The Return Read online

  Then he decided to remove Claus Menhevern from the list of possible victims. Which meant there was only one left.

  Münster parked outside the dilapidated apartment block on Armastenstraat. Lingered in the car before walking over the street and venturing in through the outside door. An unmistakable stench of cat piss hovered over the stairs, and large lumps of plaster had given up all hope of clinging on to the walls, leaving gaping holes. There was no mention of a Pierre Kohler on the list of tenants in the hallway, but that seemed to be as unreliable as the rest of the building and so he decided to investigate what it said on the doors.

  He hit the jackpot on the fourth floor.

  Pierre Kohler

  Margite Delling

  Jürg Eschenmaa

  Dolomite Kazaj

  it said on a handwritten scrap of paper pinned above the letter slot.

  He rang the bell. Nothing happened—presumably it wasn’t working. He knocked several times instead. After almost a minute he heard footsteps and the door was opened by a woman in her fifties. She had a mauve dressing gown wrapped loosely round her overweight body, and she eyed Münster critically up and down.

  She was evidently unimpressed by what she saw.

  So was Münster.

  “I’m from the Maardam police,” he said, flashing his ID for a tenth of a second. “It’s about a missing person. May I come in?”

  “Not without a warrant,” said the woman.

  “Thank you,” said Münster. “We’ve found a dead body in some woods not far from here, and it seems possible that it might be Pierre Kohler, who was reported missing in August last year.”

  “Why should it be him?” the woman wondered, tightening the belt of her robe.

  “Well, we don’t know for certain, of course,” said Münster. “We’re just checking everybody who’s been reported missing. The age seems to fit, and his height; but this is purely a routine check. There’s nothing else to suggest that it could be him.”

  Why am I being so polite to this damned bitch? he wondered. It’s obvious I should have clamped down on her right from the start.

  “Well?” she said, lighting a cigarette.

  “There is one detail,” said Münster.

  “One detail?”

  “Yes, something that will enable us to make a positive identification. You see, the body we found didn’t have a head. That’s what’s making it so difficult for us to establish who it is.”

  “You don’t say?”

  A man had appeared in the hall behind her. Nodded brusquely at Münster and put his hand on the woman’s shoulder.

  “What kind of a detail?” he asked.

  “Er,” said Münster. “Well, our victim is missing a testicle. Presumably it was operated on some considerable time ago. Do you happen to know…?”

  The man started coughing, and Münster broke off. When the attack was over, Münster realized that it had been more of an outburst of laughter. He was grinning. The woman as well.

  “Well, mister fucking chief of police,” said the man, hammering his clenched fist against his forehead. “This is my head. If you want to count my balls, you’d better step inside. My name is Pierre Kohler.”

  Why the hell didn’t I telephone instead? thought Münster.

  When he’d got back home and read the bedtime stories for the kids, Rooth rang.

  “How did you get on?” he asked.

  “It’s not him,” said Münster. “He’s alive and kicking. They’d forgotten to inform the police.”

  “Oh dear,” said Rooth.

  “What about yours?”

  “Same thing, presumably,” sighed Rooth. “Doesn’t seem to be missing a testicle, in any case. Nor does his wife. The fact is, he’s probably done a runner.”

  “Huh,” said Münster. “What do we do now, then?”

  “I had a bright idea,” said Rooth. “About that butchery job. Either there must have been some kind of distinguishing feature on his hands or feet, or there might be a simpler explanation.”

  “Simpler?” wondered Münster.

  “Fingerprints,” said Rooth.

  Münster thought for a moment.

  “You don’t get rid of fingerprints by cutting a man’s feet off,” he said.

  “True,” said Rooth. “But he probably did that to confuse us. Do you see what I’m getting at?”

  Münster thought for another couple of seconds.

  “Of course,” he said. “We’ve got his fingerprints. He’s on our crime register.”

  “There’s a clever boy,” said Rooth. “Yes, we’ve got his fingerprints somewhere in the archives; I’ll bet my damned life on it. Do you know how many we have, by the way?”

  “Three hundred thousand, I think,” said Münster.

  “Just over, yes. Ah well, given the way things are we can’t pin him down that way, in any case, but at least it’s a lead. See you tomorrow.”

  “Yes, see you,” said Münster, putting the phone down.

  “What’s keeping you so busy?” asked Synn when they had switched the light off and he’d put his left arm around her.

  “Oh, nothing special,” said Münster. “We’re looking for an old lag who disappeared sometime last year, that’s all. He’s between fifty-five and sixty, and only has one testicle.”

  “How fascinating,” said Synn. “How are you going to find him?”

  “We have done already,” said Münster. “He’s dead, of course.”

  “Ah,” said Synn. “I’m with you. Could you cuddle me a bit more tightly, please?”

  8

  It was true that Münster won all three sets, but there was no doubt that this was the closest match they had played for many a long year. The final scores were 15–10, 15–13, 15–12—not that anybody bothered to record them—and Van Veeteren had been leading for much of the time, in both the second and the final set. In the latter by as much as 12–8.

