Borkmann's Point (6 page)

She had done no more than sit down at her desk when the telephone rang. Beside her was a cup of Russian tea, and the only
light in the room formed a small oval in which her notebooks
basked.

Her mother, of course. Ah, well, might as well get that call
over with now rather than being interrupted later.
Would Beate be coming home this Sunday? That was what
she wanted to know. Dad would be so pleased. He’d been
depressed all week and the doctors had said that...but that
was something they could come back to, perhaps. What was
she doing? Working! Surely she didn’t have to get involved in
that awful murder business; that was a man’s job, surely?
Hadn’t they got any men in the Kaalbringen police force?
What kind of a place was it?
Ten minutes later the call was over, and her bad conscience
was gnawing at her like an aching tooth. She was looking out
the window, watching the last stages of the sunset as it spread
its symbolic light over the whole sky, and made up her mind
to go home for a few hours on Sunday evening after all. Perhaps she could spend the night there and take the first train
back on Monday morning...yes, she had no alternative, of
course.
She unplugged the telephone. Just in case. After all, it
wasn’t impossible that Janos might ring, and she had no desire
at all to sacrifice a whole evening to
that
particular bit of bad
conscience... not for a while yet, at least.
The Axman.
She opened the two notepads and placed them side by side.
Started to study the one on the left.
Heinz Eggers, it said at the top, underscored with a double
line.
Born April 23, 1961, in Selstadt.
Died June 28, 1993, in Kaalbringen.
That was indisputable, of course. Below came a long series
of notes. Parents and siblings. School education. Various addresses. A list of women’s names. A number of dates marking
when Eggers had entered or left various penal institutions,
mainly prisons, dates of convictions and sentences...
Two children with different women. The first, a girl, born
in Wodz, August 2, 1985. The mother, one Kristine Lauger. The
second, a boy, born on December 23, the day before Christmas
Eve she had noted earlier, 1991—so he was not yet two.
Mother’s name Matilde Fuchs, address and place of domicile
unknown. She devoted a few seconds’ thought to this woman,
musing on how she appeared to have achieved what Beate herself was striving for. A child without a father—there again, was
that really what she was striving for? Besides, Fuchs could just
as well be a junkie and a whore who had long since given the
unwanted boy away to some other, more suitable guardians.
Yes, that was a far more likely hypothesis.
Well? How far had she got with her meditations last night?
An important question, no doubt... She turned a few pages.
There!
What had Heinz Eggers been doing in that courtyard? That
was the crux of the matter! Why, to be more precise, was this
social outcast, this dropout, in the courtyard at 24 Burgislaan at
one o’clock in the morning (or even later) on June 28, 1993?
She knew that was a good question, and even if it was not
yet possible to give a definitive answer, she could draw a few
conclusions, of course, without exceeding the limits of logic
and without sinking into a morass of speculation. Anybody
could do that.
First, even if Eggers was a confirmed drug user, one could
assume that he was capable of a certain amount of rational
thought—there was not a lot of poison in his veins that night;
he had died more or less clean and sober (which one might
hope, as a good Christian, would stand him in good stead
when they started to assess his earthly life on the other side). In
any case, Eggers could not possibly have just happened to be at
Burgislaan. He must have gone there for some reason. In the
middle of the night. On June 28. Alone.
She took a sip of tea.
Second, none of the shady characters Eggers mixed with—
and she had questioned all of them very carefully—had the
slightest idea what it was all about, not even his so-called girlfriend, who was evidently sleeping like a log on the night in
question after spending the previous day or days drinking vast
amounts of wine. When she and Kropke had pressed them
even harder, insisted that they make an informed guess, all
they could come up with was that Heinz must have had a tipoff. A hint. Information that somebody had something to
sell...some goods. Drugs of some sort... heroin or amphetamines or even hash. Could be anything. Heinz took the lot.
And what he couldn’t stuff into himself, he would sell to little
kids.
