by Håkan Nesser
Death does us the greatest of all favours, he had decided instead. But being its agent was neither noble nor evil. Just pointless.
He was sleeping better at night now that the new year had dawned. He hadn’t remembered any dreams at all for several weeks, only that fragment of a memory that kept returning at regular intervals. It didn’t matter if he was awake or asleep . . . My first murder, he thought . . . It was so close to that source, but it wasn’t me, she was the one who arranged it, who planned it and staged it. The house burning away that freezing cold February morning, her even colder hand squeezing his own as they stood there in the wet village street together with all their neighbours, the smell of wet soil and coldness despite the raging fire as they watched the flames devouring their home and his father . . . It was remarkable that both the air and her hand could be so cold when the fire must have been so hot . . .
‘If anybody hurts you, eliminate him!’ she had said, and kissed his mouth. Those were her remarkable words, and that evening he had slept in her bed in the boarding house where they stayed for some days after the event . . . Eliminate him.
Or her. He felt a longing to be back on that Greek island once more, for some kind of homecoming, but he suppressed it. Squeezed out another dab of yellow ointment onto his fingertips instead, and rubbed it in carefully where his throat was hurting. The slightest touch was very painful, but nevertheless it was more bearable than it had been at the beginning. The first few days, not to mention the first few hours: he had never been so close to the core of pain and madness before . . . Never any closer than that.
He turned to page twelve and read more about the speculations.
The police had zoomed in on that night at Keefer’s in any case, but that was just about all they had achieved. They knew that Ester Peerenkaas had met a man she didn’t know on 8 December, and that this man might have had something to do with her disappearance.
They were keen to get in touch with him, and urged everybody who had been to the restaurant that evening to contact the Maardam CID as soon as possible.
Or their nearest police station.
He checked today’s date at the top of the newspaper, and counted backwards in his head. Fifty-four days had passed.
More or less eight weeks.
Eight weeks had passed since somebody might have noticed them at the hidden table behind one of the trellises at Keefer’s. No more than two-and-a-half weeks since her ‘disappearance’, but there were no other persons present at the meeting which preceded that. No presumptive witnesses.
Just him and her.
He smiled hastily, his skin tightened over his cheeks and neck.
And no mention of the other happenings.
Not a word to suggest that the murders in September – nor the one last summer in Wallburg – could have any connection with that vulgar Ester Peerenkaas.
Dilettantes, he thought with a weary sigh, and a sort of cold feeling of satisfaction took possession of him. A pleasure that was worth no more than a pale, austere smile, but nevertheless a positive force in the barren landscape of his emotions.
The barren landscape of my emotions? he thought. No, that won’t do.
And what about the name? What did they have to say about the carefully composed name he had used on that latest occasion?
Nothing. Not a word.
Pearls, he said, folding up the newspaper. Talk about casting pearls before swine. I could kill one of their own, and they still wouldn’t catch me.
The thought struck a chord. One of their own?
He noticed that the thought interested him no end.
WALLBURG, MAARDAM
FEBRUARY 2001
37
The coastal town of Wallburg was enveloped by a thin sea mist when Moreno arrived at about half past eleven in the morning – and Inspector Baasteuwel was surrounded by a similarly thin cloud of tobacco smoke when she finally found his office in the police station at Polderplejn a quarter of an hour later.
He smiled broadly and wryly, stubbed out the day’s eighth cigarette and opened the window.
‘Time to let some fresh air in,’ he said. ‘Nice to see you again. No problems getting here, I hope?’
‘No, the drive was straightforward,’ said Moreno. ‘God had forgotten to switch the lights on, but that’s how it usually is at this time of year.’
She took off her coat and hung it over a filing-cabinet, and looked around for somewhere to sit. Baasteuwel removed a crate of empty bottles, a leather jacket, a broken snooker cue and a heap of old newspapers – revealing a tubular steel armchair. After a moment’s hesitation, she sat down.
