Borkmann's Point

by Håkan Nesser

  “His marriage wasn’t all that serious either then, I assume,” said Van Veeteren.

  “No . . . You could put it like that, I suppose.”

  “And he left here at about eleven?”

  “A few minutes past.”

  “Which way did he go?”

  “That way.” Schalke pointed again. “Down toward the square and the harbor.”

  “Didn’t he live in the other direction?”

  “You can go either way, in fact. It’s just that it’s a bit longer via the harbor.”

  “You didn’t see anybody follow him?”

  “No.”

  “Why do you think he took the longer route?”

  “I don’t know. Women, perhaps.”

  “Whores?”

  “Yes . . . we have one or two. They usually hang about down there.”

  “Did you notice anybody else leave the bar after Simmel?”

  “No . . . I’ve been thinking about that, but I don’t think anybody did.”

  Van Veeteren sighed.

  “What questions would you ask if you were in my place?”

  Schalke considered.

  “God knows! I haven’t a clue, to be honest.”

  “You don’t have any theories about what happened?”

  Schalke considered again. It was obvious that he would have loved to come up with a bold hypothesis, but he gave up after a while.

  “No, none at all, to be honest,” he said. “It must be a madman, I reckon . . . Somebody who’s escaped from a funny farm, maybe?”

  Funny farm? thought Van Veeteren. A well-chosen expression for a scribbler to use, I must say.

  “Bausen’s been following that up,” he said. “The only person who’s escaped is a confused old lady in her nineties. Has Alzheimer’s and goes around in a wheelchair . . .”

  “I don’t suppose it’s her then,” said Schalke.

  Van Veeteren drained his beer and decided it was time to go home. He hopped off his bar stool and thanked Schalke for his assistance.

  “Is it always as empty as this here?” he asked.

  “Good Lord, no!” said Schalke. “It’s usually packed. I mean, it’s Friday and all that . . . People are just scared stiff. They daren’t go out!”

  Scared stiff? thought Van Veeteren as he stood on the pavement outside. Yes, of course they’re scared stiff.

  Town terror stricken?

  It took him barely ten minutes to walk from The Blue Ship to the harbor and The See Warf. Quite a few cars were around, but he saw no more than a dozen or so pedestrians, all of them in groups. The few bars and cafés that were open also seemed to be fairly empty. The Palladium cinema had started its late-evening showing, but he had the impression that it was just as empty in there. Even if the Kaalbringen nightlife was nothing to write home about, the trend was clear enough.

  The murderer . . . the executioner . . . the Axman left nobody unaffected.

  Hardly surprising. He stood for a while outside his hotel and wondered if he maybe ought to go to the municipal woods and take a look but decided to wait. No doubt it would be better to do that in daylight.

  There were a lot of other things to take care of tomorrow, of course, but as he settled down in bed and switched on the cassette player, it was Inspector Moerk’s words that were ringing in his ears.

  Nothing. We don’t know a damn thing.

  An attractive woman, incidentally, he thought. A pity I’m not twenty-five years younger.

  By the time he’d heard one and a half interviews, he was sleeping like a log.

  7

  In his dreams the old images came back to haunt him again. The same images. The same desperate inability to act, the same sterile white-hot fury—Bitte in the corner by the sofa with her arms covered in needle marks and eyes like black, empty wells. The pimp, thin as a rake with jet-black, straggly hair, eyeing him scornfully and sneering. Hands raised, palms up, and shaking his head. And the other man—her face over the shoulders of the naked man. A sweaty, hairy back, heavy buttocks thrusting violently into her and pressing her up against the wall, her legs wide apart and her eyes reflecting his own, seeing what he sees . . . just for a second before he turns on his heel and leaves.

  The same images . . . and imposed upon them, penetrating them, the image of the ten-year-old with blond plaits, roaring with laughter, running toward him along the beach. Arms outstretched, eyes gleaming. Bitte . . .

