Woman with Birthmark

by Håkan Nesser

  Always woke up at the slightest sound or movement.

  Would no doubt do that now as well.

  Blankets wrapped around his body. Face close to the window-pane. Hand over the gun.

  So. Bring her on.

  36

  “I don't know,” said the chief inspector. “It's just an opinion, but if these three were up to no good together, you'd think that at least some of the others ought to have known about it. So it's more likely that something of this sort would happen toward the end of the course. But then, that's only speculation, pure and simple.”

  “Sounds reasonable, though,” said Münster.

  “Anyway rapes in 1965. How many have you found?”

  “Two,” said Münster.

  “Two?”

  “Yes. Two cases of rape reported, both of them in April. The first girl was attacked in a park, it seems. The other in an apartment in Pampas.”

  Van Veeteren nodded.

  “How many rapists?”

  “One in the park. Two in the apartment. The pair in the apartment were sentenced, the one in the park got away with it. He was never found.”

  Van Veeteren leafed through his papers.

  “Do you know how many rapes have been reported so far this year?”

  Münster shook his head.

  “Fifty-six. Can you explain to me how the hell the number of rapes could shoot up so drastically?”

  “Not rapes,” said Münster. “Reported rapes.”

  “Precisely” said the chief inspector. “How do you rate the chances of tracking down a thirty-year-old unreported rape?”

  “Poor,” said Münster. “How do we know it's a matter of rape anyway?”

  The chief inspector sighed.

  “We don't know,” he said. “But we can't just sit here twiddling our thumbs. You can have another job instead. If it gets us somewhere I'll invite you to dinner at Kraus.”

  Mission Impossible, Münster thought, and so did the chief inspector, it seemed, as he cleared his throat somewhat apologetically.

  “I want to know about all births registered by the mother with the father given as unknown. December ′65 to March ′66, or thereabouts. In Maardam and the surrounding district. The names of the mothers and the children.”

  “Especially girls?” Münster asked.

  “Only girls.”

  That evening he went to the movies. Saw Tarkovsky's Nostalgia for the fourth, or possibly the fifth, time. With the same feelings of admiration and gratitude as usual. The masterpiece of masterpieces, he thought as he sat there in the half-empty cinema and allowed himself to be gobbled up by the pictures; and he suddenly thought of what the vicar had said at his confirmation service—a gentle preacher with a long white beard, and there were doubtless many in the congregation who considered him a very close relation of God the Father himself.

  There is evil in this world, he had declared, but never and nowhere so much that there is no room left over for good deeds.

  Not a particularly remarkable claim in itself, but it had stuck in Van Veeteren's mind and occasionally rose up to the surface.

  Such as now. Good deeds? Van Veeteren thought as he walked home after the showing. How many people are there living the sort of lives which don't even have room for nostalgia?

  Is that why she's murdering these men? Because she never had a chance?

  And room for good deeds? Was that really always available? Who exactly decided on the proportions? And who started off the relentless hunt for a meaning in everything? In every deed and every happening?

  Things occur, Van Veeteren thought. Things happen, and perhaps they have to happen. But they don't need to be good or evil.

  And they don't need to mean anything.

  And his gloom deepened.

  I'm an old sod, an old, tired detective who's seen too much and doesn't want to see much more, he thought.

  I don't want to see the end of this case that's been occupying me for the past six weeks now. I want to get off the train before we get to the terminus.

  What were all those vile thoughts about flushing out and hunting that were so noble and meaningful at the start?

  I don't want to get to the point where I'm staring at the bleak and grubby causes of all this, he thought. I know the background is just as ugly as the crimes. Or suspect that, at least, and would like to be spared everything.

  A futile prayer, he knew that—but isn't futility the home ground of prayer? What else could it be?

  He turned into Klagenburg and wondered briefly if he ought to call in at the café. He failed to reach a conclusion, but his feet passed by the brightly lit doorway of their own accord, and he continued his walk home.

  Things happen, he thought. I might just as well have gone in.

  And as he lay in bed, there were two thoughts that overwhelmed him and kept him awake.

  Something is going to happen in this case as well. Just happen. Soon.

  I must think about whether I have the strength to last for much longer.

  And then the image of Ulrike Fremdli—Karel Innings's wife—popped up in his mind's eye. Hovered there in the dark mist between dream and reality, between slumber and consciousness, and was gradually interleaved by and combined with Tarkovsky's ruined church and Gorchakov's wading through the water with a flaming torch.

  Something's bound to happen.

  37

  “Hello?”

  Jelena Walgens's hearing was not what it had once been. She found it especially difficult to understand what people said on the telephone—and needless to say, she would have preferred to discuss whatever the topic was over a cup of coffee. With something freshly baked on the side. A little chat about this and that. But the young man was persistent, sounded pleasant, and of course it would be possible to settle matters over the phone even so.

  “How long did you say? A month only? I would prefer to have a tenant for a bit longer than that….”

