by Håkan Nesser
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.”
IV
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 secretiveness—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 thereabouts,” 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?”
“By car?”
“Yes, by car.”
“I don’t know . . . about twenty minutes, I suppose.”
“And you saw her there at quarter past five. That means she can’t have had time to go home first, doesn’t it?”
“I suppose so, yes,” said Bang, trying to frown.
“How long would it take her to drive home from Kuipers—to Vrejsbakk, that is?”
Bang shrugged.
“Er, about a quarter of an hour, I’d say. Depends on the traffic. But I don’t see why you’re going on about this.”
Münster contemplated his colleague’s rosy-cheeked face with an almost pitying smile.
“I’ll explain why,” he said slowly, emphasizing every word. “If Inspector Moerk was out at Immelsport at a quarter past five, she can hardly have got home until about . . . let’s say twenty to six. She was at The See Warf in a tracksuit at quarter past six. Can you tell me when the hell she could have found time to read the Melnik report?”
Bang thought that over for a while.
“You’re right, of course,” he said eventually. “So she didn’t read it, is that it?”
“Exactly,” said Münster. “She didn’t read it.”
He knocked and went in.
Van Veeteren had moved from the room’s only armchair to the balcony. He sat there smoking and gazing out in the direction of Fisherman’s Square, at the spiky outlines of the buildings as twilight began to descend over the bay. The chair was placed diagonally; all Münster could see of him were his legs, his right shoulder and right arm. Even so, it was enough for him to understand.
Something had happened. And it wasn’t a question of his being struck down by senility. On the contrary. I must learn to be humble in thought, Münster decided. Not just in deed.
“Sit down,” said Van Veeteren wearily, gesturing with his hand.
Münster moved the desk chair and sat down next to the detective chief inspector at an angle he hoped would at least give him the opportunity of some eye contact if necessary.
“Let’s hear it again!” said Van Veeteren.
Münster cleared his throat.
“Bang met Moerk out at Immelsport at quarter past five last Friday afternoon.”
“Is he sure?”
“Yes. They exchanged a few words. Not even Bang could get that wrong.”
Van Veeteren nodded.
“I’m not sure where that is. Do the times fit?”
“I’ve checked,” said Münster. “There’s no possibility of her having read the report. She left the police station at exactly four-thirty-five, together with Miss deWitt. They were the last to leave. She went to her car; drove out to that greengrocer’s and bought various items; drove home; got changed; tried to phone me, presumably, but received no answer. Instead, she wrote a message and drove here with it, and then—”
Van Veeteren grunted and sat up in the armchair.
“That’s enough. Well, what conclusions do you draw from this?”
Münster spread out his arms.
“That she must have discovered something without having read it, of course, something right at the beginning. On the first page, perhaps . . . I don’t know.”
He paused and observed his boss, who was gazing up at the evening sky and slowly wagging his head from side to side.
“Bang?” he said, with a deep sigh. “What the devil are we going to do with Bang?”
“Excuse me?” said Münster, but it was clear that Van Veeteren was talking to himself now. H
e continued muttering for a while, holding his spent cigarette vertically between his thumb and his index finger and staring at the column of ash as long as his thumb. Only when a puff of wind blew it away did he give a start and seem to become conscious of the fact that he wasn’t alone in the room.
“OK, this is what we’ll do,” he said, dropping the cigarette end into his glass of water on the balcony floor. “If it works, it works . . . Münster!”
“Er, yes,” said Münster.
“You take the day off tomorrow and spend your time with Synn and the kids.”
“What?” said Münster. “Why the . . . ?”
“That’s an order,” said Van Veeteren. “Make sure you’re reachable in the evening, though. I think I’ll need to talk to you then.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to make a little trip,” said Van Veeteren.
“Where to?”
“We’ll see.”
Here we go again, thought Münster. He gritted his teeth and pushed the humility principle to one side. He’s sitting there playing the asshole and being mysterious again, as if he were a gumshoe in some book or film or other! It’s disgusting, really. I don’t understand why I should be expected to put up with such goddamn—
“I have my reasons,” said Van Veeteren, as if he’d been able to read Münster’s thoughts. “It’s just that I have an idea, and it’s not one to shout from the rooftops. In fact, if I’m wrong, it’s better for nobody to know about it.”
Münster stood up.
“OK,” he said. “A day off with the family tomorrow. Make sure I’m at home in the evening—anything else?”
“I don’t think so,” said Van Veeteren. “Well, I suppose you could wish me luck. I might need it.”
“Good hunting,” said Münster, leaving Van Veeteren to his fate.
He remained in the armchair for a while, gazing out over the town. He smoked another cigarette and wished he had something to wash away the unpleasant taste in his mouth.
