Borkmann's Point (19 page)

Münster bit his lip. Van Veeteren was swaying back and
forth, looking for once at a loss. Unless it’s just a pose, thought
Münster. Wouldn’t surprise me.

It was Mooser who broke the spell.
“Do you think—?” he said.
“We don’t think anything,” interrupted Van Veeteren.

“What the hell do you mean?”
“But—?”
“Shut up!” said Van Veeteren. “This is no time to be playing

guessing games. Do you know what track she used to follow?”
“Well,” said Mooser, “Track and track—back and forth
along the beach, perhaps. Or maybe she would take the path
through the woods on the way back.”
“Hmm,” said Van Veeteren. “Did she always go jogging on
her own?”
“No,” said Mooser. “I think she and Gertrude Dunckel used
to run together sometimes.”
“Who’s she?” asked Münster.
“A friend of hers. Works at the library—”
“Did she have a boyfriend?” asked Van Veeteren.
Mooser thought.
“She used to...but not at the moment. She was with a guy
for a few years, then he left her, I think. And then there was
Janos Havel, but I think that’s all over as well.”
“Yes, it’s all over,” said Münster. “Do we have to go through
her whole life story before we do something?”
Mooser cleared his throat.
“The beach out and the woods back?”
“Just the woods,” said Van Veeteren. “They’d have already
found her if she was on the beach—he doesn’t usually bother
too much about hiding them.”
“Oh, Christ,” said Münster.
“I assume the car was her starting and finishing point,” said
Van Veeteren, ignoring Münster. “Do you know if there’s
more than one path? Through the woods, I mean?”
“I don’t think so,” said Mooser. “It’s only a narrow stretch
of trees, in fact. There’s a path that most people use—quite
hilly. Shall we try that?”
“Let’s get going, then!” said Van Veeteren. “We haven’t got
all day.”
“Don’t drive so damn fast,” said Bausen. “We must be clear
about what we’re going to do when we get there.”
Kropke slowed down.
“Have you got your weapon with you?” he asked.
“Of course,” said Bausen. “I had the feeling something
funny was going on. I take it you have yours as well?”
Kropke slapped under his arm.
“Thank God, it isn’t dangling against your thigh, at least,”
muttered Bausen. “Stop! This is where we turn off.”
Kropke braked and turned onto the narrow ribbon of
asphalt running over the heath. A flock of big black rooks busy
with the dead body of some small animal or other took off
from the road and landed again the moment they’d passed.
Cawing loudly, and self-assured.
Bausen turned to gaze over the desolate wilderness. In the
far distance he could make out the skeletons of a row of low
buildings, more or less dilapidated—a few walls, roofs
destroyed by the rain; once upon a time, half a century or
more ago, they had served a purpose. When peat was still
being cut from these marshy wastes, he recalled. Odd that the
drying sheds were still standing; he recalled how they had fulfilled a different function when he was a kid—love nests for the
young people of the district with no homes to go to. It had
been quite an undertaking to get out here, of course, but once
that detail had been fixed, these isolated buildings provided
excellent opportunities for all kinds of intimacies—almost like
the
urga
s of the Mongols, it struck him. Holy sites dedicated to
love. He had no difficulty in remembering two, no, three occa
sions when it really did happen...
“That’s it just ahead of us, isn’t it?” said Kropke.
Bausen turned to look ahead and agreed. There it was.
Eugen Podworsky’s house, scantily protected by a rectangle of
spruce firs. He was familiar with its history. Built toward the
end of the previous century, it had served for a few decades as
the home of the more senior peat-cutter families, before the
bottom fell out of the industry and it became uneconomical
early in the twentieth century; and eventually, like so much
else in Kaalbringen and vicinity, it fell into the hands of Ernst
Simmel. And eventually into the none-too-tender care of
Eugen Podworsky.
“It looks like hell,” said Kropke as he parked in the shelter
of a comparatively bushy double spruce.
“I know,” said Bausen. “Can you see the truck anywhere?”
Kropke shook his head.
“No point in trying to creep up on him,” said Bausen. “If
he’s at home, he’ll have been watching us for the last five
minutes—plenty of time to load his shotgun and take position
in the kitchen window.”
“Ugh,” said Kropke. “No wonder Simmel didn’t succeed in
evicting him.”
“Hmm,” said Bausen. “I don’t understand why he even
bothered to try. Who do you think would want to buy a place
like this?”
Kropke considered that one.
“No idea,” he said. “Some naïve newcomer, perhaps. What
shall we do, then?”
“We’d better get inside and check the place out,” said
Bausen. “Now that we’re here. I’ll go first. Keep some way
behind me, and have your pistol at the ready in case anything
happens. You never know—”
“OK,” said Kropke.
“But I don’t think he’s in.”
Bausen got out of the car and followed the row of straggly
fir trees, passing through the gateway, where a rusty, peeling
mailbox bore witness to the fact that the post office still made
the effort to drive the extra miles over the heath—presumably
because Podworsky had threatened to kill the manager if he
withdrew the service, Bausen thought. He took the newspaper
out of the mailbox.
“Today’s,” he confirmed. “You can put your revolver back
in your armpit. He’s not at home.”
They walked along the path to the veranda. On either side
of the door was a worn-out leather armchair and a hammock.
Evidently Eugen Podworsky was in the habit of making the
most of warm summer and fall evenings. About ten crates of
empty bottles were stacked up against the wall; piles of newspapers were all over the place, and on a rickety metal table
were a transistor radio, a large can full of sand with cigarette
butts sticking out of it, and a badly washed beer glass. A yellowish gray cat rubbed itself against the table leg; another one,
slightly darker, lay outstretched in front of the door.
“Well,” said Kropke, “now what?”
“God only knows,” said Bausen. “Who interrogated Podworsky after the Simmel murder? I take it we’ve interviewed
him?”
Kropke scratched his unoccupied armpit.
“Oh, shit,” he said. “Moerk...yes, it was Moerk, I’m sure
of it.”
Bausen lit a cigarette. He walked up the veranda steps and
over to the door. The cat hissed and shifted a couple of feet to
one side.
“It’s open,” said Bausen. “Shall we go in?”
Kropke nodded.
“Do you think the inside will be any better than the out-
side?”
“I was here once about twelve or fifteen years ago,” said
Bausen, entering the dingy entrance hall. He looked around. “I
don’t think he’s done much in the way of decorating...”

