The Stranglers Honeymoon (37 page)

It was also possible to speculate about the timing, and they duly did.

If it could be assumed that Kerran-alias-Brugger was behind the murder of Kristine Kortsmaa in Wallburg as well, and that Ester Peerenkaas had suffered the same fate, the number of victims was now five. The number of known victims, that is. Spread over about eighteen months, more or less. One-and-a-half years.

The first one in Wallburg in June 1999.

Numbers two, three and four in Maardam in September 2000.

Number five in the same town in January 2001.

Inspector Krause noted down these facts as well, and read them out.

A period of silence followed.

Then Reinhart leaned forward over the table and pointed his index finger in the air as a sort of warning.

‘Let’s avoid using the term “serial murderer’’,’ he said. ‘In theory we could be looking for five different murderers – even if I myself wouldn’t bet so much as a matchstick on that possibility. And in theory, we don’t know if number five really is a victim. She might just have run off with that Brugger bastard, and they could be lounging back lapping up sun and champagne on some picturesque little island in the South Pacific at this very moment. It’s not impossible to grow tired of the charms of Maardam in January, perhaps I don’t need to remind you of that – and for as long as we don’t find her, she remains officially a missing person.’

‘Well said,’ commented Rooth. ‘Even if we do have our thoughts. I must say I don’t like the way she has disappeared . . . I’m not exactly enthusiastic about murder either, come to that: but if you have been murdered, you surely don’t need to disappear as well. It’s difficult to make sense of anything until the dead body is found. What the hell are we going to do? What are we going to do right now, I mean?’

Reinhart checked his watch.

‘I assume that’s a roundabout way of proposing a coffee break before we start allocating specific duties?’

‘Such a thought had never occurred to me,’ said Rooth. ‘But if you’re desperate for a cup of coffee, don’t let me stand in your way.’

The allocation of duties lasted over two hours, and eventually took the form – at least in Inspector Krause’s spiral notebook – of a five-point programme.

In the first place there should be an immediate and wide-ranging search for the missing thirty-five-year-old Maardam woman Ester Peerenkaas. Or at least, as immediate as was possible in practice. The chief inspector promised to remain at his desk smoking and preparing statements after the others had gone home to feed the chickens. Or whatever they usually did when they left work.

Secondly, and following on from the Wanted notices, there should be a comprehensive appeal to everybody who had visited Keefer’s restaurant in Molnarstraat on 8 December the previous year to get in touch with the police in Maardam. For obvious reasons, this also landed on Reinhart’s desk.

Thirdly, everybody who was acquainted with, or in one capacity or another was regularly in some kind of contact with the missing fröken Peerenkaas – friends, relatives, colleagues – should be interviewed. For obvious reasons it was difficult to forecast how many people might be concerned in such a complicated operation, but for the time being Jung and Krause were put in charge of it.

In the fourth place, it was decided that renewed contact should be established with Inspector Baasteuwel in Wallburg, more specifically to look once again at the Kristine Kortsmaa case in an attempt to find possible links with the September and January cases in Maardam. Inspector Moreno volunteered for this task.

And finally, it was decided to continue to uphold productive contacts with the bookseller at Krantze’s Antiquarian Bookshop in Kupinskis gränd, one herr Van Veeteren.

‘So, that’s that then,’ said Chief Inspector Reinhart after Krause had read out the programme once more. He wondered if anybody had anything to add.

But it was already twenty minutes to seven in the evening, and nobody could think of anything to say.

Ewa Moreno had just finished vacuuming the living room, taking a shower and opening a bottle of wine, when there was a ring at the door.

Irene Sammelmerk had a bouquet of red and yellow gerbera daisies in one hand, and a carrier bag of Chinese food in the other.

‘A hell of a good idea, this,’ she said. ‘We need to be almost lying down to eat it – I don’t have the strength to sit upright.’

‘Same here,’ said Moreno, ushering her in.

They had finally got round to arranging a meeting on their own. It was about time, too. Plan A had been a visit to a restaurant, of course, but when they happened to meet in the canteen at lunchtime, they had only needed to look at each other for a second to know that neither of them felt like sitting around in a public place.

Not in mid-January, when they were feeling exhausted and washed out.

Not with masses of other people hanging around and disturbing them.

What was needed was a comfy sofa.

And no cooking, God forbid.