  “If I hadn’t mishit that crappy serve, you’d have bitten the dust,” he maintained as they strolled back to the changing rooms. “I want you to be quite clear about that.”

  “An unusually good game,” said Münster. “You seem to be on song.”

  “On song!” snorted Van Veeteren. “I’m just going through the death throes. I shall be under the surgeon’s knife tomorrow, let me remind you.”

  “Oh yes, so you will,” said Münster, as if it wasn’t a fact that everybody at the police station knew all about it. “When exactly will it happen?”

  “I’ll go in this evening. The operation is set for eleven o’clock tomorrow morning. Ah well, it happens to all of us sooner or later.”

  “An uncle of mine has had cancer of the intestine,” said Münster. “They’ve operated on him twice. He’s fighting fit now.”

  “How old is he?”

  “Seventy, I think,” said Münster.

  Van Veeteren muttered something and flopped down on the bench.

  “Let’s have a glass at Adenaar’s when we’ve been in the shower,” he said. “I want to hear about how you’re getting on.”

  “OK,” said Münster. “I’ll have to ring Synn first, though.”

  “By all means,” said Van Veeteren. “Give her my regards.”

  He doesn’t think he’s going to pull through, Münster thought, and it occurred to him that he felt sorry for his boss. This was very definitely the first time ever, and it was a surprising feeling. He ducked under the shower and allowed the hot water to rinse away the smile it brought on.

  But at Adenaar’s the detective chief inspector was his usual self again. He complained peevishly that there was water in his beer, and had his glass changed twice. Sent Münster to buy him some cigarettes. Knocked ash into the flowerpots.

  “As I said, you’d better make the most of it while I’m still available. You’re not getting anywhere, I gather?”

  Münster sighed, took a deep drink and started to explain the position.

  No, he had to admit that Van Veeteren was quite r
ight in his assumption. The unidentified body in Behren was still just as unidentified as ever. Two weeks had gone by, and they had made no progress.

  Not that the effort being put in by everybody left anything to be desired; it was simply that it wasn’t producing any results. They had made several appeals, in the press, on the radio and on television. There was no doubt that the case fascinated the whole country, even if the interest of the mass media had waned after the first week. Every missing-person case nationwide (males between forty and seventy, just to cover the unlikely possibility that Meusse had made a mistake) had been investigated, but none of them tallied: If it wasn’t the testicle business, it was something else. Rooth had contacted several hospitals and established that between nine thousand and ten thousand men in that age group were missing one testicle, for one reason or another. Considerably more than one might have guessed, but it was virtually impossible to follow all of them up via case notes and similar data, not least because of the secrecy oath applying to the medical profession. Münster had also been in touch with three or four prison governors, but found that checks on prisoners’ genitalia was regrettably not a priority as far as looking after criminals was concerned.

  “It seems pretty pointless bothering about prisons,” Münster said. “That business of fingerprints was only a guess, after all.”

  Van Veeteren nodded.

  “What about the carpet?” he asked.

  “Well,” said Münster, “we know quite a lot about it, of course. Do you want to hear it all?”

  “In outline, please.”

  “A cow-hair carpet. Fairly low quality, blue and green once upon a time. Five foot six by six foot six. Between thirty and forty years old, apparently. No manufacturers’ labels or similar stuff, quite worn even before it was used as a…shroud.”

  “Hmm,” said Van Veeteren.

  “There are traces of dog hair and about fifty other things you find in every household. Brown paper string as well. Used to tie around the bundle, of course. A double strand wound around several times. The commonest kind. They sell about 250,000 yards of it every year. Nationwide, that is.”

  Van Veeteren lit a cigarette.

  “Anything more from Meusse?”

  “Oh yes,” said Münster. “They’ve done a DNA analysis and produced the full genetic code, if I understand it rightly. The problem is that we don’t have anything to compare it with. No registers.”

  “Thank God,” said Van Veeteren.

  “I agree,” said Münster. “Anyway, we know more or less everything there is to know about this damned body….”

  “Apart from who it belonged to,” said Van Veeteren.

  “Apart from that, yes,” sighed Münster.

  “Have you tried floating the testicle story in the media? I haven’t seen anything.”

  “No,” said Münster. “We thought it best to keep quiet about that. So that we can be sure when the right identification turns up, but I think that a whisper has been going around.”

  Van Veeteren pondered for a while.

  “He must have been a lonely bastard,” he said eventually. “Incredibly lonely.”

  “I’ve read about people lying dead for two or three years without being missed,” said Münster.

  Van Veeteren nodded gloomily. Beckoned to the waitress and ordered two more beers.

  “I don’t know if I should…,” Münster began.

  “I’ll pay,” said Van Veeteren, and the matter was closed. “Do you really think he’s been reported as missing? Anywhere?”

  Münster gazed out of the window and thought it over.

  “No,” he said. “I have been thinking about that, and I don’t think he has.”

  “He could be a foreigner, of course,” Van Veeteren pointed out. “The borders are so open nowadays that anybody can drive into the country with a dead body in the trunk.”

  Münster agreed.

  “What are you planning to do next, then?”

  Münster hesitated.