Twenty minutes later they were back in the car.
“A pointless visit,” said Kropke.
“Maybe,” said Bausen. “He has a hell of a lot of books.”
“What do you think, Chief Inspector?”
“What do you think, as new chief of police?”
“I don’t know,” said Kropke, trying to avoid sounding

embarrassed. “Difficult to say. Coming here wasn’t much help,
though. We need to get hold of the man himself. Give him an
aggressive interrogation. I think it would help if we were a bit
rougher with him than we usually are.”

“You think so?” said Bausen.
Kropke started the car.
“Where do you think he is?”
“In Fisherman’s Square, presumably,” said Bausen. “I seem

to remember he has a stall there on Saturdays—I take it you
noticed the greenhouses around the back?”

“Yes...of course,” said Kropke. “Shall we go pick him up?
Or do we have to leave him alone because we didn’t find any
bloodstained clothing under the bed?”

Bausen said nothing for some time.
“I think we’d better ask the advice of our guests first,” he
said. “We have the little problem of Inspector Moerk as well,
or had you forgotten that?”
Kropke drummed at the steering wheel.
“Do you think...do you think they’ve found her?”
“I sincerely hope not,” said Bausen. “Not in the state that
you’re hinting at, in any case.”
Kropke swallowed and stepped on the gas. He suddenly
saw the previous victims with their almost severed heads in his
mind’s eye. He glanced down and saw that his knuckles had
turned white.
God, he thought, surely she can’t be...
“Nothing?” asked Bausen.
“No,” said Van Veeteren. “Thank God, I suppose you could
say. But I’m afraid it’s not much to celebrate—she hasn’t come
back from jogging.”
“How do you know?”
“Her car. It’s still parked next to the smokehouse,” said
Mooser.
Bausen nodded.
“What about you?” asked Münster.
“Left the nest,” said Bausen with a shrug.
“The market?” suggested Mooser. “He usually sells vegetables in the square.”
Kropke shook his head.
“No. We’ve just come from there. He hasn’t shown up
today.”
“Ah, well,” said Van Veeteren with a sigh, draping his jacket
over the back of his chair. “We need to get a grip now. This
business is becoming as clear as porridge.”
“Bang,” said Bausen. “Go to Sylvie’s and tell her we need
something really special today.”
Bang saluted and left the room. The others sat down
around the table, apart from Van Veeteren, who opened the
window and stood gazing out over the rooftops. The chief of
police leaned forward and rested his head in his hands. He
sighed deeply and stared at the portraits of three of his predecessors on the wall opposite.
“OK,” he said after a while. “What the hell do we do now?
Please be kind to somebody who’s about to become an oldaged pensioner! What the hell do we do now?”
“Hmm,” said Münster. “That’s a good question.”
“I have one more week before I retire,” said Bausen, blowing his nose. “Fate seems to want me to spend it trying to find
one of my inspectors. Find her in some damn ditch with her
head cut off—that’s what I call a great way to end a career.”
“Oh, shit,” said Münster.
Nobody spoke. Bausen had clasped his hands in front of
him now and closed his eyes. For a brief moment it seemed to
Münster that he was praying, but then he opened both his eyes
and his mouth again.
“Yes, a big heap of shit is what I’m surrounded by,” he said.
“Ah, well,” said Van Veeteren, sitting down. “That could
well be. But perhaps we ought to spend a little less time swearing and a little more trying to get somewhere—that’s just a
modest suggestion, of course.”
“Excuse me,” said Bausen, sighing deeply. “You’re right, of
course, but we might as well wait for the coffee, don’t you
think? Kropke, you can tell us the Podworsky story, as we
intended in the first place.”
Kropke nodded and started sorting out his papers.
“Shall we make this public knowledge?” asked Mooser.
“That she’s... disappeared, I mean.”
“Let’s take that later,” said Van Veeteren. “It can wait for a
second or two, I think.”
. . .

