by Håkan Nesser
That was the final image.
And when night closed in over the eye, everything became nothing.
II
Friday, November 20- Sunday, November 29
25
“Rooth, would you mind asking Miss Katz to bring us a few bottles of soda water, please!”
Hiller removed a strand of hair from his jacket collar and eyed the assembled police officers.
“Where’s Van Veeteren? Didn’t I say that everybody was to be here at five o’clock? It’s three minutes past. The press conference is at six on the dot, and we need to know exactly where we are by then. This is a shitty situation if ever I saw one!”
Reinhart stood up.
“I’ll go and fetch him. He’s busy scaring the life out of a psychiatrist.”
Munster leaned back and tried to see out the window.
The chief of police’s office was on the fifth floor, and was generally called either the Fifth Column or the Greenhouse.
The former referred to the enemy in our midst, the latter to the occupier’s partiality for potted plants. The picture window looking out over the southern part of the town allowed in such a generous intake of warm light that a wide array of azaleas, bougainvillea, and all manner of palms were able to flourish. So successfully that the intended panoramic view had long since been replaced by an almost impenetrable wall of greenery.
Munster sighed and observed the chief of police instead.
He was rotating back and forth on his swivel chair. Moving papers, adjusting his tie, brushing dust from his midnight-blue suit. . These were all telltale signs: press conference! And it wouldn’t be just newspaper reporters and photographers eager for details, but radio and television newshounds as well.
Munster had seen a broadcast van park in the courtyard down below half an hour or so earlier. Presumably they were busy with cables and light meters in the conference room. Hiller was no doubt right.
This really was a shitty situation.
“Van Veeteren, can you fill us in on the current situation,” said Hiller when everybody had finally turned up. “I have to meet the press in forty-five minutes. . ”
“No,” said Van Veeteren. “I have a headache. Munster can do it.”
“Oh, okay,” said Munster, taking out his notebook. “From the beginning?”
The chief of police nodded. Munster cleared his throat.
“Well, it was 7:10 a.m. when we received an emergency call from Majorna, the psychiatric hospital out at Willemsburg.”
“We know that,” said Hiller.
“Reinhart and I arrived there at seven-thirty-five, together with Jung and deBries. The victim was lying in his bed in Ward 26B. We cordoned it off, of course. The other patient had already been moved to another room.”
“Very sensible,” muttered Van Veeteren.
“Anyway, the dead man was Janek Mitter-we both recognized him, and it was obvious what had happened. The whole bed was full of blood, and there was a lot on the floor as well.”
He leafed through his notebook.
“According to Meusse, who arrived ten minutes later, the cause of death was internal injuries and loss of blood caused by three deep stab wounds, one of which had sliced right through the aorta. Death appeared to have been more or less instantaneous, a few seconds at most, and Meusse estimated the time of death at somewhere between three and half past three.”
“The hour of the wolf,” said Van Veeteren. “The time of nightmares and death.”
“How come the press got to the scene before we did?”
Hiller asked. “Yet again,” he added.
“Tip-off from the staff,” said Reinhart. “One of the nurses had a girl staying the night with him-a hack with Neuwe Blatt.
They’d spent the night screwing in his apartment in the staff quarters, so she was only a three-minute walk away. Pretty, incidentally. . ”
“Hmm,” said Hiller. “Go on!”
“Rooth and Van Veeteren arrived half an hour later,” said Munster. “Along with the forensic team. They ran a fine-tooth comb over the place, of course, but there wasn’t much to find.”
“Really?”
“Apart from what was obvious, that is. The murderer had entered the room, killed the victim-a scary sort of knife, apparently, double-edged, some kind of hunting knife; there are so many variations of that type of thing nowadays. Anyway, the murderer left through the window and down the drainpipe. . ”
“I thought all the patients were locked up,” said Hiller.
“Not necessary,” said Rooth. “Not with the sophisticated drugs they have nowadays-although they have bars on the first- and second-floor windows. The drainpipe held on this occasion, but the next one to try it will probably fall to his death: three of the anchor brackets have come loose.”
“We’d better inform the murderer,” said Reinhart. “We can’t have him falling and hurting himself.”
“Any fingerprints?” Hiller asked.
“Not a trace, and no marks where he landed, either. There was a paved path at that particular point.”
“Are we allowed to smoke?” Reinhart wondered.
“Sit next to the window,” said Hiller.
Reinhart and Rooth changed places. Reinhart scraped out the spent contents of his pipe into a flower pot. Van Veeteren gave him an approving nod.
“Carry on!” said Hiller.
Munster closed his notebook again.
“There were four people on night duty-on Ward 26, that is. Four rooms make up that ward. It’s the same on the first and second floors.”
“Wards 24, 25, and 26, each on a different floor,” explained Rooth. “A, B, C, and D in each of them. Twelve rooms in all in that building. Two beds per room, eight in each ward; but some were empty. That happens occasionally, every other year or so-somebody is cured, or dies, and so there’s a vacancy.”
“But there are plenty of loonies waiting in the queue,” said Reinhart, finally getting his pipe to burn.