Third, ergo, conclusion: The Axman had arranged to meet
him. Eggers was the intended victim and nobody else. The
deed was carefully planned and prepared. No room for madmen or lunatics and similar epithets that certain people were
throwing around. The only possible category of crime was
first-degree murder! Not something done on the spur of the
moment, no extenuating circumstances, no junkie who happened to hit another one on the head.
First degree. Not a shadow of a doubt about that, or about
what kind of a person the Axman was—a meticulous, very
self-assured criminal who was absolutely clear about what he
was doing. Who didn’t appear to leave anything to chance, and
who...
Fourth, who had a motive!
She leaned back in her chair and took a deep drink of tea.
A very single-minded murderer.

She moved on to the other notebook.
Ernst Leopold Simmel.
Not so much data here. Only a few pages. She simply hadn’t

had the strength to note down the abundance of information
Kropke had fished out from such sources as local council
records and national registers and company registrations,
bankruptcies, shell company dealings, commissions, tax
returns, business trips and God only knows what else. She
glanced quickly through what she had written, then concentrated on the questions at the end, the ones she’d scribbled
down last night before going to bed. The trick was to ask the
right questions, as old Wundermaas, her favorite at the police
college in Genschen, never ceased to stress. Keep rephrasing
them! he used to growl impatiently as he pinned you down
with his piercing eyes. The answers can be harder to find than
needles in a haystack! So make sure that you’re rummaging in
the right haystack, at least!

Well, what were the questions to ask about Simmel? The
right ones? She took another sip of tea and started thinking.
What was he doing when he went out last Tuesday
evening? She knew that.
Why did he go via Fisherman’s Square? They could be
pretty sure of that.
Why did he take the path through the municipal woods?
That was obvious.
When did the Axman begin following him? A good starting
point, perhaps? What about the answers?
From near The Blue Ship? In all probability, yes. He must
then have followed him all the way through town, more or
less. Yes, what else could he have done?
What does that imply?
She raised her head and looked through the window. The
town was stretched out before her. She switched off her desk
lamp and suddenly Kaalbringen was illuminated, lit up by
myriad lamps that come into their own when night falls. The
main thoroughfares and features were clearly marked—
Bungeskirke, Hoistraat, Grande Place, the town hall, the tower
blocks out at Dünningen...The Fisherman’s Friend. Yes, that
must be the restaurant hanging up there on the edge of the
cliff; she hadn’t thought of that before. He’d walked past all
that; the murderer had walked all the way from The Blue Ship
with his victim only a few yards ahead, and there must...
There must be witnesses.
That was as obvious as can be. People simply must have
seen the Axman as he skulked in the shadow of the walls along
Langvej and Hoistraat, as he scampered down the steps, as he
sneaked across Fisherman’s Square...There’s no other possibility. Whoever he is, he’s not invisible. What does that indicate?
Just as obvious was that tomorrow they would open up
their doors, and that famous detective the general public
would come teeming into the police station; and sooner or
later somebody—possibly several people—would turn up and
prove to have seen him. They didn’t know it was him, obviously; but nevertheless, they’d seen him and now they were
reporting that fact. They’d seen him full in the face, they had
even said hello to him!
That was the way it was. She put the light on again. In a few
days they’d have the name of the Axman hidden away among
the mass of completely irrelevant information; and nobody
would know which one it was, and there’d be no way of separating the wheat from the chaff. Or would it be worth sifting
through it all? Would anybody regard it as being worth the
trouble? Kropke, perhaps.
Shit! she thought. Just the job for Kropke. If that’s how it’s
going to turn out, we might as well acknowledge defeat in
advance.
But surely there must be some shortcuts? Cribs? Some way
of cutting through the mass of irrelevant data? There must be.
So what was the question she could write on the next page
with quadruple underscoring?
It was already there.
