The Strangler's Honeymoon (46 page)

Why not? he asked himself. What do we do with our lives and our friends? After all, Reinhart was one of the nicest people he had ever met.

Winnifred arrived with a glass in each hand.

‘Cheers,’ she said, flopping down on the sofa opposite him. ‘I have to say you’ve aroused my curiosity. Not to mention what you’ve done to my dear husband.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘It’s not my intention to be mysterious, it’s just that it would be damned stupid to enlighten all and sundry with regard to what I have in mind. But I need your help.’

‘So I’ve gathered,’ said Winnifred.

‘The fact is that I’m trying to cut corners, to take a short cut to what I’m after. If it turns out that I’m barking up the wrong tree, it’s better that as few people as possible know about my stupidity.’

‘I’m with you,’ said Winnifred. ‘I’m worn out, but my brain’s wide awake, don’t worry.’

‘You must agree to say nothing to anybody about this.’

‘I wasn’t born yesterday.’

‘Good. I shall worry you no end.’

‘I’m worried stiff already.’

‘And I shall cast aspersions on the reputation of your colleagues.’

She smiled.

‘I’ve already had a certain amount of information from the hospital, don’t forget that. You don’t need to run through the preliminaries.’

‘Okay,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘I just want to make sure that we’re both singing from the same hymn sheet, and in the same key.’

She didn’t respond. He took out the sheet of paper with the names. He said nothing for a while, but Winnifred looked just as calm and relaxed as a goddess after a bath.

Or after making love.

And this despite the fact that she had seemed to be so tired only a few minutes ago: it was remarkable how quickly she had acquired a new aura. There’s something special about certain women, he thought, and realized he was losing the plot. He cleared his throat and leaned forward, pushed the folded-over sheet of paper across the table, but kept two fingers on it.

‘Here are the names of four of your colleagues in the English Department,’ he said slowly. ‘I want you to study those names, and concentrate on the persons behind them. Visualize them as best you can, you mustn’t rush it – we can sit here in silence for half an hour if that’s what it takes. What I want to know is which of them is capable of killing five people.’

She didn’t respond. Just nodded rather vaguely. He realized that she must have been expecting something of this sort. Despite everything.

She had spoken to Reinhart, and they had reached their conclusions together. It would have been odd if they hadn’t.

‘If you can’t intuitively decide on one of them, then let it drop. This has nothing to do with normal police work, but you can rely on my judgement. If it isn’t one of these four, or if you pick out the wrong one, that will remain a matter between you and me. It will have no significance in any circumstances. But . . .’

‘But if I pick the right one?’

‘That will make the whole process easier, and enable us to nail a murderer.’

‘Really?’

‘I hope so, at least. The responsibility is entirely mine. Are you prepared to accept these conditions?’

She looked at him for a few seconds with something about her mouth that suggested amusement, before answering.

‘Yes. I’ll go along with all that.’

Van Veeteren removed his fingers from the folded sheet of paper and leaned back.

‘Okay. Off you go, then.’

Inspector Sammelmerk had lots of good sides, but only one mania.

She loved taking a shower.

It had nothing to do with an exaggerated desire to be clean. Not at all. It had more to do with her soul than with her body in general, even if the physical pleasure was of course the direct link with her soul.

When the hot jets – so hot that they were barely tolerable – came into contact with the area around her seventh cervical vertebra and her first thoracic vertebra, a sort of electric well being spread out over the whole of her body; and she sometimes asked herself whether the Good Lord was guilty of a careless error when he placed her G-spot in a different part of her anatomy.

Mind you, it didn’t work that way when she was touched, only when she was subjected to a jet of hot water: so perhaps she wasn’t all that abnormal after all.

Whatever, she liked nothing better than to take a long shower – the longer the better. Sometimes she could almost lapse into a trance in the bathroom, to the rest of the family’s increasingly perplexed surprise. A twenty-or thirty-minute soak was nothing unusual, but eventually both the IT genius and their offspring came to terms with it. Every human being has a right to have their fundamental needs satisfied, she used to maintain, and if she were to try to overcome this harmless perversion, no doubt something much worse would turn up to replace it. The sum of one’s vices is constant.

