Borkmann's Point: An Inspector Van Veeteren Mystery Page 20

  “Well?” said Van Veeteren.

  “What’s the time limit on proceedings for illegal distilling?” asked Podworsky.

  “You’ll be all right,” said Van Veeteren.

  “Sure?”

  Van Veeteren nodded.

  “Never trust the fucking cops,” said Podworsky. “Switch that fucking machine off !”

  Van Veeteren nodded, and Münster switched off the tape recorder. Podworsky gave a hoarse laugh.

  “All right. Here you have it. I’d hit upon a consignment of spirits that needed selling on—”

  “Hit upon?” said Van Veeteren.

  “Let’s call it that,” said Podworsky.

  “How much?”

  “Quite a lot.”

  Van Veeteren nodded.

  “And you see, I had this pal, a Dane, in Aarlach who had a buyer, a fucking medic, as it turned out, who wasn’t too fond of paying what he owed.”

  “What was his name?” interrupted Münster.

  “His name? Fuck knows. I can’t remember. Well, something beginning with B. Bloe-something—”

  “Bleuwe?” suggested Van Veeteren.

  “Yeah, that’s probably it—one of those academic assholes who thought he could make some easy cash by selling booze to his snotty pals. We’d reached agreement on everything, the delivery was arranged, everything fixed up, all that remained now was payment—”

  “And?” said Van Veeteren.

  “That was what we were going to sort out at that pub...and this little prick sits there with his pal and thinks he can pull a fast one on me! What do you reckon the odds are on that, Constable?”

  “How much are we talking about?” asked Münster.

  “Quite a bit,” said Podworsky. “We’d sunk a fair amount, and I got a bit annoyed, of course. I only regret one thing—”

  “What?” said Van Veeteren.

  “That I didn’t wait for the Dane before I went for them,” said Podworsky, succumbing to a sudden coughing fit. He had to turn away and double up with his hands over his mouth, and it lasted for nearly half a minute. Münster looked at Van Veeteren. Tried to work out what he was thinking, but that was impossible, as usual. As for himself, he thought Podworsky’s story sounded pretty plausible; at least he didn’t give the impression of making it up as he went along.

  Although you could never be sure, of course. He’d seen this kind of thing before. And got it wrong before, as well.

  “What was the name of his pal?” asked Van Veeteren when Podworsky had finished coughing.

  “Eh?”

  “Bleuwe’s mate. What was he called?”

  “No idea,” said Podworsky.

  “Did he ever introduce himself ?” asked Münster.

  “He might have, but I’m fucked if I can remember the name of somebody I punched on the nose twelve years ago.”

  “Ten,” said Van Veeteren. “What was his name?”

  “What the fuck?” said Podworsky. “Are you not all there, and what’s going on?”

  Van Veeteren waited for a few seconds while Podworsky stared at them, shifting his gaze from one to the other as if he were asking himself how on earth he could have landed in front of two idiots instead of two police officers.

  Mind you, in his world the difference probably wasn’t all that great, Münster conceded.

  “His name was Maurice Rühme,” said Van Veeteren.

  Podworsky gaped at him.

  “Oh, fuck,” he said.

  He leaned back in his chair and thought things over for a while.

  “OK,” he said eventually. “Let’s be clear about one thing—I didn’t manage to kill the bastard in that goddamn bar, and I haven’t succeeded in doing it since then either. Any more questions?”

  “Not right now,” said Van Veeteren, standing up again. “But you can sit here and think this over, and maybe we’ll get back to you.” He knocked on the door and Kropke and Mooser returned with the cuffs.

  “You fucking bastards,” said Podworsky, and there’s no doubt that it sounded as if he meant it.

  39

  The decision to release Eugen Podworsky, and as soon as possible inform the media of the disappearance of Inspector Moerk, was taken at about nine p.m. on Sunday evening, by a majority vote of three to one. Bausen, Münster and Van Veeteren were in favor, Kropke against. Mooser abstained, possibly because he was somewhat overwhelmed by the sudden and very definitely onetime adoption of democratic procedures.

