by Håkan Nesser
“Would you open your door for Meryl Streep?” asked Beate Moerk.
“I think so,” said Münster.
Beate Moerk sighed.
“We’re not getting anywhere. Would you like some coffee?”
“Yes, please,” said Münster. “If you make it, I’ll wash the dishes.”
“Excellent,” said Beate Moerk. “I hope you didn’t think I’d turn the offer down.”
“Not for a second,” said Münster.
“Are you used to this sort of thing?”
“Depends what you mean by used to,” said Münster.
“How many murderers do you generally track down per year?”
Munster thought for a moment.
“Ten to fifteen perhaps... although we hardly need to track down most of them. They turn up of their own accord, more or less. Come and give themselves up, or it’s just a matter of going around and collaring them—a bit like picking apples, really. Most cases are sorted out within a few weeks, it’s fair to say.”
“Cases like this one, though? How often do they crop up?”
Münster hesitated.
“Not so often. One or two a year, perhaps.”
“But you solve them all?”
“More or less. Van Veeteren doesn’t like unsolved cases. He’s usually impossible to live with if it drags on too long. As far as I know, there’s only one case that he’s had to shelve—the G-file. Must be five or six years ago now. I think it’s still nagging him.”
Beate Moerk nodded.
“So you think he’ll be the one who cracks this one as well?”
Münster shrugged.
“Highly likely. The main thing is that we get him, I suppose. There’ll be enough glory to go around for all of us. Don’t you think?”
Beate Moerk blushed. She turned her head away and ran her hand through her hair, but Münster had noted her reaction.
Aha, he thought. An ambitious young inspector. Maybe fancies herself as a private detective?
“Have you any theories of your own?” he asked.
“Of my own? No, of course not. I think about it a lot, naturally, but I don’t seem to get anywhere.”
“That’s how it usually looks,” said Münster.
“Meaning what?”
“That you think you’re just marking time and getting nowhere; then suddenly, off you go—some little detail starts to grow and becomes significant, and then it goes very quickly.”
“Hmm,” said Beate Moerk. She stirred her coffee and scraped at another blob of candle wax with her nail.
“Do you mind if I make a confession?” she said after a pause.
“Go ahead,” said Münster.
“I think... think it’s exciting, being in the middle of it all. I mean—”
“I know,” said Münster.
“—I realize my first thought ought to be that it’s terrible and awful, and I should be out there hunting down this mad Axman because he’s a horrific criminal, and because honest people need to be able to sleep at night. And I do think that, of course, but... but I have to admit that I quite enjoy it as well. That’s pretty perverse, don’t you think?”
Münster smiled.
“I don’t think so,” he said.
“You think the same!” exclaimed Beate Moerk, and suddenly, for one giddy fraction of a second, something happened inside Münster’s head—the unfeigned look on her face as she said it, the fresh, slightly childlike expression in her face—genuine, pure; he didn’t really know why, but it gave him a jolt, in any case, and reminded him of something that... that belonged to another chapter of his life. Something he’d already read. Enjoyed and given in to. Of course, he ought to have been expecting it and, needless to say, he was. There had been something about that walk through the town, the beer at The Blue Ship, their conversation in between the interviews—playful and almost wanton—something that was so banal and so obvious that he quite simply didn’t dare put it into words.
“Well,” he said. “I have thought... in the beginning, that is. You get your fingers burned.”
It wasn’t that she was trying to lead him on. On the contrary, really. Presumably, he tried to convince himself, it was the knowledge that he was married, the knowledge that Synn existed that had caused her to let herself go a bit, allowed him to come close to her—because she knew she was safe.
Safe? What about him, though?
“A penny for your thoughts.”
He realized that she was looking at him again, and that his mind must have wandered off for a few seconds.
“I... don’t know really,” he said. “The Axman, I suppose.”
“What does your wife think about your job?”
“Why do you ask?”
“Answer first.”
“What Synn thinks about my job?”
“Yes. That you have to be away from home. Now, for instance.”
“Not much.”
“Did you quarrel before you left for here?”
He hesitated.
“Yes, we quarreled.”
Beate Moerk sighed.
“I knew it,” she said. “I’m asking because I want to know if it’s really possible to be a police officer and be married as well.”
“Possible?”
“Tolerable, then.”
“That’s an old chestnut,” said Münster.
“I know,” said Beate Moerk. “Can you give me a good answer, though, as you’ve been in the job for some time?”
Münster thought it over.
“Yes,” he said. “It must be possible.”
“As easy as that, is it?”
“It’s as easy as that.”
“Good,” said Beate Moerk. “You’ve taken a weight off my chest.”
Münster coughed and wished he could think of something sensible to say. Beate Moerk was watching him.
“Maybe we should change the subject?” she said after a while.
“That would probably be safest,” said Münster.
“Shall we look more closely at my private thoughts? About the Axman, that is.”
“Why not?”
“Unless you think it’s too late, of course.”
“Too late?” said Münster.
