The Return Page 14

  Moreno hesitated.

  “Hmm,” she said, biting her lower lip. “I don’t know. The shadow of Verhaven is lurking over them all, but that’s scarcely surprising. I gather a delegation of locals actually wanted to change the place’s name after the second murder.”

  “Change its name?” said Rooth.

  “Yes. They wanted to get rid of the name Kaustin. Presumably they thought everybody associated it with Verhaven and the trials. They felt they were living in a village known only for the murders. There was a petition you could sign in the village shop, but it all petered out in the end.”

  “I suppose you can understand them,” said Münster. “Anyway, can you be a bit more specific? What have you managed to find out?”

  “Well,” said deBries, “we’ve spoken to about twenty people, most of them old, who’ve lived there all their lives and remembered both cases very clearly. There’s not much in the way of movement in and out of the village, and the population is only some six hundred inhabitants in all. The setting is very pretty, no arguing with that. A lake and some woodland and some open countryside, that kind of thing.”

  “Many people were unwilling to talk about Verhaven,” said Moreno. “They seemed to want to forget all about it, as if it were something shameful for everybody who lives there. Maybe it is, in a way.”

  “Isn’t there more than that?” interrupted Reinhart.

  “Meaning what?” said deBries.

  Reinhart was poking around with a match in the bowl of his pipe.

  “Did you get the feeling that they were…hiding something, so to speak? Damn it all, surely I don’t need to spell it out? It’s a matter of mood, pure and simple, that’s all. A woman ought to notice it anyway.”

  “Thank you,” said deBries.

  For God’s sake, don’t start fighting now, Münster thought. I don’t want to have to spend ages editing the tape.

  “Maybe,” said Moreno after a little pause. “But it’s only a very faint suspicion at most. Perhaps they all have a skeleton or two in their cupboard—metaphorically speaking, naturally—and they’re a bit scared of one another. That’s another aspect of the syndrome, isn’t it? No, I don’t know.”

  Münster sighed.

  “But you must have put them under a little bit of pressure, surely?”

  “Obviously,” said deBries. “The butcher’s a bit of a shady type, for instance. He has at least two mistresses in the village. Or has had, rather. Perhaps he had it off with Beatrice Holden now and again, before she made a pitch at Verhaven, but that’s not certain. She was a bit of a dolly, it seems. Not too difficult to persuade.”

  “Her relationship with Verhaven was a stormy one, if I’m not much mistaken?” said Reinhart.

  “You can say that again,” said Moreno. “A bit of a cat and dog relationship, apparently. Sparks would fly now and then. Only a week before she was murdered, she knocked on the door of her neighbors’ house in the middle of the night, looking for refuge. He’d given her a good beating, evidently. She was naked, just wrapped up in a blanket.”

  “Did they let her in?”

  “They certainly did. They let her sleep on a sofa. She was pretty drunk, but insisted she was going to report Verhaven to the police the next day. Grievous bodily harm, that kind of thing.”

  “But when she woke up the next morning,” said deBries, “she just wrapped the blanket around her and went back to him.”

  “For Christ’s sake!” said Reinhart. “The faded embers of second thoughts.”

  “Frailty, thy name is woman,” said Moreno, with a quick smile.

  “Hmm,” said Münster. “Anything else of interest?”

  “Quite a bit about his childhood and school days,” said Moreno. “The former janitor at the village school is still alive. He’s nearly ninety, but unusually clear in the head and not unwilling to talk. Verhaven was a bit of an odd bird from the start, it appears. A loner. Introverted. But strong. His fellow pupils respected him. There’s plenty of evidence for that.”

  Münster nodded.

  “There were a few who thought he was innocent,” said deBries. “Of the Beatrice murder, at least. But that’s no longer an opinion people are willing to shout in the streets.”

  “Why not?” asked Jung.

  “Same boat,” muttered Reinhart.

  “Yes, that’s about it,” said deBries. “Standing in the village shop in Kaustin and maintaining that Verhaven is innocent is a bit like going to Tehran and claiming that the ayatollah has shit his trousers.”

  “Ayatollahs don’t wear trousers,” said Jung. “They wear those black dresses, whatever they’re called.”

  “All right, all right,” said Münster.

  “Maintaining that Verhaven is innocent implies something else as well,” said Reinhart.

  “What?” wondered Rooth.

  “You’re accusing somebody else in the village of murder.”

  Nobody spoke, and Münster could see exactly how long it took for Reinhart’s words to sink into each one of them.

  “But that’s not certain,” said Rooth.

  “No,” said Reinhart. “Of course it’s not certain that there’s another murderer in the village, but it’s shit-hot certain that the thought will occur to people. Suspicion. If you keep your mouth shut, you’re not going to put your foot in it.”

  “Very true,” said Moreno.

  “Well,” said Münster when he had switched off the tape recorder and the others had left them alone. “What do you think?”

  “I don’t think anything,” sighed Rooth. “Or rather, I think anything’s possible. I’d give a lot for a couple of hot tips at this stage. What the hell should we be concentrating on?”