  He woke up. In a cold sweat as usual, and it was several seconds before he remembered, before he got the upper hand . . . the weapon . . . the intense feeling of bliss as he swung it through the air and the dull thud as it penetrated their necks. The lifeless bodies and the blood bubbling out . . .

  That blood.

  If only that blood would flow over those dream images. Cover them in stains, make them incomprehensible, unrecognizable. Destroy them. Settle the bill once and for all, reduce all debts to zero . . . But even so, it was not about his torture. It wasn’t about the images, it was about what the images were based on. The reality behind them. The reality.

  Her revenge, not his. That ten-year-old running toward him, whose life had come to a sudden stop. Who was blocked and obstructed in midstride, just as abruptly and inexorably as in the photograph. It was about her and nobody else.

  He fumbled for his cigarettes. Didn’t want to put the light on. Darkness was what was needed; he didn’t want to see anything now. He struck a match. Lit the cigarette and inhaled deeply, resolutely. Immediately felt that warm sensation again spreading through his body, a tidal wave flowing up into his head and making him smile. He thought about his weapon again. Could see it before him in the darkness. He was an exhilarated Macbeth suddenly, and he wondered how long he would have to wait before it was time to let it speak again . . .

  8

  In the clear light of morning and with a fresh breeze blowing in from the sea, Kaalbringen seemed to have forgotten that it was terror stricken. Van Veeteren had a late breakfast on his balcony and observed the teeming crowds in Fisherman’s Square down below. There were obviously more than delicacies from the depths of the sea being sold from the stalls under their colorful awnings—more like everything under the sun. Saturday morning was market day; the sun was shining and life went on.

  The clock in the low limestone church struck ten, and Van Veeteren realized that he had slept for almost eleven hours.

  Eleven hours? Did that really mean, he asked himself, that what he needed in order to get a good night’s sleep was a murder hunt? He contemplated that theory as he tapped the top of his egg. It seemed absurd. And what was that insidious feeling that had taken possession of him this peaceful morning? He’d noticed it when he was in the shower, tried to rinse it away, but out here in the salty air it had returned with renewed strength. Spun esoteric threads of indolence around his soul and whispered seductive words in his ears . . .

  It was that he had no need to exert himself.

  The solution to this case would come to him of its own accord. Strike him as a result of some coincidence. A gift from the heavens. A deus ex machina!

  A mercy devoutly to be wished, thought Van Veeteren. Fat chance!

  But the thought was there nevertheless.

  Cruickshank and Müller were sitting in the foyer, waiting for him. They had been joined by a photographer, a bearded young man who brandished a flash gun at his face the moment he emerged from the lift.

  “Good morning, Chief Inspector,” said Müller.

  “It looks like it,” said Van Veeteren.

  “Can we have a chat after the press conference?” asked Cruickshank.

  “If you write what I tell you to write. One word too many and you’ll be banned for two years!”

  “Of course,” said Müller with a smile. “Usual rules.”

  “I’ll be at Sylvie’s between noon and half past twelve,” said Van Veeteren, handing in his room key at reception.

  “Sylvie’s? What’s that?” asked the photographer, taki
ng a new picture.

  “You’ll have to work that out for yourselves,” said Van Veeteren.

  Detective Chief Inspector Bausen took charge of the assembled journalists and immediately stamped his authority on the proceedings. He started by waiting for several minutes until you could have heard a drop of sweat fall in the packed conference room. Then he started to speak, but stopped the moment anybody whispered or coughed and fixed the perpetrator with a beady eye. If anybody dared to interrupt him, he delivered the warning that a repeated offense would result in the sinner’s being ejected from the room forthwith by Kropke and Mooser. And he himself would help out if need be.

  But he answered calmly and methodically the questions that were put to him, adopting a precisely judged degree of superiority that exposed and established the limited intellectual faculties of the questioner. Always assuming he had any.

  The man must have been an actor, thought Van Veeteren.

