Woman with Birthmark (23 page)

“She's probably gone northward,” said Reinhart. “She might have taken a train. We'll be talking to a guy tomorrow who thinks he might have been in the same coach as she was. He rang just before I left.”

“Any more?”

Reinhart shrugged.

“I don't know. We don't know about the motive, either.”

She thought for a moment.

“You remember I said it would be a woman?”

“Yes, yes,” said Reinhart, with a trace of irritation.

“A wronged woman.”

“Yes.”

She stroked his thigh with her fingers.

“There are many ways of wronging a woman, but one is infallible.”

“Rape?”

“Yes.”

“She was ten years old at most when they left the Staff College,” said Reinhart. “Can't be more than forty now—what do you think … ?”

“No, hardly,” said Winnifred. “Awful, but there's something of that sort in the background, believe me.”

“Could well be,” said Reinhart. “Can't you look a bit deeper into your crystal ball and tell me where she's hiding as well? No, let's forget this for a while. What was the book you read?”

“La Vie Devant Soi,”
said Winnifred.

“Emile Ajar?”

“Yes.”

“And?”

“I think I need a child.”

Reinhart leaned his head against the tiles and closed his eyes. Sensed two completely irreconcilable images flashing through his brain, but it all happened so quickly that he never managed to grasp their significance.

Assuming they had any.

“May I give you one?” he said.

“If you insist,” she said.

“She could well have taken that train,” said Münster. “He seems pretty sure of what he's talking about.”

“Good,” said Van Veeteren. “Where did she go to?”

Münster shook his head.

“Alas,” he said. “He got off in Rheinau, but she didn't. So … somewhere farther north than Rheinau, it seems.”

“There must be more people who saw her?” said Reinhart.

“You'd have thought so. In any case, there was somebody else in the same coach, according to Pfeffenholtz.”

“Pfeffenholtz?”

“Yes, that's his name. There was somebody else there all the way from Maardam. A skinhead. And it seems he was still there after Rheinau.”

“Wow,” said Reinhart.

“Dark glasses, Walkman, and a comic book,” said Münster. “Between eighteen and twenty about. Eating candy all the time, and a cross tattooed over his right ear.”

“A swastika?” Reinhart asked.

“Evidently,” sighed Münster. “What should we do? Send out a ‘wanted’ notice?”

Van Veeteren grunted.

“A swastika and candies?” he said. “Good God, no. Somebody else can go chasing after neo-Nazi puppies. But this Pfeffen-berg …”

“Holtz,” said Münster.

“Okay, okay, Pfeffenholtz. He seems to know what he's talking about?”

Münster nodded.

“Okay,” said Van Veeteren. “Go back to your office and pick out the ones from the Staff College who might fit in. The ones who live north of Rheinau, in other words. Fill me in when you've done that.”

Münster stood up and left the room.

“Have you thought about the motive?” Reinhart wondered.

“I've spent the last month wondering about that,” muttered the chief inspector.

“Really? What do you reckon, then? I'm starting to think in terms of rape.”

Van Veeteren looked up.

“Go on,” he said.

“It must be a woman looking for revenge for something or other,” Reinhart suggested.

“Could be.”

“And rape would fit the bill.”

“Could be,” repeated the chief inspector.

“Her age makes it a bit complicated, though. She must have been very young at the time. Only a child.”

Van Veeteren snorted.

“Younger than you think, Reinhart.”

Reinhart said nothing and stared into thin air for a few seconds.

“My God,” he said eventually. “That's a possibility, of course. Sorry to be so thick.”

“No problem,” said Van Veeteren, and reverted to leafing through papers.

DeBries arrived at the same time as Jung and Moreno.

“Can we take mine first?” said deBries. “It won't take long.”

Van Veeteren nodded.

“She's not in criminal records.”

“A pity” said Reinhart. “Still, as things are now it probably wouldn't help us if we knew who she was. But it could be interesting, of course.”

“Innings?” said Van Veeteren when deBries had left the room.

“Well,” began Moreno. “We've fixed the restaurant. He had a meal at Klumm's Cellar out at Loewingen, but we haven't managed to find out who he was with.”