  “I don’t know,” said Münster. “I have the feeling Hiller will want to take several officers off the case. It’ll probably be just you and me from now on. And the boss, of course.”

  He nodded toward the tape recorder.

  “Unless we come across something vital,” said Rooth.

  “Unless the newspapers decide to make a meal of it, more likely,” said Münster. “They’ll have the story tomorrow, in any case. Maybe that’s just as well. We need all the help we can get.”

  “What do you really think yourself?” said Rooth before they went their separate ways in the underground car park. “Do you really think there’s a triple murderer on the loose in this backwater? That sounds to me like a damn awful film.”

  “It wouldn’t be a better film even if the locals knew who it is,” said Münster. “No, I think I’d switch it off right away.”

  Rooth pondered.

  “Maybe we are sort of sitting in a movie theater, as well,” he said. “It can be damn hard getting out if you’re stuck in the middle of a row.”

  “Dead right,” said Münster.

  They stood in silence for a while.

  “How about a beer?” said Roth.

  Münster checked his watch.

  “No time,” he said. “I have to visit the patient. They won’t let me in after eight.”

  “Pity,” said Rooth, and shrugged. “Pass on greetings. I reckon we could do with him around.”

  “I couldn’t agree more,” said Münster.

  Why do I keep lying? Münster asked himself as he sat in the car on the way to his suburb. Why couldn’t I have simply told him straight up that I wanted to go home to Synn and the kids? Why did I have to drag in the chief inspector?

  Van Veeteren would get his tape after breakfast the next morning, as they had agreed. But if he didn’t want to offend Rooth by turning down his offer of a drink, why should some old cop recovering from an operation be a better excuse than his wife and children?

  A good question, no doubt about it.

  He decided to think about something else instead.

  26

  Van Veeteren folded up the Allgemenje and dropped it on the concrete floor. Then he inserted the cassette, adjusted the earphones and leaned back against the pillow.

&
nbsp; Elgar’s cello concerto. The sun in his face and a warm breeze. Could be worse.

  It wasn’t exactly normal routine to allow patients to lie out on the balcony and enjoy themselves, he had realized that. On the other hand, it was hardly the only rule the hospital staff had broken during the five days he’d been in their care. The hospital rules left a great deal to be desired in every respect, but at least the staff had begun to grasp who they were dealing with. Modified rapture.

  “But no more than half an hour at most,” Sister Terhovian had insisted, and for some reason held up four fingers close to his face.

  “We’ll see about that,” he’d responded.

  Getting on for three quarters of an hour must have passed by now. Presumably they’d discovered that it was less trouble to let him be outside.

  He called up from his memory the stuff he’d just been reading. There wasn’t a lot to say about it, in fact. Bold headlines on the front page, of course, and two columns summarizing the case on an inside page, but surprisingly little in the way of speculation. Nothing at all, to be honest.

  So this was the fourth time. No getting away from it. Since Verhaven had launched his career as an athlete in his early twenties, he’d taken over the headlines on four different occasions.

  As king of the middle distances at the end of the fifties. King, and then cheat.

  As a murderer at the beginning of the sixties.

  As a murderer once again about twenty years later.

  And now, in the middle of the nineties, as a victim. The last time, it seemed reasonable to assume.

  Was this a logical development and an expected conclusion? Van Veeteren wondered as he turned up the volume to exclude the noise of the buses in Palitzerlaan down below.

  The logical conclusion of a wasted life?

  Hard to say.

  What pattern could be applied to Leopold Verhaven’s time on earth? Was there any pattern behind this bizarre and complicated human destiny?

  Would it be possible, Van Veeteren asked himself, to make a film about his life, and thereby say something fundamental about his existence? About everybody’s existence? That was a good question, in any case. A good yardstick.

  Or was it just a matter of unfortunate circumstances piling up, one on top of the other? A dismal and ill-starred destiny of an unusual person under pressure, whose mutilated end was just as pointless as the rest of his days in this world?

  Not the sort of life to make a film about?

  He bit a toothpick and continued his line of thought.

  Shouldn’t it be possible to re-create any given life in some artistic form or other, if a big enough effort was made? Perhaps there was a specific genre for every individual. What about his own life, for instance? What could be made of that? A sinfonietta, perhaps? A concrete sculpture? Could Strindberg have turned it into half a sheet of paper?

  Who knows, he thought.

  And now here he was, lying on the balcony, asking these pointless questions again. Pretentious and incomprehensible questions that seemed to be whirring around inside his head only in order to mount a vain and idiotic struggle with the aggressive cello.

  Much better would be a beer and a cigarette, he thought, and pressed the white button. A damn sight better.

  But instead of Sister Terhovian, it was Münster who appeared in the doorway. Van Veeteren switched off the cassette and removed the earphones.

  “Everything OK?” asked Münster.

  “What the devil do you mean? Isn’t it obvious that everything isn’t OK? I’m lying here miles from civilization, and I can’t do anything about it. Have you made any progress?”

  “Not really,” said Münster. “It seems pretty good out here in the sunshine, no matter what.”

  “Hot and sweaty,” said Van Veeteren. “I could do with a beer. Well?”

  “What do you mean by ‘well’?”