  “When do you think you will have the murderer under lock and key?” asked a red-nosed reporter from the local radio station.

  “About ten minutes after we’ve found him,” said Bausen.

  “Have you any theories you’re working on?” wondered Malevic, chief reporter on de Journaal.

  “How else do you think we operate?” asked Bausen. “We’re not working for a newspaper.”

  “Who’s actually in charge of the investigation?” asked the man sent by the Neuwe Blatt. “Is it you or DCI Van Veeteren?”

  “Who do you think?” responded Van Veeteren, contemplating a comprehensively chewed toothpick. He didn’t answer anything else, referring all direct questions to Bausen by nodding in his direction. If he was smiling inwardly, nobody could have told that from the expression on his face.

  After twenty minutes most of the questions seemed to have been asked, and Bausen began issuing instructions.

  “I want the local newspapers and the radio to urge everybody who was in town last Tuesday night between eleven o’clock and midnight, give or take a few minutes, in the area around The Blue Ship, Hoistraat, the steps down to Fisherman’s Square and the Esplanade leading to the municipal woods to get in touch with the police from tomorrow onward. We’ll have two officers on hand at the station to deal with all the information we receive, and we shall not turn a blind eye if anybody who was out then fails to report to us. Don’t forget that we’re dealing with an unusually violent killer.”

  “But won’t you have a vast number of responses?” somebody wondered.

  “When you’re hunting a murderer, Miss Meuhlich,” said Bausen, “you have to accept a few minor inconveniences.”

  “What do you think, Chief Inspector?” asked Cruickshank. “Just between you and me.”

  “You, me and two others, if I’m not much mistaken,” said Van Veeteren. “I don’t think anything.”

  “The Bausen guy seems to like throwing his weight around,” said Müller. “Do you think you’ll be able to work with him?”

  “You can bet your life,” said Van Veeteren.

  “Have you anything to go on?”

  “You can write that we have.”

  “But you haven’t, in fact?”

  “I never said that.”

  “How long is it since you last had to leave a case unsolved?” asked Cruickshank.

  “Six years,” said Van Veeteren.

  “What was that, then?” asked the photographer, curious.

  “The G-file . . .” Van Veeteren stopped chewing and stared out of the window.

  “Oh, yes, I remember,” said Cruickshank. “I wrote about that one—”

  Two young ladies came in and were about to sit at the next table, but Müller drove them away.

  “Sit in the corner instead,” he urged them. “There’s a terrible stink here!”

  “Well,” began Cruickshank, “are we dealing with a madman, or is it planned?”

  “Who says that madmen don’t plan?” said Van Veeteren.

  “Is there a link between the victims?”

  “Yes.”

  “What is it?”

  “. . .”

  “How do you know?”

  “Give me a Danish pastry!”

  “Will there be any more top brass coming?”

  “If necessary.”

  “Have you any previous experience with ax murderers?” wondered the photographer.

  “I know a fair amount about murderers,” said Van Veeteren. “And everybody knows how an ax works. How long can your esteemed journals afford to do without your services and leave you here in Kaalbringen? Six months?”

  “Ha ha,” said Müller. “A few days, I should think. Unless it happens again, that is.”

  “It’ll be some time before that, no doubt.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Thank you for the coffee,” said Van Veeteren, standing up. “I’ll have to leave you now, I’m afraid. Don’t stay up too late, and don’t write any rubbish!”

  “Have we ever written rubbish?” asked Cruickshank.

  “What the hell are we doing here?” wondered the photographer when Van Veeteren had left them on their own.

  What the hell am I doing here? thought Van Veeteren, and clambered into the passenger seat next to Bausen.

  “It’s not a pretty sight,” said Bausen. “I think I’ll stay out here and do a bit of planning.”

  Van Veeteren followed the limping pathologist.

  “Meuritz,” he said when they had entered the room. “My name’s Meuritz. Actually based in Oostwerdingen, but I generally do one day a week here as well. It’s been a bit more than that lately.”