The only thing that’s preventing her from seducing me is herself, he thought. I hope she’s strong enough... I wouldn’t want to look myself in the eye tomorrow morning.
“Would you like any more wine?”
“Good God, no,” said Münster. “Black coffee.”
27
“Melnik has gallstones,” said Kropke.
“What in hell’s name... ?” said Van Veeteren. “I’m not surprised, actually.”
“That’s why the report’s been delayed,” explained Bausen.
“He phoned from the hospital.”
“Did he phone himself ?” asked Van Veeteren. “Good for him... Well, what shall we do today, then?”
The chief of police sighed.
“You tell me,” he said. “Continue gathering information, I suppose. Before long every single citizen of Kaalbringen will have had a say in this case. Not a bad collection of documents.
Perhaps we can try to sell them to the folklore archives when we’ve finished—”
“If we ever finish, that is,” muttered Kropke. “How’s it going with the ax?”
Van Veeteren put a cigarette and a toothpick on the table.
“Not very well,” he said. “Although I don’t suppose it matters much. I doubt that we’ll find the shop that sold it—if they sell gadgets like that in shops, anyway. And as for asking some shop assistant to recall who bought an ax a dozen or fifteen years ago, assuming it was the man himself who did, no, I think we’ll give the ax trail a rest.”
“What about Simmel’s children?” wondered Inspector Moerk, looking up from her papers.
“Led us nowhere,” said Bausen. “They haven’t had much contact with th
eir parents for the last ten years or so, neither him nor her—Christmases and big birthdays, and that’s about it. You could say that puts them in a good light. Only visited them once in Spain as well.”
Van Veeteren nodded and put the toothpick in his pocket.
Kropke stood up.
“Anyway,” he said, “I think I’ll go to my office and write a few summaries. Unless the boss has anything else for me to do.”
Bausen shrugged.
“We’ll just keep plodding on, I suppose,” he said, with a look in Van Veeteren’s direction.
“Yes,” said Van Veeteren, lighting the cigarette. “For Christ’s sake, don’t think this is anything unusual. It’s hard going, we have no sensible leads, no real suspicions, only a hell of a lot of information, but things will start moving sooner or later. It’ll come if only we have a bit of patience.”
Either that or it won’t, he thought.
“Did Melnik say when he’d be ready with the report?” asked Moerk.
“Not precisely,” said Kropke. “A few more days, he thought. He seems to be a persnickety bastard—”
“You can say that again,” said Van Veeteren.
“OK,” said Bausen. “Let’s get going with... whatever it is we’re busy doing!”
Hmm, what am I busy doing? wondered Münster.
The village of Kirkenau was not large. A railroad station, a clump of houses in a valley by the river Geusse that had formed a longish lake in this part of the rolling, fertile countryside. Van Veeteren couldn’t see any shops, or a post office or a school, and the gloomy-looking stone church by the roadside looked as godforsaken as the rest of the place.
The road to Seldon Hospice was in the other direction, up from the valley through a belt of sparse coniferous woods; ten minutes by car, roughly, and when he parked outside the walls, he wondered if it was really an old sanatorium. The air felt fresh and oxygen rich, and it was no problem resisting the temptation to smoke a cigarette before going in through the gates.
Erich Meisse was tall and thin, and baldness had set in early, making it difficult to estimate his age. Probably no more than thirty-five, in any case, Van Veeteren thought; they would have the exact age somewhere if it should prove to be of any importance. Meisse shook hands, gave the detective chief inspector a broad smile and invited him to take a seat in one of the Kremer armchairs in front of the French windows.
“Tea or coffee?” he asked.
“Coffee, please,” said Van Veeteren.
The doctor left the room. Van Veeteren sat down and looked out over the grounds: a large, well-tended and slightly undulating lawn with gnarled old fruit trees dotting it here and there, raked gravel paths and solid-looking white-painted wooden benches. Next to the wall a few little greenhouses; a gardener or someone of the sort was pushing a wheelbarrow full of compost or something of the sort, and farther away, to the left, two nurses dressed in black emerged from a low yellow wooden pavilion with rather a different vehicle, more like a wagon.
He swallowed.
Two creatures were sitting in the wagon, and it took him several seconds before it dawned on him that they were, in fact, two human beings.
“We don’t accept just any patients here,” explained Dr. Meisse.
“We only take the worst cases. We have no illusions about cur-ing anybody; we simply try to give them a reasonably decent life. Insofar as that’s possible . . .”
Van Veeteren nodded.
“I understand,” he said. “How many patients do you have?”
“It varies,” said Meisse. “Between twenty-five and thirty, approximately. Most of them spend the rest of their days here; that’s the point, really . . .”
“You’re the last port of call?”
“You could put it like that, yes. We have a philosophy... I don’t know if you are familiar with Professor Seldon’s ideas?”
Van Veeteren shook his head.
“Ah, well,” said Meisse with a smile, “maybe we can talk about that some other time. I don’t suppose you’ve come here to discuss the treatment of severe psychiatric cases.”