  “I’ll speak to Cruickshank now, tonight,” said Van Veeteren.

  “I’ve promised him a bit of advance information. Press conference tomorrow afternoon?”

  Bausen agreed.

  “Three o’clock,” he decided. “And we can expect the whole parade, as I said before—television, radio, the lot. It’s not all that common for a murderer to put the cuffs on the police, you have to say.”

  “The general public reckon it ought to be the other way around,” said Van Veeteren. “One can see their point, it has to be admitted.”

  “What shall we say about Podworsky?” wondered Kropke.

  “Not a goddamn word,” said Bausen. “Mouths shut is the order of the day.” He looked around the table. “DCI Van Veeteren and I will talk to the press, nobody else.”

  “Typical,” muttered Kropke.

  “That’s an order,” said Bausen. “Go home and get some sleep now. Tomorrow is another day, and we’re certain to be on TV. It might help if we looked like normal human beings. I’ll release Podworsky.”

  “I’ll come with you,” said Van Veeteren. “It might be useful for there to be more than one of us.”

  It was past eleven before the kids finally went to bed. They opened a bottle of wine and put on a Mostakis tape, and after several failed attempts, they finally managed to get a fire going.

  They spread the mattresses out on the floor and undressed each other.

  “We’ll wake them up,” said Münster.

  “No, we won’t,” said Synn. She stroked his back and crept down under the blankets. “I put a bit of a sleeping pill into their hot chocolate.”

  “Sleeping pill?” he thundered, trying to sound outraged.

  “Only a little bit. Won’t do them any lasting harm. Come here!”

  “OK,” said Münster, and restored relations with his wife.

  Monday announced its arrival with a stubborn and persistent downpour that threatened to go on forever. Van Veeteren woke up at about seven, contemplated the rain for a while and decided to go back to bed. This place changes its weather more often than I change my shirt, he thought.

  By a quarter past nine he was sharing a breakfast table in the dining room with Cruickshank, who seemed to be remarkably invigorated and in a strikingly good mood, despite the early hour and the fact that he must have been up working for most of the night.

  “Phoned it through at three this morning,” he said enthusiastically. “I’ll be damned if the night desk didn’t want to stop the presses, but they eventually settled for the afternoon edition. Talk about Jack the Ripper hysteria!”

  Van Veeteren looked decidedly miserable.

  “Cheer up!” said Cruickshank. “You’ll soon have cracked it.

  He’s gone too far this time. Did she really have some idea who he was?”

  “Presumably,” said Van Veeteren. “That’s what he must have thought, at least.”

  Cruikshank nodded.

  “Have you sent out the press release yet?” he asked, looking around the empty dining room. “I don’t notice any of my colleagues rushing in for the kill.”

  Van Veeteren checked his watch.

  “Another quarter of an hour, I think. Must finish breakfast and then go into hiding. It’s pissing out there.”

  “Hmm,” said Cruickshank, chewing away at a croissant.

  “It’ll be shit over the ankles down there.”

  “Down where?”

  “On the beach a
nd in the woods, of course. With all the photographers and private dicks.”

  “You’re probably right,” said Van Veeteren, sighing again.

  “Anyway, I think it’s time I went to the police station and locked myself in.”

  “Good luck,” said Cruickshank. “I’ll see you this afternoon. I expect I’ll still be here, waiting for my fellow union members.”

  “Well, that was that,” said the chief of police, flopping back onto the leather sofa. “I have to say that I prefer the newspaper boys.”

  Van Veeteren agreed.

  “Those well-oiled talking heads on TV make me vomit; they really do. Do you have a lot to do with that crowd?”

  He kicked off his shoes and wiggled his toes rather cautiously, as if he were uncertain whether or not they were still there.

  “I can’t say that I have much of an interest in encouraging them,” said Van Veeteren. “Let’s be honest; it’s reasonable that they should start forming their own ideas. But you handled them pretty well, I thought.”

  “Thank you,” said Bausen. “But we’re definitely in trouble, no matter how you look at it. Has Hiller been onto you?”

