Renate was just as numb and apathetic as she had been when she went in. He wondered what tablets she was on, and how many.
A few minutes’ conversation with Meusse as well. Neither of them had performed especially well. Meusse had looked as if he were about to burst into tears, and he didn’t usually behave like that.
Soon afterwards he had introduced Jess to Ulrike. It was a bright spot in all the darkness, a meeting that went exceptionally well. Only half an hour in the living room at Klagenburg with a glass of wine and a salad, but that was enough. What mattered was not the words themselves, as had been said before… But there was something between women that he would never understand. Between certain women. When they said their goodbyes out in the hall, he had felt almost like a stranger: he was able to smile in the midst of all the grief.
Then he had rung Marlene Frey and arranged a meeting. She had sounded pretty much in control of herself, and said he was welcome to call round any time after five o’clock. She would be at home, and was looking forward to speaking to him. There was something she wanted to say, she said.
Looking forward? Something she wanted to say?
And now he was sitting here with feet colder than his beer. Why?
He didn’t know. Knew only that it wouldn’t work today, and after he had finished his beer he asked if he could use the telephone. Stood there between the ladies and gents toilets surrounded by a faint smell of urine, and rang his dead son’s living fiancee to tell her that something had cropped up.
Would it be okay if he came tomorrow instead? Or the day after?
Yes, that was okay. But she had difficulty in hiding her disappointment.
So did he as he left Ockfener Plejn and started walking back home. Disappointment and shame.
I don’t understand myself any more, he thought. It’s not me that it’s all about. What am I scared of, what the hell is happening to me?
But he went straight home.
Reinhart was woken up by Winnifred whispering his name. And placing a cold hand on his stomach.
‘You’re supposed to be putting your daughter to bed, not yourself.’
He yawned, and tried to do some stretches for a couple of minutes. Then he eased himself cautiously out of Joanna’s narrow bed and out of the nursery. Flopped down on the sofa in the living room instead, where his wife was half-lying under a blanket at the other end.
‘Let’s hear it,’ she said.
He thought for a while.
‘Triple-headed and Satanic,’ he said. ‘Yes, that’s exactly what it is. Would you like a glass of wine?’
‘I think so,’ said Winnifred. ‘As we know, the Devil is triple-headed in Dante already, so all is in order.’
‘In Dante’s time women who knew too much were burnt at the stake. Red or white?’
‘Red. No, it was later than Dante. Well?’
Reinhart got up and went into the kitchen. Poured out two glasses and came back. Lay down on the sofa again and started his narration. It took quite a while, and she didn’t interrupt him a single time.
‘And the three heads?’ she said when he’d finished.
Reinhart took a drink before answering.
‘In the first place,’ he said, ‘we haven’t the faintest idea who did it. That’s bad enough in routine cases.’
‘I’m familiar with that,’ said Winnifred.
‘In the second place it’s The Chief Inspector ’s son who’s the victim.’
‘Nasty,’ said Winnifred. ‘And the third?’
Reinhart paused once more to think.
‘In the third place, he was presumably mixed up in something. If we find a killer, we shall presumably also find that Erich Van Veeteren was mixed up in something illegal. Yet again. Despite what his girlfriend says… That’s unlikely to be something to warm the cockles of his father’s heart, don’t you think?’
‘I understand,’ said Winnifred, swirling her wine round in its glass. ‘Yes, it’s three-headed all right. But how certain is it that he was involved in something illegal? That doesn’t necessarily have to be the case, surely?’
‘Certain and certain,’ said Reinhart, tapping his forehead with his middle finger. ‘There are signals in here that can’t be ignored. Besides… besides, he’s asked to be left alone face to face with the murderer when we eventually find him. The Chief Inspector, that is. Hell’s bells… But I think I understand him.’
Winnifred thought for a moment.
‘It’s not a nice story,’ she said. ‘Could it be much worse, in fact? It sounds almost as if it’s been stage-managed in some way.’
‘That’s what he always says,’ said Reinhart.
11
The police’s appeal for help in the Dikken case was plastered all over the main newspapers in Maardam on Tuesday, exactly a week after the murder, and by five o’clock in the afternoon ten people had rung to say they had been at the Trattoria Commedia on the day in question. Jung and Rooth were delegated to look into the tip-offs, and eliminated six of them as ‘of secondary interest’ (Rooth’s term), as the timing didn’t fit in. The remaining four had evidently been in the restaurant during the period 17.00–18.30, and all four were kind enough to turn up at the police station during the evening to be interrogated.
The first was Rupert Pilzen, a fifty-eight-year-old bank manager who lived in Weimaar Alle in Dikken, and had slipped into the Commedia and sat in the bar for a while. A little whisky and a beer, that’s all. A quarter past five until a quarter to six, roughly speaking. While he waited for his wife to prepare the evening meal — he sometimes indulged in that pleasure after a hard day’s work, he explained. When he had time.
He lifted up his spectacles while he studied the photographs of Erich Van Veeteren carefully. Then stated that he had never seen the man before, neither at the Commedia nor anywhere else, and he looked ostentatiously at his glistening wristwatch. He had presumably planned to pay another well-deserved visit to the bar, which was now becoming less likely a possibility, Jung reckoned.
Was there anything else he had noticed that he thought could be of relevance to the case?
No.
Any faces he recalled?
No.
Had there been any other customers in the bar?
Pilzen furrowed his brow and retracted his double chins into deep folds. No, he had been alone there all the time. Oh, hang on, a woman had come in just before he left. Short hair, about forty, probably a feminist. She’d sat at the bar and ordered a drink. Quite a long way away from him. With a newspaper, he seemed to recall. That was all.
‘If there had been a second bar, she would no doubt have sat there instead,’ said Rooth when herr Pilzen had waddled out on his unsteady legs. ‘You fat slob.’
‘Hmm,’ said Jung. ‘People get like that when they’ve too much money and no lofty interests. You’d become like that as well. If you had any money, that is.’
‘Go and fetch the next one,’ said Rooth.
The next one turned out to be a couple. Herr and fru Schwarz, who didn’t live in Dikken but had been visiting somebody they knew out there to discuss business. Exactly what was irrelevant. On the way back they had stopped off at the Commedia for a meal, a little luxury they granted themselves occasionally. Going out for a meal. Not just to Trattoria Commedia, but to restaurants in general. Especially now, when they had more or less retired. Yes indeed. Just once or twice a week.
They were both around sixty-five, and recognized Erich Van Veeteren immediately when Jung produced the photographs. He had been eating — a simple pasta dish, if fru Schwartz remembered rightly — at a table a few metres away from their own. They had ordered fish. Turbot, to be precise. Yes, the young man had been on his own. He had paid and left the restaurant at more or less the same time as they were being served their dessert. Shortly after six.
Were there any other guests while they were eating?
Just a young couple sitting further back in the restaurant section. They arrived shortly before six and probably ordered that same cheap pasta dish. Both of them. They were still there when herr and fru Schwartz had finished. Half past six or thereabouts.