exactly.”

  “I promise,” said Uwe Klejmert.

  Bang put his notebook away in his inside pocket, and saluted.

  “Aren’t you going to ask me why Sis made my bed?”

  “All right,” said Bang. “Why did she? I’ve never heard of a sister making the bed for anybody.”

  “She’d borrowed my Walkman and broke the earphones.”

  “Typical sister,” said Bang.

  “Do you have a pleasant time at your hotel in the evenings, you and DCI Van Veeteren?” asked Beate Moerk.

  “Very pleasant,” said Münster.

  “Otherwise I could offer you a toasted sandwich and a glass of wine.”

  “Tonight?”

  “Why not?” said Beate Moerk. “But I’m afraid I wouldn’t be able to avoid talking shop.”

  “That’s no problem,” said Münster. “I have a feeling we ought to get this case solved pretty damn soon.”

  “My own feeling precisely,” said Beate Moerk.

  25

  She swooped down on him just outside the entrance, and he realized she must have been standing there, waiting. Hidden by the privet hedge that ran all the way along the front of the hotel, presumably. Or behind one of the poplars.

  A tall and rather wiry woman in her fifties. Her dark flower-patterned shawl was tied loosely around her hair and fell down over her high shoulders. For a brief moment he thought she might be one of his teachers from high school, but that was no more than a fleeting impression; he could never remember names and, in any case, it wouldn’t have been possible.

  “Detective Chief Inspector Van Veeteren?”

  “Yes.”

  She put her hand on his arm and looked straight at him from very close quarters. Stared him in the eye, as if she were very nearsighted or was trying to establish an unusual level of intimacy.

  “Could I speak to you for a few minutes, please?”

  “Of course,” said Van Veeteren. “What’s it about? Shall we go inside?”

  Is she mad? he wondered.

  “If you could just walk around the block with me. I prefer to talk out of doors. It’ll only take five minutes.”

  Her voice was deep and melancholy. Van Veeteren agreed and they started walking down toward the harbor. They turned right into Dooms Alley, in among the topsy-turvy gables, and it was only when they had entered the deep shadow that she started to present her problem.

  “It’s about my husband,” she explained. “His name’s Laurids and he’s always had a bit of a problem with his nerves... nothing he couldn’t get over; he’s never been put away or anything like that. Just a bit worried. But now he no longer dares to leave home . . .”

  She paused, but Van Veeteren said nothing.

  “Ever since last Friday—that’s almost a week now—he’s stayed home because he’s frightened of the Axman. He doesn’t go to work, and now they’ve told him he’ll be fired if he goes on like this—”

  Van Veeteren stopped in his tracks.

  “What are you trying to tell me?”

  She let go of his arm. Stared down at the ground as if she were ashamed.

  “Well, I thought I’d track you down and ask how it’s going... I told him about it, and
I do think that he would dare to go out again if I could go back home with some kind of reassuring or soothing comment from you.”

  Van Veeteren nodded. Good God! he thought.

  “Tell your husband... what’s your name, by the way?”

  “Christine Reisin. My husband’s called Laurids Reisin.”

  “Tell him he has no need to be afraid,” said Van Veeteren.

  “He can go back to work. We’re very hopeful we can nail this murderer in... six to eight days at most.”

  She looked up and eyed him from close quarters again.

  “Thank you, Mr. Van Veeteren,” she said eventually. “Very many thanks. I feel I can rely on you.”

  Then she turned on her heel and vanished into one of the narrow alleys. Van Veeteren stood there watching her.

  How easy it is to fool a woman, he thought. A woman you’ve only known for five minutes.

  The episode stuck in his mind, and as he stood in the shower, trying to scrub her out of his memory, it became clear to him that Laurids Reisin would hang over him like a bad conscience for as long as this investigation lasted.

  The man who daren’t leave home.

  Somebody was on the way to losing his job—and his dignity, no doubt—simply because Van Veeteren and the others— Münster, Bausen, Kropke and Moerk—couldn’t track down this damn murderer.