“No.” Van Veeteren cleared his throat and took his notebook out of his briefcase. “You were good friends with Maurice Rühme... even when you were in Aarlach, if I understand correctly?”
“Yes, I got to know him about... five years ago, more or less, through my wife. She and Beatrice—Beatrice Linckx, that is—are old childhood friends, well, school friends, in any case.”
“When did you first meet Maurice Rühme?”
Dr. Meisse pondered a moment.
“I’m not absolutely sure when I was first introduced to him, but we’d started to meet socially by the winter of 1988–89, in any case... now and then, at least.”
“Miss Linckx also works out here, is that right?”
“Yes, she’s been with us for six months or so.”
Van Veeteren paused.
“Did you fix this job for her?”
But Dr. Meisse only laughed.
“Oh, no,” he said. “I’m afraid I don’t have much influence in such matters, unfortunately. I put in a good word for her, I suppose. Why do you ask?”
Van Veeteren shrugged but didn’t answer.
“What do you know about Rühme’s cocaine addiction while he was in Aarlach?”
Meisse turned serious again, and ran his hand over his bald head.
“Not very much,” he said. “No details. Maurice preferred not to talk about it. He told me a little bit one night, when we’d had a fair amount to drink; I think that was the only time it was ever mentioned. He’d got over it, in any case. I reckoned he had a right to draw a line underneath it.”
“Were you acquainted with Ernst Simmel and Heinz Eggers?”
The doctor gave a start.
“With... ? The other two? No, of course not. I don’t understand—”
“And what about Rühme?” asked Van Veeteren, cutting him short. “Can you see any connection between him and the other two?”
Dr. Meisse produced a handkerchief and dried his forehead as he pondered that.
“No,” he said after a while. “I have thought about it, of course, but I haven’t been able to come up with any link at all.”
Van Veeteren sighed and looked out the window again. He wondered if there was anything sensible he could ask the young doctor about as he watched a trio approaching the building from the direction of the greenhouses. A man and a woman walked on either side of a hunched figure, supporting her—for it was a she; he could see that now—with their arms around her hunched back. She seemed to be dragging her feet through the gravel, and it sometimes looked as if her helpers were lifting her up and carrying her. It suddenly dawned on him that he recognized the man. The tall, thin figure, the thick dark hair—Dr. Mandrijn, no doubt about it. He watched the three of them for a bit longer before turning to Dr. Meisse.
“What does Dr. Mandrijn do here?”
“Dr. Mandrijn?”
Van Veeteren pointed.
“Oh, of course, Mandrijn. That’s a relative of his... a niece, if I remember rightly. Brigitte Kerr. One of our most recent guests. She arrived only a month or so ago, poor girl—”
“What’s the matter with her?”
The doctor flung out his arms in an apologetic gesture.
“I’m sorry. I’m afraid there are some things I can’t discuss.
Professional secrecy you know, not only—”
“Crap.” Van Veeteren cut him short again. “It’s true that I don’t have any papers with me, but it will be only a matter of time if I decide to relieve you of that commitment to secrecy. May I remind you that this is a murder investigation.”
Meisse hesitated.
“Just give me an indication,” said Van Veeteren. “That will be sufficient. Are drugs involved, for instance?”
The doctor looked up at the ceiling.
“Yes,” he said. “To a large extent. But
she’s not in my group, so I don’t know all that much about it.”
Van Veeteren said nothing for a while. Then he looked at his watch and rose to his feet.
“Many thanks for your time,” he said. “I’ll have a word with Miss Linckx as well. May I just ask you one final question?”
“Of course,” said Meisse, who leaned back in his chair and smiled again.
Van Veeteren paused for effect.
“Who do you think killed Maurice Rühme?”
The smile vanished.
“What... ?” said Meisse. “Who... ? I’ve no idea, of course. If I had the slightest idea of who the Axman was, I’d have told the police long ago, obviously!”
“Obviously,” said Van Veeteren. “I’m sorry I had to take up so much of your time.”
This place seems to have a remarkable ability to attract people to it, he thought, after he’d left Dr. Meisse in peace and was instead looking for Miss Linckx’s office. How many people had he come across, in fact, with some kind of connection with this gloomy, isolated institution?
He started counting, but before he’d gone very far, he bumped into Miss Linckx in the corridor, and decided to abandon that line of thinking until after he had interviewed her.
As he drove out of the parking lot an hour or so later, he was thinking mostly about what sort of an impression she had made on him. The beautiful Beatrice Linckx. And if it really was as she maintained, that her relationship with Maurice Rühme had truly been based on the strongest and most solid trinity as she claimed—respect, honesty and love.
In any case, it didn’t sound so silly, he thought, and started remembering his own broken-down marriage.
But he’d hardly gotten as far as recalling Renate’s name when he drove into a cloudburst, so he turned his attention to trying to see through the windshield and stay on the road instead.
28
The confession came early in the morning. Apparently, Mr.Wollner had been waiting in the drizzle outside the police station since before six, but it wasn’t until Miss deWitt, the clerk, opened up just before seven that he was able to get in.
