Woman with Birthmark (13 page)

“Badly,” said Van Veeteren.

“Have you found a link yet?”

Van Veeteren nodded.

“But I'm not sure it's the right one. Well, I suppose I am, really…. But that doesn't mean very much yet. You could say that I'm looking for a stone and I've found the market square.”

“Eh?” said Mahler.

Van Veeteren sneezed again.

“For Christ's sake,” he said. “Looking for a star and I've found a galaxy, how about that? I thought you were supposed to be the poet.”

Mahler chuckled.

“I know what you mean,” he said. “But isn't it an incident that you're looking for?”

Van Veeteren picked up his white knight and sat there for a few seconds, holding it in his hand.

“An incident?” he said, placing the knight on c4. “Yes, that's probably not a bad guess. The problem is that such a lot is happening.”

“All the time,” said Mahler.

Of the four people eventually allocated to Inspector Münster, it turned out that one lived in central Maardam, one in Linzhuisen, barely thirty kilometers away and one down in Groenstadt, a journey of some two hundred kilometers. On Saturday afternoon, Münster conducted a short telephone interview with the last—a certain Werner Samijn, who worked as an electrical engineer and didn't have much to say about either Malik or Maasleitner. He had lived in the same barrack room as Malik and remembered him most as a rather pleasant and somewhat reserved young man. He thought Maasleitner was a more cocksure type (if the inspector and the man's widow would excuse the expression), but they had never mixed or gotten to know each other.

Number one on the list, Erich Molder, failed to answer the several phone calls Münster made to his house in Guyderstraat; but number two, Joen Fassleucht, was available; Münster offered to drive to his home late on Sunday afternoon.

Münster's son, Bart, aged six and a half, objected strongly to this arrangement, but after some discussion, it was decided that Bart could go along in the car, provided he promise to stay in the
backseat reading a
Monster
comic while his father carried out his police duties.

It was the first time Münster had agreed to anything of this nature, and as he sat in Fassleucht's living room nibbling at cookies, he became aware that it did not have a particularly positive influence on his powers of concentration.

But perhaps that didn't matter so much on this occasion—it was hardly an important interrogation, he tried to convince himself. Fassleucht had mixed with Malik quite a lot during his National Service: they were both part of a group of four or five friends who occasionally went out together. Went to the movies, played cards, or simply sat at the same table in the canteen and gaped at the goggle-box. After demobilization, all contact had ceased; and as for Maasleitner, all Fassleucht could do was confirm the opinion expressed by Samijn the previous day.

Overbearing and rather cocky.

Münster had been apprehensive, of course, and when he returned to his car after about half an hour he saw immediately that Bart had disappeared.

A cold shudder ran down his spine as he stood on the pavement wondering what the hell he should do; and, of course, that was the intention. Bart's disheveled head suddenly appeared in the back window—he had been lying on the floor hidden under a blanket, and his broadly grinning face left no doubt about the fact that he considered it an unusually successful joke.

“You really looked shit scared!” he announced in glee.

“You little bastard,” said Münster. “Would you like a hamburger?”

“And a Coke,” said Bart.

Münster drove toward the center of town in search of a suitable
establishment for the provision of such goods, and decided that his son would have to grow several years older before it was appropriate to take him along on a similar assignment.

“There's an in-depth article about your case in the
Allgemejne
today” said Winnifred Lynch. “Have you read it?”

“No,” said Reinhart. “Why should I do that?”

“They try to make a profile of the perpetrator.”

Reinhart snorted.

“You can make a perpetrator profile only in the case of a serial killer. And even then it's a decidedly dodgy method. But it sounds good in the press, of course. They can write and make up stories about murderers who don't exist. A green flag for any fantasies you like. Much more fun than reality naturally.”

Winnifred Lynch folded up the newspaper.

“Isn't it a serial killer, then?”

Reinhart looked hard at her over the edge of his book.

“If we go and take a bath, I can tell you a bit more about it.”

“Good that you have such a big bathtub,” commented Winnifred ten minutes later. “If I do take you on, it'll be because of the bathtub. So don't imagine anything else. Okay?”