  He pulled the trolley out of the deep freeze, and removed the sheet with an extravagant gesture. Van Veeteren was reminded of something Reinhart had said once: There’s only one profession. Matador. All the rest are substitutes and shadows.

  Bausen was right, no doubt about it. Even if Ernst Simmel hadn’t exactly been a handsome specimen of a man while on this earth, neither the Axman nor Meuritz had done anything to improve the situation. He was lying on his stomach, and for reasons that Van Veeteren didn’t fully understand but which were no doubt pedagogical, Meuritz had placed the head at ninety degrees to the neck in an upward direction, so that the incision was clearly visible.

  “A pretty skillful blow, you have to give him that,” he said, poking into the wound with a ballpoint pen.

  “Skillful?” wondered Van Veeteren.

  “Look at this!”

  Meuritz held out an X-ray film.

  “This is Eggers. Note the angle of entry! Only a couple of degrees difference. They were exactly the same depth, incidentally . . .”

  Van Veeteren scrutinized the picture of the maltreated white bones against a black background.

  “. . . lands from above, diagonally from the right.”

  “Right-handed?” asked Van Veeteren.

  “Presumably. Or a left-handed badminton player. Who’s used to playing forehands way out on the backhand side, if you follow me.”

  “I play three times a week,” said Van Veeteren.

  Who was it who had said something about tennis balls not so long ago?

  Meuritz nodded and pushed his glasses up onto his forehead.

  “Is it the same weapon?” asked Van Veeteren. “Take that ballpoint out of his throat, if you don’t mind.”

  Meuritz wiped his pen clean on his white coat and put it in his breast pocket.

  “Definitely,” he said. “I can even claim to be able to describe it—an ax with a very sharp blade, sharpened by an expert no doubt. Five inches deep and quite wide. Maybe six inches, possibly more.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “It penetrated exactly the same distance in both cases, and then it was stopped by the handle. If the blade had been deeper, the skull would certainly have been severed. Have you seen the things butchers use to cut up bones with?”

  Van Veeteren nodded. Began to regret the fact that he’d eaten three Danish pastries at Sy
lvie’s luxury café.

  “Time of death?”

  “Between half past eleven and half past twelve, roughly speaking.”

  “Can you be more precise?”

  “Closer to half past eleven—twenty to twelve, if you were to really press me.”

  “Have you come across anything like this before?” Van Veeteren indicated the pale blue corpse.

  “No. You never stop learning in this business.”

  Although it was three and a half days since Ernst Simmel’s body had been found, and almost four days since he’d been murdered, the scene of the crime had not lost its attraction. The police had sealed it off with red-and-white tape and warning notices, but a trickle of people was still flowing past this woodland corral, a narrow stream of Kaalbringen citizens who didn’t want to miss the opportunity of seeing the white markers in among the bushes and the increasingly dark-colored patch of human blood on the path.

  Constable Erwin Bang had been given the task of maintaining order and keeping the most curious at bay, and he carried out this mission with all the dignity and attention to detail that his 160-pound frame allowed. The moment there were more than two visitors at a time, he would get them moving.

  “Come on! Move it! Keep going!”

  It seemed to Van Veeteren that Bang was handling the situation as a spot of traffic policing more than anything else. But that was of minor significance, of course.

  “Can you keep the spectators at bay so that the chief inspector and I can take a look in peace and quiet?” asked Bausen.

  “Right, that’s it. Move along!” bellowed Bang, and flocks of jackdaws and wood pigeons panicked and took to the air. “Quickly now! This is a crime scene investigation!”

  You can go and have a cup of coffee,” said Bausen when they were on their own. “We’ll be here for about half an hour. I think we can remove the tape and stuff then. You can take it all back to the station.”

  “Will do!” said Bang, giving a smart salute. He embarked on his amended duties, and strode off in the direction of the Esplanade and the harbor café.