The Strangler's Honeymoon (22 page)

She leaned over the balcony rail and breathed in the warm smells of the summer evening. Great! she thought. Free all summer, then a steady job in August! You’ve done pretty well for yourself, Kristine Kortsmaa! Very well indeed!

Then she heard him moving inside the flat. She took another deep breath, and went back inside.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

‘Why?’

He was lying on the sofa in the darkest corner of the room, that was why she hadn’t noticed him. He suddenly moved, only a little, but she caught sight of bare skin and realized that he was naked.

‘I think it’s time to say goodnight now,’ she said. ‘It was silly of me to invite you in. I’m sorry if I aroused your expectations, but I’d be grateful if you got dressed.’

He said nothing, and didn’t move.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I got a bit drunk, that’s why I lost the plot. I didn’t intend things to turn out like this.’

She found his clothes on one of the chairs.

‘Here you are. Put them on now. Would you like a cup of coffee before you go?’

He sat up.

‘Coffee isn’t what I want.’

He didn’t sound offended or angry. The slight trace of menace she sensed immediately was not in his voice, but in his words.

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean that I don’t want any coffee just now,’ he said, standing up and ignoring his clothes. He took two paces towards her and placed his hands on her shoulders. Stood there for a while as if uncertain what to do next, and she wondered if she ought to make her rejection even more clear. She felt both stupid and guilty with regard to her behaviour: she was the one who had taken the initiative at Dorrit’s, she was the one who had invited him to dance with her – not only to protect herself from the Berk, she had assured him over and over again – and she was the one who had invited him in after he had escorted her home.

So it wasn’t very surprising if he felt a little disappointed.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said again.

‘It’s a pity,’ he said. ‘May I massage your shoulders for a while? I think you need it.’

She hesitated, but before she could say yes or no he was standing behind her. Moved her hair out of the way and began exploring with his fingers over her bare shoulders. But not massaging. He followed the sharp outline of her collarbone towards her neck, and she could feel that he was trembling.

And she was holding her breath.

‘My finger tips . . .’ he said. ‘My finger tips are like little seismographs. They register everything you feel in your body, and your thoughts as well – that’s pretty remarkable, don’t you think?’

She decided that things had gone far enough now, but it was too late.

Much too late for Kristine Kortsmaa.

MAARDAM

NOVEMBER 2000

20

Van Veeteren lifted the carrier bags onto the counter, and began taking out the books.

Forty in all, Professor Baertenow had said. He couldn’t carry any more than that nowadays, unfortunately. A mixed bag, you could say: but mainly novels in foreign languages.

He thought it was a pity he needed to offload them: but at least he knew that giving them to Krantze’s antiquarian bookshop meant they were in good hands. Or rather, that they had been delivered into good hands. Which would have been necessary sooner or later, no matter what. No, he didn’t want paying for them this time either. Money was of no use to him any more.

Van Veeteren studied the titles, one after an other, and was surprised yet again by the range of languages – Russian, Czech, Hungarian, Finnish. A collection of poetry in Basque. Norwegian, Danish and Swedish.

An impressive character, this Baertenow, to say the least. An old philologist, retired several years ago, and now in the habit of turning up several times a year, bringing with him a couple of carrier bags of books. They say he spoke fifty-five living languages. Plus an unknown number of dead ones.

He used to say that he was busy tidying up his bookshelves – you have to sort things out when death is breathing down your neck.

Van Veeteren used to pay him with a glass of port wine, sometimes two, and a chat: but today the professor didn’t have time. He was planning to move into a somewhat smaller and rather more convenient flat, it seemed: there simply wasn’t room for all his books . . . That was life – there was a time for collecting and a time for getting rid. Or, as the Estonians say,
Kui oikk in vahe hauakivil kahe aastaarvu vahel
.

‘Very true,’ Van Veeteren had said.

But what immediately attracted his attention was not any of the Estonian books: there was another title that sent his mind spinning

The Determinant
.

That really was the title. His eyes were not deceiving him. Two books, in fact. He stood there with one of them in each hand, staring at them. One was white with a woman’s face on the front cover, and with the subtitle
Eva
. The other was pale red with lots of strange configurations in some sort of system of coordinates.