  Were there more like that, perhaps? Why not?

  How much collective fear—terror and dread—was in existence at this moment in Kaalbringen? Assuming it was possible to measure such things...

  He stretched out on his bed and stared up at the ceiling.

  Counted.

  Six days since the murder of Maurice Rühme.

  Fifteen since Simmel.

  Eggers? Two and a half months.

  And what did they have?

  Well, what? A mass of information. An absolute abundance of details about this and that—and no pattern.

  Not the slightest trace of a suspicion, and no leads at all.

  Three men who had recently moved into Kaalbringen.

  From Selstadt, from Aarlach, from Spain.

  Two were drug abusers; one of those had given it up several years ago. The weapon was under lock and key. The murderer had handed it over to them himself.

  Melnik’s report? Hadn’t arrived yet, but was that anything to count on? The material they had on Eggers and Simmel, and what little they had on Rühme, had so far turned up no similarities at all, apart from the way they’d died, the way he’d gone about it. No name in the background to link them together—nothing. Would anything turn up in Aarlach? He doubted it.

  Damnation!

  He didn’t even have a hunch, and he usually did. Not a single little idea, nothing nagging away inside his brain, trying to draw attention to itself—nothing odd, no improbable coincidences, nothing.

  Not a damned thing, as they’d said.

  It was as if the whole of this case had never really happened. Or had taken place on the other side of a wall—an impenetrable, bulletproof glass pane through which he could only vaguely make out a mass of incomprehensible people and events, dancing slowly in accordance with some choreography that made no sense to him. All the different, pointless and meaningless connections...

  A course of events with one single, totally blind, observer.

  DCI Van Veeteren.

  As if it didn’t affect him.

  And then Laurids Reisin.

  There again, wasn’t it always like this? he asked himself as he fumbled around in his pockets for his pack of cigarettes.

  Wasn’t this just the usual familiar feeling of alienation that occasionally used to creep up on him? Wasn’t it... ?

  The hell it was! He cut his train of thought short. Produced a cigarette. Lit it and went to stand by the window. Looked out over the square.

  Darkness was closing in over the town. The shops had closed for the day, and people were few and far between; the stall holders outside the covered market were busy packing up their wares, he noted. Over there in the arcade a few musicians were playing for deaf ears, or for nobody at all. He raised his gaze and eyed the churchyard and the path up to the steep hill on the edge of his field of vision; he looked farther left: the tower blocks in Dünningen. To the right: the municipal woods, Rikken and whatever it was called, that other district. Somewhere or other... somewhere or other out there was a murderer, feeling more and more secure.

  We have to make a breakthrough now, thought Van Veeteren. It’s high time. So that people dare to go out—if for no other reason.

  Bausen had already set up the board.

  “Your turn for white,” said Van Veeteren.

  “The winner gets black,” said Bausen. “Klimke rules.”

  “All right by me,” said Van Veeteren, moving his king’s pawn.

  “I brought up a bottle,” said Bausen. “Do you think a Pergault ’81 might help us to get out of the shit?”

  “I couldn’t possibly think of any better assistance,” said Van Veeteren.

  “At last!” he exclaimed an hour and a half later. “Dammit all, I thought you were going to wriggle your way out, despite everything.”

  “Impressive stuff,” said Bausen. “A peculiar opening... I don’t think I’ve come across it before.”

  “Thought it up myself,” said Van Veeteren. “You have to be on your toes, and you can never use it more than once against the same opponent.”

  Bausen drank to his health. Sat quietly for a while, gazing down into his empty glass.

  “Damn,” he said. “This business is starting to get on my nerves, to be honest. Do you reckon we’re going to crack it?”

  Van Veeteren shrugged.

  “Well . . .”

  “Keysenholt phoned half an hour before you showed up,” said Bausen. “You know, the regional boss. Wanted to know if I was prepared to go on. Until we’d cracked the case, that is . . .”