Besides, it wasn’t always a case of sinking into a trance. Not every time. While in the shower she could also experience an enhanced feeling of insight and clarity of thought, and very often she was able to make important decisions and solve complicated problems while in this meditative mode. Confused thinking was ironed out and irritations rinsed away. If she ever tried to work out why such remarkable things happened while she was in the shower, she usually found that the most congenial solution was that she was born under the sign of Pisces.

The rest of her family were born under earth and air signs, and could hardly be expected to fully appreciate the significance of water.

That evening she was in the shower a mere twenty minutes after arriving back home, and there was only one problem that occupied her thoughts as she wallowed in the hot jets of water. Only one.

The conversation with Clara Peerenkaas.

Without a second thought Intendent Münster had accepted her suggestion that they should renew contact with the worried parents out at Willby – which happened to be his home town, he informed her. She had rung and given notice of her arrival time, and at four o’clock she had been received in a neat, yellow-painted house on the bank of a canal in the idyllic little town on the River Gimser.

The husband had been otherwise engaged. Inspector Sammelmerk had drunk tea and eaten biscuits while sitting on a somewhat slippery plush sofa, trying to work out what it was about fru Peerenkaas’s behaviour that disturbed her.

Or ‘disturbed’ was too strong a word: surprised her.

There was certainly something odd about it.

Elusive and hard to pin down, but odd even so.

Her worry about what might have happened to her daughter seemed to be genuine enough, there were no two ways about that. When Sammelmerk asked bluntly why the Peerenkaases had stopped telephoning the police, the reply was that they had lost heart when no progress was made. They had discussed the possibility of employing a private detective, but still hadn’t made up their minds. Instead they had been concentrating on their efforts to contain their worries and fears.

This seemed quite a plausible explanation, Sammelmerk thought. They were religious and had received stalwart support from their parish, fru Peerenkaas maintained. Prayers were said for Ester several times a week, for instance: when one was unable to do anything concrete to solve a problem, it was a person’s duty to put his or her trust in God. Calmly and without hesitation.

It had all sounded very convincing, and it was not until she was in the car on the way back to Maardam that Sammelmerk began to doubt the evidence of her senses. When she could contemplate what had happened from a distance, as it were.

And now, as she stood there in the shower, it soon dawned on her what the problem was.

She was lying.

Somehow or other fru Peerenkaas was not telling the truth.

God only knows about what, exactly, she thought. That could be literally true, in view of what had been said about prayers and the other world.

But there was something wrong in any case. Fru Peerenkaas was holding something back, and had not quite been able to conceal the fact that she was doing so.

That was the top and bottom of it.

But what?

What exactly had she been keeping to herself ? Sammelmerk wondered, and raised the temperature of the water by half a degree.

It didn’t help.

Nor did it help that she stayed in the shower for thirty-five minutes. Nor that she raised the temperature another half-degree, so that it really was at the very limit of what was bearable. Nor did it help that her youngest son came and belted on the door, wondering whether she intended to spend the whole night in there or was turning into a seal.

Nothing helped.

But something was wrong, she was sure of that. Fru Peerenkaas was lying about something.

But she didn’t know what. It was maddening.

Winnifred Lynch folded up the sheet of paper and drank the remains of her whisky.

‘I’m ready,’ she said.

Van Veeteren gave a start and realized that he had almost fallen asleep. He looked at the clock. Only a few minutes had passed, but the silence had been manifest. Very manifest indeed. Like a vacuum.

She slid the paper back across the table just as he had done. Like the final hidden card to complete a straight flush, he thought. He picked it up and unfolded it.

‘Who?’ he asked.

‘Maarten deFraan,’ she said. ‘Number two.’

He looked at the name. Allowed a few seconds to pass while stroking his cheek. He realized that he hadn’t shaved today.

