He picked up the receiver and said his name.
For a few seconds he could hear the presence of the caller, then the line went dead.
Okay, he thought. Let’s hear what you have to say for yourself next time.
He rolled over in bed, adjusted the pillows and tried to sleep.
He succeeded very well. When he was woken up by the telephone ringing again, it was a quarter past eleven.
During the brief moment that passed before he picked up the receiver he began to realize that something had gone wrong. That things had not proceeded as he had expected. What had happened? Why had his opponent waited for several hours? Why had…?
It was Smaage.
‘How are you, brother?’
‘Ill,’ he managed to say.
‘Yes, I’d heard. The priest curses and the doctor’s ill. What sort of an age are we living in?’
He laughed in a way that made a rasping noise in the receiver.
‘Just a touch of flu. But it looks as though I’ll be off all week.’
‘Oh dear. We thought we’d have a little session on Friday evening, as I said. Will that be too much for you? At Canaille.’
He coughed and managed to produce a few heavy breaths. They sounded pretty convincing.
‘I think so,’ he said. ‘But I’ll be back at work by Monday.’
When he had said that, and when Smaage had expressed the hope that he’d soon be well again and hung up, it occurred to him that his prognosis had been one hundred per cent wrong.
Whatever happened — no matter how the balls rolled over the next few days — one thing was absolutely clear. Only one. He would not be going to the hospital on Monday.
He would never set foot inside the place again.
There was something extremely attractive about that thought.
24
‘Right then, let’s kick off this brainstorming session,’ said Reinhart, placing his pipe, tobacco pouch and lighter in a neat row on his desk in front of him. ‘I’ll be meeting The Chief Inspector this evening, and as you can well imagine he’s more than a little interested in how things are going for us. I intend to give him a tape recording of this run-through, so that I have at least something to deliver. So think about what you say.’
He pressed the button and started the recorder running. Immediately, Van Veeteren’s presence was felt in the room as something almost tangible, and a respectful silence ensued.
‘Hmm, okay,’ said Reinhart. ‘Tuesday, the eighth of December, fifteen hundred hours. Run-through of the cases Erich Van Veeteren and Vera Miller. We’ll take them both even though the connection is far from definite. Let’s hear your comments.’
‘Have we anything more than Meusse’s guess to suggest that the two cases are linked?’ wondered deBries.
‘Nothing,’ said Reinhart. ‘Apart from the fact that our esteemed pathologist’s guesses can usually be taken as dead-certs. But I suppose even he will have to get something wrong one of these days.’
‘I doubt that,’ said Moreno.
Reinhart opened the zip of his tobacco pouch and sniffed the contents before continuing.
‘Let’s start with Vera Miller,’ he suggested. ‘We have no new technical evidence relevant to her case. Unfortunately. Apart from the time being slightly more precise now. She evidently died some time between a quarter past two and half past three in the early hours of Sunday morning. It’s difficult to say when she was dumped out there at Korrim. If she’d been there long, you might think she ought to have been discovered sooner: but we must remember that the body was hidden and there’s hardly any traffic on those roads. Not at the weekend at this time of year, at least. Oh, we’ve spoken again to Andreas Wollger
… That is, Inspector Moreno and I have spoken to him. The gods should be aware that he didn’t have much to tell us — like everybody else we’ve talked to. But at least he’s begun to admit that their marriage wasn’t entirely idyllic. I think in fact that he’s only just beginning to realize that… He seems to be a bit handicapped when it comes to the labyrinth of love — something else the gods ought to be aware of.’
‘He was thirty-six when he got married,’ Moreno explained. ‘He doesn’t seem to have had many relationships earlier in his life. If any.’
‘A peculiar chap,’ said Rooth.
‘Yes, he gives the impression of being a bit of a wimp,’ said Reinhart, ‘and I don’t think he’s the type who would commit murder on grounds of jealousy. I suspect he’d prefer to cut off his testicles and give them away as a peace offering if a crisis arose. He has an alibi until one o’clock on Sunday morning, which was when he left a restaurant he’d been at with a good friend… And who the hell has an alibi for the small hours?’
‘I do,’ said Rooth. ‘My fish are my witnesses.’
‘So we can clear him of any suspicion — for the moment, at least,’ said Reinhart.
‘How many does that leave, then?’ asked deBries. ‘Assuming we can exclude Rooth as well.’
Reinhart looked as if he had a retort on the tip of his tongue, but he glanced at the tape recorder and suppressed it.
‘Perhaps Rooth can tell us what Vera Miller’s mother had to say for herself,’ he said instead.
Rooth sighed.
‘Not so much as the shadow of a chicken’s fart,’ he said. ‘To make things worse she was a domestic science teacher and hysterical about calories. I wasn’t even allowed to eat my Danish pastry in peace and quiet. Not my type.’
‘We all feel sorry for you,’ said deBries. ‘But I have to say I think we’re missing something in this connection.’
‘What?’ said Moreno.
‘Well, listen to this,’ said deBries, leaning forward over the table. ‘We know that Vera Miller was two-timing her wimp of a husband. We know there must be some other bloke involved. Why don’t we make an appeal via the media? Issue a Wanted notice for the bastard in the newspapers and on the telly — I mean, somebody must have seen them out together… If they’d been carrying on for four or five weekends in a row.’
‘That’s not certain,’ said Reinhart. ‘I can’t believe that they were prancing around in pubs and restaurants. Or canoodling in public. Besides… Besides, there are certain ethical aspects we must take into account.’
‘You don’t say?’ said deBries. ‘And what might they be?’
‘I know that this isn’t your strong point,’ said Reinhart, ‘but we haven’t had it confirmed yet. The infidelity, that is. Her mythical courses might have been a cover for something quite different — though I have to say I find it hard to understand what. But in any case, she’s been murdered, and I think we ought to be a bit careful about adding adultery to her obituary. In public, that is… Bearing in mind the feelings of her husband and other next of kin. I wouldn’t want to be held responsible if it turned out that we’d hung her out to dry in the press, but then discovered that she was innocent.’
‘All right,’ said deBries with a shrug, ‘I give in. Did you say it was a matter of ethics?’
‘Exactly,’ said Reinhart, pressing the pause button on the tape recorder. ‘I think it’s time for a coffee break now.’
‘We don’t have much that’s new regarding Erich Van Veeteren either, I’m afraid,’ said Reinhart when froken Katz had left the room. ‘A few interviews of course, mainly conducted by Detective-Sergeant Bollmert who’s been out and about. Anything of interest?’
‘Not as far as I can see,’ said Bollmert, fiddling nervously with a propelling pencil. ‘I’ve spoken to welfare officers and probation officers and old friends of Erich’s, but it was mainly people who haven’t had much to do with him in recent years. He’d been walking the straight and narrow, as you know. I mentioned Vera Miller to the ones I spoke to as well, but nobody took the bait there either.’
‘Yes, that seems to be the way things are,’ said Reinhart. ‘No winning tickets. You’d think that somebody — just one individual would do — would be acquainted with both our victims… from a purely statistical point of view. We’ve spoken to hundreds of people, for God’s sake. But no…’