Woman with Birthmark (17 page)

The clock on St. Mary's Church had just struck nine when she came out. She looked left and right several times, then walked rapidly across the square, passing by only a few meters away from him, and boarded one of the buses waiting outside the station.

Biedersen hesitated for a few seconds before getting on the bus as well. He gathered it was going to Hengeloo, and bought a ticket to there. He had barely sat down six rows behind her when the bus shuddered and set off.

It struck him how close he had been to losing her altogether, how small the margins were in this kind of situation, and he made up his mind to stick as close to her as possible in the future.

They were traveling westward. Through Legenbojs and Maas. There were about a dozen passengers on board from the start, mostly elderly women with bulging plastic carrier bags and shopping baskets in their laps. A few youths were half asleep at the back with personal stereos turned up so that the high notes hovered over the muffled rumble of the engine like a cloud of buzzing insects. The driver occasionally stopped to pick up new passengers; a few got off as well, but not many—until after twenty-five minutes or so they came to the square at Berkinshaam,
when more than half the passengers stood up and prepared to alight.

He lost sight of her for a moment as a pair of old women stood up and fumbled around with their bags and baskets, and when they finally moved away he saw to his dismay that her seat was empty.

He stood up and scanned the front part of the bus, but it was clear that she must have left via the doors next to the driver. When he tried to look out through the side windows, all he could see was his own unrecognizable face and other items reflected from inside the bus.

As panic welled up inside him, he made a dash to get off the bus. Emerged into the dimly lit square and was lucky enough to see—what he assumed was, at any rate—her back as she turned into a narrow alley between high, dark gable ends.

He slung his bag over his shoulder and rushed to follow her; when he came to the narrow entrance, once again he just caught sight of her back turning into another alley some twenty meters ahead. He swallowed. Realized that it was hardly a good idea to go careering after her now. He also managed to overcome his agitation and slow down his pace. He put his hand into his bag to check that the pistol was still there. He released the safety catch and left his hand in the bag.

When he came to the inadequate streetlamp on the corner, he found that what she had turned into was a twenty-meter-long cul-de-sac culminating in a fire wall. The tall building on the left appeared to be a factory or a warehouse, without a single illuminated window. Nor could he make out an entrance or doorway on that side of the street; the only entrance of any description was a portal leading into the four- or five-story-high property on the right-hand side. He investigated and discovered that it was
the entrance to a sort of tunnel running through the building and emerging into an inner courtyard, dimly lit by lights from various windows.

Biedersen paused. Took a few steps into the tunnel, then paused again. An unpleasant smell was forcing its way into his nostrils. Something rotten, or at least damaged by damp. He listened, but all he could hear was rain falling on a tin roof somewhere in the courtyard. And the faint sound of a television set evidently standing close to an open window. On one of the upstairs floors facing the street, presumably. A cat appeared and rubbed up against his legs.

Oh hell, he thought, clutching the pistol.

And he acknowledged that the feeling bubbling up inside him was fear, nothing else.

Pure, unadulterated fear.

When Innings got home after the restaurant meal with Biedersen, the first thing he did was to hide the bag containing the gun in a chest of drawers full of odds and ends in the garage. He knew that the risk of Ulrike or the children finding it there was more or less negligible, and he hoped sincerely that it would remain hidden forever. Or at least until he had an opportunity to get rid of it.

His mind felt like a playground for a mass of the most divergent thoughts and ideas. As he sat on the sofa with Ulrike, watching a Fassbinder film, he tried to assess the most likely outcome of—or escape from—this nightmare. It seemed even harder now than it had been before. His thoughts were being tossed around like a straw in the wind, and he soon began to wish that he could simply switch off his brain. For a little while at least, in order to gain some breathing space.

When it came to wishes and hopes, the situation was more straightforward. The most welcome development from his point of view would be for Biedersen to simply sort the whole business out by himself. Track down this madwoman and render her harmless, once and for all. Without any involvement on Innings's part.

In view of what he discovered at the restaurant—regarding the telephone music and so on—surely this was not an altogether unlikely outcome?

Innings came back to this conclusion over and over again, but his assessment of it, like the rest of his thoughts, kept swinging back and forth between hope and something that was most reminiscent of deepest despair.

In fact—and, gradually, this became the only consolation he could find—there was only one thing he could be absolutely sure of.

Something would happen soon.

This period of suspense would come to an end.

In a few days—a week, perhaps—it would all be over.

Any other outcome was unthinkable.

Given these hopes—which Innings began to cherish even before he went to bed on Friday evening—there is no denying that it was very stressful to have to accept that nothing in fact happened.

On Saturday and for half of Sunday they had visitors—Ulrike's brother with his wife and two children—and the practical things that needed to be done and the conversation helped to keep the worry at a distance. For part of the time, at least. But things became much worse after they had left, and peace and quiet returned to the house on Sunday afternoon.

It was worse still on Monday, which floated by in a cloud of listlessness and worry. That night he had barely a wink of sleep, and when he left the editorial office at about four on Tuesday afternoon, he had the distinct impression that several of his colleagues were wondering about the state of his health.

He had told Ulrike that he was a bit upset because of the murder of two of his former colleagues when he was a National Serviceman, and she seemed to accept this as a reasonable explanation for his occasional preoccupation.

And then, on Tuesday evening, the telephone call came at last from Biedersen. Something might be about to happen, he said, but there was no reason for Innings to do anything. Not yet, at least.

That was all he said. Promised to ring again later. And even if this call more or less corresponded to what Innings had been hoping for deep down, it increased his nervous tension even more—with another sleepless night as the outcome.

