Borkmann's Point: An Inspector Van Veeteren Mystery

by Håkan Nesser

  “Damn Jesuits!” he had nevertheless exclaimed after replacing the receiver. “Inquisitors in silver ties, huh, no thank you!”

  But given the circumstances, of course, it was a question of making the most of a bad job.

  41

  “What the hell is that?” asked Van Veeteren, leaning forward over the table.

  “It’s a map,” explained Kropke. “The drawing pins represent sightings of Inspector Moerk and her Mazda—or rather, of red Mazdas in general.”

  “There are several in Kaalbringen,” said Bausen. “Presumably at least two of them were on the streets on Friday evening—in addition to hers, that is.”

  “Pins with red and yellow heads stand for sightings of the car,” said Kropke, keen to take over and assert his ownership of the patent. “Red for the period six-fifteen to six-forty-five, yellow for six-forty-five to seven-fifteen.”

  Van Veeteren leaned farther over the table.

  “The blue and white pins are witnesses who claim to have seen her in person—blue for the first half hour, white for the second. That one is DCI Van Veeteren, for instance.”

  He pointed to a white pin on the beach.

  “I’m honored,” said Van Veeteren. “How many are there?”

  “Twenty-five red and twenty yellow,” said Kropke. “That’s the car—and then twelve blue and five white.”

  Münster moved up alongside his boss and studied the pattern of the drawing pins. Not a bad idea, he had to admit— provided you knew how to interpret it properly, that is. They seemed to be quite widespread; evidently sightings had been made in all parts of town, but in most cases there was just one isolated pin.

  “The point,” said Kropke, “is that we don’t need to worry about whether a single witness is sufficient or not. Places where there are several pins ought to be a sufficiently clear pointer.”

  He paused to allow the others to count the pins, and recognize the stroke of genius behind the method.

  “Quite clear,” muttered Münster. “The white ones as well.”

  “Indubitably,” said Van Veeteren. “No doubt about it.”

  “Exactly,” said Kropke, looking pleased. “As you can see, there are only three conglomerations—in Fisherman’s Square outside The See Warf, in Grande Place, and the smokehouse. Twenty-four pins outside The See Warf, eleven out here, eight by the smokehouse—forty-three out of sixty-two. The rest are scattered all over the place, as you will have noticed. And it seems that nobody saw her after DCI Van Veeteren’s sighting. Apart from the murderer, that is. The beach must have been pretty deserted.”

  “True,” said Van Veeteren.

  “Hmm,” said Bausen. “I still don’t think we should get carried away—a third of the sightings must be wrong, if I understand things.”

  “Well,” said Kropke. “I think you realize—”

  “And both The See Warf and the smokehouse have been written about in the newspapers.”

  “True enough,” said Kropke. “But I think it’s fair to say that doesn’t matter. The most interesting thing is, of course, Grande Place—there are eleven witnesses who claim to have seen either Moerk or her car outside the police station here between half past six and seven, roughly. Two saw her getting out of the car... those two white drawing pins over there.”

  He pointed, and Bausen nodded. Van Veeteren snapped off a toothpick and dropped it in St. Pieter’s churchyard.

  “Which direction was she going?” he asked.

  Kropke looked at Bausen.

  “Toward here,” he said.

  Bausen nodded again.

  “OK,” he said. “So there are indications that she came here. Back to the station.”

  “Well?” said Münster, feeling as if he’d just missed the point of a long and complicated joke. Van Veeteren said nothing. He dug his hands deeper into his pockets, stood erect again and emitted a slight hissing noise through his teeth. Münster recalled his boss’s back trouble, which occasionally manifested itself.

  They sat down around the table again. Kropke was still looking pleased with himself, but also slightly bewildered, as if he couldn’t quite work out the implications of what his efforts had produced. Once again Münster could feel those butterfly-like vibrations in his temples—the ones that usually suggested something was afoot, that a critical point was being approached. That the breakthrough could come at any moment.

  He looked around the untidy room. Bang was sitting opposite him, sweating. Van Veeteren appeared to be half asleep.

  Bausen was still studying the map and the drawing pins, sucking in his cheeks and looking almost as if he was dreaming.

  Eventually it was Constable Mooser who put into words the general bewilderment that seemed to be filling the room.

  “Here?” he exclaimed. “Why on earth did she come here?”

  Three seconds passed. Then both Kropke and Mooser groaned and said more or less simultaneously:

  “Her office!”

  “Holy shit!” gasped Bausen, and dropped his as yet unlit cigarette on the floor. “Has anybody checked her office?”

  Mooser and Kropke were already on their way. Münster had stood up, and Bausen looked as if he’d just failed the first exam testing the basics of police work. Only Van Veeteren seemed unperturbed, and was digging around in his breast pocket.

  “Of course,” he muttered. “There’ll be nothing there. But take a look by all means; six eyes will see more than two, or so one hopes.”