“Connection???” it said. She stared at it for a while. Then
she drew a triangle. Wrote the names Eggers and Simmel in
two of the corners. Hesitated for a moment before putting
Axman in the third. Contemplated her handiwork.
What on earth am I doing? she thought. What kind of rubbish is this? What childish drivel!
Nevertheless, the drawing certainly looked plausible. If
only I had a computer, she thought, I’d simply feed Simmel
into one end and Eggers into the other. The patterns that came
up on the screen would sooner or later highlight a point, or
produce a bundle of lines that indicated something that made
sense. A single name would emerge from the chaos or whatever the mathematical term was, and it would be the name of
the Axman. It would be as easy as that!
Oh, come on, thought Beate Moerk. I’m losing my grip! If
there’s one thing in this world that I don’t understand, it’s computers.
She closed her notebooks and saw from the clock that it
was too late for that Italian film on the TV that she hadn’t
really intended watching anyway. No, she was not one for the
quantitative approach. Not for her the tedious search through
haystack after haystack; Kropke could get on with that, with
the help of Mooser and Bang. She had better things to do.
She looked up again, just in time to see the moon glide into
the rectangle formed by her window. Full and round...Juno!
It was a sign, no doubt about it. There were other criteria to be
applied to this case. Different assumptions. Intuition! Woman!
None of this confounded left side of the brain! Yin, not yang!
She sat smiling at the moon. I’m an idiot, she thought. A damn
fool! Time to go to bed. Yes, no doubt about it. Lucky that
nobody else knows how I’m using my brain. Or rather, abusing it!
She stood up and went into the hall. She slid out of her
dressing gown and examined herself in the mirror. Hmm,
not too bad, she thought. Could easily be twenty-five, twentysix, or thereabouts. A pity there isn’t a man waiting for me in
my bed.
But she certainly didn’t want him there tomorrow morning
as well!
And when she started to doze off a quarter of an hour later,
all that drifted into her subconscious through the darkness
were the imaginary images of the murderer. Insofar as there
are any imaginary images...
The Axman?
Could they even be sure that it was a man?
That question registered just as she abandoned her final
foothold and submitted to the boundless embrace of slumber.
There was no time to consider whether or not Wundermaas
would have assigned her to one of the potentially fruitful
haystacks.
“I sometimes get the feeling there is a guiding hand, despite
everything,” said Bausen, handing Van Veeteren a glass.
“God’s finger?”
“Or the other one’s. Cheers! This is not strong; I didn’t
want to kill off your taste buds. I thought we could sample a
few decent things later.”
They drank and the wicker chairs creaked in sympathy. Van
Veeteren lit a cigarette. He’d succumbed to temptation and
bought a pack at the newsstand outside his hotel. It was the
first one since Erich had left him, so he felt entitled to it.
“Anyway,” said Bausen, producing a shabby tobacco pouch
vaguely reminiscent of something Van Veeteren had seen in
Ernst Simmel’s throat. “We lead a fairly quiet life here. Lock up
a few drunks, clear up the occasional case of assault and battery, confiscate a few bottles of the hard stuff from the boats
coming in from the east, and suddenly we’re landed with this.
Just when I’m about to call it a day. Don’t try to tell me that’s
not a pointer!”
“There are certain patterns,” said Van Veeteren.
Bausen sucked fire into his pipe.
“I’ve even given the racists a rap on the knuckles.”
“Ah, yes. You have a refugee camp out at Taublitz, if I
remember rightly,” said Van Veeteren.
“We certainly do. These characters started stirring up
trouble a few years ago, and in November last year there was a
gang going around setting fire to things. They burned two huts
down to the ground. I arrested eight of them.”
“Excellent,” said Van Veeteren.
“Four of them are busy rebuilding the cabins; can you imagine that? They’re working alongside the asylum seekers! They
were allowed to choose between two years in jail or community service. Damned fine judge. Heinrich Heine his name was,
the same as the poet. And now they’ve learned their lesson.”