‘I must do some clearing away this afternoon,’ he said. ‘Work has been piling up a bit while I’ve been away. It’s bloody disgusting that they can’t find a standin for somebody as indispensable as I am when I happen to be indisposed – don’t you think?’
Moreno nodded. He had explained on the telephone that he had been off for over three weeks as a result of his father’s illness, death and burial. He had started work again on Monday, and today was Wednesday. She agreed that his office looked somewhat cluttered, especially on his desk.
And it didn’t exactly smell of violets either, to be frank.
‘So the criminal classes have had a bit of an extra start,’ said Baasteuwel. ‘That can’t be helped, but it’s only a short period of grace – I’ll soon nail them anyway. Mind you, I’m not referring first and foremost to our damned strangler. He seems to have quite a lot of a start, if I understand things rightly.’
He reached out for his packet of cigarettes, which was somewhere among the junk on his desk, but then changed his mind.
‘Rather a big one, yes,’ said Moreno. ‘We haven’t exactly gathered a bunch of feathers for our caps. The fact is that we’ve made zero progress these last few weeks – apart from using up a few more hundred working hours that is.’
‘That’s the way it goes in our line of work,’ said Baasteuwel. ‘And this new woman who’s gone missing – I don’t supposed she’s turned up, has she? In one way or another . . .’
Moreno sighed and shook her head.
‘No sign of her.’
‘But you reckon he’s the one behind it, do you? Our strangler friend?’
‘Very possibly,’ said Moreno. ‘But not certain. If you twisted my arm, though, I’d say it was him.’
‘Hmm,’ said Baasteuwel. ‘I’ve been thinking about what you said regarding that name. It seems very plausible, but it’s a blasted nuisance that he can’t leave anything more substantial behind. Something concrete.’
‘That’s why I’m here,’ said Moreno. ‘My chief inspector is starting to get a bit desperate, but he thinks we ought to work a bit more closely together on searching for links with that old case of yours. It’s worth exploring every possibility when you’re as stuck as we are.’
‘We mustn’t let the bastards get us down,’ said Baasteuwel optimistically. ‘Let’s see what we can do. I take it you’re fully informed about fröken Kortsmaa?’
‘Yes, indeed,’ said Moreno. ‘But it won’t do any harm if you run through it all once more. I don’t suppose this palace you work in can produce a cup of coffee out of nowhere? I didn’t bother to stop for one on the way here.’
Baasteuwel smiled again and dug his fingers into his tousled hair.
‘Mon dieu,’ he said. ‘Forgive my disgraceful lack of courtesy. Sit back here and meditate – I’ll be back in two shakes of a puppy dog’s tail. Sugar and milk?’
‘Milk,’ said Moreno. ‘But just a drop.’
Baasteuwel’s oral recapitulation of the Kristine Kortsmaa case took about half an hour, but contained no significant information that Moreno didn’t know already. As he held forth, a feeling of despondency began to undermine her concentration. Despite the strong coffee. To undermine it very significantly, in fact: she felt she had heard it all before, and it wasn’t until he took a dark-brown cardboard box out of a desk cupboard that a flicker of in
terest raised her spirits slightly.
A cardboard box, she thought: something concrete at last. Something substantial.
‘What’s that?’ she asked.
‘Technical evidence,’ said Baasteuwel, lighting his eleventh cigarette of the day.
‘Technical evidence? You’re rambling again.’
‘I only ramble in my spare time,’ said Baasteuwel. ‘Hardly ever then even, in fact. But never mind. Proof would be too strong a word.’
He took off the lid and began taking plastic bags out of the box, placing them quite meticulously on the desk in front of him. Moreno watched him in silence. He summed up the result.
‘Thirteen significant pieces of circumstantial evidence,’ he said. ‘Let’s call them pieces of circumstantial evidence, fröken, since you are so finicky . . . I assume you are still a fröken?’
‘Just about,’ said Moreno. ‘What exactly is it?’
‘What is it?’ said Baasteuwel. ‘Bits and pieces from her flat, of course.’
