The Return ivv-3
Page 24
Were they actually getting paid for standing here?! That wouldn’t surprise him in the least.
“. . on the Day of Judgment, Amen!” said the vicar, and it was all over.
Rest in peace, Leopold Verhaven, Maertens thought, and looked around for his spade.
“I’ve been thinking about a few things,” said Munster as they came to the parking lot.
“Let’s hear about them,” said Van Veeteren.
“Well,” said Munster, “in the first place, how did you come to think that he was the guilty party? Jahrens, that is.”
“Hmm,” said Van Veeteren. “The wheelchair ramp at the Czermaks’ house, of course. And that woman at the prison with the walking stick. Maybe I didn’t catch on right away, but there was a link, in any case. A little bell ringing somewhere in the background. .”
“But Mrs. Jahrens was an invalid. She couldn’t walk, not even with walking sticks.”
Van Veeteren fanned himself with a newspaper.
“Not everything is as it seems, Munster. I thought we’d agreed on that?”
“And what might that mean?” asked Munster.
“Oh, various things,” said the chief inspector, gazing out over the churchyard. “That the root, or source, of evil isn’t always where we expect to find it, for instance. Leopold Verhaven’s fate-and I really do hope we shall be able to restore his reputation one of these days-has hardly anything to do with him. Like it or not, he becomes the unwilling main character in a silent and bitter and pointless drama fought between Mr. and Mrs. Jahrens. He’s totally innocent, but he is cast as the scapegoat and gets to spend a quarter of a century in jail.
No wonder he becomes a bit odd! When Mrs. Jahrens eventually decides to go to confession, all it leads to is the death of Verhaven. That is the biggest barrow-load of garbage you can ever imagine, Munster; but there again, maybe there is some kind of inverted logic behind it all. You can almost hear them roaring with laughter down there in the underworld, if you get my meaning.”
He looked up at the bright, cloud-spattered summer sky.
“Even on a day like this,” he added.
They stood in silence for a while.
“And Marlene Nietsch?” Munster asked.
“A coincidence, I reckon,” said Van Veeteren. “He’d probably come across her in the village and recognized her, and that morning he just happened to be driving past Zwille when Verhaven left her. He most likely saw an opportunity and picked her up, no more than that, and we know what happened next.
She didn’t want to, and so he turned violent. That’s what I think happened, but there are lots of other possibilities, of course.”
“And the missing bits? Of Verhaven, I mean.”
The chief inspector shrugged.
“No idea. I expect they’re buried somewhere-I’m inclined to hope they stay wherever they are. Just think if they find them a hundred years from now and start a new investigation!
I sometimes get the feeling that this is a case that could go on forever.”
Munster nodded and opened his car door.
“Anyway, that’ll have to be it for now,” he said. “I’d better get home and pack. We’re off tomorrow.”
“Italy?” asked Van Veeteren.
“Yes. Two weeks in Calabria and one in Tuscany. When are you going on holiday?”
“August,” said Van Veeteren. “I haven’t really started to think about it yet, but I suppose that’s not necessary. July is usually rather a good month to spend in Maardam. Calm and peaceful. All the idiots are away on holiday. Don’t take that personally, by the way.”
“That would never occur to me,” said Munster. “All the best!”
“Have a good holiday,” said Van Veeteren. “Take good care of your lovely wife. And the kids, of course. It’ll be badminton time again, come September.”
“It certainly will,” said Munster.
Once again he drove up to The Big Shadow. Never got out of the car. Merely sat there, contemplating the overgrown house and garden while smoking a cigarette and drumming his fingers on the steering wheel.
What a goddamn awful business, he thought.
And now all those involved were dead. Just as in a Shake-spearean tragedy. Beatrice Holden and Marlene Nietsch.
Arnold and Anna Jahrens. And Verhaven himself, of course.
But justice had been done after all. Insofar as that was possible, that is. Nemesis had claimed her due. That was the only way of looking at it.
And who were left?
Verhaven’s ancient sister, who had played no part at all in the events.
Andrea Jahrens, or Valgre, as she was called nowadays.
The daughter, with two children of her own.
You could say they were the only survivors, in fact; Mrs.
Hoegstraa would soon join the others six feet down.
Survivors, and completely ignorant of the whole business.
Needless to say, there was no reason why they should be informed.
He would never dream of doing so.
Never.
And as he drove slowly back down the hill for the last time to the village, which was wallowing sleepily if misleadingly in the summer sunshine, he thought about what he had said to Munster.
Not everything is what it seems.
Kaustin-the village of murders.
Then it struck him that he hadn’t really told Munster the whole truth. The real reason why he’d stopped by at the Czermaks that afternoon was, of course, not because he had noticed the wheelchair ramp-that was something he’d picked up in passing. No, the real reason was more prosaic than that, and just now he was beginning to feel the same symptom.
He’d been thirsty.
Ah well, he thought, possessed by a sudden if brief attack of cheerfulness, and an obvious risk of repeating himself: Not everything is what it seems.
He sped up and started thinking instead about that borderline that he’d at long last overstepped.
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