“Good,” said Van Veeteren. “That was no doubt the intention. How carefully have you checked?”

“Extremely carefully,” said Jung. “We've spoken to all his colleagues and friends, and all his relatives up to seven times removed. None of them was out with Innings that Friday evening.”

The chief inspector broke a toothpick in half and looked pleased. As pleased as he was able to look, that is, which wasn't all that much. Nevertheless, Reinhart noticed his state.

“What's the matter with you?” he asked. “Don't you feel well?”

“Hmm,” said Van Veeteren. “But you have the witness from the restaurant, I gather?”

“Only a waiter,” said Moreno. “And he didn't get to see much of the person Innings was with. A man aged between fifty and sixty, he thought. He had his back toward the waiter most of the time, it seems.”

“You can bet your life he had,” said Van Veeteren. “Anyway take those photographs of the group who attended Staff College together. The new ones, of course. Ask him if he thinks he can point anybody out.”

Jung nodded.

“Do you think Innings was eating with one of them, then?”

Van Veeteren looked inscrutable.

“Moreover,” he said, “be a bit generous when you ask him if he can identify anybody. If he's not sure, get him to pick out the three or four most likely even so.”

Jung nodded again. Moreno looked at the clock.

“Today?” she asked hopefully. “It's half past four.”

“Now, right away,” said Van Veeteren.

Shortly after Van Veeteren got home, Heinemann phoned.

“I've found a connection,” he said.

“Between what?”

“Between Malik, Maasleitner, and Innings. Do you want me to tell you about it now, over the phone?”

“Fire away,” said Van Veeteren.

“Okay,” said Heinemann. “I've been going through their bank
records, all three of them—it's more awkward than you might think. Some banks, Spaarkasse, for instance, have some routines that are highly peculiar, to say the least. It can't be much fun dealing with financial crimes, but I suppose that's the point….”

“What have you found?” asked Van Veeteren.

“Well, there's a similarity.”

“What, exactly?”

“June 1976,” explained Heinemann. “On June eighth, Malik takes out ten thousand guilders from his savings account at the Cuyverbank. On the ninth, Maasleitner draws an identical amount from the Spaarkasse. The same day, Innings is granted a loan by the Landtbank for twelve thousand….”

Van Veeteren thought for a moment.

“Well done, Heinemann,” he said eventually. “What do you think that implies?”

“You can never be sure, I suppose,” said Heinemann. “But a spot of blackmail might not be out of the question.”

Van Veeteren thought again.

“You see where we need to go from there, I suppose?”

Heinemann sighed.

“Yes,” he said. “I suppose I do.”

“You need to check and see if anybody else in the group made a similar transaction at the same time.”

“Exactly,” said Heinemann. “I'll start on that tomorrow.”

“Don't sound so miserable,” said the chief inspector. “You can start with the ones who live up north—with a bit of luck that might be enough. Have a word with Münster, and he'll give you a list tomorrow morning.”

“All right,” said Heinemann. “I have to go and look after the kiddies now.”

“Kiddies?” asked the chief inspector in surprise. “Surely your children are grown up now?”

“Grandchildren,” said Heinemann, and sighed again.

Well, well, Van Veeteren thought as he replaced the receiver. We're getting there, the noose is tightening.

He fetched a beer from the fridge. Put on the
Goldberg Variations
and leaned back in his armchair. Placed the photographs on his knee, and began to study them with a slight feeling of admiration.

Thirty-five young men.

Five dead.

Three of them thanks to this woman's efforts.

This woman in a dark beret and a light overcoat, with the trace of a smile on her face. Leaning over a gravestone. A birthmark on her left cheek—he couldn't recall seeing that on the picture the artist had drawn, but then it was no bigger than a little fingernail.

Klaarentoft had made an excellent enlargement in any case, and as Van Veeteren sat in his chair, studying her face, he suddenly had the impression that she had raised her gaze a little. Peered over the top of the gravestone and looked at him.

A bit cheeky, he thought. A little bit roguish even, but at the same time, serious.

And very, very determined.

How old are you, in fact? he wondered.