“So twelve staff on night duty?” Hiller wondered.
“Yes,” said Munster. “Two awake and two asleep on every ward. We’ve interrogated all twelve, especially the ones on Ward 26, of course. And. . well, it seems pretty clear what happened.”
“Really?” said Hiller, and stopped rotating his watch around his wrist at last.
“It was some time before we realized, of course. We had to check with the day staff as well, but everybody seems to agree.
There was a visitor who stayed behind.”
“Stayed behind?” said Hiller.
“Yes, she arrived at about five o’clock-visiting hours last until half past six. But that woman stayed behind, and everybody forgot about her.”
“A woman?” Hiller asked.
“Yes, that’s what they say,” said Reinhart, blowing a smoke ring that slowly sailed in the direction of the chief of police.
“But it could have been a man, of course.”
“Huh. What the hell are their routines?” Hiller asked, waft-ing away the smoke ring. “Do we have a description?”
“Eight,” said Munster. “They are more or less in agreement. Quite a tall woman with thick, dark hair and glasses.
Duffel coat and jeans. Only three of them spoke to her, but another five saw her. Including a patient. He’s prepared to swear on oath that it was a man dressed up as a woman. The rest are not sure.”
“Van Veeteren, what do you think?” Hiller asked.
“I agree with the loony,” said Van Veeteren. “But he’ll have to look after the oath himself.”
Hiller clasped his hands in front of him on his desk.
“So this. . person. . remained hidden inside the building until. . three o’clock, half past three in the morning. Then murdered Mitter, and climbed out through the window? It sounds a little on the cold-blooded side, don’t you agree, gentlemen?”
“You can say that again,” said Reinhart.
“As callous as it comes,” said Rooth. “It’s like a da
mn B-film more than anything else. .”
“The other patient,” interrupted Hiller. “The one sharing the same room. What did he have to say?”
“Nothing,” said Munster. “He slept like a log, I don’t think he even woke up when they carried him out.”
“Very fancy drugs they have nowadays,” said Rooth.
“Remember The Cuckoo’s Nest?” asked Reinhart.
Hiller looked at the clock.
“A quarter of an hour to go,” he informed everybody.
“Can’t you keep the hacks waiting for a while?” asked Reinhart.
“Even if we can’t do anything else, at least we can make a point of being punctual,” said Hiller, glaring at Reinhart’s pipe. “Besides, I gather it’s a live broadcast.”
“Well, I’ll be damned,” said Rooth.
“Okay,” said Hiller. “Van Veeteren, what clues do we have?
What theories are you working on? I couldn’t care less about your headache.”
Van Veeteren removed his toothpick from between his lower teeth, broke it in two, and laid it on the shiny table in front of him.
“Do you want to know what you ought to say, or what I think?”
“Both. But perhaps we can take your private thoughts afterward. Give me some pearls to cast before the swine.”
“As you wish,” said Van Veeteren. “An unknown person has entered Majorna and killed Jonas Mattias Mitter, who was found guilty of the manslaughter of his wife a few weeks ago.
He was being looked after in Majorna because of his frail mental condition. There is nothing to suggest that the two deaths are connected in any way.”
“I can’t say that, for Christ’s sake!” roared Hiller nervously, wiping his brow.
“Say that there is a connection, then,” Van Veeteren suggested. “It makes no difference to me.”
There followed a few seconds of silence. The only sounds came from Reinhart’s pipe and the chief of police’s rotating wristwatch.
“Was Mitter innocent, then?” asked Rooth.
Nobody answered.
“So it’s the same person that committed both the murders?” Rooth continued.
Van Veeteren leaned back and stared up at the ceiling.
“He was an amusing devil, I must say,” he said eventually.
“There’s only one thing that surprises me: that he didn’t try to contact us instead, if he’d remembered something.”
“What do you mean?” said Hiller.
“You mean. .” said Reinhart.
Van Veeteren nodded slowly.
“. . that Mitter tipped off the murderer?” said Munster.
“But not us?”
Van Veeteren said nothing.
“How could anybody be so damned stupid?” Reinhart wondered.
“You try spending some time in the loony bin and let them fill you up with drugs, and see how smart you feel after a week of that,” said Rooth. “If it’s as V.V. says and Mitter managed to beat a hole through his memory loss, what the hell did he think he was playing at? I have to say I have my doubts.”
“No, it’s as I say,” said Van Veeteren with a yawn. “But we don’t need to quarrel over it. You’ll see in the end.”
Hiller stood up.
“It’s time. Van Veeteren, I want a word with you afterward.”
“By all means. You’ll find me in the canteen. There’s a program on the box that I don’t want to miss. . ”
Hiller adjusted his tie and hurried out through the door.
“A shitty situation if ever I saw one,” he muttered.
26
Munster knocked on the door and came in.
“Take a seat,” said Van Veeteren, pointing at the chair between the filing cabinets. Munster sat down and slumped back against the wall.
“It’s eleven o’clock,” he said. “Why can’t we go home and get some sleep, and continue tomorrow instead?”
Van Veeteren clasped his hands on the desk in front of him.
