The Stranglers Honeymoon

by Håkan Nesser

  ‘It seems to have been assumed that she had transferred to another school, but she hasn’t been registered at any of the other grammar schools in Maardam and district. There’s a social worker who ought to know a bit more about it, but she’s been at a funeral down in Groenstadt today. We shall be talking to her tomorrow.’

  ‘So you’re saying that the daughter has been missing for as long as her mother has been lying dead, are you?’ said Moreno.

  ‘It seems so,’ said Krause. ‘On the face of it.’

  ‘But that’s deplorable,’ said Rooth.

  ‘That’s exactly what I said,’ agreed Reinhart. ‘If nobody notices that a child has been missing for a month and a half, you have to ask what the hell is going on there.’

  ‘Precisely,’ said Krause. ‘The headmaster seemed flabbergasted, to be fair.’

  ‘No wonder,’ said Münster. ‘Perhaps we ought to say a few words about this at the press conference?’

  ‘When I played truant at secondary school, they nabbed me after no more than an hour,’ said Rooth. ‘Every bloody time.’

  There followed a few moments of silence. Reinhart leafed through his papers and blew out another cloud of smoke.

  ‘That’s the way things are nowadays,’ he muttered eventually. ‘And however they are, it’s bonkers. But I suppose this isn’t really anything unprecedented . . . The world is a madhouse, and has been that way for as long as I can remember. Münster, did you make contact with any of the medics?’

  Münster nodded.

  ‘After considerable difficulty,’ he said. ‘Martina Kammerle was a manic depressive, and she was taken into care a few times. The first time she was only eighteen, and had tried to take her own life. She’s been on medication ever since then, but Dr Klimke – the one I spoke to – suggested that she sometimes used to skip it. It seems that is not uncommon, when patients are on a high. The usual medicines are Lithium and Calvonal. Martina Kammerle has been on both of them: they are used to try to level out the ups and downs of the manic-depressive psyche, as they say. Klimke works at Gemejnte Hospital and came into contact with Kammerle four years ago, in connection with the death of her husband – I expect you know about that car accident business?’

  He looked round the table.

  ‘Yep,’ said Rooth. ‘Was she on the sick list now?’

  ‘Klimke thought so – we’ll check that tomorrow. He didn’t really know all that much about her. He’d signed prescriptions for her and phoned the pharmacy once or twice, when she had been in touch; but he says he hasn’t actually met her for about three years.’

  ‘Top class psychiatric care,’ said Rooth.

  ‘Brilliant,’ said Reinhart. ‘But that’s not exactly anything new either. Medicine is cheaper than therapy. Anyway, all this boils down to the fact that Martina Kammerle hasn’t had a steady job – or any job at all, come to that – for the last five years. She had no social contacts, not that we know about, at least; and apart from her daughter her only living close relative is her sister up in Chadow. Perhaps Inspector Moreno could be so kind as to inject a little light into the compact darkness and tell us something substantial about her visit to Chadow?’

  Moreno did as she was asked, without feeling that anything had become any clearer. She was tempted to mention the incident with the motorcycle, in order to increase the degree of substantiality asked of her, but desisted.

  ‘A testament to sisterly love, in other words,’ said Reinhart when she had finished. ‘Is there a single person who has anything to say about Martina Kammerle? Didn’t she ever undergo a course of treatment, by the way?’

  Krause cleared his throat and took the floor once more.

  ‘It depends what you mean by “undergo”,’ he said. ‘She started on a sort of work aptitude course in August, and was paid a subsidy to attend. She seems to have turned up three or four times, but the man responsible for it doesn’t recall ever speaking to her about it. It apparently involved mainly watching videos and then filling in aptitude forms . . . But he promised to send us a list of all those taking part so that we can maybe check on whether she made any contacts there.’

  ‘Good,’ said Reinhart. ‘Not much chance of that, I suspect, but this is the kind of thing we have to hope comes up with a lead. Somebody who might be able to tell us a little bit about her. Every little helps, as they say.’

  ‘Let’s face it,’ said Rooth, ‘Everything that is more than nothing is something.’