The author’s name: Leon Rappaport. Language: Swedish.

Rappaport didn’t sound all that Swedish. Jewish, rather. Van Veeteren investigated and found the years when the books had been copyrighted: 1962 and 1978. The first book was evidently written in Polish, with the original title
Determinanta
. The second one, with the woman’s face, seemed to have been written in Swedish.

He shook his head. Very odd, he thought. Would he now have to teach himself Polish and Swedish? In order to get to the bottom of it all. He had spent half his life believing in a concept that he thought he had invented: but now he was standing here with two books that had been written about it. Or at least had been called that.

The Determinant.

Very odd, to say the least. He thought for a while. Then put both the books into his briefcase, and took out his cigarette machine. Time for the day’s first cigarette, no doubt about that. What was needed now was time to think things over; to keep things at arm’s length . . .

Before he’d had time to light his cigarette, Moreno rang.

And he sat there with it unlighted throughout the whole of the conversation.

‘Come in,’ Van Veeteren said an hour and a half later. ‘Let’s withdraw to the kitchenette, we can be undisturbed there.’

He pulled down the blind over the glass pane in the door, and locked up. Moreno took off her jacket and hung it round the back of a chair.

‘Fire away,’ he said. ‘I had a feeling that damned priest wouldn’t leave me alone for long. A premonition, it seems.’

‘Yes, indeed,’ said Moreno, flopping down into one of the Greek armchairs in the cramped kitchenette. ‘You can say that again. As I said, we discovered his name when we searched through that flat yesterday . . . Martina Kammerle’s flat in Moerckstraat. She was found murdered last Sunday evening, but the body had been lying there for over a month – I don’t know if you’ve read about it, Chief Inspector—’

‘Belay there!’ warned Van Veeteren.

‘Oops!’ said Moreno. ‘A slip of the tongue. Anyway, I don’t know if you’ve read about it?’

Van Veeteren nodded.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I still plough my way through a few newspapers.
Allgemejne
had quite a detailed article about it today, in fact. A strangled woman . . . and a missing girl as well, is that right?’

‘Correct,’ said Moreno. ‘Although we didn’t discover the link with that priest until yesterday, so there hasn’t been anything about that in the newspapers. We don’t really know any more than I said on the phone. It might be a blind alley, of course, but to be honest that seems a bit unlikely. Or what do you think?’

Van Veeteren opened a cupboard and dug out a couple of cups.

‘Blind alley?’ he said. ‘Like hell. I take it you fancy some coffee?’

Moreno nodded; he put the kettle on and started rummaging in another cupboard.

‘Shall we take things in chronological order?’ he suggested, putting a tray of cinnamon biscuits on the table. ‘That might make sense. As far as I’m aware causes still usually come before effects in most circumstances. So, where do we begin? . . .’

‘Well,’ said Moreno, ‘if we look at the cards we have in our hands at present, it all starts when Pastor Gassel comes to see you . . .’

She looked around and made a hesitant gesture.

‘. . . in this very room, if I’ve understood it rightly.’

Van Veeteren nodded and scattered some coffee powder in the two mugs.

‘Some time around the middle of September?’

‘The fifteenth, I seem to recall.’

‘The fifteenth? In that case it was just over two weeks before he was found dead under a train in Maardam’s Central Station. At about the same time, or possibly slightly later, a certain Martina Kammerle was murdered in her flat in Moerckstraat. Her sixteen-year-old daughter Monica disappeared at the same time, and is still missing. Martina’s body was lying there for over a month before it was discovered, and in a notebook in her daughter’s room we found the name Tomas Gassel . . . Well, that’s about it in a nutshell, you could say.’

‘Nothing else?’ asked Van Veeteren after a few moments’ thought. ‘Was there nothing else apart from the name in that notebook? Telephone number or address, for instance?’

‘No. She’d written it at the very bottom of an empty page. There was nothing else at all.’

Van Veeteren nodded and poured hot water into the mugs.

‘It’s not exactly a common name.’

‘No.’

‘But not all that uncommon either.’

‘No.’

‘Can there be any doubt that he’s the one?’