“Podworsky,” said Kropke. “Eugen Pavel. Born
1935. Came to
Kaalbringen as an immigrant at the end of the fifties. Got a job
at the canning factory, like so many others. To start with, he
lived in the workers’ hostel down there; but when they pulled
it down, he moved out to the house on the heath. It had been
empty for a few years, and the reason he was allowed to move
in was that he was engaged to Maria Massau, whom he was living with. She’s the sister of Grete Simmel—”

“Aha,” said Münster. “Ernst Simmel’s brother-in-law.”
“More or less, yes,” said Bausen. “Carry on!”
“Podworsky has always been an odd type, you could say.

Difficult to deal with, as many people have found to their cost.
On the booze from time to time—the very thought of allowing that poor woman to live out there on the heath—well, it
can’t have been a great time for her...”

“Go on,” said Bausen.
“Then there was that killing in 1968. For some unknown
reason—and entirely out of character—Podworsky had invited some fellow workers out to his house—men only, if I’ve
understood it correctly?”
Bausen nodded.
“There was some hard drinking, one assumes, and eventually one of them made a pass at Maria—a bit of flirting, probably no more than that, but Podworsky was furious. He started
an enormous row that ended with him kicking the whole lot of
them out of the house, apart from the one who had made the
pass. He kept him inside, and beat him to death with a poker
later that night—Klaus Molder, his name was.”
“Found guilty of manslaughter,” said Bausen, taking up the
tale. “Was inside at Klejmershuus for six years. In the meantime, Maria Massau fell ill with leukemia. She’d had it since she
was a child, it seems, but it had been dormant. She got worse
and worse, and died the same month that Podworsky was
released.”
“Did they let him out on parole to see her?” asked Van
Veeteren.
“Yes, but she didn’t want to see him,” said Kropke, taking
over once again. “I don’t think she needed to, in fact. She was
living with the Simmels for most of the time—more often in
the hospital toward the end, of course. When Podworsky got
out, he moved straight back into the house, even though it was
Simmel who owned it and had only allowed him to live there
because of the family connection, as it were. Anyway, Simmel
tried to kick him out several times, but he eventually gave up.”
“Why?” asked Van Veeteren.
“Dunno,” said Kropke.
“No,” said Bausen. “It’s unclear if he simply got tired of trying, or if there was some other reason, as rumor had it. Has
had it for years.”
“What kind of rumor?” wondered Münster.
“All kinds,” said Bausen. “That Podworsky had scared the
shit out of Simmel, for instance—to put it bluntly—or that he
had some kind of hold over him.”
Van Veeteren nodded.
“OK,” he said. “They weren’t especially well liked in Kaalbringen, either of them, if I’ve understood the situation correctly?”
“Right,” said Kropke.
“Why was Podworsky given early retirement?” asked Van
Veeteren. “Was that immediately after he was released from
jail?”
“More or less,” said Bausen. “He’d managed to pick up a
back injury or something of the sort while in prison—didn’t
have much chance of getting another job anyway, I suppose.”
“And so he’s been living out there on his own ever since,”
said Kropke. “Since 1974 ...a real prairie wolf, you could say.”
“No more brushes with the law since then?” asked Münster.
“Well . . .” said Bausen. “It was rumored that he was distilling and selling moonshine, or buying it from the Eastern bloc
duty-free. I was out there at the end of the seventies, but I
didn’t find anything. Maybe he’d been tipped off.”
Van Veeteren scratched his head with a pencil.
“Yep,” he said. “And then there’s this Aarlach business...”