  Van Veeteren sat back in his chair behind the chief of police’s desk.

  “Of course,” he said. “He wanted to send ten men from Selstadt and another ten from Oostwerdingen—plus a team of forensic officers to run a fine-tooth comb over the jogging track.”

  Bausen linked his hands behind the back of his head and gazed out of the window.

  “A brilliant idea, in weather like this,” he said. “Does he want you to take charge completely? I mean, damn it to hell, I’ve only got five days left. I’m quitting on Friday, no matter what. Made up my mind last night—I’m starting to feel like a football coach with a two-year losing streak.”

  “The leadership question never came up,” said Van Veeteren. “In any case, I’ve promised to clear up the whole thing by Friday.”

  Bausen was distinctly skeptical.

  “Glad to hear it,” he said, filling his pipe. “Let’s leave it at that. Have you spoken to her parents?”

  “Mrs. Moerk, yes,” said Van Veeteren.

  “Did it go well?”

  “Not especially. Why should it?”

  “No, it’s a long time since anything went well,” said Bausen.

  “I’ve been watching TV,” said Synn. “They don’t give you very good marks.”

  “That’s odd,” said Münster. “Something smells good; what are we eating?”

  “Creole chicken,” said his wife, giving him a kiss. “Do you think she’s dead?” she whispered in his ear; there’s a limit to what the children of a police officer can be expected to put up with, after all.

  “I don’t know,” he said, and just for a moment he once again felt the cold despair well up inside him.

  “I saw Dad on TV,” said his daughter, interrupting their conversation and hugging his thigh. “I’ve been swimming in the rain.”

  “You’ve been swimming in the sea, you idiot,” said his son.

  “Have we any more sleeping pills?” wondered Münster.

  Van Veeteren leaned back against the pillows and picked up the Melnik report yet again. He weighed it in his hand for a while, his eyes closed.

  Horrific, he thought. Absolutely horrific.

  Or perhaps painful might be a better word to describe it.

  Hidden away somewhere in these damn documents was the answer, but he couldn’t find it. Thirty-four pages, a total of seventy-five names. He’d underlined them and re-counted twice—women, lovers and possible lovers, good friends, fellow students, colleagues, neighbors, members of the same golf club—right down to the most casual acquaintances, marginal figures who had happened to cross the path of Maurice Rühme at one time or another. And then occasions—journeys, exams, final exams, appointments, parties, new addresses, congresses, cocaine withdrawal clinics—it was all there, noted down in those densely packed pages, neatly and comprehensively recorded in the dry prose of DCI Melnik. It was a masterpiece of detective work, no doubt about it; but even so, he couldn’t draw any conclusions from it. Not a damn thing!

  What was it?

  What the hell had Beate Moerk noticed?

  Or did she know something that the others didn’t know?

  Could that be it? Could it be that he hadn’t passed Borkmann’s point yet, despite everything?

  He had her notebooks on his bedside table. Three of them, which he hadn’t gotten around to looking at yet.

  It went against the grain. If they really did contain something of significance, why had the murderer left them there?

  He’d had plenty of time, and didn’t seem to be a person who left anything to chance.

  And if in fact she was still alive, despite everything, would he be intruding upon the holy territory of her private life?

  Trampling all over her most sacred ground? Before he opened them, he couldn’t have the slightest idea about what she had confided to these notebooks. They hadn’t been meant for him to read, that was for sure.

  Did the same reservations apply if she was still alive, come to that?

  Yes, of course. Maybe even more so.

  He shut his eyes and listened to the rain pattering down. It must have been raining for more than twenty-four hours, heavy and relentless, from an unremitting sky. Leaden and impenetrable. Did the weather never change in this godforsaken hole? he thought.

  Whatever; it wasn’t a bad way of presenting what they were up against. Nonstop nudging at the same point. Marking time and never moving on. Waves in a dead sea...

  The clock in St. Anna’s church struck twelve. He sighed, opened his eyes, then concentrated for the fourth time on the report from Aarlach.