‘No doubt at all. Krause has checked. There’s one other person in the area with the same name, but he’s only four years old. Lives in Linzhuisen and has no links with the Kammerles whatsoever.’

‘Hmm,’ muttered Van Veeteren. ‘So it hangs together, does it?’

‘It certainly does,’ said Moreno. ‘Thus far, at least. It’s obviously possible that Monica Kammerle has some kind of normal link with Pastor Gassel, something that has nothing to do with his death or her disappearance, but, well . . . we’ll find that out in due course. At the moment we must assume that there is a more significant connection, of course . . .’

‘Of course,’ said Van Veeteren.

‘We can naturally speculate about how that contact came about.’

‘One can always speculate,’ said Van Veeteren, adding milk to the coffee. ‘How long is it since you caught onto this?’

Moreno took a sip and smiled innocently.

‘Can you tell by looking at me?’ she asked. ‘Can you really? Can you see that I haven’t slept a wink, lying in bed, thinking about nothing but this? Rooth caught on last night, and was kind enough to phone me right away.’

‘I can’t see a single trace,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘I can assure you that you are the most delicate and fragrant violet in the whole bookshop. Anyway, where exactly are your thoughts leading you?’

Moreno coughed away a smile.

‘It’s pretty self-evident,’ she said. ‘Somebody has killed Martina Kammerle for some reason or other. The same person has removed Pastor Gassel from the stage . . . possibly because he knew the reason for the murder. Monica Kammerle might well have suffered the same fate. It’s just that we haven’t found her yet . . . To reduce matters to basics, that is.’

‘Why complicate matters?’ said Van Veeteren. ‘It will get more complicated of its own accord, and second-degree equations have never been one of my strengths . . . But if a certain antiquarian bookseller hadn’t sent a certain priest packing because he had an urgent dental appointment, the Maardam CID wouldn’t be sitting in this hole. That’s what you’re getting at, of course.’

‘I’m not getting at anything,’ Moreno assured him, ‘but let’s face it: there is something in that. The fact is that I have a little request as well.’

‘A request?’ said Van Veeteren, raising an eyebrow.

‘Maybe I should call it a formal invitation. From Reinhart. He wants you to turn up and answer some questions.’

Van Veeteren spilled some coffee on the table.

‘Answer . . . ?’

‘Yes, it follows naturally if you think about it,’ said Moreno. ‘We clearly need to find out as much as possible about that meeting between you and the priest . . .’

‘So you’re going to interrogate me, are you?’

‘Have a chat,’ said Moreno. ‘Not interrogate. Shall we do it now, or leave it until later?’

‘Well, I’ll be damned. But now you mention it, I suppose . . .’

He glanced at his watch.

‘Now,’ he said.

‘Just one condition,’ said Van Veeteren as they clambered out of the car in the police station’s basement garage. ‘If we bump into Hiller I shall do an about-turn and disappear. You’ll have to fetch me by patrol car at Klagenburg instead.’

‘Of course,’ said Moreno, pressing the lift button.

No chief of police put in an appearance in fact, and two minutes later the
Chief Inspector
was sitting in Reinhart’s smoke-filled office with its owner and Intendent Münster.

‘Nice to see you here,’ said Reinhart with a wry smile. ‘I’ll be damned if you don’t look younger every time I see you.’

‘Natural beauty can’t be repressed in the long run,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘How are things?’

‘We get what we deserve, I suppose,’ said Reinhart. ‘Or what do you think, Münster?’

‘We get what Reinhart deserves, unfortunately,’ said Münster. ‘Hence all the misery. How are things in the book trade?’

‘There are still one or two citizens around who can read,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘But there are fewer of them by the day, alas. Anyway, enough of this nonsense. This business with the priest is pretty damned awful . . . and the rest of it. Is the connection any more definite than Moreno indicated?’

Reinhart scratched the back of his neck and pulled a face.

‘I don’t really know,’ he said. ‘Krause and Jung are looking into it. Gassel’s furniture and belongings have already been put in storage, unfortunately, and his flat has been let. But as I see it, it’s only a matter of time before we’re a hundred per cent certain . . . Everything fits in, and I’m sure that’s how it will turn out. But what I’m most interested in just now is whether we can squeeze out of you any more details of that meeting you had with the priest.’