“Would you like to see the basement as well?”
She nodded, and Mrs. Simmel puffed and panted her way down the stairs.
In June, when the first one happened, she’d been on vaca tion, in a cottage in Tatrabergen with Janos. She’d broken up with him since then or, at least, put him on ice for a while.
She’d missed the first few days of the case, and even if she would never admit it, she’d been fretting about it quite a lot.
Heinz Eggers. She’d read up all about it and put herself in the picture, obviously. She’d taken part in the interviews and interrogations, drawn up outline plans and solved puzzles for the rest of the summer. But they hadn’t gotten very far, she’d be the first to admit. After all those hours of interrogation and consideration, they didn’t seem to have dug up even the slight est trace of a suspicion. Both she and Kropke had put in so many hours of overtime by now that they must be due at least an extra month’s leave-and she might very well cash that in, provided they’d caught the confounded Axman first.
That’s what they called him in the newspapers: the Axman.
And now he’d struck again.
Her mind elsewhere, she allowed Mrs. Simmel to take her on a guided tour of the house. Six rooms and a kitchen, if she’d counted right-for two people. Only one now. Plus a pool room and a sauna in the basement. Patio and a large garden facing the woods. Real estate? Bausen had given Kropke the task of digging around in Simmel’s company. Not a bad idea, in fact. Surely they would come up with something?
But what the hell could Heinz Eggers and Ernst Simmel possibly have in common?
Needless to say, that was the question that had been nag ging away inside her ever since they’d found Simmel’s body, but so far she hadn’t even managed to hit on anything even resembling a guess.
Or was there no link?
Was it just somebody killing at random?
No motive whatsoever, and a month in between strikes.
When he felt like it. Were they really dealing with a madman, as some people maintained? A lunatic?
She shuddered, and the hairs on her arms were standing on end.
Get a grip, Beate! she thought.
She took her leave of Grete Simmel on the paved drive leading into the garage, taking a shortcut over the neat lawn and step ping over the low fence in faux jacaranda. She settled down behind the wheel of her car and considered indulging in a ciga rette, but suppressed the urge. She’d gone over four weeks without now, and it would take more than an axman to break her willpower again.
On the drive, watching her pull away, stood Mrs. Simmel, a black, depressed colossus who had suddenly been saddled with a house worth a million, a sailing boat and a real estate com pany.
And God only knows what else.
The visit had made several things clearer, in any case.
It wasn’t Grete Simmel who had been lying in wait with the ax in the woods; Beate Moerk was 100 percent certain of that.
She was almost equally sure that the victim’s wife hadn’t hired anybody else to carry out the attack, and that she wasn’t involved in any other way. Needless to say, there was no solid evidence to support any of these conclusions; but why not bow to your good judgment and intuition when you’ve been blessed with an abundance of both qualities?
Why not indeed?
She checked her watch. There was time to go home and take a shower before meeting that big shot, she decided.
4
Van Veeteren parked outside the overgrown garden. He checked that the number on the flaking mailbox by the gate really did correspond with the address he’d noted down on the scrap of paper in his breast pocket.
Yes. No doubt about it.
“You’ll find it all right,” Chief of Police Bausen had said.
“There’s nothing else like it anywhere in town!”
That was certainly no exaggeration. He got out of his car and tried to peer over the tangled spirea hedge. It looked dark inside there. Heavy, sagging branches of unpruned fruit trees coalesced at about chest height with the undergrowth-grass three feet high, untamed rosebushes and an assortment of prickly tendrils of obscure origin-to form a more or less impenetrable jungle. There was no sign of a house from the pavement, but a well-worn path suggested that one might pos sibly be in there somewhere. A machete would have been use ful, thought Van Veeteren. The guy must be crazy.
He opened the gate, crouched down and ventured in. After only ten yards or so he found a house wall ahead of him, and a thickset man came to meet him. His face was rugged, wrinkled and heavily tanned-it had been a hot summer. His hair was sparse, almost white, and Van Veeteren thought he looked as if he’d already been retired for some time. Nearer seventy than sixty, if he’d had to guess. But still pretty fit and strong, obvi ously. His clothes indicated that he was on home territory slippers, worn corduroy trousers and a checked flannel shirt, with the sleeves rolled up.
“Chief Inspector Van Veeteren, I presume?”
He held out a muscular hand. Van Veeteren shook it and admitted his identity.
“Forgive the garden! I started growing roses and a few other things a couple of years ago, but then I got fed up.
Bloody amazing how fast everything grows! I haven’t a clue how to sort it out.”
He flung out his arms and smiled apologetically.
“No problem,” said Van Veeteren.
“Anyway, welcome! Come this way; I have a few easy chairs around back. I take it you drink beer?”
“Masses,” said Van Veeteren.
Bausen contemplated him over the edge of his glass and raised an eyebrow.
“I hope you’ll forgive me,” he said. “I felt I had to check out what sort of bastard I’d been stuck with. Before we meet the rest of them, that is. Cheers!”
“Cheers,” said Van Veeteren.
He lounged back in the wicker chair and emptied half the bottle in one gulp. The sun had been blazing down all the way there; only an hour, it was true, but he could feel his shirt cling ing to his back.
“I think the heat wave’s going to last.”
The chief of police leaned forward and tried to find a patch of sky through the network of branches.
“Yes,” said Van Veeteren. “Nice place you’ve got here.”
“It’s not bad,” said Bausen. “Once you get out into the jungle, you’re usually left in peace.”
That seemed to be the case. A well-camouflaged little nest, no doubt about it. The dirty yellow awning; straggly clumps of bushes and roses climbing up the trellis; the thick, tall grass; a heavy scent of late summer, the buzzing of bees… And the patio itself: nine or ten square yards, stone flags and a frayed cord mat, two battered wicker chairs, a table with newspapers and books, a pipe and tobacco. Next to the house wall was a lopsided bookcase full of tins of paint, brushes, plant pots, sev eral magazines and other bric-a-brac… a chessboard pro truded from behind a few crates of empty bottles. Oh yes, there was something special about this place. Van Veeteren produced a toothpick and stuck it between his front teeth.
“Sandwich?” asked Bausen.
“If I can have something to wash it down with. This is empty, I’m afraid.”
He put the bottle on the table. Bausen knocked out his pipe and rose to his feet.
“Let’s see if we can do something about that.”
He disappeared into the house, and Van Veeteren could hear him pottering about in the kitchen and singing something that sounded reminiscent of the bass aria from The Pearl Fishers.
Well, he thought, clasping his hands behind his head. This could have got off to a worse start. There’s life in the old boy yet!
Then it struck him that there could hardly be more then eight or ten years between them.
He declined Bausen’s offer of accommodation most reluc tantly, indicating that he might well change his mind later on.