  Van Veeteren nodded.

  “The snag is that he didn’t actually ask me to keep going. Just asked what I thought about it. Wanted me to make the decision. Damn brilliant way to bow out, don’t you think? Condemn yourself as incompetent, then retire!”

  “Well, I don’t know—” said Van Veeteren.

  “The trouble is, I don’t really know myself. It wouldn’t be very flattering to give yourself a few extra months and then mess it up all the same. What do you think?”

  “Hmm,” said Van Veeteren. “A bit awkward, no doubt about it. It might be best to nail the bastard first, perhaps?”

  “My view exactly,” said Bausen. “But I have to give this blasted Keysenholt some kind of answer. He’s going to phone again tomorrow—”

  “Will it be Kropke who takes over?”

  “Until the end of the year, at least. They’ll no doubt advertise the post in January.”

  Van Veeteren nodded. Lit a cigarette and pondered for a moment.

  “Tell Keysenholt you don’t understand what he’s babbling about,” he said. “The Axman will be behind bars within six to eight days, give or take.”

  “How the hell can I claim that?” said Bausen, looking doubtful.

  “I’ve promised to solve it before then.”

  “Three cheers for that,” said Bausen. “That makes me feel much better, of course. How do you intend going about it?”

  “I’m not sure,” said Van Veeteren. “But if you were to bring up a decent—let me see—a decent Merlot, I’d set up the pieces while you’re away. No doubt we’ll hit on an opening.”

  Bausen smiled.

  “A homemade one?” he asked, rising to his feet.

  “They’re usually the best.”

  Bausen disappeared in the direction of his wine cellar.

  So that’s how easy it is to fool an honest old chief of police, thought Van Veeteren. What on earth am I doing here?

  26

  “But if . . .” said Beate Moerk, scraping a blob o
f candle wax off the tablecloth. “If Rühme opened the door because he recognized the murderer, that ought to mean that we have his name somewhere on our lists.”

  “Good friend or colleague, yes,” said Münster. “Do you have anybody in mind?”

  “I’ll go get my papers. Have you finished eating?”

  “Couldn’t eat another crumb,” said Münster. “Really delicious... a scandal that you live on your own.”

  “In view of the fact that I can make toasted sandwiches, you mean?”

  Münster blushed.

  “No... no, in general, of course. A scandal that the men... that nobody has got you.”

  “Rubbish,” said Beate Moerk, heading for her study.

  What a brilliant conversationalist I am, thought Münster.

  “If we say that it’s a man, that means precisely ten possibilities, in fact.”

  “Not more?” said Münster. “How many are left if we assume that he lives here in Kaalbringen?”

  Beate Moerk counted them up.

  “Six,” she said. “Six male friends or colleagues. A bit thin, I’d say.”

  “They’d only recently moved here,” said Münster. “They can’t have all that big a circle of friends yet. Who are the six?”

  “Three colleagues they occasionally saw socially... and three couples, it seems.”

  “Names,” said Münster.

  “Genner, Sopinski and Kreutz—they’re the doctors. The friends are Erich Meisse, also a doctor, incidentally, and...hang on a minute. Kesserling and Teuvers. Yes, that’s the lot. What do you think? Meisse is a colleague of Linckx’s, I think.”

  “I’ve met them all, apart from Teuvers and Meisse. I wouldn’t have thought it was any of them, but that’s no guar-antee of anything, of course. Even so, shall we say it must be... Teuvers?”

  “All right,” said Beate Moerk. “That’s that solved, then. There’s just one little snag, though—”

  “What’s that?”

  “He’s been away for three weeks. Somewhere in South America, if I’m not much mistaken.”

  “Oh, shit,” said Münster.

  “Shall we say it was somebody he didn’t know, then?”

  “That might be just as well. Not any of these, at least. It could have been a celebrity as well. Somebody everybody recognizes, I mean. The finance minister or Meryl Streep or somebody . . .”