  “I don’t know, put it on ice, I suppose. Rooth has already started working on something else. I suspect Hiller wants me to join Reinhart’s group from the day after tomorrow onward. Our body will probably have to lie in the deep freeze waiting for the next coincidence, I guess.”

  Van Veeteren nodded in appreciation.

  “Good, Münster,” he said. “I couldn’t have put it better myself! Lie in the deep freeze waiting for the next coincidence—I don’t think that’s what they had in mind, though, that business of life after death. But cheers in any case!”

  “Cheers,” said Münster.

  “So you don’t have any good advice to offer?” he asked as they were on their way out.

  Van Veeteren scratched the back of his head.

  “No,” he said. “You’ve said all there is to say. You have to be able to show a bit of patience after all. Hens don’t lay eggs any quicker if you stand watching them.”

  “Where do you get all your expressions from?”

  “No idea,” Van Veeteren said, feeling quite pleased with himself. “That’s the way it is with us poets. They just come.”

  9

  She’d failed to catch on from the first indication. A few lines she’d read in one of the evening papers while traveling from the airport in a taxi. Anybody might have overlooked it.

  Then it became more worrying. When she’d finished unpacking and taken her two tablets, she turned her attention to the daily papers that Mrs. Pudecka had left in two neat piles on the kitchen table, as usual. She lay back in the Biedermeier armchair in front of the fire and started to work her way slowly through them, one by one; that was when the suspicion began to nag at her. Of course, it was pure fantasy at the moment—a whimsical idea, something of that sort, prompted and set in motion by her bad conscience, no doubt. The vague feeling of guilt that naturally had no justification but was nevertheless always with her, deep down, more or less insistent, but never totally absent. She wished it had been otherwise. That it could have made up its mind to be completely—absolutely and very definitely—absent. Once and for all.

  But that was not how it was, of course.

  She went to the kitchen. Made another cup of tea, took some of the newspapers to the bedroom and started working through them more systematically. Stretched herself out under the blanket and read, letting her mind wander back through time as she tried to recall dates and events. Dozed off for a few minutes when dusk crept up on her, but was thrust out of a dream in which his face had suddenly appeared before her, in sharp detail.

  His totally silent and expressionless face with those unfathomable eyes.

  She stretched out a hand and switched on the lamp.

  Could it be him?

  She looked at the clock. Half past six. In any event it was too late to set off in the car this evening. The flight had tired her out, as usual. Nobody could expect her to sort things out immediately, but she was also aware that it was not something she could sweep under the carpet and hope it would stay there. There were some things you simply couldn’t skirt around. There was such a thing as duty.

  She took a shower and spent a few hours in front of the television. Phoned Liesen to tell her that she was back home, but didn’t say a word about her misgivings. Of course not. Liesen was one of the people who knew nothing about it; there had never been any reason to tell her.

  No compelling reason.

  They didn’t mention a word about it on the news. That wasn’t so odd, when you came to think about it; over two weeks had passed, and of course there were other more important things to keep citizens informed about. Presumably it had all begun to fade away and disappear from people’s minds, and she suspected that if she didn’t intervene, the whole business would soon be forgotten.

  She sighed uneasily. Wouldn’t that be best? For it to be forgotten? Surely there was no rhyme or reason why the past should be raked over again? Think of the unpleasantness that might be stirred up. Would he never tire of following her like
a…like a, what is it they say nowadays? A poltergeist? Something like that, in any case.

  But there was that vague stirring of conscience. That slight, nagging feeling of guilt. That is what it was really about, and would she ever be rid of it if she kept out of it this time as well? A good question, to be sure. Even if she looked on the positive side she could hardly have more than ten or twelve years left, and sooner or later she would find herself standing in front of that wall.

  Facing her maker, that is. In which case it might be a good idea to be on solid ground.

  Yes, indeed. She sighed, stood up and switched off the television. She would have to follow this up.

  But there again, there was nothing, nothing at all, in fact, to suggest that it really might be him. Not the slightest detail.

  No doubt it was just her nerves getting the better of her.

  She set off early the next morning. She had woken up at half past five, another of those inevitable curses that old age brings with it. Got up, had breakfast and driven the car out of the garage before seven.

  There was not much traffic; once she had wriggled her way out of town and reached the hills, she was more or less alone on the road. It was a lovely morning, with a thin layer of mist that slowly dispersed as the sun broke through. She stopped at the picturesque inn between Geerlach and Würpatz and drank a cup of coffee. Pulled herself together and tried to keep her thoughts and the nagging worry under control as she leafed through the morning papers. There wasn’t a word. Not in any of them.

  She drove straight through Linzhuisen without stopping and arrived at the house soon after half past nine. Got out and walked up to the door. Managed to open it with a little difficulty, and then it was not many minutes before she realized that her worst fears could very well be true.

  It was far from certain, of course, but having come this far she clearly had no alternative but to contact the police.

  She did that shortly afterward; from the telegraph station in Linzhuisen, to be exact, and the call was logged in to Maardam at 10:03 by the duty officer, Police Constable Pieter Willock.