“Impressive,” said Van Veeteren.
“I agree. Maybe it is possible to make human beings out of
anybody at all, providing you go for it hook, line and sinker.
Mind you, four of them preferred jail, of course.”
“Are you intending to go on October first anyway, no
matter what happens?” asked Van Veeteren. “They haven’t
approached you about staying on, or anything?”
Bausen snorted.
“No idea. I’ve not heard any hints yet, in any case. I expect
they hope you’ll sort this out in a couple of ticks so that they
can send me packing in the usual manner when the day comes.
I hope so as well, come to that.”
Same here, thought Van Veeteren. He picked up his glass
and looked around. Bausen had cleared the table and put a
cloth on it, but apart from that, the patio looked the same as
the previous time—books and newspapers and junk everywhere. The serpentine rambling roses and the overgrown garden sucked up every noise and impression but their own; you
could easily imagine having been transported to some Greeneesque or Conradian outpost. A mangrove swamp at the mouth
of some river in the as yet unexplored continent. The heart of
darkness, perhaps. A couple of topis, a jar of quinine tablets
and a few mosquito nets would not have disturbed the image.
But nevertheless, he was in the middle of Europe. A little toy
jungle by a European sea. Van Veeteren took a sip of his drink,
which smelled slightly of cinnamon, and felt a brief pang of
satisfaction.
“Your wife...?” he said. Sooner or later he’d have to ask
that question, after all.
“Died two years ago. Cancer.”
“Any children?”
Bausen shook his head.
“What about you?” he asked.
“Divorced. Also two years ago, or thereabouts.”
“Ah, well,” said Bausen. “Are you ready?”
“For what?”
Bausen smiled.
“A little trip into the underworld. I thought I’d show you
my treasure trove.”
They emptied their glasses, and Bausen led the way down
into the cellar. Down the stairs, through the boiler room and a
couple of storage rooms full of still more junk—bicycles, furniture, worn-out domestic appliances, rusty old garden tools,
newspapers (some in bundles and some not), bottles, old shoes
and boots...
“I find it hard to let anything go,” said Bausen. “Mind your
head! It’s a bit low down here.”
Down a few more steps and along a narrow passage
smelling of soil, and they came to a solid-looking door with
double bolts and a padlock.
“Here we are!” said Bausen. He unlocked the door and
switched on a light. “Stand by to have your breath taken away!”
He opened the door and allowed Van Veeteren to go in first.
Wine. A cellar full of it.
In the dim light he could just make out the dull reflections
from the bottles stacked up in racks around the walls. In neat
rows from floor to ceiling. Thousands of bottles, without
doubt. He sucked the heavy air into his nostrils.
“Aah!” he said. “You are rising in my estimation, Mr. Chief
of Police. This denotes without doubt the pinnacle of civilization.”
Bausen chuckled.
“Exactly! What you see here is what will become my main
occupation when I’ve retired. I’ve worked out that if I restrict
myself to three bottles per week, they’ll last ten years. I doubt
if I’ll want to continue any longer than that.”
Van Veeteren nodded. Why haven’t I been doing something
like this? he thought. I must start digging the moment I get
home!
It might be a bit problematic in view of the fact that he lived
in an apartment block, of course, but maybe he could start by
purchasing the goods instead. Perhaps he could rent an allotment or something of the sort? He made up his mind to take it
up with Reinhart or Dorigues as soon as he was back home.
“Please choose two for us to drink,” said Bausen. “A white
and a red, I think.”
“Meursault,” said Van Veeteren. “White Meursault, do you
have any of that?”
“A few dozen, I should think. What about the red?”
“I’ll leave that to the boss of the investigation team,” said
Van Veeteren.
“Ha ha. All right, in that case I’ll propose a Saint Emilion
’71. If my friend the chief inspector doesn’t disapprove.”
“I expect I’ll be able to force it down,” said Van Veeteren.
. . .