  “I could pay you a bit extra,” argued the young man. “I'm a writer. Alois Mühren, I don't know if you've heard of me?”

  “I don't think so.”

  “What I'm looking for is a nice, quiet hideaway where I can write the final chapter of my new book. I certainly don't need more than a month. All the people and the hustle and bustle of a city make things so difficult for a writer, if you see what I mean.”

  “I certainly do,” said Jelena Walgens as she searched through her memory.

  But she couldn't think of anybody by that name. She read quite a lot, and had always done so; but he was a young man, and maybe she hadn't quite heard the name right. Alois Mühren? Was that what he'd said?

  “One month,” she said. “Until the first of April, that is. Is that what you want?”

  “If possible. But perhaps you have other prospective tenants?”

  “A few,” she lied. “But nobody who's committed themselves yet.”

  In fact this was the third week in succession that she'd placed the ad in the newspaper, and apart from an off-putting German who seemed to have misunderstood everything it was possible to misunderstand, and no doubt stank of sauerkraut and sausages, he was the only one who'd called. What was the point of hesitating? A month was a month, after all.

  “Would you be happy with five hundred guilders?” she asked. “It's a bit of a nuisance having to advertise again when you move out.”

  “Five hundred guilders would be fine,” he said without hesitation, and the deal was done.

  After lunch she drew a map and wrote instructions. One kilometer after the church in Wahrhejm, take a left when you come to the hand-painted sign. Two hundred meters through the trees toward the lake, no more. Three cottages. The one nearest the lake on the right was hers.

  Keys and an explanation of how to make the awkward water pump work. The stove and the electric mains. The boat and the oars.

  She had only just finished when he arrived. Rather a pale young man. Not very tall, and with polished manners, she thought. She offere
d him coffee, of course—it was already brewed. But he declined. He couldn't wait to get out there and start writing. She understood perfectly.

  He wasn't the least bit impolite or cocky. On the contrary. He was courteous, as she would explain later to Beatrix Hoelder and Marcela Augenbach. Courteous and polite.

  And a writer. When he'd left, she tasted the word several times. “Writer.” There was something sweet about it, that had to be admitted. She liked the idea of having somebody sitting and writing in her little cottage by the lake, and perhaps she even entertained the hope that at some point in the future he would remember her and send her a copy of the book. When it was finished, of course. That would take time, she imagined. What with publishers and all the rest of it. Perhaps he would dedicate the book to her, even? She made up her mind to go to the library before long and see if he was represented on the shelves.

  Mühlen, was that his name? Yes, that's what it said on the contract they had both signed. Alfons Mühlen, if she had read it correctly. He seemed a bit effeminate, she had to say, and she wondered if he might be homosexual. A lot of writers were, even if they pretended not to be, according to what Beatrix had maintained once. But then again, she maintained all kinds of things.

  She'd never heard of him, that was for sure. Neither had Beatrix nor Marcela, but he was a young man, after all.

  Still, he'd paid in cash, without quibbling. Five hundred guilders. She would have been satisfied with three.

  So, it was an excellent deal, all things considered.

  Alfons Müller?

  Ah, maybe she had heard the name after all.

  38

  He felt cold.

  For the fifth morning in succession, he was woken up by feeling freezing cold.

  For the fifth morning in succession, it took him less than one second to remember where he was.

  For the fifth morning in succession, he felt for his pistol and looked out the window.

  The house was still there in the hesitant light of dawn. Just as untouched, just as unvisited and unaware as when he had fallen asleep at some point during the night.

  Unmolested. She wasn't coming. She hadn't come last night, either. The cold made his body ache all over. It was inconceivable how impossible it was to keep warm up here, despite the abundance of quilts and blankets. Every morning he had woken up in the early stages of dawn, frozen stiff. Checked the state of everything by looking out the window, then gone downstairs and into the house and the warmth created by the stove. He always made a big fire in the evenings when he came back from the inn. A really roaring fire in the iron stove in the kitchen, making sure that it would retain its heat until well into the following morning.

  He followed the same routine this morning. Carefully scrutinized the whole area, outside in the raw morning air and inside the house. Gun in hand. With the safety catch off.

  Then he sat down at the kitchen table for coffee. Took a couple of drams of whiskey as well, to drive the cold out of his body. Listened to the seven o'clock news on the radio while he made plans for the coming day. Pistol close at hand on the worn, fifty-year-old waxed tablecloth. Back against the wall. Invisible from the window.

  Getting through the day was becoming harder and harder. He couldn't endure more than three or four hours at a time in the forest, and when he came back in the early afternoon, on the alert as ever, he generally sat down on the sofa again. Or lay down in the loft for an hour or two, waiting.

  He would sit or lie there and glance through something from his father's library, which was not exactly voluminous and not particularly varied. Adventure stories. Brash, cheap literature bought by the meter at auctions or at sales time. He would quite like to read the occasional one, to be honest, but found it hard to concentrate.