And how many do you have on your list?

But then everything came to a dead stop.

The distinct feeling that the investigation, which was now entering its second month, had been on the right track over the weekend—caused by such developments as the discovery of Maria Adler in the house in Deijkstraa and the visit to the restaurant by Innings—turned out to have been a little hasty Instead of gathering pace and culminating in the capture of the man—or rather, woman—behind the three murders, the sum of all the efforts being made gave the impression of something slowly but inevitably trickling out into the sand.

“We're drifting out to sea,” asserted Reinhart on Thursday morning. “Land behind!”

And the chief inspector was forced to agree. The so-called train line—suggesting that Maria Adler had traveled on the 1803 northbound train from Maardam Central Station—could be neither confirmed nor disproved. Pffeffenholtz's evidence, strong as it was, was uncorroborated. No candy-eating skinhead had been in contact. Nor any other passenger. Perhaps Miss Adler had indeed traveled to somewhere north of Rheinau, or perhaps not.

But even if she had, as Reinhart pointed out, what the devil
was there to say that she was still there? And that her move was because of the intentions imputed to her?

Nothing at all, he announced, answering his own rhetorical question.

On Tuesday afternoon, in accordance with Van Veeteren's instructions, Jung and Moreno interviewed Ibrahim Jebardahad-dan again in Leuwingen. The young Iranian was at first very doubtful about his ability to pick out anybody, but when Moreno explained that it was especially important and serious, he picked out five people from the Staff College group that he thought might possibly have been sitting opposite Innings on the Friday in question.

When the chief inspector saw the list of names, he did not appear pleased with the result, and so Jebardahaddan was summoned to the police station on Thursday for another session with the photographs.

This time the five photographs he had picked out were mixed with not only some of the others from the group, but also pictures of about thirty other people who had nothing to do with the case, and the witness managed to pick out only two of the five faces he had chosen previously. Both of them lived south of Maardam, one of them as far distant as South Africa.

After Ibrahim Jebardahaddan had left the police station on unsteady legs, Moreno remarked that this was the first time she had seen him wearing glasses. The general consensus was that the restaurant line was a dead end, at least for the present.

As for contact with the as-yet-not-murdered (to use Rein-hart's term), the group had now been reduced to twenty-five (excluding those living abroad), and on Wednesday the investigation team was due to hear the results of the latest interviews
with them. The judgment that Karel Innings had been a person roughly halfway between Malik and Maasleitner was more or less universal. A generally liked, sociable, and positive young man, most of them recalled. With no strong links to either Malik or Maasleitner.

As far as anybody could remember.

Some of the group had declined to make any comment at all for some unknown reason, according to the local police authorities. Some had also declined the offer of some form of protection or guarding, and three had been impossible to contact because they were not at home.

The link between the three victims was thus restricted to the banking transactions in June 1976, unearthed by Heinemann, but as yet he had been unable to find any similar transactions entered into at that time by any other members of the group.

“Much more awkward than you would think,” he explained when he reported to the Friday meeting reviewing the case. “Generally speaking we have to get specific permission for every single account we want to investigate.”

“Ah well,” sighed the chief inspector. “We know whose interests they're looking after. Where are we now, then? What does Reinhart have to say?”

“We haven't moved from the same spot,” said Reinhart. “It's nine days since Innings was murdered. And a week since Miss Adler flew the coop from Deijkstraa. She's had plenty of time to hide herself away, that's for sure.”

“I think she's finished,” said Rooth.

“I don't,” said Reinhart.

“We could keep a special eye on those on Münster's list,” suggested deBries. “The ones who live up north, that is.”

“Do you think it's worth the effort?” asked the chief inspector.

“Of course it isn't,” said Reinhart. “The only thing we ought to be concentrating on at the moment is a long, free weekend.”

“Is there anybody who objects to Inspector Reinhart's proposal?” asked Van Veeteren wearily, whereupon a gravelike silence descended on the senior investigative team.

“Okay,” said Van Veeteren. “Unless anything special turns up, we'll assemble again here on Monday morning at nine o'clock. Don't forget that we have over two thousand more tips to work through.”