  40

  “Well, what the hell was I supposed to do?” said Wilmotsen with a sigh, contemplating the layouts.

  “All right,” said the editor. “If we’ve printed a double run, we might as well make everything double.”

  The news of Inspector Moerk’s disappearance and the circumstances in which it took place had clearly proved to be a trial of manhood for Wilmotsen, the headline setter on de Journaal. The opposing concepts Important Information and Big Letters were simply not possible to reconcile within the space available, and for the first time in the newspaper’s eighty-year-old history, they had been forced to prepare two separate placards.

  In order not to abandon the duty to provide full information, that is. In order not to undervalue the dignity of this hair-raising drama that was now entering its fourth (or was it the fifth?) act in their peaceful hometown of Kaalbringen.

  NEXT VICTIM?

  it said on the first placard, over a slightly blurred picture of a smiling Beate Moerk.

  HAVE YOU SEEN THE RED MAZDA?

  the public was asked on the second one, where it was also stated that

  BAFFLED POLICE APPEAL FOR HELP.

  Inside the newspaper, more than half the space was devoted to the latest development in the Axman case. There were a mass of pictures: aerial photographs of the parking lot at the smokehouse (with a white cross marking the spot where Moerk had left her car; since Sunday evening it had been securely garaged in the police station basement after being searched for eight hours by forensic officers from Selstadt) and another of the beach and the woods, and more photos of Moerk and of Bausen and Van Veeteren taken at the press conference. Van Veeteren was leaning back with his eyes closed, a position that was mainly reminiscent of a state of deep peace—a mummy or a yogi sunk deep inside himself was the first thing that came to mind. Far removed from the exertions and idiocies of this life, and perhaps one had to ask oneself if these people were really the ones best equipped to track down and put away criminals of the caliber of the killer they were seeking in this case.

  Indeed, had there ever been anything like this? A police inspector abducted, probably murdered! In the middle of an ongoing investigation! The question wa
s justified.

  The text was also variable in character, from the cool assessment in the leading article that the only honorable thing for the local council to do in the current circumstances was to accept responsibility for the Axman scandal and announce new elections, to the eloquent if divergent speculations about the lunatic, the madman (the ice-cold psychopath) or the terrorist (the hired hit man from an obscure murderous sect)—and, of course, the still very popular theory featuring the perfectly normal, honest citizen, the respectable head of the family, the man in the same apartment block with a murky past.

  Among the more reliable items, and hopefully also the most productive ones from the point of view of the investigation, was Bausen’s renewed and urgent appeal to the general public to come forward with any information they might have.

  In particular, the critical period between six-fifteen and seven-fifteen on the Friday evening needed to be pinned down in detail—Inspector Moerk’s movements from the moment she left The See Warf until she set off jogging and was observed by Detective Chief Inspector Van Veeteren. If it was possible to establish the route taken by Beate Moerk during those sixty minutes, with and without her red Mazda, well, “it would be a damn scandal if we couldn’t nail the bastard,” wrote Herman Schalke, quoting the exact words used by the chief of police.

  As early as four in this infernal afternoon, Bausen and Kropke withdrew to the latter’s office in order to go through and col-late the tip-offs and information that had been received so far—a total of no fewer than sixty-two firsthand sightings, as well as another twenty or so pieces of secondhand information of various kinds. Münster and Mooser were delegated to receive and conduct preliminary interviews with the nonstop stream of witnesses, who were held in check by Bang and Miss deWitt in the office downstairs, all names and personal data duly recorded.

  Nobody was quite clear about what Detective Chief Inspector Van Veeteren was up to. He had left the police station after lunch to “make a few inquiries,” but he had not confided their nature to anybody. On the other hand, he had promised to be back by five p.m. for the compulsory run-through. A small press conference was then scheduled for seven-thirty; the time was a concession to the local television company, whose regular news program took place then. Anything other than a live broadcast would be regarded by viewers as a failure and a crime against all press ethics, the company had argued peremptorily, and even if Bausen could have taught the young media guru a thing or two about the law and justice, he had swallowed his objections and acceded to his request.