by Håkan Nesser
Or is it? Van Veeteren wondered, watching one of the cows that had just turned its back on him and demonstrated how remarkably efficiently its digestive processes were functioning.
And she probably hasn’t even had figs in cognac for lunch, the chief inspector assumed before returning to his train of thought.
Had they missed something crucial in the tearful outpourings of the girls? Was there something more – something more deeply hidden – in all these testimonies about purity and self-deprivation and nudity? Apart from their dubious nature per se, that is?
He didn’t know. The images of the girls’ stylized behaviour as they bathed at the water’s edge that first day came back to his mind’s eye, and he wondered if there were images like that in the murderer’s baggage as well.
In the actual motive. In so far as it was meaningful to talk about a motive in a case like this. Perhaps, perhaps not; in any case, it was hardly something that could be developed usefully.
What about the women? The priestesses who kept an eye on everything, and presumably had a lot of information they could share but had chosen to remain silent. Was it possible that one of them was the killer? It was a possibility he had been keeping in reserve from the very beginning. Oh yes. A blank card hidden up his sleeve. A woman murderess?
Could one assume that it was one of them who had contacted the police and tipped them off?
Perhaps.
But in any case, surely to God it was obvious that they shared in the guilt?
Most probably, he decided.
The only question was: what? Guilty of what?
‘Oh hell!’ muttered Chief Inspector Van Veeteren. ‘I’m getting nowhere!’
For one bitter self-critical moment he realized that the cows on the other side of the river were probably not only a symbol of inaccessible wisdom – demiurges and all that sort of thing – but also a symbol of his own unrelieved inertia.
He lit a cigarette and changed track.
What about Figuera? he wondered.
Ewa Figuera? Hmm, he would have to track her down and find out why she was with the other three women in Przebuda’s photograph. What had she been doing in Waldingen the previous summer?
In view of the fact that he had solved the problem caused by the misspelling of her name – and the fact that he had obeyed his celebrated intuition and come to Stamberg – his efforts so far certainly hadn’t come to much.
Or was there a grain of gold dust hidden away inside the last couple of days’ conversations as well? Had these confused members of the congregation contributed something after all that he wasn’t in a position to notice?
Oh hell, Van Veeteren thought again. What a brilliant analyst I am! First I say A, then I say A can’t be right. All the time.
He sighed. For the moment he was unable to think about anything other than this dialectic, and the dark river that separated him from the cows.
Ergo? he thought gloomily. Could there be a clearer indication of the fact that it was time to hand in his police ID? Hardly.
He stood up and decided to go for a half-hour drive accompanied by Fauré rather than this fruitless vegetating.
Then he would have to search through the telephone directory.
Okay. All in good time.
The half-hour became a whole one, and Fauré received some assistance from Pergolesi. When the chief inspector parked behind Glossman’s it was seven o’clock already and the worst of the day’s heat was over. There was a fax waiting for him in reception, from Reinhart, but it only contained a bad joke along the lines that members of the investigation team who didn’t have a wooden leg seemed to have a wooden head instead. Van Veeteren threw it into the waste bin and asked for a telephone directory he could take up to his room. Plus the two obligatory beers.
‘You’ll find a directory in the desk drawer,’ explained the receptionist, who was as sleepy as ever. ‘In every room. Light or dark?’
‘The usual,’ said Van Veeteren, and was given one of each.
When he got to his room he lay down on the bed with the first bottle, the light one, and the local telephone directory – sure enough, he had found it in the desk drawer, underneath the Bible and some sheets of writing paper with the hotel’s logo.
He took a swig and started searching. It was not a thick directory. Stamberg probably had a population of about – what? Fifty thousand inhabitants? – and he found what he was looking for almost immediately. Evidently he still knew the alphabet.
As he scanned the rows of names, it came to him.
Nothing more than a tiny nudge, in fact. A brief little twitch in some lugubrious corner of his old, tired brain: but enough to tell him that something was falling into place at last.