“The murderer?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I don't know,” said Reinhart, sinking down further into the bubbles. “Of course it's possible that there's going to be a series, but it's almost impossible to judge after only two. And then, what kind of a series is it? Continue this series of numbers: one, four … then what? There are all kinds of possibilities.”

“And the former National Servicemen have nothing useful to say?”

Reinhart shook his head.

“I don't think so. Not the ones I spoke to, in any case. But the key might well be there somewhere, even so. It's so damned easy to hide something, if you want to. If there's something you don't want stirred up, then all you do is say nothing about it. It was thirty years ago, after all….”

He leaned his head against the edge of the bath and thought for a while.

“It's going to be extremely difficult to solve this case, no matter what. If there are no more after these two, that is. There's a bit of difference in the work input, I can assure you.”

“What do you mean?”

Reinhart cleared his throat.

“Well, hypothetically Let's say I make up my mind to kill somebody, anybody at all. I get up at three o'clock on a Tuesday morning. I get dressed in dark clothes, hide my face, go out and find a suitable place, and wait. Then I shoot the first person to come past and go home.”

“Using a silencer.”

“Using a silencer. Or I stab him with a knife. What chance is there of my being found out?”

“Not a lot.”

“Next to none. But if I do it even so, how many working hours do you think it costs the police? Compared with the hour it took me.”

Winnifred nodded. Stuck her right foot into Reinhart's armpit and started wiggling her toes.

“That's nice,” said Reinhart. “When war breaks out, can't we just come here and lie like this?”

“By all means,” said Winnifred. “But what about a motive? That's what you're getting at, I take it?”

“Exactly,” said Reinhart. “It's because of this imbalance that we have to look for a motive. A single thought on the right lines can save thousands of working hours. So you can see why I'm such a trump card at the police station.”

She laughed.

“I can imagine it. But you haven't had that thought on the right lines in this case, is that it?”

“Not yet,” said Reinhart.

He found the soap and started lathering her legs.

“I think it's a wronged woman,” said Winnifred after a while.

“I know that's what you think.”

He thought for half a minute.

“Would you be able to fire those other two shots?”

She thought about it.

“No. Not now. But I don't think it's impossible. You can be driven to it. It's hardly inexplicable, let's face it. On the contrary, in fact.”

“A madwoman who goes around shooting the willies off all men? With good reason?”

“For specific reasons,” said Winnifred. “Specific causes. And not just any old willies.”

“Perhaps she's not mad, either?” said Reinhart.

“Depends on how you look at it, I suppose. She's been wronged, as I said. Affronted, perhaps…. No, let's change the subject, this is making me feel unwell.”

“Me too,” said Reinhart. “Shall I do the other leg as well?”

“Yes, do that,” said Winnifred Lynch.

·  ·  ·

Van Veeteren had arranged to meet Renate for a while on Sunday afternoon, but when he got up at eleven o'clock, he was pleased to discover that his cold had gotten so much worse that he had a perfectly good excuse for canceling the meeting. All his respiratory passages seemed to be blocked by something thick and slimy and more or less impenetrable, and the only way in which he could breathe at all was by walking around with his mouth wide open. For a few painful seconds he observed what this procedure looked like in the hall mirror, and he recognized that today was one of those days when he ought not to force his presence on another human being.

Not even an ex-wife.

It was bad enough putting up with himself, and the day progressed in a fashion reminiscent of a seal traveling through a desert. At about ten in the evening he slumped over the kitchen table with his feet in a bubbling footbath and a terry towel draped over his head—in the vain hope that the steam from an aromatic concoction in a saucepan would banish the slime in his frontal cavities. It certainly had an effect: fluid poured out from every orifice, and he was covered in sweat.

Bugger this for a lark, he thought.

And then the telephone rang.

Van Veeteren recalled Reinhart's early morning call the other day and formed a rapid but logical conclusion: if I didn't wish to receive any calls, I ought to have pulled out the plug.