“People think better at night. You’ll get fat if you sleep too much. You’re already starting to get slow when you come forward to the net. A murderer is on the loose. Do you need any more explanations?”
Oh, shut up, Munster thought; but he didn’t say it.
“Coffee?” Van Veeteren asked in a friendly tone.
“Yes, please,” said Munster. “That would be appreciated.
I’ve only drunk eleven cups so far today.”
Van Veeteren poured out something evil-smelling and brown from a grimy thermos flask. Handed Munster a paper mug.
“Now listen carefully, Inspector. You had better concentrate, otherwise you could find yourself sitting here all night.
The hard work starts tomorrow, so it would be as well if we had some idea of what the hell we should do. Do you want to call your wife?”
Munster shook his head.
“I’ve already done so. She saw on the television that. .”
“Good. Well, who’s our culprit? Our murderer?”
Munster sipped the lukewarm coffee. Pulled a face as he swallowed and guessed that it must have been brewed between twelve and eighteen hours previously.
“Does that mean that you don’t know?” Van Veeteren
asked.
Munster nodded.
“That means: no, I don’t know,” he confirmed.
“Same here,” said Van Veeteren. “And I have to admit that I haven’t the slightest trace of a suspicion, either. That’s why you have to pull your socks up. Let’s start with number two!”
“Eh?”
“With the second murder, the murder of Mitter. What is the most important question?”
“Why!” said Munster.
“Correct! We can ignore for the moment when and how and if the victim emptied his bowels during the last eight hours. What we need to concentrate on is why. Why was Mitter murdered?”
“We’re assuming that it was the same killer?”
“Yes,” said Van Veeteren. “If it isn’t the same one, it will be a different matter altogether. A case we won’t solve for a very long time, not using the methods we use in any case. No, dammit, it is the same person, I know it is. But why? And why just now?”
“He was warned?”
“Do you really think so?”
“But, sir, you said yourself. .”
“You can drop the ‘sir’ after ten o’clock.”
“You said yourself that the murderer must have been warned by Mitter himself. That Mitter must have remembered something to do with the first murder.”
“Let us assume that I’m certain of that. Mitter informed the murderer that he remembered who he was.”
“Or she.”
“Is that likely?”
“No.”
“We’ll assume it’s a man. Next question, Munster!”
Munster scratched the back of his neck.
“How?” he said. “How did he inform the murderer?”
“Correct again! You’re on top form, Munster!”
“And why did he say nothing to the police?”
“We’ll take that later,” said Van Veeteren. “First things first.
How? What do you think?”
“I. . he phoned, or wrote a letter. I don’t think he sent a fax.”
Van Veeteren’s baggy cheeks twitched to form something that might have been a smile. But it was so brief that Munster was unable to decide for certain.
“He wrote,” Van Veeteren confirmed.
“How do you know?”
“Because I checked. Listen carefully, and I’ll explain. Mitter wrote a letter last Monday. . the sixteenth. . and it was mailed the same day. He was given an envelope, paper, and a pen by the staff. They evidently have everything locked up, and hand it out to the patients on request. If they’ve been behaving themselves, that is. Everything seems to be locked up at that place-apart from the patients, but they get pills instead, of course. Anyway, it’s clear that he sent a letter last Monday. If we assume that
the murderer lives here in Maardam, or in the district, at least, he should have received it on Tuesday. He spends Wednesday waiting, and then he strikes on Thursday evening. He gets dressed up, finds a way of entering the ward, waits calmly. Hides himself for eight or nine hours-just imagine that, Munster. That bastard stays in there for eight or nine hours until it’s time, that’s what’s so impressive about this whole business. It’s not just anybody we’re dealing with, I think we ought to be clear about that.”
Munster nodded. His tiredness was fading away now, thinning out and being penetrated by concentration. He looked out the window. The silhouettes of the cathedral and the skyscrapers at Karlsplatsen were outlined against the night sky, and that feeling came slowly creeping up on him, the feeling that always turned up sooner or later in an investigation, that could keep him lying wide awake in his bed, despite being so exhausted that he was on the point of collapse. This was the challenge, this was the core of their work. The murderer was somewhere out there. One of this town’s 300,000 inhabi-tants had taken it upon himself to kill two of his fellow human beings, and it was his duty, and Van Veeteren’s and all the rest of them, to nail the man-or the woman. It was going to be one hell of a job, in fact. They would work for thousands of hours before the case was closed, and when they eventually had all the answers, it would become clear to them that nearly everything they had done had been a complete waste of time.
They would realize that if only they’d done this or that right away, they would have cracked it in two days instead of two months.
But this was only the beginning. So far they knew virtually nothing. There was only Van Veeteren and him shut up in this messy office, hemmed in by questions and answers and guesses in a slow but inexorable search for the right track. If they didn’t find it, if they took a wrong turning at the very beginning-well, it could be that two months from now they would be sitting around in this very same room with their thousands of wasted hours and no murderer. This was the millstone around their necks: finding themselves at the far end of a cul-de-sac, knowing that they would have to walk all the way back. And it was always the first turning that was the most important one.