‘Kristine Kortsmaa’s flat?’
‘Who else’s? Needless to say we have a hell of a lot of other plastic bags with fibres and fluff and God only knows what other crap, but these are a bit more tangible.’
He held up one of the bags so that Moreno could see the contents.
‘A pen?’ she said.
‘Give her a prize,’ said Baasteuwel. ‘I’m glad to see that there are still officers in the force with powers of observation like that. Anyway, I asked three of fröken Kortsmaa’s friends to look through the flat and point out any items they didn’t think seemed to belong. Things that might – this is obviously one of the case’s most dodgy mights – have been left behind by that bloke she took home with her from the music bar. Her murderer, in other words. And so I’m sitting here with thirteen mysterious objects. I’m sure you agree that life in the CID is one big thrill after another.’
He held up another plastic bag that seemed to contain a bus or a tram ticket.
‘I’ve spent quite a lot of time contemplating them,’ said Baasteuwel glumly. ‘Turning them over and staring at them from all angles for nineteen or twenty months now, or however long it’s been. You’re welcome to take over the whole caboodle.’
Moreno stood up and tried to get an overview of the thirteen significant pieces of circumstantial evidence that he had laid out over the top of the piles of paper on his desk.
A beer-bottle cap. A matchbox. A little nail file.
She couldn’t help but laugh.
‘A nail file? Why in God’s name should he have left a nail file behind at the scene of the crime? Are you pulling my leg?’
‘Not at all,’ said Baasteuwel in a serious tone. ‘I never pull anybody’s leg, not even in my spare time. The nail file was found under the table in the room where the dead body was found. None of Kortsmaa’s friends was sure that it belonged to her.’
Moreno sat down again.
‘Good,’ she said. ‘Brilliant detective work – he filed his nails before he strangled her. I don’t suppose you found any bits of nail among the dust and fluff ?’
‘I’m afraid not,’ said Baasteuwel. ‘You can forget DNA. No, seriously, I’d be only too pleased if you took care of this crap . . . Although there is one item that’s rather interesting.’
‘You don’t say,’ said Moreno. ‘What?’
He held up another of the bags so that she could see the contents. It seemed to be a little lapel badge of some sort. He took it out of the bag and handed it over to her.
Moreno examined the badge somewhat sceptically, twisting it around between her thumb and index finger. The badge itself was yellow, presumably brass or something similar, she guessed. Four or five centimetres in diameter, and at the top a little triangular plate, pointing downwards, no more than half a centimetre square. Dark green enamel, and a little red strand that might have been a letter S, or possibly a stylized serpent.
‘Some club or other?’ Moreno wondered. ‘A membership badge?’
Baasteuwel nodded.
‘Something like that,’ he said.
‘Or maybe one of those badges people wear to indicate that they are suffering from some disease or other – epilepsy or diabetes, for instance?’
‘No,’ said Baasteuwel. ‘I’ve checked every disease that occurs north of the South Pole, and none of them has a symbol anything like that.’
Moreno thought for a moment.
‘So a club, perhaps?’
‘Possibly.’
‘What kind of a club?’
‘I haven’t the slightest idea,’ said Baasteuwel.
‘Have you checked?’
‘What do you think? . . .’
‘Forgive me.’
Baasteuwel scratched his head again, and looked melodramatically devastated again.
‘Her friends didn’t recognize it in any case. The only association she ever belonged to was a handball club when she was in her teens, and they were short of cash and didn’t have club badges. This is the kind of badge people like to wear on their lapels because they want to show off the fact that they are members of some association: Alcoholics Anonymous or Siegbrunn’s Rowing Club or Left-Handed Vicars Against Abortion – anything you like as long as they can show that they belong. But we don’t have a register of badges in this country, and I don’t suppose they have them in other countries either. Believe you me, I spent a week chasing up that damned badge.’
‘Where was it found?’