  ‘You don’t say?’ said Reinhart. ‘Anyway, we’ll make sure her picture appears in tomorrow’s papers, come what may. And urge people to come forward – especially if anybody has seen her in the company of a man.’

  ‘A man?’ said Rooth. ‘Why?’

  ‘Surely that’s obvious,’ said Reinhart, beginning to look annoyed. ‘It’s got to have been a man who killed her, and next-door-neighbour Paraskevi said something – pretty vague, for God’s sake, but still. Something about having seen a man around. At the end of August or thereabouts.’

  ‘But she never actually saw him, did she?’ asked Krause.

  ‘Apparently not,’ sighed Reinhart, sitting up straight. ‘Unfortunately. Anyway, to sum up: this is a case about which we know next to nothing – I take it we can all agree on that? We know so damned little that we ought to be ashamed – if it helps for police officers to be ashamed, and maybe it doesn’t. Has anybody anything to add before we start deciding who is going to do what?’

  Rooth stood up.

  ‘I think I must go and fetch something to eat before we go any further,’ he said. ‘Bearing in mind my blood sugar levels and all that. But there’s one other thing I wonder about.’

  ‘What’s that?’ asked Jung.

  ‘Well, if this Martina Kammerle woman was so cut off from contact with anybody else, how come that anybody should bother to murder her? Eh? If she was so insignificant?’

  Reinhart nodded vaguely, but said nothing.

  ‘There’s something in that,’ said Münster. ‘Anybody who had a reason for murdering her must have been acquainted with her – a little bit, at least. Bearing in mind how she was killed. You don’t strangle somebody on the spur of the moment. I wouldn’t, at least.’

  ‘Nor would I,’ said Reinhart. ‘Anyway, let’s take a five-minute pause, so that Inspector Rooth doesn’t starve to death.’

  Once Tuesday’s work programme had been drawn up, Münster invited Moreno into his office for a brief chat.

  ‘You didn’t say very much during the meeting,’ he said when they had sat down.

  ‘I know,’ said Moreno. ‘I’m sorry, but I find this Martina Kammerle business very depressing.’

  ‘So do I,’ said Münster.

  ‘If you live in such a way that nobody notices your presence, why should anybody want to kill you? I agree with Rooth. Getting murdered seems to suggest an interest in you that you haven’t deserved.’

  ‘Indeed,’ said Münster. ‘That thought struck me as well. But I suppose it’s possible that she possessed some sort of inner light that we’re unaware of. Qualities of life that we don’t see. We’re only rooting around in the afterbirth, as it were.’

  ‘Do you think so? That there was some kind of inner light?’

  Münster shrugged.

  ‘I don’t think anything. But what we’ve gathered about the daughter is very perplexing.’

  ‘You can say that again,’ said Moreno. ‘I wonder if in fact she’s the one behind it all. The murderer seems to have been a very strong man, but you never know – she might have hired a contract killer.’

  Münster sighed and looked grim.

  ‘Some sort of showdown between a psychologically disturbed woman and her daughter, you mean?’

  ‘Something like that. What do you think?’

  ‘Why not? The girl must be involved in some way, seeing as she’s disappeared . . . Huh, it’s not exactly a bundle of laughs, this case.’

  ‘A bundle of laughs?’ said Moreno, twisting her mouth into a
clownish grin. ‘When did we last have a case that was a bundle of laughs? I must have missed it.’

  Münster said nothing, but eyed her up and down for a while.

  ‘How are you?’ he asked eventually. ‘If one dare ask.’

  Moreno laughed.

  ‘I’m okay,’ she said. ‘It’s just that being a human being is so hard. And so pointless. I’m afraid I’ve started thinking seriously along those lines . . . Look at deBries, for instance. It’s only about a year since he died, but it seems as if we’ve forgotten about him already. I know he was a swine in a way, but still.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Münster. ‘I’m afraid you’re right.’

  ‘And Heinemann is struggling with his prostate cancer. Has anybody been in touch with him since he left? Proper contact, I mean. He was a cop for forty years, after all.’

