Borkmann's Point (26 page)

After the pear in brandy and the coffee, he had made up his
mind about the various problems—a strategy that seemed to
him to have good odds of working and involved as good a
chance of avoiding injury to Inspector Moerk as could be
hoped.

Assuming she was still alive, that is. He wanted to believe it,
of course, but probabilities didn’t seem to play much of a role
in this case.

Probabilities? he thought. I ought to have known by now.

It was half past three. He paid his bill, left his corner table
and occupied the phone booth in the vestibule.
Three calls. First to Bausen at home in his nest; then Münster—no answer at the cottage—no doubt he was still on the
beach with Synn and the kids. Then Kropke at the police station. This call cost Van Veeteren half an hour; the inspector
evidently found it a little difficult to catch on to what was happening, but when they eventually finished the conversation,
Van Veeteren had the feeling that everything would work out
well, notwithstanding.

He set off shortly after four o’clock, and he had barely reached
Ulming, after a mere seven or eight miles, when he noticed his
generator warning light blinking. Before long it was emitting a
constant and ominous glow, and matters were not helped by
the driver cursing and beating the dashboard with both fists.
On the contrary, the bastard of a car started coughing and losing speed, and when he came to a service station, he was
forced to admit that he had no choice.

He uttered a few more choice oaths, put on his right-hand
blinker and left the highway.

“A new generator,” said the young mechanic after a cursory
look under the hood. “Probably not possible to do anything
about it today.” He put his hands in his pockets and looked
apologetic. Van Veeteren cursed.

“Well, okay, if it’s so urgent and if you’re prepared for what
it’ll cost.”
Hmm. It might well take four or five hours...he’d have to
drive to town, of course, to buy a new one, but if the customer
was in a hurry, he could hire a car, naturally. There were one or
two available.
“And leave my stereo system here?” roared the detective
chief inspector, with a broad gesture encompassing the
depressing sight of the workshop interior. “What the hell do
you take me for?”
“All right,” said the mechanic. “Might I suggest that you
wait in the café? You can buy books and magazines at the newsstand.”
Damnation! thought Van Veeteren. Bloody car! I won’t be
back in Kaalbringen until one or two in the morning.

“Phone!” yelled Bart.

Münster and his family had stayed on the beach until the
sun had started to sink behind the line of trees in the west.
They had only just walked through the door after a day filled
with games, relaxation and reunion. Münster carefully placed
the sleeping four-year-old in bed while Synn went to answer
the phone.

“It’s DCI Van Veeteren,” she whispered, with her hand over
the earpiece. “He sounds like a barrel of gunpowder about to
go off. Something to do with the car.”

Münster took the receiver.
“Hello?” he said.
That was more or less the only word he spoke for the next

ten minutes or more. He just stood there in the window recess,
listening and nodding while his wife and his son prowled
around and around him in ever-decreasing circles. A single
look was enough for Synn to understand, and she passed on
her knowledge to her six-year-old, who had been through this
many times before.

No doubt about it. The car was not what this call was really
about. She could hear that in the voice of her husband’s boss at
the other end of the line: a muffled but unstoppable tornado.
She saw it in her husband’s face as well—in his body language,
the profile of his jaw. Tense, resolute. A slight touch of white
under his ears...

It was time.
And slowly that feeling of worry surged toward and over
her. The feeling she couldn’t speak about, not even to him, but
which she knew she shared with every other policeman’s wife
all over the world.
The possibility that...The possibility of something happening that...
She grasped her son’s hand firmly, and refused to let go.
Grateful despite everything that she’d had the opportunity of
coming here.
“About two o’clock?” asked Münster in the end. “Yep, I’m
with you. We’ll assemble here, yes...OK, I can fix that.”
Then he replaced the receiver and stared fixedly ahead,
looking at nothing.
“That was the damnedest . . .” he said. “But he’s right, of
course...”
He shook his head, then became aware of his wife and son,
staring at him with the same unspoken question on their faces.
“We’re going to arrest the Axman tomorrow morning,” he
explained. “The others are coming here tonight to sort out
tactics.”
“Coming here?” said Synn.
“Wicked,” said the six-year-old boy. “I’ll go with you.”

Plans were laid by half past four. It had taken a bit longer than
Van Veeteren had imagined; the question of motive had been
kicked around, and nobody was quite sure how it all hung
together. But they had sorted it out as far as possible. They
couldn’t get any further now, and even if a few pieces of the
puzzle were still missing, everybody was clear about the overall picture.