Or rather, being set in motion.
And about time, for Christ’s sake, he thought.
He stared at the information for a few seconds. Then closed his eyes and leaned back against the pillows, trying to clear the junk and rubbish from his brain. Cows, priests and things like that. Lay there for quite a while without thinking a single thought.
And then they emerged from the slough of forgetfulness – two random comments he had heard one afternoon getting on for two weeks earlier.
Or was it in fact two different afternoons?
He couldn’t remember, and of course, it didn’t matter.
He allowed another few minutes to pass, but nothing else happened. Just the information given in the telephone directory and those two comments – and when he opened his eyes again, he was aware that it was barely more than a mere suspicion.
He drank the remains of both bottles of beer. Then started ringing round and arranging meetings for the next day.
When he had finished, he read two more chapters of Klimke, took a shower and went to bed.
The telephone rang at two minutes past seven the next morning.
It was Reinhart, but before the chief inspector had time to tell him to go to hell he had taken command.
‘Have you a television set in your room?’
‘Yes . . .’
‘Switch it on then! Channel 4.’
Then he hung up. Van Veeteren fumbled for the remote control, and managed to press the right button. Three seconds later he was wide awake.
As far as he could judge it was the routine morning news bulletin. An excited newscaster. Flickering pictures of a building on fire. Firefighters and sirens. Very realistic interviews with soot-covered senior officers.
He recognized it immediately. The camera even paused for a few seconds on the abusive graffiti he had seen with his own eyes only the other day.
Murdering bastards and so on.
Practically everything was in flames, and the chief officer of the fire brigade thought there was little chance of saving anything of the building. So they were concentrating on stopping the blaze from spreading to adjacent buildings. There was quite a strong wind blowing. It was finito as far as the church was concerned, he reckoned.
But apart from that, everything was under control.
Arson?
Of course it was arson. The alarm had been raised at four in the morning, the fire brigade had arrived twenty minutes later, and by then the whole building was ablaze.
No doubt at all that it was arson. Perhaps that was understandable, in the circumstances . . .
Van Veeteren switched off. Remained in bed for half a minute more, thinking. Then put on a shirt and some trousers, took the elevator down to reception and sent a fax to Wicker’s Travel Agency in Maardam.
Cancelled his package holiday due to begin on the first of August.
Then he went back up to his room and took the longest shower of his life.
33
From a purely physical point of view, acting Chief of Police Kluuge was a wreck by this morning.
When he got off his bicycle outside the police station in the fresh morning air, he was puffing and panting, his heart was pounding wildly, and unfortunately things were just as bad as far as his mi
nd was concerned. He recognized that this was hardly surprising: the last three nights he had slept for less than ten hours all told, and obviously one was always bound to come up against a limit eventually. Or a brick wall.
We must bring this case to a conclusion pretty soon, he decided. Two more days like these and I’ll have to take sick leave.
But then again, there were only five more days to go before Malijsen came back on duty, so perhaps it would be best to stick it out, no matter what.
Incidentally, Kluuge thought as he fiddled with the various locks, it’s odd that he hasn’t been in touch at all. No matter how isolated it is at the lake where he’s fishing, it’s surely impossible to imagine that he hasn’t heard anything about what’s been going on? There can’t be a single person in the whole country who doesn’t know what’s been happening in Sorbinowo during these hot summer weeks. Very strange.
And odder still, of course, if you happen to be the real chief of police for the area.
But of course, Malijsen was Malijsen. He’s probably dug himself in and is waiting for the Japanese hordes to arrive, Kluuge guessed, wiping the sweat from his brow.
He met Suijderbeck in the entrance, on his way out.
‘Aren’t you going to attend the run-through meeting?’
‘Ciggy break,’ muttered Suijderbeck, and spat into the flower bed. ‘I’m just nipping to the news stand and I’ll be back before you’ve even had time for a pee.’
