by Håkan Nesser
The reason is that at the time her friend was sitting at the table they had agreed upon, waiting for her and beginning to wonder what was the matter, Marlene Nietsch was in the van with her murderer, driving out of Maardam. And this murderer, my Lord and honorable members of the jury, can in no circumstances be anybody other than the accused, Leopold Verhaven.
If we leave these incontestable facts to one side for the moment and instead turn our attention to a number of psychological questions…
A very neatly constructed jigsaw puzzle, Van Veeteren thought as he put the papers down. Damned neat. Ominously neat, in fact? What was required for Verhaven to have been found not guilty?
He stuck a toothpick into the front teeth in his lower jaw and folded his hands behind his neck.
In the first place: Marlene Nietsch must have met her real murderer during that short period around ten o’clock. It had to be assumed that Verhaven had never taken her in his van, although there was of course a slight chance that he could have done so and still be innocent…. That, just as prosecuting counsel Kiesling had pointed out, he’d known he was finished if he’d admitted that he did give her a lift.
Although it would become clear that he was finished, in any case, no matter what he said or did.
Second: The murderer must somehow have persuaded Marlene Nietsch not to turn up for her meeting at the café.
Would it have been enough, perhaps, for a prospective customer simply to have handed over a bundle of cash and invited her to perform for him? Van Veeteren wondered. That couldn’t be excluded as a possibility. Marlene Nietsch was hardly one of God’s blameless children, after all.
Third: At least three witnesses must have been mistaken. Or lied. The woman who saw them standing by the van. The man and the woman who saw Miss Nietsch in the cab of the van. Plus the one who didn’t want to swear under oath.
Three or four witnesses all in agreement? Wasn’t that damning enough? Conclusive, in fact?
No, thought Van Veeteren in annoyance and bit off the end of the toothpick. During the morning, he had plowed through more than fifty pages of interrogation minutes, only to discover that they made unusually deplorable reading. The male witness in particular had given the strongest impression of partaking in a parody. And left a very unpleasant taste in the mouth, if one happened to be even vaguely interested in the fairness of the judicial system. By all accounts, Necker had turned up four weeks after Verhaven had been charged, gone to the police of his own accord and claimed suddenly to have remembered noticing a fair-haired woman in the accused’s well-known Trotta. In court he had got days wrong, places wrong, people wrong, and it wasn’t until Kiesling had put all the right words into his mouth that he had managed to produce a reasonably coherent story.
And that Denbourke was certainly not the ideal lawyer to conduct your defense; but that wasn’t exactly news.
Moreover—and at this point Van Veeteren had been forced to grab hold of the bed frame in order not to hit the roof—there had been no less than three other witnesses who claimed to have seen Verhaven’s van on its way from the Covered Market, but none of them had seen a woman inside it. What had happened to these witnesses in the final summing up was a mystery.
Deplorable! muttered Van Veeteren, and spat out the rest of the toothpick onto the quilt. Had Mort really been involved in this? And Heidelbluum?
He knew from bitter experience that the others, the laymen, the semi-educated servants of the law, could turn a blind eye to practically anything; but that the judge and the chief inspector could allow something like this to happen, that was a rude awakening. Difficult to digest, to say the least. It was true of course that it was no longer Mort’s responsibility once the case reached the courtroom—but even so?
Then again, Mort hadn’t been his old self during his last years in harness. Perhaps that was it; perhaps he ought to make some allowances.
And Heidelbluum had been nearly seventy at the time.
I hope they get rid of me before I lose as much sting as that, he thought. But maybe I’ll die before I get that gaga? A blessing devoutly to be wished, I suppose.
But what could one say about this case as a whole? The bottom line was that he’d sat there in the dock and acted like the guiltiest of the guilty, that damned Verhaven.
Apart from denying that he’d done it, of course.
Incomprehensible, decided Detective Chief Inspector Van Veeteren. And there’s nothing I hate as much as things I don’t understand!
