Borkmann's Point (24 page)

“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.
“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. He 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.

Once this case is over, he thought, I won’t want to be
reminded of it. Not ever.
Then he sat down at the desk and made two phone calls.
He asked two questions, and received more or less the
replies he’d been looking for.
“I’ll be there at around noon,” he said. “No, I can’t tell you
what it’s about. It would be such a goddamn disaster if I’m
wrong.”
Then he took a shower and went to bed. It was only eleven
o’clock, but the earlier he could set off the next day, the better.
I’ll know tomorrow, he thought.
We’ll have him behind bars the day after tomorrow, and I
can go home on Saturday.
But before he could go to sleep, thoughts about Beate
Moerk came flooding into his mind, and it was well into the
early hours before he finally dozed off.
“Evil,” he began, and his voice was deeper now, barely audible
in the densely packed air, “is the concept we cannot avoid, the
only certainty. A young person might find that hard to grasp,
but for those of us who have understood, it becomes steadily
clearer. What we can be sure of, what we can rely on
absolutely, is evil. It never lets us down. Good... goodness is
only a stage set, a backdrop against which the satanic performs. Nothing else... nothing.”
He coughed. He lit another cigarette, a glowing point trembling in the darkness.
“When you eventually acquire that insight, it brings with it
a certain degree of comfort despite everything. The difficult
thing is simply to rid oneself of all the old hopes, all the illusions and castles in the air that one builds at the beginning. In
our case her name was Brigitte, and when she was ten she
promised never to hurt me. That was the time she came running over the sands; it was a very windy day at the end of May.
Out at Gimsvejr. She flung herself into my arms and hugged
me so tightly that I remember having a pain in the back of my
neck afterward. We’ll love each other all our lives and never do
anything silly to each other—those were her very words. Anything silly...never do anything silly to each other...ten
years old, blond braids. She was the only child we had, and
some people said they had never seen such a happy child.
Nobody laughed like she did—she sometimes even woke herself up, laughing in her sleep—who can blame us for having
hopes?”
He coughed again.
“She took her final exams in 1981, then went to England and
worked there for a year. Was accepted by the university in Aarlach the following year. Met a boy called Maurice—Maurice
Rühme—yes, we’re there already. I think she knew him slightly
from before; he came from Kaalbringen. He was reading medicine. Came from an upper-class family, very attractive, and he
taught her how to use cocaine...he was the first, but I kept
him until last.”
The cigarette glowed again.
“They moved in together. Lived together for about a year
until he threw her out. By then he had taught her other
things...LSD, pure morphine, which he never used himself,
and how a young woman can earn money most easily and
most effectively. Perhaps she provided for him, perhaps he was
her pimp...I don’t know, we never talked about that. Perhaps
it hadn’t gone quite as far as that, not then.
“She stayed in Aarlach on her own for another eighteen
months. She had no place of her own, but moved around from
man to man. And she was going in and out of hospitals and
treatment centers. Detoxified, ran away, moved on...”
He swallowed, and she could hear him holding his breathing in check.
“She lived at home for a short period as well, but then went
back. Kept clean for a while, but before long it was the same
old story. Eventually she was ensnared by some kind of sect,
kept away from drugs but was brought down by other things
borkmann’s point

instead. It was as if she didn’t have the strength, or as if she
shied away from any normal sort of life...or perhaps it was
no longer enough for her, the everyday, I don’t know. Nevertheless, after two years she agreed to leave Aarlach and live
with us again, but now all that happiness had vanished...
Brigitte... Bitte. She was twenty-four. She was only twentyfour, but in fact she was much older than me and my wife. She
knew, I think she knew even then that she had burned up her
life... she could still do her hair in blond braids, but she had
burned up her life. She realized that, but we didn’t. I don’t
know, in fact... perhaps there was a faint glimmer of hope
left, a possibility of sorting everything out. That’s what we told
ourselves, at least, what we had to tell ourselves... the desperate illusion of vain hope. We believe what we have to believe.
Until we’ve taught ourselves to see reality, that is what we do.
That’s what this damn life looks like. We cling on to whatever
is at hand. Anything at all...”

He fell silent. She opened her eyes and saw the cigarette
glow illuminate his face, and pulled the blankets more tightly
around her. She felt and sensed the extreme hopelessness that
came flowing out of him uninterruptedly. Coming in waves,
and for a moment it seemed to compress the darkness, making
it solid and impermeable even for words and thoughts.