Nice guy, Kluuge thought. Good camaraderie and a good atmosphere, just like they said it should be at police college. He entered his office, which had recently undergone several changes as far as the furniture was concerned, in an effort to keep up with the requirements of the investigation. But his desk was still there, and he flopped down behind it after greeting the others.
Servinus was in his usual place, as were Tolltse and Lauremaa, plus one of the latest newcomers – Detective Inspector Jung from the Maardam police. The other newcomer, the somewhat strange Inspector Reinhart, was smoking his pipe through the open window, and Chief Inspector Van Veeteren’s chair was empty, as usual.
Ah well, Kluuge thought when Suijderbeck reappeared. We’d better get going, then.
‘We’d better get going, then,’ he said, logically enough.
‘Not a bad idea,’ said Reinhart.
‘I have to say,’ Servinus admitted, ‘that I feel pretty disgusted when people start burning down churches. Despite my deep-rooted atheism.’
‘Yes, they’re going too far now,’ Kluuge agreed.
‘The mob’s taking over,’ said Lauremaa. ‘We really must get this case solved PDQ – you all heard what the psychologist said on the television, I take it? This kind of thing always inspires copycat actions . . . And we know how pyromaniacs operate, don’t we?’
‘Yes indeed,’ said Reinhart. ‘But bollocks to what’s happening in Stamberg. They have their own police force there, we can assume.’
‘Yes, I think so,’ said Suijderbeck. ‘And this means that we’ll probably lose about fifty reporters, so perhaps we don’t need to spend all day weeping.’
‘Anyway,’ said Reinhart, ‘I’d like to be informed about what’s been happening. Let’s get the gen first.’
‘Okay,’ said Kluuge, stretching himself. ‘I suppose it could be summed up by saying that all our guesses have been confirmed. Katarina Schwartz had been dead for nearly two weeks when she was found – round about 16 July they reckon. As I understand it, that fits in well with other information we have. Tolltse?’
Inspector Tolltse leafed through her notebook.
‘That’s right,’ she said. ‘We – Inspector Lauremaa and I, that is – have spoken again to five of the girls, and it seems that Katarina Schwartz went missing round about then. Probably a day or so earlier, the 14th or 15th, but they are all pretty bad at dates. None of them has been keeping a diary, and there doesn’t even seem to have been a calendar out there. Not where the girls lived, at least.’
‘Beyond time and space,’ muttered Servinus.
‘What about the circumstances?’ wondered Reinhart impatiently. ‘We can assume that she disappeared at a certain time of day, surely. Or did she just dissolve bit by bit?’
‘Yes, there were various circumstances,’ Lauremaa confirmed. ‘In the first place they wanted everybody to forget that she’d ever been at the camp. It must have been her disappearance that the anonymous woman phoned about the first time, but right from the start the organizers and the girls denied that there had ever been more than twelve girls at the camp. It’s not easy to understand the motive or the logic in that – personally I reckon it shows more than anything else that Yellinek is as mad as a hatter – but when the girls finally started to admit that there had in fact been a Katarina Schwartz among them until, let’s say 15 July a few more facts began to emerge as well.’
‘What, for example?’ Reinhart asked.
‘Times, to start with,’ said Tolltse. ‘She vanished during the night. Went to bed as usual in the evening, but wasn’t there the next morning.’
‘Is that definite?’ Suijderbeck wondered.
‘Definite,’ said Lauremaa.
‘For Christ’s sake!’ said Suijderbeck. ‘That must mean that whoever did it must have dragged her out of bed, more or less. Doesn’t that narrow the possible candidates down pretty drastically?’
‘Yes,’ said Lauremaa. ‘Unless she went out of her own accord, of course.’
‘Went out?’ said Suijderbeck. ‘Why the hell would she want to go out?’
Lauremaa shrugged.
‘Don’t ask me. It’s not impossible, but it does seem a bit improbable.’
‘There’s not a lot in this case that has any connection with probability,’ said Servinus. ‘Carry on.’