  Münster made no reply.

  ‘So no doubt that’s what you and I have to look forward to, unfortunately,’ said Moreno. ‘That’s what I mean. We’re so insignificant. Oblivion lies in store for us all. Unless we happen to be murdered, like Martina Kammerle, of course. Or shot while on duty. Then we might receive a bit of attention. Briefly. ’

  ‘A damned perverted sort of attention,’ said Münster, looking over her shoulder and out of the window. ‘I think I’d prefer to fall asleep in peace and quiet. Why don’t you get married and have some children? That would give your existence a bit more substance.’

  As he said that, he couldn’t avoid the fact that the love he had once felt for her surged up again inside him – and he found it necessary to keep gazing out of the window when she looked at him.

  ‘Thanks for the tip,’ she said. ‘I might well be on the way to doing that, in fact. It might be a makeshift solution, but rather one of those than none at all.’

  ‘Good,’ said Münster. ‘I’m also about to give my existence a bit more substance. We’re going to have another one.’

  ‘A baby, you mean?’

  ‘A baby, yes. What did you think I meant? A hamster?’

  Moreno laughed. Genuinely, at last.

  ‘I’m delighted to hear it,’ she said, looking at her watch. ‘No, I’d better go – there’s a dinner waiting for me. We can carry on philosophizing tomorrow.’

  ‘By all means,’ said Münster. ‘Mind you, tomorrow is deeper than a camel’s soul.’

  ‘Eh?’ said Moreno. ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘I’ve no idea,’ said Münster. ‘I must have read it somewhere.’

  16

  ‘Monica Kammerle,’ said Detective Inspector Krause. ‘What can you tell me about her?’

  Welfare Officer Stroop tried hard to produce a smile hinting at mutual understanding before answering, but it looked somewhat ambiguous. She raised her narrow eyebrows and looked at him as one would look at an old but not entirely reliable ally. Krause clicked his biro a couple of times and looked out of the window. It was raining.

  ‘Well, what can one say?’ said the welfare officer hesitantly. ‘We’re so understaffed that we simply can’t keep up. There are over nine hundred pupils in this school.’

  ‘Minus one,’ said Krause. ‘You were in contact with Monica Kammerle at the beginning of this term – perhaps you remember that, at least? What did she want?’

  ‘I’m not allowed to discuss such matters with third parties . . .’ said Stroop slowly, rotating a ring with a large green stone round and round her little finger.

  ‘Rubbish,’ said Krause.

  ‘Rubbish?’

  ‘Her mother has been murdered and the girl has been missing for at least six weeks. If you don’t tell me what you know, I shall report you to the authorities this afternoon. No matter how busy you are, you have a duty to keep tabs on all the pupils in this school.’

  Stroop blushed well into her bleached hair. She fiddled nervously with the various piles of papers on her desk, and drank something out of a china mug with blue flowers on.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘These are . . . well, these are extraordinary circumstances. Yes, she came to see me. She wanted to transfer to another school, it was as simple as that.’

  ‘As simple as that?’

  ‘Yes. She told me about her situation, and said she wanted to transfer to another grammar school.’

  ‘Why did she want to transfer?’

  ‘Because of the situation in her class. She thought she was being bullied.’

  ‘Was she?’

  The welfare officer shrugged.

  ‘I only saw her once. That’s what she said, in any case – but I don’t always have time to dig more deeply into every individual case. Girls at that age are very sensitive, and you have to be very careful about how you handle them. And besides, the term had only just started.’

  ‘So what did you do?’ asked Krause.

  Stroop looked down and clasped her hands.

  ‘Well, I decided that her situation could justify a school transfer. Especially as she had thought it through herself, and come up with a specific proposal. I contacted the Joannis Grammar School in Löhr, and arranged for her to go there for an interview. Monica was supposed to visit the school and see if she liked it.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Well, she went there: and as she didn’t come back here we took it for granted that she had made up her mind. It was already decided which class she would join, and so on . . .’

  ‘You assumed that she had transferred to the Joannis Grammar School?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And no doubt you checked up in accordance with the official procedures?’