He swung one leg over the side of the bed and sat up. After a moment of dizziness he found himself standing on the cold floor. It felt good to be able to move under one’s own steam again. No denying that.
Even if his frailty and tendency to grow dizzy still scared him a bit. No denying that either.
Still, I’m going home tomorrow, no matter what, he thought as he closed the bathroom door. Then sure as hell I’ll soon sort out this mess!
But when he had flopped down onto the cold seat, it dawned on him that it might not be all that easy.
The fact was, he already had all the known facts with him here in hospital. Bundle after bundle of newspaper reports. Trial transcripts. Tape recordings of the investigation updates, and detailed reports from Münster.
Surely things couldn’t look all that different out there in the real world?
Another good question.
30
“Let’s go and sit in the café instead,” David Cupperman had whispered, ushering him out the door.
Now that they were sitting in a secluded corner of the bar, enveloped in the smell of cooking fat, he looked much calmer, Jung felt. It didn’t take very long to explain why.
“I didn’t want the wife to get involved,” explained Cupperman. “She’s a bit sensitive, and she knows nothing about this business.”
Jung nodded and held out his pack of cigarettes.
“No thanks. I’ve given up. Thanks to the missus,” he added, with a slightly apologetic smile.
Jung lit a cigarette.
“You don’t need to worry,” he said. “We’re just calling on a few people and asking a couple of routine questions, that’s all. Maybe you’ve seen in the papers that Leopold Verhaven has been murdered?”
“Yes.”
Cupperman nodded and contemplated his coffee cup.
“We understand you lived with Beatrice Holden for some time in Ulming. When was that? The end of the fifties, was it?”
Cupperman sighed. It seemed quite obvious that if there was anything in his life that this worryingly prim and proper man regretted, it was that unfortunate affair in his youth.
“Nineteen fifty-eight,” he said. “We met in ’57, and moved in together a few months later. She was pregnant…. Well, then we lived together until February the following year. It wasn’t my child.”
“Really?” said Jung, trying to sound as surprised as he could.
“We…she had a daughter, Christine, we called her; she had a daughter in August 1958; but as I said, the father was another man.”
“When did you find that out?”
“When she was five months old. He came to visit, and when he’d left, she told me the whole story.”
“Oh, shit,” Jung said before he could stop himself. “Excuse me, but it can’t have been very pleasant for you?”
“No,” said Cupperman. “It wasn’t exactly amusing. I left her that same evening.”
“That same evening?” Jung asked.
“I just threw a few things into a bag. Took the train.”
He fell silent. Jung thought for a while. Where did you go? was the obvious question, but perhaps that wasn’t so important.
“What about your daughter?” he asked instead. “Her daughter, that is. It must have been hard to leave a child you had thought was your own?”
But Cupperman didn’t reply. He just stared down at the table, biting his lip.
“You hadn’t had any suspicions at all?”
Cupperman shook his h
ead.
“No,” he said. “I ought to have done, of course. But I was young and inexperienced. That was the top and bottom of it.”
“Did you ever meet her again? Afterward, that is?”
“No.”
“Not Christine either?”
“I went to visit her in Kaustin. After the murder. But only once. She was four, living with her grandmother. Beatrice’s mother. She didn’t seem to want anything to do with me, the grandmother I mean, so there didn’t seem to be much point.”
“I see,” said Jung. “And the father? The real father, that is? Do you know anything about him?”
Cupperman shook his head again.
“He went to sea, I think. I never saw him again.”
“And Beatrice didn’t meet him, after you’d left her?”
“How should I know?”
No, thought Jung after he’d taken leave of David Cupperman. If the police haven’t managed to track down Claus Fritze after thirty years, it would be a bit much to expect his poor cuckolded rival to have done so.
Rooth rang the bell and the door opened so fast that he had to jump backward to avoid being hit by it. Arnold Jahrens had been expecting him, that was obvious.
“Mr. Jahrens?”
“Come in.”