So a Chinese takeaway and a bottle of wine in Moreno’s cosy two-room flat in Falckstraat was just what the doctor ordered. An ideal solution.

‘Excellent,’ said Sammelmerk an hour later. ‘I don’t understand why we insist on cooking food seven days a week in our family.’

‘Seven?’ wondered Moreno.

‘Well, five to seven,’ said Sammelmerk. ‘Sometimes the computer genius takes the brood out to a hamburger bar, and sometimes we settle for a pizza. I had a friend up in Aarlach who wouldn’t hear of her children having less than two healthy home-cooked meals per day. She had her first heart attack when she was forty-six. Her two children are nervous wrecks. So much for that . . .’

‘Yes, everybody’s short of time nowadays,’ said Moreno.

‘Or they divide it up badly,’ said Sammelmerk. ‘Some people work their arses off, and others have nothing better to do than sit around scratching them.’

Moreno laughed.

‘Yes, there’s no denying that the balance could often be better than it is. But you have got your family sorted out now, I take it?’

‘Oh yes indeed,’ said Sammelmerk, taking a sip of wine. ‘I can’t complain. What about you? When are you going to take the momentous step? It would be stupid to wait until the menopause.’

Moreno hesitated, but only for a second.

‘He lives here in the same building,’ she said. ‘On the next floor down. I’m the one with my foot on the brakes.’

‘Why’s that? Have you been burnt?’

Moreno thought that over. It was a good question. Had she been burnt?

Not really, if truth were told. You had to reckon with the occasional scratch and the odd dent in your soul as you tramped along the path of thorns that was life. She had birthmarks, of course, but she hadn’t suffered any more than anybody else.

She didn’t have much to complain about. In fact.

‘No,’ she said. ‘Not burnt. Just a bit scorched at the edges. I suppose I’m just a bit sluggish . . . And hard to please, perhaps.’

‘Like our missing woman?’

‘Not really. I shall never turn up at a restaurant on a blind date in any case, I promise you that. Do you think you could find yourself a man like that?’

Sammelmerk shrugged.

‘I’ve no idea, to tell you the truth,’ she said. ‘I met my Janos when we were twenty-one. We have three kids and we’ve both been unfaithful . . . I simply don’t know how to find my way through the labyrinth of love. I’m not sure I want to know either.’

Moreno smiled.

‘What about your lover?’

‘He was a copper,’ said Sammelmerk. ‘That’s the way it goes, I suppose. Cheers.’

‘I understand,’ said Moreno. ‘Cheers . . . It’s great to see you outside the police station at last.’

‘This Kerran . . . Or Brugger . . .’ said Sammelmerk.

‘What about him?’

‘What do you think about him?’

‘Think? What exactly do you mean?’

‘Well, what sort of a person do you think he is?’

Moreno swirled the wine around in her glass.

‘I’ve no idea. Or rather, I do have an idea of course, but I haven’t constructed a detailed psychological portrait of him. But it’s obvious he’s yet another of those perverted, frustrated stallions . . . There are a lot of them around.’

‘There certainly are,’ said Sammelmerk. ‘Most crimes of violence are committed by aggressive males between twenty and forty, of course, blokes who didn’t get their end away although they badly wanted to – but of course, deep down they are kind and gentle.’

‘Bang on,’ said Moreno.

‘That’s the way it is, unfortunately,’ said Sammelmerk. ‘But the bloke we’re after doesn’t have sex with his victims, neither before nor after, it seems. For Christ’s sake, he just kills them. Why does he do it? That’s what I can’t understand.’

‘He’s sick.’

‘Of course he’s sick. But perhaps it’s possible to diagnose his illness?’

‘It could be. Huh, I suppose the problem is that we are so badly constructed in the biological sense, if we try looking into the crystal ball, as it were.’

‘Eh?’ said Sammelmerk. ‘I think you need to explain yourself a bit better than that.’

Moreno clasped her hands behind her head and decided to spell things out.

‘Well,’ she said, ‘what I mean is that men – if they just follow their instincts and basic needs – are programmed to achieve sexual satisfaction within about twenty seconds . . . So the Good Lord can hardly have expected that we women would get any pleasure out of that, surely? Don’t you think?’

‘I understand that God is a bachelor,’ said Sammelmerk with a wry smile. ‘But they usually learn what to do, the ones – or rather the one – that I know.’