I haven't pulled out the plug, and therefore I'd better answer.

“Hello. Enso Faringer here.”

For a few blank seconds he hadn't the slightest idea who Enso Faringer was.

“We met down at Freddy's and talked about Maasleitner.”

“Yes, of course. What do you want?”

“You said I should give you a call if I remembered anything.”

“And?”

“I've remembered something.”

Van Veeteren sneezed.

“Excuse me?”

“It was nothing. What have you remembered?”

“Well, I remember Maasleitner talking about that music.”

“What music?”

“Somebody had telephoned him over and over again, and played him a tune, it seems.”

“A tune?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“I don't know. It had annoyed him, in any case.”

A diffuse memory began to stir in the back of the chief inspector's brain.

“Hang on a minute. What kind of music was it?”

“I don't know. He never said what it was—I don't think he knew.”

“But why did this person call him? What was the point?”

“He didn't know. That's what irritated him.”

“Was it a man or a woman?”

“I don't think he said. I think it was just music, all the time.”

Van Veeteren thought for a moment.

“When exactly was this?”

Faringer hesitated.

“The same day we went to Freddy's, I think. When he was shot. Or maybe the day before.”

“And this call was repeated several times?”

“Yes, it seems so.”

“Did he try to do anything about it?”

“I don't know.”

“And he didn't know who it was behind it?”

“I don't think so. No, he was angry, mainly because he'd no idea what it was all about.”

Van Veeteren thought again.

“Mr. Faringer,” he said eventually. “Are you sure you remember this correctly? You're sure you haven't got hold of the wrong end of the stick?”

He could hear some coughing at the other end of the line, and when the little German teacher's voice returned, there was no doubt that he was rather offended.

“I know I was slightly drunk, but I can remember this as clear as day.”

“I understand,” said Van Veeteren. “Is there anything else you remember?”

“Not yet,” said Faringer. “But if I do, I'll be in touch again.”

“I'll probably be in touch again as well,” said the chief inspector before hanging up.

Well, what the devil does this mean? he wondered as he poured the liquid from the footbath and the concoction of herbs down the sink.

And what was it he almost remembered that somebody had said a few weeks ago?

It was late on Tuesday afternoon before they succeeded in tracking down all the remaining thirty-three staff NCOs (which was their official military status) of the 1965 vintage. Thirty-one of the group were still alive, the youngest of them now fifty the eldest fifty-six. Five of them turned out to be resident abroad (three in other European countries, one in the United States, one in South Africa), fourteen were still in the Maardam police district, and the remaining twelve in other parts of the country.

Heinemann was in charge of this side of the investigation and kept a register of all those concerned. He also made an effort to systematize the results of the interrogations, without finding an entirely successful method. When he handed the documentation over to Van Veeteren at about half past six in the evening, he devoted some considerable time to an attempt to enlighten his boss about all the cryptic signs and abbreviations, but in the end they both realized that it was a waste of time.

“You can explain it orally instead when we meet tomorrow to run through the current situation,” Van Veeteren decided. “It'll be just as well for everybody to get the information at the same time.”

·  ·  ·

There had been a rumor to the effect that the chief of police himself intended to turn up for this meeting, which was due to take place at ten a.m. on Wednesday; but when the time came he was unable to attend. Whether this was due to something important that had cropped up, or the desire to repot some plants in his office, was something nobody was in a position to say—but the fact that February is the most sensitive month for all plants was something that Reinhart at least was fully conversant with.

“Eight wise heads is a good score,” he said. “If we had Hiller's as well, that would reduce the number to seven. Let's get started.”

Heinemann's summary—with questions and interruptions and comments—took almost an hour, despite the fact that there were no real links or justifiable suspicions to report.

Opinions of Ryszard Malik had been more or less unanimous. A rather reticent, somewhat reserved person; friendly, reliable, without any striking characteristics or interests—that seemed to be the general impression. His social intercourse with his fellow students had been restricted to a group of four or five, generally speaking; but even among those there was nobody able to give any interesting tips of use to the investigation.