‘That’s what makes it interesting,’ said Baasteuwel. ‘Assuming you don’t have too ambitious pretensions, that is. It was lying inside a shoe in the hall. Under the coat rack and hat shelf. One of the victim’s shoes, of course – the badge could well have come loose and fallen off an overcoat or jacket. It could have belonged to the murderer. Or some other visitor . . . But I’m fed up of seeing it now. We put a picture of it in the local newspaper, but nobody got in touch. I expect she bought the damned thing in a flea market in Prague or Casablanca or somewhere like that.’
‘Shouldn’t it be possible to find out where it was made?’
‘We tried, but we didn’t find that out either,’ said Baasteuwel with a sigh. ‘I think you should take it, so that you have something to keep yourself occupied.’
‘With pleasure,’ said Moreno. ‘If you pack all the circumstantial evidence into the cardboard box, we’ll be delighted to solve all the problems for you.’
‘Excellent,’ said Baasteuwel, checking his watch. ‘By all means. But I’ll be damned if it isn’t time for lunch. I hope you’ll allow me to treat you to a bite to eat in return for your help.’
‘I think I’m the one who should be doing the thanking so far,’ said Moreno. ‘And as I still owe you at least two restaurant meals from last summer, I reckon this lunch should be on me.’
‘Miserliness and equality of the sexes have always been my guiding stars,’ said Baasteuwel. ‘Lead the way.’
During the two-hour drive back to Maardam, Inspector Moreno’s attention was concentrated more or less equally between two things.
The first was the western sky, where the sun suddenly burst forth in spectacular fashion as it sank down behind the sea in a festoon of red and purple . . . Ragged clouds were lit up from beyond the horizon by rogue beams, creating a slowly fading extravaganza as darker and duller tints spread with almost apocalyptic implications. Der Untergang des Abendlandes cropped up in her mind as she stood next to her car in a lay-by, making the most of the view for several minutes. The Decline of the West . . .
The other was the carton with Baasteuwel’s plastic bags on the front passenger seat of her car.
Thirteen presumed pieces of circumstantial evidence, less substantial than strands of hair. Twelve of them, at least. That badge was the only thing worth devoting time and energy to, it seemed.
A red S against a green background.
Or a snake in the grass? Why not? It must mean something, after all.
Somebody must have been wearin
g it. The little pin securing the badge must have come loose, fallen out and ended up inside a shoe. Unfortunately not one of the black court shoes Kristine Kortsmaa had been wearing the evening she was murdered, Baasteuwel had explained, so it could have landed up there on some previous occasion. At more or less any time.
But nevertheless it must be an indication of something or other? A tiny piece of information that could turn out to be a key, in fact?
An unintended greeting from a murderer?
Wishful thinking? she thought.
Most probably, yes.
The third thing that occupied her thoughts – especially during the last half-hour of the drive into Maardam, when the sun had set and the plastic bags on the passenger seat beside her were almost invisible in the near-darkness – was a mathematical calculation.
It was quite straightforward, but had nevertheless been the cause of the distraction she had felt while discussing matters with Inspector Baasteuwel – both in his office at the police station and at the Restaurant Bodenthal, where they had eaten an excellent lamb fricassee and an equally excellent lemon sorbet, and talked quite a lot about life and death and the point of being a copper.
Her period had been due last Saturday.
It was four days overdue.
38
‘Why are we sitting here?’ said Rooth.
‘It was something to do with one of those lapel badges on a pin,’ said Jung. ‘Reinhart sounded almost enthusiastic – maybe we’re on the verge of a breakthrough?’
‘You’re talking about the Strangler, are you?’ said Rooth with a yawn.
‘I think so,’ said Jung.
‘That would be good,’ said Rooth. ‘If we got somewhere at last, I mean. It’ll soon be half a year since the murders, and my investigation instincts tell me that’s a bit on the long side.’
‘Ester Peerenkaas was only a month ago,’ said Jung.
‘If she really was one of his victims,’ said Rooth. ‘I must say I’m beginning to have my doubts . . . But I did have a thought this morning.’
