“Well, that was that,” said the chief of police, flopping back onto the leather sofa. “I have to say that I prefer the newspaper boys.”
Van Veeteren agreed.
“Those well-oiled talking heads on TV make me vomit; they really do. Do you have a lot to do with that crowd?”
He kicked off his shoes and wiggled his toes rather cau tiously, as if he were uncertain whether or not they were still there.
“I can’t say that I have much of an interest in encourag ing them,” said Van Veeteren. “Let’s be honest; it’s reasonable that they should start forming their own ideas. But you handled them pretty well, I thought.”
“Thank you,” said Bausen. “But we’re definitely in trouble, no matter how you look at it. Has Hiller been onto you?”
Van Veeteren sat back in his chair behind the chief of police’s desk.
“Of course,” he said. “He wanted to send ten men from
Selstadt and another ten from Oostwerdingen-plus a team of forensic officers to run a fine-tooth comb over the jogging track.”
Bausen linked his hands behind the back of his head and gazed out of the window.
“A brilliant idea, in weather like this,” he said. “Does he want you to take charge completely? I mean, damn it to hell,
I’ve only got five days left. I’m quitting on Friday, no matter what. Made up my mind last night-I’m starting to feel like a football coach with a two-year losing streak.”
“The leadership question never came up,” said Van
Veeteren. “In any case, I’ve promised to clear up the whole thing by Friday.”
Bausen was distinctly skeptical.
“Glad to hear it,” he said, filling his pipe. “Let’s leave it at that. Have you spoken to her parents?”
“Mrs. Moerk, yes,” said Van Veeteren.
“Did it go well?”
“Not especially. Why should it?”
“No, it’s a long time since anything went well,” said Bausen.
“I’ve been watching TV,” said Synn. “They don’t give you very good marks.”
“That’s odd,” said Munster. “Something smells good; what are we eating?”
“Creole chicken,” said his wife, giving him a kiss. “Do you think she’s dead?” she whispered in his ear; there’s a limit to what the children of a police officer can be expected to put up with, after all.
“I don’t know,” he said, and just for a moment he once again felt the cold despair well up inside him.
“I saw Dad on TV,” said his daughter, interrupting their conversation and hugging his thigh. “I’ve been swimming in the rain.”
“You’ve been swimming in the sea, you idiot,” said his son.
“Have we any more sleeping pills?” wondered Munster.
Van Veeteren leaned back against the pillows and picked up the Melnik report yet again. He weighed it in his hand for a while, his eyes closed.
Horrific, he thought. Absolutely horrific.
Or perhaps painful might be a better word to describe it.
Hidden away somewhere in these damn documents was the answer, but he couldn’t find it. Thirty-four pages, a total of seventy-five names. He’d underlined them and re-counted twice-women, lovers and possible lovers, good friends, fellow students, colleagues, neighbors, members of the same golf club-right down to the most casual acquaintances, marginal figures who had happened to cross the path of Maurice Ruhme at one time or another. And then occasions-journeys, exams, final exams, appointments, parties, new addresses, congresses, cocaine withdrawal clinics-it was all there, noted down in those densely packed pages, neatly and comprehensively recorded in the dry prose of DCI Melnik. It was a masterpiece of detective work, no doubt about it; but even so, he couldn’t draw any conclusions from it. Not a damn thing!
What was it?
What the hell had Beate Moerk noticed?
Or did she know something that the others didn’t know?
Could that be it? Could it be that he hadn’t passed Borkmann’s point yet, despite everything?
He had her notebooks on his bedside table. Three of them, which he hadn’t gotten around to looking at yet.
It went against the grain. If they really did contain some thing of significance, why had the murderer left them there?
He’d had plenty of time, and didn’t seem to be a person who left anything to chance.
And if in fact she was still alive, despite everything, would he be intruding upon the holy territory of her private life?
Trampling all over her most sacred ground? Before he opened them, he couldn’t have the slightest idea about what she had confided to these notebooks. They hadn’t been meant for him to read, that was for sure.
Did the same reservations apply if she was still alive, come to that?
Yes, of course. Maybe even more so.
He shut his eyes and listened to the rain pattering down. It must have been raining for more than twenty-four hours, heavy and relentless, from an unremitting sky. Leaden and impenetrable. Did the weather never change in this godfor saken hole? he thought.
Whatever; it wasn’t a bad way of presenting what they were up against. Nonstop nudging at the same point. Marking time and never moving on. Waves in a dead sea…
The clock in St. Anna’s church struck twelve. He sighed, opened his eyes, then concentrated for the fourth time on the report from Aarlach.
40
“Well, what the hell was I supposed to do?” said Wilmotsen with a sigh, contemplating the layouts.
“All right,” said the editor. “If we’ve printed a double run, we might as well make everything double.”
The news of Inspector Moerk’s disappearance and the cir cumstances in which it took place had clearly proved to be a trial of manhood for Wilmotsen, the headline setter on de
Journaal. The opposing concepts Important Information and
Big Letters were simply not possible to reconcile within the space available, and for the first time in the newspaper’s eighty year-old history, they had been forced to prepare two separate placards.
In order not to abandon the duty to provide full informa tion, that is. In order not to undervalue the dignity of this hair raising drama that was now entering its fourth (or was it the fifth?) act in their peaceful hometown of Kaalbringen. next victim? it said on the first placard, over a slightly blurred picture of a smiling Beate Moerk.
Have you seen the red mazda? the public was asked on the second one, where it was also stated that baffled police appeal for help.
Inside the newspaper, more than half the space was devoted to the latest development in the Axman case. There were a mass of pictures: aerial photographs of the parking lot at the smoke house (with a white cross marking the spot where Moerk had left her car; since Sunday evening it had been securely garaged in the police station basement after being searched for eight hours by forensic officers from Selstadt) and another of the beach and the woods, and more photos of Moerk and of Bausen and Van Veeteren taken at the press conference. Van Veeteren was leaning back with his eyes closed, a position that was mainly reminiscent of a state of deep peace-a mummy or a yogi sunk deep inside himself was the first thing that came to mind. Far removed from the exertions and idiocies of this life, and perhaps one had to ask oneself if these people were really the ones best equipped to track down and put away crim inals of the caliber of the killer they were seeking in this case.
Indeed, had there ever been anything like this? A police inspector abducted, probably murdered! In the middle of an ongoing investigation! The question was justified.
The text was also variable in character, from the cool assessment in the leading article that the only honorable thing for the local council to do in the current circumstances was to accept responsibility for the Axman scandal and announce new elections, to the eloquent if divergent speculations about the lunatic, the madman (the ice-cold psychopath) or the terrorist
(the hired hit man from an obscure murderous sect)-and, of course, the still very popular theory featuring the perfectly normal, honest citizen, the respectable head of the family, the man in the same apartment block with a murky past.