He was tall and powerful and looked at least ten years younger than the sixty-five he was. Or was it sixty? It doesn’t matter anyway, he decided and sat down on the chair provided at the kitchen table.
“Well,” said Jahrens. “I expect it’s about Verhaven again. And Miss Holden.”
“Exactly,” said Rooth. “I take it you know what’s happened?”
“I’ve read about it in the papers,” said Jahrens, gesturing toward a corner where he evidently collected them in a pile. Both Neuwe Blatt and Telegraaf, as far as Rooth could see.
“I bet you have,” said Rooth. “To be honest with you, we’re groping around in the dark; and so we’re doing a bit of stocktaking, you might say. Having a chat with everybody who’s been in contact with them and the case, in one way or another.”
“I’m with you,” said Jahrens, serving coffee. “Sugar?”
“Three spoons,” said Rooth.
“Three?”
“Did I say three? I meant one and a half.”
Jahrens burst out laughing.
“I’ve plenty of sugar,” he explained. “You can have three damned spoonfuls if you like.”
“Thanks,” said Rooth. “Anyway, I don’t want to keep you longer than necessary, so I’ll come straight to the point. You used to be a neighbor of Verhaven’s. When did you move away from there, by the way?”
“Nineteen eighty-five,” said Jahrens. “We didn’t have anybody who could take over the farm, and rather than wear ourselves out we decided to spend our twilight years in town. It’s made quite a difference, in fact.”
“Your wife…?” asked Rooth.
“She died two years ago.”
“I’m sorry about that. Anyway, down to business. I’d like you to tell me what you made of the pair Leopold Verhaven and Beatrice Holden. You must have seen quite a bit of them, and it was you she came to the night before she was murdered, is that right?”
“Yes, of course. You couldn’t avoid noticing a few things,” said Jahrens. “And yes, she came to us all right. Why are you asking, by the way? Surely you don’t think he was innocent? They seem to be hinting at that in the Telegraaf.…”
“We don’t know,” Rooth admitted. “What we do know is that somebody’s killed him. There must be a reason, and until we know what it is, we have to take every possibility into account.”
“I follow you,” said Jahrens, fishing a cookie out of his cup with the aid of a spoon. “You could say they were at each other’s throats, all the time. Not many people were surprised by what happened…of us in the village, I mean. I’m not saying we thought he’d do her in; but they weren’t especially nice to each other.”
“We’ve gathered that,” said Rooth. “What happened that night when she came and knocked on your door?”
“I must have described that at least fifty times,” said Jahrens.
“But not recently, I don’t think,” said Rooth. “Just one more time; I expect you know it off by heart anyway.”
Jahrens laughed again.
“All right,” he said. “There’s not much to tell. I was woken up by somebody knocking on the glass panel of the front door. I put on a pair of trousers and went downstairs to open up, and there she was. She could have just come in and bedded down on the sofa without waking us up, in fact—we never locked the front door. It was the same all over the village, come to that: Nobody bothered to lock themselves in. It’s a bit different here in town, I can tell you. Anyway, she was standing there, shivering, and she asked if she could come in and sleep on our sofa. That damn bastard Verhaven had beaten her up, she said, and she was going to report him to the police next morning.”
“Was she drunk?”
“Fairly, but I’ve seen worse. Obviously, I asked if we could do anything for her—she had a black eye, all swollen, and a few other bruises; but she wouldn’t hear of it. All she wanted was to sleep, she said, so I let her go and lie down on the sofa. I fetched a blanket and a pillow, that’s all. And poured her a glass of water. Then I went back to bed. It was gone three.”
“Hmm,” said Rooth. “Was that all?”
“Yes,” said Jahrens. “She woke up at about nine the next morning, but when I reminded her that she was going to call the police she turned all insolent and told me to mind my own business. And then she left. Didn’t even say thank you.”
“A well-brought-up lady,” said Rooth.
“Very,” said Jahrens. “Would you like some more cookies? I see they’re all gone.”
“No thanks,” said Rooth, and thought for a few seconds.