Tolltse turned a page.
‘There’s another little thing,’ she said. ‘It may be of no importance, but you never know. There had evidently been some sort of controversy that Katarina was involved in. Marieke Bergson indicated something of the sort, by the way – the first girl that Chief Inspector Van Veeteren interrogated.’
‘Controversy?’ said Reinhart. ‘What sort of controversy?’
‘Something between her and Yellinek,’ said Lauremaa. ‘She had misbehaved somehow or other. Said something to him; it’s not clear what, we haven’t managed to get the details out of any of the girls.’
‘They’re obviously a bit scared that they might get picked on as well,’ explained Tolltse.
‘Aha,’ said Reinhart. ‘A little rebel in Paradise, eh?’
‘Could be,’ said Lauremaa. ‘Thinking for yourself – critical thinking – wasn’t exactly something encouraged as part of their spiritual education. In any case, Yellinek evidently had a private meeting with her the evening before she went missing.’
Nobody spoke for a few seconds. Then Suijderbeck cleared his throat and leaned forward with his elbows on the table.
‘So both of them . . . I mean both these poor little girls had strayed slightly from the straight and narrow, is that it?’ he said. ‘Clarissa had said something she shouldn’t have done to the chief inspector, right?’
‘Yes,’ said Kluuge. ‘There’s some common ground there.’
Silence for a few seconds. Then Servinus slammed his fist down on the table.
‘Yellinek!’ he groaned. ‘If I had that fucking creeping Jesus in here I swear I’d have poured boiling lead into his arsehole by now!’
‘Harrumph,’ said Kluuge. ‘Perhaps we’d better move on. Or do Tolltse and Lauremaa have anything more to add?’
‘No,’ said Lauremaa. ‘Except that we think we saw Chief Inspector Van Veeteren in a restaurant. When we were in Stamberg, talking to the girls, that is.’
‘Really?’ said Suijderbeck ‘Did you see what he was gobbling?’
He didn’t get an answer, so he lit a cigarette instead.
‘As for bodily injuries and that kind of thing,’ Kluuge resumed, ‘we’ve already been through that. Nothing
new has cropped up. What happened seems to have been more or less the same in both cases. Still, I don’t suppose anybody thinks we’re looking for two killers?’
‘No, nobody,’ Servinus assured him.
‘Then perhaps we should concentrate on the Sunday evening,’ Kluuge suggested. ‘We seem to have got a bit of new information, I gather. Which of you . . . ?’
He looked at Reinhart and Jung.
‘Let Jung do it,’ Reinhart proposed. ‘Otherwise he’ll drop off to sleep.’
‘Thank you,’ said Jung. ‘Well, if we combine my results and Reinhart’s, we can probably draw several conclusions. It looks like Oscar Yellinek went missing from Waldingen quite early on Sunday night. If the information is correct – the stuff we got from that Moulder girl and Ulriche Fischer – it seems most likely that he left the camp shortly before ten o’clock. He talked to the girls for a few minutes after evening prayers, and then left, presumably heading for those rocks where Belle Moulder had left Clarissa Heerenmacht four hours earlier, or thereabouts. After that, nobody seems to have seen him.’
‘What you say seems to contain quite a high proportion of guesses, doesn’t it?’ said Servinus, looking doubtful.
‘Of course,’ said Reinhart, ‘but we usually guess right. Everything depends on how much credibility we give to Miss Fischer’s performance, but if we combine that with what the chief inspector managed to get out of that other woman – what’s her name?’
‘Mathilde Ulbrecht,’ said Kluuge.
‘Yes, that’s right. If we add the two lots of fragments together, they do point in a certain direction: they don’t seem to know where the hell he is.’
‘So all that about him meeting God and being given a mission, and that he was on probation, was just cobbled together by the women?’
Reinhart shrugged.
‘Why not?’ he said. ‘The main aim was probably to keep the girls quiet, I presume. Yes, I think this makes sense.’
