“Hmm,” said Beate Moerk. She stirred her coffee and scraped at another blob of candle wax with her nail.
“Do you mind if I make a confession?” she said after a pause.
“Go ahead,” said Munster.
“I think… think it’s exciting, being in the middle of it all. I mean-”
“I know,” said Munster.
“I realize my first thought ought to be that it’s terrible and awful, and I should be out there hunting down this mad Axman because he’s a horrific criminal, and because honest people need to be able to sleep at night. And I do think that, of course, but… but I have to admit that I quite enjoy it as well.
That’s pretty perverse, don’t you think?”
Munster smiled.
“I don’t think so,” he said.
“You think the same!” exclaimed Beate Moerk, and sud denly, for one giddy fraction of a second, something happened inside Munster’s head-the unfeigned look on her face as she said it, the fresh, slightly childlike expression in her face genuine, pure; he didn’t really know why, but it gave him a jolt, in any case, and reminded him of something that… that belonged to another chapter of his life. Something he’d already read. Enjoyed and given in to. Of course, he ought to have been expecting it and, needless to say, he was. There had been something about that walk through the town, the beer at The Blue Ship, their conversation in between the interviews-playful and almost wanton-something that was so banal and so obvious that he quite simply didn’t dare put it into words.
“Well,” he said. “I have thought… in the beginning, that is. You get your fingers burned.”
It wasn’t that she was trying to lead him on. On the con trary, really. Presumably, he tried to convince himself, it was the knowledge that he was married, the knowledge that Synn existed that had caused her to let herself go a bit, allowed him to come close to her-because she knew she was safe.
Safe? What about him, though?
“A penny for your thoughts.”
He realized that she was looking at him again, and that his mind must have wandered off for a few seconds.
“I… don’t know really,” he said. “The Axman, I suppose.”
“What does your wife think about your job?”
“Why do you ask?”
“Answer first.”
“What Synn thinks about my job?”
“Yes. That you have to be away from home. Now, for instance.”
“Not much.”
“Did you quarrel before you left for here?”
He hesitated.
“Yes, we quarreled.”
Beate Moerk sighed.
“I knew it,” she said. “I’m asking because I want to know if it’s really possible to be a police officer and be married as well.”
“Possible?”
“Tolerable, then.”
“That’s an old chestnut,” said Munster.
“I know,” said Beate Moerk. “Can you give me a good answer, though, as you’ve been in the job for some time?”
Munster thought it over.
“Yes,” he said. “It must be possible.”
“As easy as that, is it?”
“It’s as easy as that.”
“Good,” said Beate Moerk. “You’ve taken a weight off my chest.”
Munster coughed and wished he could think of something sensible to say. Beate Moerk was watching him.
“Maybe we should change the subject?” she said after a while.
“That would probably be safest,” said Munster.
“Shall we look more closely at my private thoughts? About the Axman, that is.”
“Why not?”
“Unless you think it’s too late, of course.”
“Too late?” said Munster.
The only thing that’s preventing her from seducing me is herself, he thought. I hope she’s strong enough… I wouldn’t want to look myself in the eye tomorrow morning.
“Would you like any more wine?”
“Good God, no,” said Munster. “Black coffee.”
27
“Melnik has gallstones,” said Kropke.
“What in hell’s name…?” said Van Veeteren. “I’m not sur prised, actually.”
“That’s why the report’s been delayed,” explained Bausen.
“He phoned from the hospital.”
“Did he phone himself?” asked Van Veeteren. “Good for him… Well, what shall we do today, then?”
The chief of police sighed.
“You tell me,” he said. “Continue gathering information, I suppose. Before long every single citizen of Kaalbringen will have had a say in this case. Not a bad collection of documents.
Perhaps we can try to sell them to the folklore archives when we’ve finished-”
“If we ever finish, that is,” muttered Kropke. “How’s it going with the ax?”
Van Veeteren put a cigarette and a toothpick on the table.
“Not very well,” he said. “Although I don’t suppose it mat ters much. I doubt that we’ll find the shop that sold it-if they sell gadgets like that in shops, anyway. And as for asking some shop assistant to recall who bought an ax a dozen or fifteen years ago, assuming it was the man himself who did, no, I think we’ll give the ax trail a rest.”
“What about Simmel’s children?” wondered Inspector
Moerk, looking up from her papers.
“Led us nowhere,” said Bausen. “They haven’t had much contact with their parents for the last ten years or so, neither him nor her-Christmases and big birthdays, and that’s about it. You could say that puts them in a good light. Only visited them once in Spain as well.”
Van Veeteren nodded and put the toothpick in his pocket.
Kropke stood up.
“Anyway,” he said, “I think I’ll go to my office and write a few summaries. Unless the boss has anything else for me to do.”
Bausen shrugged.
“We’ll just keep plodding on, I suppose,” he said, with a look in Van Veeteren’s direction.
“Yes,” said Van Veeteren, lighting the cigarette. “For
Christ’s sake, don’t think this is anything unusual. It’s hard going, we have no sensible leads, no real suspicions, only a hell of a lot of information, but things will start moving sooner or later. It’ll come if only we have a bit of patience.”
Either that or it won’t, he thought.
“Did Melnik say when he’d be ready with the report?” asked Moerk.
“Not precisely,” said Kropke. “A few more days, he thought.
He seems to be a persnickety bastard-”
“You can say that again,” said Van Veeteren.
“OK,” said Bausen. “Let’s get going with… whatever it is we’re busy doing!”
Hmm, what am I busy doing? wondered Munster.
The village of Kirkenau was not large. A railroad station, a clump of houses in a valley by the river Geusse that had formed a longish lake in this part of the rolling, fertile country side. Van Veeteren couldn’t see any shops, or a post office or a school, and the gloomy-looking stone church by the roadside looked as godforsaken as the rest of the place.
The road to Seldon Hospice was in the other direction, up from the valley through a belt of sparse coniferous woods; ten minutes by car, roughly, and when he parked outside the walls, he wondered if it was really an old sanatorium. The air felt fresh and oxygen rich, and it was no problem resisting the temptation to smoke a cigarette before going in through the gates.
Erich Meisse was tall and thin, and baldness had set in early, making it difficult to estimate his age. Probably no more than thirty-five, in any case, Van Veeteren thought; they would have the exact age somewhere if it should prove to be of any impor tance. Meisse shook hands, gave the detective chief inspector a broad smile and invited him to take a seat in one of the Kremer armchairs in front of the French windows.
“Tea or coffee?” he asked.
“Coffee, please,” said Van Veeteren.
The doctor left the room. Van Veeteren sat down and looked out over the grounds: a large, well-tended and slightly undulating lawn with gnarled old fruit trees dotting it here and there, raked gravel paths and solid-looking white-painted wooden benches. Next to the wall a few little greenhouses; a gardener or someone of the sort was pushing a wheelbarrow full of compost or something of the sort, and farther away, to the left, two nurses dressed in black emerged from a low yel low wooden pavilion with rather a different vehicle, more like a wagon.