  “Have you brought the cassettes, for instance?”

  “Of course. Both of them. I had a bit of trouble in finding the Gossec, needless to say, but they had it at Laudener’s.”

  He produced the two cassettes from a plastic carrier bag and handed them to the chief inspector.

  “The red one is from our update meeting.”

  “Are you suggesting that I can’t tell the difference between a requiem and a gang of cops droning on and on?”

  “No, I take it for granted that you can.”

  “I’ve read what the Allgemenje has to say. What’s in the other rags?”

  “The same, more or less,” said Münster.

  “No speculation about motives?”

  “No, not in the ones I’ve read, in any case.”

  “Odd,” said Van Veeteren.

  “Why?” said Münster.

  “Ah well, it’ll come, no doubt. Anyway, I’m quite clear about the matter now. I read through the Marlene papers last night. I’ll wager he’s innocent on both accounts. Do you disagree?”

  “No,” said Münster. “We’ve been coming round to that view as well. We’re just a bit doubtful about what to do next….”

  “Of course you are, damn it,” growled Van Veeteren. “I haven’t issued any orders yet. Wheel me back into the ward, and we can get down to business. It’s disgraceful that they send patients into exile on the balcony and just leave them lying there. It’s like an oven here….”

  Münster opened the doors as wide as they would go and started to shove the steel-framed bed back into the ward.

  “Where shall we start?” he asked when Van Veeteren was back in his usual place.

  “How the hell do I know?” said the chief inspector. “Let me listen to the tapes, and come back two hours from now. I’ll be able to give you clear instructions then.”

  “All right,” said Münster.

  “Meanwhile, you can try to locate this person.”

  He handed over a sheet of paper folded twice.

  “Leonore Conchis,” Münster read. “Who’s she?”

  “A woman Verhaven had a relationship with in the seventies,” said Van Veeteren.

  “Is she still alive?” Münster asked automatically.

  “You can start off by finding the answer to that question,” said Van Veeteren.

  VII

  April 24, 1962

  27

  She wakes up yet again.

  She can feel the darkness and his heavy presence like pressure on her chest. She cautiously heaves herself up on an elbow and tries to make out the faint phosphorescent glow of the alarm clock’s hands.

  Half past three. Very nearly. As far as she can see. The air in the bedroom is compact and stuffy, despite the window standing ajar. She raises herself into a sitting position and gropes around with her feet on the uneven floor until she finds her slippers.

  She stands up and tiptoes cautiously out of the room, picking up her thin and worn terry-cloth robe on the way. She closes the door and puts her ear against the cool wood. She can hear his heavy, occasionally rattling breathing even at this distance.

  She shivers and puts on her robe, then slowly makes her way down the stairs.

  Down. That’s the worst. The pain in her hips sends red-hot needles up and down through her body. Along her spine and up into the back of her head, down to the arch of her foot and into her toes. It’s remarkable how mobile this pain can be.

  It gets worse with every step she takes.

  With every day. More and more acute. It becomes more and more difficult not to turn her feet inward and hunch her back.

  It becomes harder and harder to walk.

  She slumps down at the kitchen table, rests her head in her hands and feels the throbbing pain slowly receding. Waits until it has faded away completely before turning her thoughts to that other business.

  That other matter.

  Three times tonight she has been jettisoned by that dream. Three times.

  The same ghastly idea. The same unbearable image.

  Whenever he’s come upstairs and plummeted down beside
her, she’s pretended to be asleep. He hasn’t touched her. Not even placed a hand on her hip or shoulder. She’s got him as far as that. He never touches her now, and she knows this is a victory she has achieved, despite everything. She has come this far thanks to her own efforts.

  Beyond reach. Her body is beyond reach. Now and forevermore.

  She need never be taken advantage of again.

  The unspoken agreement is a sort of murky bond between them, but it is only now that she has begun to appreciate the price. The counterbalance. The incomprehensible horror on the other side of the scales.

  Everything has its price, but she has not had any choice. There can be no question of guilt regarding her decision and her action—she knows all too well what would be the outcome of giving herself again to this man, even though he is her husband and the father of her child. There is medical advice as well; it’s not just her. It would have a detrimental effect on her physical and mental health, and what ability to move around she still retains. If she were to become pregnant, that is. She must not give birth again. Must never give herself to him again. The hub of her life is in her pelvis. Ever since that terrible night when she gave birth, it has to be protected and made as inaccessible as a hallowed room.

  A hallowed room?

  This really is the way her thoughts are tending. Can anybody understand why?

  God or her mother or any other woman?

  No, nobody. She is on her own in this matter. A barren woman with a husband and a child. At long last she has learned how to accept the inevitable. He must never again be allowed inside her, and now his hands and the whole of his body have given up their vain attempts to plead and grope around. At long last he has resigned himself to the inevitable.

  But the price?

  Perhaps she did realize early on that there would be a price to pay. But now? Did she realize this would be the price?

  The thought is horrific. Not even a thought; no more than the fragment of a dream. An image that has raced through her consciousness at such a dizzy speed and with such incomprehensible clarity that she has been unable to understand it.