  September 27–October 1

  42

  “I take it you know where you are?” he said, and his voice sounded weary in the extreme.

  “I think so,” she said into the darkness.

  He coughed.

  “You realize that you have no chance of getting out of here without assistance?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re in my hands. Can we agree on that?”

  She didn’t answer. She suddenly wondered how such resolute determination could be combined with the deep sorrow that was obvious in his voice. Wondered and yet understood at the same time that this was the key to the whole business.

  Sorrow and determination.

  “Can we agree on that?”

  “Yes.”

  He paused and adjusted his chair. Probably crossed his legs, but she was only guessing. The darkness was extremely dense.

  “I . . .” she began.

  “No,” he said flatly. “I don’t want you to speak unless it’s necessary. If I want you to say something, I’ll tell you. This is not going to be a conversation; my intention is simply to tell you a story. All I ask is that you listen.

  “A story,” he repeated.

  He lit a cigarette, and for a moment his face was illuminated by a faint red glow.

  “I’m going to tell you a story,” he said for the third time.

  “Not because I’m asking for understanding or forgiveness—

  I’m way past such things—but simply because I want to remind myself of it one more time, before it’s all over.”

  “What are you going to do with me?” she asked.

  “Don’t interrupt me,” he said. “I beg you not to spoil this.

  Perhaps I haven’t yet made up my mind . . .”

  She could hear his breathing through the dense silence and darkness. Nine or ten feet away from her, no more. She closed her eyes, but that didn’t make any difference.

  The darkness was there. The smells—stale soil, fresh tobacco smoke. And the murderer.

  43

  Bausen produced two beers from his briefcase, and opened them.

  “We mustn’t forget the other sightings,” he said. “There are seven or eight other people who are convinced they saw her in quite different places. She might have had time to do something else as well. The witnesses who saw her here at the station said it was between half past and a quarter to, isn’t that right?”

  Van Veeteren didn’t answer. He lit a
cigarette and adjusted the pieces.

  “Kropke had stuck in more than a hundred drawing pins by the time he went home,” said Bausen. “He’s almost run out of red ones. That seems to be giving him a bit of a headache, in fact. Anyway, what do you think?”

  Van Veeteren shrugged.

  “Let’s say she did in fact come here,” he said. “For simplicity’s sake, if nothing else. OK, Mr. Chief of Police, your turn to start. The Sicilian, I assume?”

  “Of course,” said Bausen with a smile, moving his e-pawn.

  “All right, she came here. But what the hell did she do?”

  “I don’t know,” said Van Veeteren, “but I intend to find out.”

  “Really?” said Bausen. “How? Her office didn’t produce much in the way of leads.”

  Van Veeteren shrugged.

  “I’ll grant you that,” he said. “Your move. If I win, I’ll take the lead. I hope you’re aware of that.”

  “Of course,” said Bausen. “Have you invented some homemade defense against the Sicilian as well? It could be useful to know.”

  “You’ll soon find out,” said Van Veeteren, and allowed himself what might have been meant as a smile, but which in fact made Bausen wonder if he had a toothache.

  Ah, well, life isn’t a game of chess after all, he thought, gazing out of the window. A game of chess involves so very many more possibilities.

  It was dark and deserted out there in the square. A few minutes past eleven; they had agreed to play a sixty-minute game, but you never knew... The chess clock was at home in the bookcase, and if they got themselves into a fascinating position, neither of them was likely to want to have to ruin it because of time pressure. On the contrary. There were some positions that should never be taken any further. They had discussed this before and reached agreement on the matter: Games should be deep-frozen after the thirty-fifth or fiftieth move and never completed. (Such as Linkowski versus Queller in Paris, 1907. After the forty-second. Or Mikoyan versus Andersson, 1980—in Brest, if he remembered rightly? After the thirty-fifth, or the thirty-seventh, at any rate.) Games in which the beauty of the situation was so great that any further move was bound to ruin it.

  It was like life, when you wished that time would call a halt, at least for a while, he thought. Although there was nothing to suggest that this game would turn out to be one of those special ones. Nothing at all.

  Three days? In three days he would leave this office, and never set foot in it again...

  It felt odd, to say the least, and he wondered how those three days would turn out. When he observed Van Veeteren on the other side of his desk, one hand hovering over the board, there were voices inside him that told him this detective chief inspector would in fact fulfill his promise and put the Axman behind bars before Friday. How he would go about it was not easy to judge, but his colleague was showing signs that he couldn’t fail to notice: increasing introversion, a tendency to irritation that had not been present earlier, a certain secretive-ness—or whatever you call it—all of which must surely indicate that he was onto something. Getting him to talk about it seemed to be an impossibility; Münster had also started to notice the signs, and had explained that they were not unusual.

