Yes, that was a far more likely hypothesis.
Well? How far had she got with her meditations last night?
An important question, no doubt… She turned a few pages.
There!
What had Heinz Eggers been doing in that courtyard? That was the crux of the matter! Why, to be more precise, was this social outcast, this dropout, in the courtyard at 24 Burgislaan at one o’clock in the morning (or even later) on June 28, 1993?
She knew that was a good question, and even if it was not yet possible to give a definitive answer, she could draw a few conclusions, of course, without exceeding the limits of logic and without sinking into a morass of speculation. Anybody could do that.
First, even if Eggers was a confirmed drug user, one could assume that he was capable of a certain amount of rational thought-there was not a lot of poison in his veins that night; he had died more or less clean and sober (which one might hope, as a good Christian, would stand him in good stead when they started to assess his earthly life on the other side). In any case, Eggers could not possibly have just happened to be at
Burgislaan. He must have gone there for some reason. In the middle of the night. On June 28. Alone.
She took a sip of tea.
Second, none of the shady characters Eggers mixed with and she had questioned all of them very carefully-had the slightest idea what it was all about, not even his so-called girl friend, who was evidently sleeping like a log on the night in question after spending the previous day or days drinking vast amounts of wine. When she and Kropke had pressed them even harder, insisted that they make an informed guess, all they could come up with was that Heinz must have had a tip off. A hint. Information that somebody had something to sell… some goods. Drugs of some sort… heroin or amphet amines or even hash. Could be anything. Heinz took the lot.
And what he couldn’t stuff into himself, he would sell to little kids.
Third, ergo, conclusion: The Axman had arranged to meet him. Eggers was the intended victim and nobody else. The deed was carefully planned and prepared. No room for mad men or lunatics and similar epithets that certain people were throwing around. The only possible category of crime was first-degree murder! Not something done on the spur of the moment, no extenuating circumstances, no junkie who hap pened to hit another one on the head.
First degree. Not a shadow of a doubt about that, or about what kind of a person the Axman was-a meticulous, very self-assured criminal who was absolutely clear about what he was doing. Who didn’t appear to leave anything to chance, and who…
Fourth, who had a motive!
She leaned back in her chair and took a deep drink of tea.
A very single-minded murderer.
She moved on to the other notebook.
Ernst Leopold Simmel.
Not so much data here. Only a few pages. She simply hadn’t had the strength to note down the abundance of information Kropke had fished out from such sources as local council records and national registers and company registrations, bankruptcies, shell company dealings, commissions, tax returns, business trips and God only knows what else. She glanced quickly through what she had written, then concen trated on the questions at the end, the ones she’d scribbled down last night before going to bed. The trick was to ask the right questions, as old Wundermaas, her favorite at the police college in Genschen, never ceased to stress. Keep rephrasing them! he used to growl impatiently as he pinned you down with his piercing eyes. The answers can be harder to find than needles in a haystack! So make sure that you’re rummaging in the right haystack, at least!
Well, what were the questions to ask about Simmel? The right ones? She took another sip of tea and started thinking.
What was he doing when he went out last Tuesday evening? She knew that.
Why did he go via Fisherman’s Square? They could be pretty sure of that.
Why did he take the path through the municipal woods?
That was obvious.
When did the Axman begin following him? A good starting point, perhaps? What about the answers?
From near The Blue Ship? In all probability, yes. He must then have followed him all the way through town, more or less. Yes, what else could he have done?
What does that imply?
She raised her head and looked through the window. The town was stretched out before her. She switched off her desk lamp and suddenly Kaalbringen was illuminated, lit up by myriad lamps that come into their own when night falls. The main thoroughfares and features were clearly marked Bungeskirke, Hoistraat, Grande Place, the town hall, the tower blocks out at Dunningen… The Fisherman’s Friend. Yes, that must be the restaurant hanging up there on the edge of the cliff; she hadn’t thought of that before. He’d walked past all that; the murderer had walked all the way from The Blue Ship with his victim only a few yards ahead, and there must…
There must be witnesses.
That was as obvious as can be. People simply must have seen the Axman as he skulked in the shadow of the walls along
Langvej and Hoistraat, as he scampered down the steps, as he sneaked across Fisherman’s Square… There’s no other pos sibility. Whoever he is, he’s not invisible. What does that indi cate?
Just as obvious was that tomorrow they would open up their doors, and that famous detective the general public would come teeming into the police station; and sooner or later somebody-possibly several people-would turn up and prove to have seen him. They didn’t know it was him, obvi ously; but nevertheless, they’d seen him and now they were reporting that fact. They’d seen him full in the face, they had even said hello to him!
That was the way it was. She put the light on again. In a few days they’d have the name of the Axman hidden away among the mass of completely irrelevant information; and nobody would know which one it was, and there’d be no way of sepa rating the wheat from the chaff. Or would it be worth sifting through it all? Would anybody regard it as being worth the trouble? Kropke, perhaps.
Shit! she thought. Just the job for Kropke. If that’s how it’s going to turn out, we might as well acknowledge defeat in advance.
But surely there must be some shortcuts? Cribs? Some way of cutting through the mass of irrelevant data? There must be.
So what was the question she could write on the next page with quadruple underscoring?
It was already there.
“Connection???” it said. She stared at it for a while. Then she drew a triangle. Wrote the names Eggers and Simmel in two of the corners. Hesitated for a moment before putting Axman in the third. Contemplated her handiwork.
What on earth am I doing? she thought. What kind of rub bish is this? What childish drivel!
Nevertheless, the drawing certainly looked plausible. If only I had a computer, she thought, I’d simply feed Simmel into one end and Eggers into the other. The patterns that came up on the screen would sooner or later highlight a point, or produce a bundle of lines that indicated something that made sense. A single name would emerge from the chaos or what ever the mathematical term was, and it would be the name of the Axman. It would be as easy as that!
Oh, come on, thought Beate Moerk. I’m losing my grip! If there’s one thing in this world that I don’t understand, it’s com puters.
She closed her notebooks and saw from the clock that it was too late for that Italian film on the TV that she hadn’t really intended watching anyway. No, she was not one for the quantitative approach. Not for her the tedious search through haystack after haystack; Kropke could get on with that, with the help of Mooser and Bang. She had better things to do.
She looked up again, just in time to see the moon glide into the rectangle formed by her window. Full and round… Juno!