‘DeFraan?’ he said. ‘Are you sure?’

It was only a name as far as he was concerned, nothing more.

‘If it is one of that quartet, yes. The others are impossible.’

‘How can you know?’

‘I just know.’

He thought for a moment.

‘Is he a plausible candidate? Or just the least unlikely?’

She hesitated before answering. Pressed the fingertips of each hand against one another and contemplated them.

‘I can . . . I can imagine him in that role. He has always made me feel uncomfortable.’

‘Do you know him well?’

‘Not at all. Remember that there are over thirty members of staff in our department. I come across him occasionally, but our offices are a long way apart. It’s mostly at meetings and suchlike.’

‘What do you know about him?’

‘Not a lot. Hardly anything. He came to the department the year before I started, I think. Was awarded the chair in English literature – there’s another chair but that’s for somebody more linguistically inclined: that’s my own field. DeFraan used to be in Aarlach, unless I’m much mistaken. He’s regarded as a big talent – it’s rare to get a chair before you’re forty.’

‘Married?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Do you know where he lives?’

‘No. Quite close to the university, I think. But I can find out all his details from the computer, if you’d like me to.’

‘Excellent,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘Can you get them for me by tomorrow?’

‘Of course. Is one allowed to ask the oracle a question?’

‘The oracle will only respond to the question if he knows the answer,’ said Van Veeteren.

‘Fair deal,’ said Winnifred with a fleeting smile. ‘What made you narrow everything down to . . . well, to this quartet in the English Department?’

Van Veeteren thought for a moment.

‘All right,’ he said. ‘A few somewhat vague indicators, in fact. Do you know the details of the case?’

‘To some extent,’ said Winnifred. ‘We’ve discussed it in the bath a few times . . . And this afternoon at the hospital, of course.’

‘In the bath?’ said Van Veeteren. ‘Reinhart and you?’

‘Yes, that’s where we have our best conversations. Hmm . . .’

‘I see,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘Well, there was nothing special – there never is when I’m under way. It was obvious at quite an early stage that the person the police were looking for had a fair amount of literary education, and when we had a tip suggesting he was in the university world, it was just a matter of finding the right faculty. And subject area. Robert Musil is what you might call public property – you don’t need to be a German language expert to know about him and his books; but that Benjamin Kerran from an obscure English criminal novel . . . coupled with T. S. Eliot at Keefer’s restaurant – well, I would suggest that settled it.’

‘Could well be,’ said Winnifred tentatively. ‘But it’s not a cut and dried case, surely?’

‘I’ve never claimed that it is,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘However, there are eleven of your colleagues who are members of the Succulent society. Seven could be excluded on the grounds of their age. But as you say, they are by no means indisputable observations. And bear in mind that we are talking about a method, nothing more than that: the possible margins of error border on the grandiose. The moment I discover deFraan has nothing to hide, we can forget the whole business and no harm will have been done . . . Incidentally, do you happen to know his area of special expertise?’

Winnifred thought for a moment, and he could see that a penny had suddenly dropped for her.

‘Good God!’ she said. ‘You could well be right. I’m pretty sure that his doctoral thesis was on English popular literature. Underground and crime novels and such stuff. Around the beginning of the twentieth century, I think.’

‘Aha,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘That really could put him in the spotlight. Anyway, I mustn’t disturb you any longer. I hope I don’t need to tell you how significant your contribution could turn out to be?’

‘Nor that I should hold my tongue,’ said Winnifred. ‘Many thanks, this has been very . . . interesting. Would you like me to fax his personal details to the bookshop tomorrow?’

Van Veeteren shook his head.

‘I’d prefer to come to the university and fetch them in person. It would be useful for me to have a look around.’

‘Your word is my command,’ said Winnifred. ‘You’ll find me in my office at any time between twelve and four – but ring first just to be on the safe side.’

Van Veeteren promised to do that. He put the list of names in his pocket and stood up. When he had finished putting on his street clothes in the hall, Winnifred had one last query.