“No point in waiting any longer,” said Van Veeteren.
“Everybody knows what they have to do...I don’t think
we’re exposing ourselves to much of a risk, but it’s just as well
to take precautions. Mooser?”

Mooser tapped his bulging hip.
“Münster?”
Münster nodded.
“Chief of Police?”
Another nod, and Van Veeteren closed his notebook.
“All right. Let’s go!”
The thought of death came like a considerate guest, but once
she had let it in, it decided to stay.

All at once it was living with her. Uninvited and inexorable.
Like a hand squeezing her midriff. Like a slowly swelling
tumor. A gray cloud spreading throughout her body, smothering her thoughts under still more hopeless darkness.

Death. Suddenly it had become the only reality she possessed. This is the end, she told herself, and it was nothing
especially traumatic or upsetting. She was going to die...
either by his hand or of her own accord. Lying curled up here
on the floor under all these blankets, with this aching body of
hers and with this writhing soul, which was the most fragile
part of her... that was what would give way first, she knew
now; once she had opened the door to death, the spark of life
inside her was slowly dimming. Perhaps it would be only a
hundred or seventy or even twenty intakes of breath before it
would be extinguished. She had started counting now; people
always did when they were in prison, she knew that. She’d read
about prisoners who had kept themselves sane thanks to this
constant counting, the only snag being that she had nothing to
count. No events. No noises. No time.

Only her own breathing and pulse.
. . .

She was waiting for him now. Longing for him as if he were
her lover... her warder, her executioner, her murderer?
Whatever. Every change, every incident, every imaginable
interruption...anything but this constant intercourse with
death.

Her considerate and demanding guest.
The dish of food was half full, but she could no longer get
anything down. She would occasionally moisten her tongue
with water, but she was not in the least thirsty either. She
struggled as far as the bucket, but could produce nothing...
all her bodily functions had left her, one after another, it was as
simple as that.
Why didn’t he come?
Even if time no longer existed, she had the feeling that
something must have delayed him. She made up her mind to
count up to four thousand heartbeats, and if he hadn’t arrived
by then, she would...
. . . she would count another four thousand heartbeats.
Was it possible to distinguish between a thousand heartbeats and another thousand heartbeats? Could it be done? And
if so, what was the point?
And as she counted, that hand squeezed tighter and tighter.
The cloud grew.
Death filled her.

“I’m late,” he said, and she could barely hear his voice.
“Yes,” she whispered.
He sat there in silence, and she noticed that she was now
counting his breaths. Rasping in the darkness as usual, but even
so his, not hers...something that didn’t emanate from herself.

“Tell me your story,” she begged.

He lit a cigarette and suddenly she felt the faint glow growing and forcing its way inside her... all at once the whole of
her body was filled with light and the next moment she lost
consciousness. She woke up in a glittering white world, where
a pulsating and vibrant gleam was so strong and powerful that
it was rumbling inside her. Vertiginous spirals spun around
inside her head, and she plunged into them, was sucked up and
carried by this infernally rotating whiteness, this flood of raging light...

Then it began to recede. The torrent slowed down and
found a slowly swaying rhythm; waves and breakers, and the
smell of earth returned. Of earth and smoke. Once again she
saw only darkness and a trembling red point, and she realized
that something had happened. She didn’t know what, but she
had been elsewhere and was now back. And the cloud was no
longer spreading.

Something had happened.
“Tell me your story,” she said, and now her voice was
steady, like before. “Tell me about Heinz Eggers.”

“Heinz Eggers,” he said, and hesitated as he usually did at the
start. “Yes, I’ll tell you about Heinz Eggers as well. It’s just that
I am so tired, so very tired...but I’ll keep going to the end, of
course.”

She had no time to reflect on what his words might imply.
He cleared his throat and started.

“It was in Selstadt... she moved there. Or was moved
there. Was taken in hand by the social services and placed in
Trieckberg; do you know Trieckberg?”