“I can’t really think of any more questions to ask you,” he said. “Is there anything else you can add, that might be of use to us?”
Jahrens leaned back on his chair and gazed up at the ceiling.
“No,” he said. “Not a thing.”
“But you think it was Verhaven who killed her?”
“Absolutely,” said Jahrens. “There are a lot of things in this life that I’m doubtful about, but not that.”
“No, when all’s said and done, it could well be as you say,” said Rooth, getting to his feet. “Many thanks.”
We’re all mad, no doubt about it, he thought when he emerged into the courtyard.
Who the hell was it who’d written that?
After another day in Kaustin, deBries and Moreno turned up at Kraus’s so late that they couldn’t find a quiet corner in the bar. DeBries tried to do a quick calculation of how much cash he had in his wallet—yet again cursing his obstinate refusal to get himself a credit card—and decided he wasn’t too badly off.
“Let’s go to the restaurant instead,” he suggested. “Can I treat you to a bite to eat?”
“All right,” said Moreno, taking another look around. “I don’t think we’d be able to do much in the way of chewing over our impressions in here. But if you treat me, I’ll treat you—that’s a condition.”
Excellent, thought deBries.
“We’ll see about that,” he said, opening the glass door leading to the more substantial area.
“Well,” said Moreno when they’d had their bite to eat and ordered another bottle and the cheese board. “What do you reckon about today, then?”
“Nice weather,” said deBries. “You look a bit more tanned, I think.”
“Every little bit helps,” said Moreno, taking her notebook from her purse. “Shall we take them in order? We ought to form some sort of judgments, after all.”
She looked at the names:
Uleczka Willmot
Katrina Berenskaya
Maria Hess
“Three old women,” said deBries. “With walking sticks. Well, I’d say the odds against were a thousand to one, roughly; but I suppose
we can’t write any of them off until we’ve checked their alibis. Mind you, it’s a long way to Ulmentahl. That visitor must have taken all day to get there and back. If she came from Kaustin, that is.”
“If she did, yes.”
“Hard to say,” said deBries.
“Very,” said Moreno. “A thousand to one? Yes, I suppose that’s about right.”
The waiter brought the cheese board, and deBries topped up their glasses.
“What about a motive?” he said after a while. “Can you see any of these old dears having the slightest whiff of a motive? If there’s any point in all this, the visitor must have known the identity of the real murderer. I don’t think our three seemed to be particularly well informed on that matter.”
“I can’t understand why she should want to keep it to herself,” said Moreno. “If she really wanted to tell Verhaven who the murderer was, there’s surely no sensible reason for being unwilling to admit to it afterward. Or is there?”
“God only knows,” said deBries, polishing a grape on the tablecloth. “No, I can’t make head nor tail of this, swear to God.”
Moreno sighed.
“Nor can I,” she said. “It all seems a bit odd, as far as I can see. All we know for a fact is that Verhaven was visited by a woman calling herself Anna Schmidt on June fifth, 1992. We’ve no idea who she really was or what they talked about. We’re jumping to quite a few conclusions if we think along these lines: First we claim that the visit had to do with the murder. Then we say the reason was that she wanted to tell Verhaven who the real murderer was. Then we assume she lives in Kaustin…. There are some weak links in that chain.”
“Besides,” said deBries, “we’re not even a hundred percent certain that it’s Verhaven who’s dead. And we’re definitely not sure that he was actually innocent of the crimes he’s been in prison for. No, if we took this to the public prosecutor, he’d no doubt laugh us out of court.”
Moreno nodded.
“But it’s not our problem, of course,” said deBries. “We’re only obeying orders: Get over there and seek out all women who use a walking stick in that dump! Or all men with false teeth in Aarlach! All left-handed whores in Hamburg! Ask them what they were doing between three and four o’clock in the afternoon on the day before Christmas Eve 1973, and most important—write down every single word they say! It’s great fun, this sleuthing: This is exactly what I dreamed about when I made up my mind to become a detective.”