  Familiar indications, rather, for anybody who had seen them before—clear pointers that something was brewing and that DCI Van Veeteren was in top gear mentally. That the situation was precisely as Bausen had suspected, in other words. It could well be that the thaw was imminent, and this somber police officer was on the brink of assembling all the pieces of this complicated jigsaw puzzle.

  Ah, well, thought Bausen. But three days? Would that really be enough?

  When it came to the crunch, of course, it wasn’t just a matter of these three days; he was the piece who’d be removed from the board on Friday. Nevertheless, over this last week he had steadily formed an impression that the whole business was a race against time. The murderer would have to be caught before October 1. That’s what they’d said, and the first was on Friday.

  On Friday he would retire. Exit Bausen. A free man with every right to fill his time with whatever he fancied. Who didn’t need to give a damn who the Axman was, and could do whatever he liked.

  Or might he not be too happy about that freedom? Would this case cast a shadow over his hard-earned future? That was not impossible. He thought about his wine cellar and its valuable contents.

  Three days?

  He eyed Van Veeteren’s weighty figure on the other side of his desk, and concluded that he had no idea where he would have placed his bet if he’d needed to do so.

  “Your move,” said Van Veeteren again, raising his bottle to his lips.

  “What’s your name?” said Kropke, starting the tape recorder.

  The well-built man opposite sighed.

  “You know perfectly well what my damn name is. We were in the same class at school for eight years, for God’s sake.”

  “This is an official interview,” said Kropke. “We have to stick to the formalities. So?”

  “Erwin Lange,” said the well-built man. “Born 1951. Owner of the photographer’s shop Blitz in Hoistraat. I’m due to open twenty minutes from now, so I’d be obliged if you could get a move on. Married with five children—is that enough?”

  “Yes,” said Kropke. “Would you mind telling me what you saw last Friday evening?”

  Erwin Lange cleared his throat.

  “I saw Inspector Moerk leave this police station at ten minutes to seven.”

  “Six-fifty, in other words. Are you sure about the time?”

  “One hundred percent certain.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “I was due to meet my daughter in the square at a quarter to. I checked my watch and saw that I was five minutes late.”

  “And you’re sure that the person you saw was Inspector Moerk?”

  “Certain.”

  “You had met her before?”

  “Yes.”

  “How close to her were you?”

  “Six feet.”

  “I see,” said Kropke. “Did you notice anything else?”

  “Such as?”

  “Er, her clothes, for instance.”

  “Tracksuit... red. Gym shoes.”

  “Was she carrying anything?”

  “No.”

  “OK. Many thanks,” said Kropke, switching off the tape recorder. “I hope you’re not intending to leave Kaalbringen during the next few days?”

  “Why on earth do you want to know that?”

  Kropke shrugged.

  “We might need to ask you some more questions... you never know.”

  “No,” said Erwin Lange, rising to his feet. “That’s the problem with you guys. You never know.”

  “Ten to seven?” muttered Bausen. “Shit, that means she could well have fitted in something else as well. Or what do you think?”

  Kropke nodded.

  “It takes fifteen minutes max from here to the smokehouse,” he said. “So there’s a gap of at least fifteen minutes.”

  “What’s the situation on the drawing pin front?” asked Münster.

  “A hundred and twelve,” said Kropke. “But there are no more conglomerations. No pattern, if you like—and nothing more from the beach.”

  “She might have sat in her car for a while before driving off,” said Bausen. “Down by the sea, perhaps. Or outside the station. That seems the most likely.”

  “Not necessarily,” said Van Veeteren. “She must have attracted his attention somehow. Or do you think he already knew about her jogging plans?”

  Nobody spoke for a few seconds. Mooser suppressed a yawn. Where’s the coffee? thought Münster.

  “Ah well,” said Bausen. “I’m damned if I know, but it’s important, obviously.”

  “Extremely important,” said Van Veeteren. “When was the earliest sighting at the smokehouse?”

  “Ten or eleven minutes past, or the
reabouts,” said Kropke.

  Van Veeteren nodded, and contemplated his thumbnail.

  “Ah, well,” he muttered. “I suppose every move has to be considered in its context. There’s always another island.”

  “Excuse me?” said Kropke.

  He’s going senile, thought Münster. No doubt about it.

  44

  “What did you say?” asked Münster.

  “Eh?” said Bang.

  “Will you repeat what you just said about Inspector Moerk and that fruit shop?”

  Bang looked up from the lists and looked slightly shifty.

  “I don’t understand... I just said that I met her there last Friday—at Kuipers, the place that sells fruit out at Immelsport.”

  “What time?”

  “A quarter past five, roughly. It was before she went to The See Warf. Obviously, I’d have mentioned it if it had been afterward.”

  “What did she do there?”

  “At Kuipers? Bought some fruit, of course. They have really cheap fruit there... and vegetables as well. But I don’t see why this matters.”

  “Just a minute,” said Münster. “She left the police station shortly after half past four... around twenty to five, perhaps. How long does it take to get to Immelsport?”