Needless to say, his sensitive stomach reacted accordingly; when he phoned in sick on Wednesday morning at least he had a legitimate physical excuse.

Perhaps he also felt emotionally calm when he settled down with his newspaper after Ulrike and the kids had left, but it didn't last long. He realized that subconsciously he'd been hoping to find something in the paper—the discovery of a woman killed in mysterious circumstances up in Saaren, or something like that—but, of course, there wasn't a single word about any such incident. Besides, it was obvious that the morning papers wouldn't have had time to carry such news. Biedersen had phoned at about half past eight. No matter what had happened next, the papers wouldn't have had time to print it. Innings had been working in the trade for nearly thirty years, so he should know.

The broadcast journalists would have had a better chance. He switched on the radio and didn't miss a single bulletin all morning. But there was nothing. Not a single word.

Something might be about to happen, that's what Biedersen had said.

What?

I'll be in touch.

When?

Minutes passed. As did hours. It wasn't until five minutes past twelve that the telephone rang.

It was the police. For one confused second this fact almost caused him to lose control of himself. He was on the point of coming out with the whole story, but then he realized that, of course, this was how he would be informed of what had happened.

If this woman really had been found shot up in Saaren, and there was even the slightest of links to the other murders, this was naturally how the police would react.

They would be in touch with all thirty-one and try to winkle out if anybody knew anything.

He came to this conclusion while talking to the police officer, who asked to come see him, and then when he sat waiting, he was pretty confident that he hadn't given himself away.

He had expressed surprise, obviously. Why would the police want to question him again? Routine questions? Okay, fair enough.

But while he waited, the other possible scenario dawned on him.

Biedersen might not have succeeded in killing the woman.

If the opposite had been the case—if it was Biedersen who had been killed—well, there was every reason for the police to come visiting.

Every reason. He could feel his guts tying themselves in knots as this possibility became a probability.

Even more reason, in fact, than if Biedersen had succeeded in what he had set out to do, and when he opened the door and let in the woman who identified herself as a detective constable, he was convinced he knew why Biedersen hadn't been in touch later, as he had promised.

I must keep a straight face, he thought. No matter what has happened, I must keep a straight face.

It felt like clutching at straws. Thin and worn-out straws. But he knew that there wasn't anything else to clutch at.

She sat down on the sofa. Held her notebook at the ready while he served up tea and cookies. She didn't seem to be about to come out with something devastating, and he succeeded in calming down a bit.

“Help yourself!”

He flopped down into the armchair opposite her.

“Thank you. Well, there are a few questions we'd like you to answer.”

“Has something happened?”

“Why do you ask that?”

He shrugged. She took a tape recorder out of her bag.

“Are you going to record this? That's not what happened last time.”

“We all have our own ways of working,” she said with a little smile. “Are you ready?”

He nodded.

“Okay,” she said, switching on the tape recorder. “Do you recognize this music?”

If there was anything that Chief Inspector Van Veeteren hated, it was press conferences.

The similarity with sitting in the dock during a trial was striking, and the kind of defense you managed was a bit too reminiscent of a guilty man's dodgy evasions. There was something about the very atmosphere on these occasions that seemed to him to express both the general public's latent (and now often openly expressed) fear of the violence inherent in modern society, and its lack of faith in the ability of the police force to put an end to it.

It was just the same this time around. The conference room on the first floor was full to overflowing with journalists and reporters, sitting, standing, taking photographs, and trying to outdo one another in the art of asking biased and insinuating questions.

He had been press-ganged to accompany Hiller and sit behind a cheap, rectangular table overloaded with microphones, cords, and the obligatory bottles of soda water that for some unfathomable reason were always present whenever high-ranking police officers made statements in front of cameras—Reinhart
maintained that it had something to do with sponsorship, and it was not impossible that he was right.

Reinhart was often right.

However, the sponsorship Van Veeteren received from the chief of police was virtually nonexistent. As usual, once the questions started to come, Hiller leaned back in his chair with his arms crossed and a sphinxlike expression on his face. He was only too happy to leave all the answers to the chief inspector, who, he was careful to stress, was the person responsible for the investigation. Hiller was merely the administrator and coordinator.

But he provided the introductory information himself, formally dressed in his midnight-blue suit and emphasizing each point by means of forceful tapping on the table by a silver ballpoint pen.

“The murder victim is a certain Karel Innings,” he explained. “According to what we have been able to ascertain, he was shot dead in his home in Loewingen at some time between half past twelve and half past one yesterday, Wednesday. Innings happened to be alone in the house, being home sick with a stomach complaint, and so far we have no definite clues concerning the killer. The victim was hit by a total of five bullets—three in the chest and two below the belt—and the weapon appears to have been a Beringer-75. There are clear indications that the gun was the same one as was used in two previous cases during the last few weeks … the murders of Ryszard Malik and Rickard Maasleitner.”

He paused for a moment, but it was obvious that he had more to say, and no questions were fired at him yet.

“It is thus possible that we are dealing with a so-called serial killer; but there is also a clear link between the people who have lost their lives so far. All three are members of a group who spent
their military service in the years 1964 and 1965 at the Staff College here in Maardam, an institution that was later relocated to Schaabe. Our efforts are currently concentrated on trying to discover the precise significance of this link, and of course also providing the best possible level of protection for the remainder of that group.”

“Have you any clues?” interrupted a young woman from the local radio station.

“All questions will be answered shortly by Chief Inspector Van Veeteren, who is sitting here beside me,” Hiller explained with a smile. “But before I throw the meeting open to the floor, just let me point out that you will be given access to all the information we possess at present, and I sincerely hope that we are all on the same side in the hunt for the ruthless murderer we are evidently up against. Thank you.”