  Other things nagged and disturbed him. Other things.

  Then he would go out for another walk, for an hour or so. As dusk drew in he would come back home in the dark. It felt like something he was waiting for, this darkness: a confidant and an ally. He knew that he had the upper hand as soon as night fell. If they were to confront each other while it was dark, he was at an advantage. He might need it.

  Then he would have dinner in the dark kitchen. He never switched on a light—the worst-case scenario would be if she came across him in a lit-up window.

  He had been into the village only once, to do some shopping. He tried to avoid it, during daylight hours at any rate. Nor did he go there during the evenings those first few days, but he soon realized that the isolation would be intolerable if he couldn't at least spend an hour at the inn with a beer.

  He went there on the third evening. He made a risk assessment before setting out, and realized that the dangerous part would be returning home. On the way in, he could make sure he was walking behind hedges, through private gardens, or along the village street, which had no lighting. Inside the inn, lots of the drinkers had a clear view of the door. That fact would hardly present her with an opportunity, even if she found out where he was.

  But walking back home was a different matter. Dangerous. If she knew he'd been at the inn, she had every opportunity of setting up an ambush, and so he took every possible precaution on his walk back to the house. Avoided the road. Dashed out of the inn and around the corner of the building, staying in the shadows there for quite a while. Then he would head for home cross-country, over terrain he had known in detail since he was a boy—changing direction, zigzagging irrationally, and approaching the house from a different direction every night. Extremely carefully, and gun in hand. Every sense on red alert.

  But nothing happened.

  Night after night, and absolutely nothing happened.

  Not a single dodgy incident. Not the slightest indication. Nothing suspicious at all.

  Two things nagged at him when he went to bed.

  The first was a headache, caused by a whole day of tension and strain. To cope with that, every night he would take two tablets, washed down with a swig of whiskey in the dark kitchen.

  That helped to some extent, but it didn't cure it.

  The other thing was a thought. The thought that she might not come at all. The possibility that while he was spending these days in isolation and on red alert, she was actually somewhere else. Somewhere a long way away.

  In an apartment in Maardam. In a house in Hamburg. Anywhere at all.

  The possibility that this was the punishment she had decided to give him. Simply to let him wait. Wait for the murderer who never came. Wait for death, whose visit had been postponed.

  And as one evening followed another, both these things grew in stature. The headache and the thought. A little bigger every evening, it seemed.

  And neither tablets nor whiskey could do anything to help.

  She pulled up beside an elderly man walking along the side of the road. Leaned over the empty passenger seat, wound down the window, and attracted his attention.

  “I'm looking for Mr. Biedersen. Do you know where his house is?”

  This was the second time she'd driven through the village. Dark outside. Quite dark inside the car as well, hat pulled down over her eyes, and a minimum of eye contact. A calculated risk, that's all. As they say.

  “Yes, of course.”

  He pointed out the house and explained where it was. It wasn't far away. Nothing in the village was far away. She memorized what he had said, thanked him, and continued on her way.

  It's all so easy, she thought. Still just as easy.

  She knew that the car gave her all the camouflage she needed; and it was indeed from inside the car—the hired Fiat that had been another expense but also a necessity—that she discovered him. That same evening. Parked in the darkness and drizzle opposite the inn. It was still a calculated risk, but there wasn't much of an alternative. In a place like this a stranger couldn't turn up many times before questions started to be asked. Who? Why?

  Unnecessary and dangerous. There was no point in driving around, looking for him. But it was important to find
him even so. Before he found her.

  This time she had an opponent, not merely prey. There was a difference.

  She watched him go in. Didn't see him come out.

  The next evening, the same thing. While he was in there, she paid a visit to the house. Scrutinized it from the road for several minutes before driving back.

  Thought about how to go about it.

  He must know.

  He had gone out of his way to entice her here; she had realized that from the start.

  The third evening she went a step further. Drove into the village and parked the car behind the church. Walked down to the inn. Went in without hesitation and bought some cigarettes at the bar. She could see him sitting right at the back, out of the corner of her eye. A beer and a whiskey. He seemed alert and tense, but paid her no attention. There were more people in there than she'd expected, in fact. Twenty or so, half of them in the bar, the rest in the restaurant.

  Three evenings out of three, she thought.

  That meant that in all probability, it would be the same on day four and day five.

  It was obvious what to do next. She had the upper hand again.

  It was about time. All the waiting and the passage of time had been to her advantage, that was clear. But now things were coming to a head. The money she had left was committed, down to almost the last guilder. Every day cost money, and she no longer had the option of holding back, for the sake of it.

  Just one opportunity She wouldn't get another. Making a mistake was no longer a possibility either. It was clear that she would have no second chance of putting things right, if she made a mess of it.

  So: what she must do was arrange things the best way she could. In line with the others, and making this a worthy conclusion.