“No.”
“One of those community homes that manages to help the
odd patient... doesn’t just allow them to drift out then back in,
out and back in, until they finally die of an overdose or a dirty
needle. It manages to help the odd patient. Then...we had
contact, good contact; we went to visit her, and she wasn’t too
bad. There was a spark of light again, but after a few months
we heard that she had run away...it was a long, long time
before we were tipped off that she might be in Selstadt. Trieckberg isn’t far from there. I drove to Selstadt and searched...
after a few days I dug up an address and went there. It was a
drug den, of course. I’ve seen a fair amount, but I’ve never seen
anybody in a worse state than Brigitte and the other woman in
Heinz Eggers’s stable... that’s what he called it. His stable. He
obviously thought I’d come for a quick session with one or both
of his whores. He might have had more, come to that...”
He paused.
“What did you do?” she asked after a while.
“I hit him. Punched him on the nose. Hadn’t the strength to
do any more than that. He disappeared. I phoned for an ambulance and got both of them into hospital... she died three
weeks later. Bitte died at the hospital in Selstadt. Forgive me,
I’m too tired to go into the details.”
“How?”
He waited again and inhaled deeply on his cigarette.
Dropped it on the floor and stamped out the glow with his foot.
“Slit her own throat as she threw herself out of a sixth-floor
window ...wanted to make sure. That was September 30,
1988. She was twenty-seven years old.”
. . .

He remained sitting there for longer than usual this time. Sat
the usual three or four yards away from her in the darkness,
breathing heavily. Neither of them spoke; she gathered there
was nothing else to add. He had finished now.

He had achieved his vengeance.
The story was told.
It was all over.
They sat there in the darkness, and it seemed to her that

they were simply two actors who happened to be still onstage,
even though the curtain had long since come down.
What now? she wondered. What comes next?

What will Horatio do after the death of Hamlet?

Live and tell the story one more time, as he had been
requested to do?
Die by his own hand, which is his wish?
In the end she dared to put the question:
“What do you intend to do?”
She could hear him give a start. Perhaps he had actually
fallen asleep. He seemed to be enveloped by infinite weariness,
in any case, and she immediately felt that she would have liked
to give him advice.
Some kind of comfort. But there was none, of course.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I’ve played my part. I must receive
a sign. Must go there and wait for a sign...”
He stood up.
“What day is it?” she asked suddenly, without knowing why.
“It’s not day,” he said. “It’s night.”
Then he left her again.
Well, I’m still alive, she thought in surprise. And night is the
mother of day...
Van Veeteren took the lead.
Led the way through the darkness that was starting to
become less intense. A narrow strip of gray dawn had forced
its way in under the trees, but it was still too early to make out
anything but vague outlines, flickerings and shadows. Sound
still held sway over light, the ear over the eye. A jumble of faint
rustling and squeals from small animals scuttling away from
their feet as they moved forward. A strange place, thought
Münster.
“Take it easy now,” Van Veeteren had urged them. “It’s a
helluva lot better to arrive a quarter of an hour later without
being discovered.”
They eventually turned the corner and emerged onto the
stone paving. Van Veeteren opened the door. It squeaked
faintly, and Münster could sense that he was concerned; but
they were all inside within half a minute.
They split up. Two up the stairs. He and Münster downstairs.
It was pitch-dark, and he switched on his flashlight.
“It’s only a guess,” he whispered over his shoulder, “but I’m
pretty damn sure that I’m right, even so!”
Münster nodded and followed hard on his heels.
“Look!” exclaimed Van Veeteren, stopping. He pointed the
beam at an old doll’s house crammed full of toys: dolls, teddy
bears and everything else you could think of. “I ought to have
realized even then...but that would have been asking a bit
much, I suppose.”
They continued downward, Münster half a step behind
him. The smell of soil grew stronger—soil and the slight remains of stale cigarette smoke. The passage grew narrower and
the ceiling lower, making them crouch slightly, leaning forward—groping their way forward, despite the flickering beam
from the flashlight.
“Here,” said Van Veeteren suddenly. He stopped and shone
the flashlight on a solid wooden door with double bolts and a
bulky padlock. “Here it is!”
He knocked cautiously.
No sound.
He tried again, a little harder, and Münster could hear a
faint noise from the other side.
“Inspector Moerk?” said Van Veeteren, his cheek pressed
against the damp door.
Now they could hear a clear and definite “Yes,” and simultaneously Münster felt something burst inside him. Tears poured
down his face and nothing on earth could have stopped them.
I’m a forty-two-year-old cop standing here weeping like a little
kid. Godammit!
But he couldn’t care less. He stood behind Van Veeteren’s
back and wept under the cover of darkness. Thank you, he
thought, without having any idea whom he was addressing.
Van Veeteren took out the crowbar, and after a couple of
failed attempts managed to make the padlock give way. He
drew back the bolts and opened the door...
“Take the light away,” whispered Beate Moerk, and all
borkmann’s point