‘In time, yes,’ said Moreno. ‘That’s right. But you must agree surely that it causes a lot of unnecessary suffering, this difference in tempo.’

Sammelmerk leaned back in her corner of the sofa and burst out laughing.

‘This difference in tempo!’ she snorted. ‘My God, yes! You certainly have a point. But what about our friend Kerran-Brugger? Why do you think he does it? From his point of view. If we try to penetrate his perverted mind.’

Moreno took a deep drink of wine and thought about that. Blew out a candle whose flame was coming dangerously close to her cuff.

‘Power,’ she said eventually. ‘If you want a one-word answer. If you can’t get love from the person you desire, you can at least get submission . . . You can control the object of your desire. It’s a motive that’s as old as the hills, but it’s probably a variation on that which drives our strangler. That’s what I think, at least.’

‘Very likely,’ agreed Sammelmerk with a frown. ‘I remember reading something once: “When a man says no to a woman, she wants to die. When a woman says no to a man, he wants to kill.” – That seems to sum it up rather neatly, don’t you think?’

‘In a nutshell,’ said Moreno. ‘We’re on pretty good form this evening, aren’t we?’

‘It must be the wine,’ said Sammelmerk. ‘And the company. Anyway, I’ll be blowed if it isn’t time for me to go and see to my flock.’

Moreno looked at the clock.

‘Half past eleven. Ah well, another working day tomorrow, I suppose.’

‘The first of many,’ said Sammelmerk with a sigh. ‘I think I’ll have to ask you to ring for a taxi. I’ve no great desire to come up against unknown men in the dark.’

‘“When a woman says no to a man . . .”’ said Moreno, standing up. ‘Yes there’s a lot of truth in that. Ugh.’

‘Ugh indeed,’ said Sammelmerk. ‘I hope we find him soon.’

‘It’s a matter of time,’ said Moreno, picking up the telephone. ‘Only a matter of time.’

34

Five minutes before Inspector Rooth was due to meet Karen deBuijk, he was seized by acute depression.

He had just entered the square Grote Torg from Zwillesteeg, and very nearly fallen into the arms of Jasmina Teuwers. He would have had nothing against that – in different circumstances. They had both attended Italian classes, and also met as a couple three times in November and December – at a cafe, a cinema and a restaurant, in that order, and although those meetings could best be described as very slow progress, there had nevertheless been some progress made.

Or at least, Rooth thought that was the case.

Until this grey, damp, windswept January morning when their eyes had met and he felt as if his heart had just burst.

Jasmina Teuwers had not been alone. Anything but. She was very obviously in close contact with a superficially handsome type in a light-brown ulster and with a ponytail. His arm was wrapped around her shoulders, they were gazing into each other’s eyes, and laughing at some shared joke.

Until she became aware of Rooth for just a fraction of a second.

A podgy lady with a dachshund blundered her way in between him and the loving couple, and they didn’t even need to pretend they hadn’t seen one another. Rooth and Teuwers, that is. They continued on their way as if nothing had happened.
Tra la perduta gente
.

A ponytail! Rooth thought when the analytical side of his brain started working again some five seconds later. Bloody hell!

Frailty, thy name is woman!

He staggered on across the square as far as Olde Maarweg. Karen deBuijk lived in one of the old warehouses that had been converted into flats from the mid-1990s onwards – way beyond the means of a mere detective inspector, for instance. DeBuijk’s flat comprised just one large room, but it was at least fifty square metres, and the exposed wooden beams in the ceiling were ideal if one had any intention of hanging oneself.

Thought Rooth as he sat down together with his depression in a basket chair under a roof window. The sky was grey, he noted. He cleared his throat and took a notebook and pencil out of his briefcase as if in a dream.

I’ve done this ten thousand times before, he thought. I wonder how many bloody notebooks I’ve filled and how many bloody pencils I’ve worn out?

How many pointless questions I’ve churned out, and how many daft answers I’ve written down?

Karen deBuijk had left him alone for a moment, but now came back in carrying a ridiculously small tray with two ugly coffee cups. And a dish of what looked like dog biscuits. She sat down in the other basket chair, crossed her legs and smiled faintly and somewhat insecurely at him. He registered that she was pretty. Suntanned and blonde-haired.