  ‘Well . . . various other things cropped up that needed dealing with. You must understand the working conditions we are landed with here, and—’

  ‘No,’ interrupted Krause. ‘I don’t understand that at all. Did you even check that she had been there?’

  ‘Er . . . well, I can’t really remember what we did.’

  ‘Remember?’ said Krause. ‘Surely you must know if you rang them and checked that she had been there?’

  Stroop took another sip from her mug, and fiddled with the green stone.

  ‘It’s possible that it was overlooked. I had a trainee to supervise, and . . . well, I assumed of course that everything had gone according to plan.’

  ‘What do you mean? What plan?’

  ‘The procedures we had drawn up. We’d all agreed that she could start out at Löhr immediately, if that’s what she wanted . . . And when she didn’t turn up here any more, well . . . we assumed that everything was done and dusted.’

  Krause paused and made notes.

  ‘Do you know for sure that she actually did visit the school in Löhr?’

  ‘Yes, she was supposed to do that. It was a Friday . . .’

  ‘Supposed to?’ said Krause. ‘Have you spoken to your colleague at Löhr since you sent Monica there?’

  ‘Yes . . .’

  ‘When?’

  ‘I . . . I phoned her this morning, and . . . well, it’s not absolutely clear whether or not she turned up on that Friday. They are looking into it . . .’

  ‘Not clear?’ said Krause. ‘I think it’s crystal clear. Monica Kammerle never set foot in Joannis Grammar School. She’s been missing since Thursday the twenty-first of September, and to say the very least I think it’s remarkable that nobody at the school where she is registered has reacted at all. Six weeks have passed.’

  Stroop made as if to say something, but changed her mind. Krause closed his notebook and put his pen in his breast pocket.

  ‘I’ll be back,’ he said. ‘Have you anything to add that might throw light on the girl’s disappearance? Anything at all – but let’s have no more prevarication.’

  The welfare officer shook her head and looked decidedly shifty.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered. ‘My personal circumstances have been difficult. I attended my brother’s funeral yesterday . . . That’s not an excuse, but . . .’

  Her voice broke, and Krause suddenly felt embarrassed. H
e stood up.

  ‘I’m only doing my job,’ he said, and when he had closed the door behind him he wondered why on earth he had made such an idiotic comment.

  But then, you have to say something in your own defence.

  As agreed, Moreno met the two girls in the Bunge Grammar School cafeteria: but after a brief discussion they decided it would be better to adjourn to a more neutral location.

  They ended up at the Café Lamprecht, which was only a stone’s throw away, and at this time of day had plenty of little corners where they could talk without being overheard.

  Both girls were dressed in black, both smoked like chimneys and both ordered coffee drinks called Black & Brown. More or less the only thing that distinguished between the two young ladies was their names: Betty Schaafens and Edwina Boekman. Moreno tried to recall what she looked like when she was sixteen, getting on for seventeen, but no really clear images came to mind. Even so, she found it hard to believe that she had ever gone through a similar phase.

  But you can never be sure . . .

  ‘As I said, it’s about your classmate Monica Kammerle,’ she began by saying. ‘We’d like some information about her.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Betty.

  ‘What kind of information?’ wondered Edwina.

  ‘I’m afraid I can’t go into that at the moment,’ said Moreno in a friendly tone. ‘Maybe I can tell you more on another occasion.’

  The girls inhaled deeply and exchanged glances.

  ‘Okay,’ said Betty.

  ‘All right,’ said Edwina. ‘But she’s not in our class any more.’

  ‘So I gather,’ said Moreno. ‘But you were in the same class even before you started at the grammar school, weren’t you?’

  ‘Yes, for three years,’ said Edwina. ‘Deijkstraaskolan.’

  ‘Four years in my case,’ said Betty. What do you want to know?’

  ‘Just a few general things. What she’s like and how she gets on with the rest of the class. With her friends, and that sort of thing.’

  ‘We don’t socialize with her,’ said Edwina. ‘Never have done. She doesn’t like us, and has never made a secret of the fact.’