He nodded in satisfaction and returned to his own car. It would do no harm if it was a few days before anybody came across the body. The more days, the better, in fact. He wrapped the pipe in a newspaper and put it into the carrier bag together with the money.
Started the engine and drove off.
He kept his bushy black hair, his beard and his blue-tinted spectacles on until he had passed that fateful concrete culvert on the main road to Boorkhejm, and half an hour later when he was pouring himself a tot of Glenalmond in a plain glass tumbler in his kitchen at home, he offered up thanks to those Sobran tablets — those little blue miracle pills that had kept him calm and in complete control of himself all afternoon. And the previous few days as well. It was not a disadvantage to have a certain degree of insight into one’s own mind and its need of psychopharmacological drugs, he thought. No disadvantage at all.
He emptied his glass.
Then took a long, relaxing bubble bath.
Then he phoned Vera Miller.
TWO
6
It was a certain Andreas Fische who found the body.
It happened on the Thursday afternoon. Fische had been visiting his sister in Windemeerstraat out at Dikken (a pain in the neck if truth be told, but blood is thicker than water and she had managed to marry a pretty wealthy lawyer), and he had taken a shortcut over the car park at the Trattoria Commedia, stopped for a pee, and noticed that there was something lying in among the bushes.
Fische finished peeing, and looked around. Then he bent aside some thorny branches and peered into the undergrowth. There was a man lying there. A body. A dead body.
Fische had seen dead bodies before. On several occasions during his rather colourful life; and having overcome his first impulse — which was to get the hell out of there — he allowed his better and more practically inclined self to take command. He checked once again to make sure there was nobody around in the dimly lit car park, then bent down carefully and moved aside several more branches — making a point of not treading on the soft, damp soil and leaving a footprint — he was no wide-eyed innocent — and took a closer look at the corpse.
Quite a young and rather tall man. Lying on his stomach with his arms stretched out peacefully over his head. Dark-green jacket and blue jeans. The side of his face turned upwards was covered in dark, dried-out stains, and Fische guessed that somebody had put an end to the man’s life by hitting him on the head with something hard and heavy. Just like that, without any fuss. He’d seen that sort of thing before, even if it was quite a few years ago now.
Checking once again to make sure there was nobody about, he leaned down and started going through the man’s pockets.
It only took a few seconds, and his booty was rather meagre. He established this fact after putting a couple of hundred metres between himself and the body. A battered wallet containing no credit cards and a small amount of cash in notes and coins. An almost empty packet of cigarettes and a lighter. A bunch of four keys and a business card from some pharmaceutical company or other. That was all. He threw it all into a litter-bin apart from the money and the cigarettes, made a rapid calculation of his current financial situation and decided that despite everything, he had a decent sum to get by on. Together with the hundred he’d wheedled out of his sister, he had more than enough for a night out at the pub, and he was feeling quite pleased with himself when he boarded the number twelve tram to the town centre. Without a ticket, of course. Andreas Fische hadn’t bought a tram ticket for the past thirty years.
Klejne Hans, on the northern side of Maar, was one of his favourite haunts. That was where Fische usually spent the evening when he had enough money to paint the town red, and that was where he headed for that drizzly Thursday in November. The place was almost empty — it was only just turned six, and he sat by himself at one of the long tables with a beer and a whisky. Tried to make the drinks last as long as possible while he smoked the dead man’s cigarettes and wondered whether he ought to inform the police straight away. One has duties as a citizen, as they used to say. Then three or four of his friends turned up, and as usual Fische put the matter off until later. No point in rushing things, he told himself. God didn’t create hurry, and there’s no way the bloke’s going to come back down to earth to create it now.
And when Fische tumbled into his rickety bed in the run-down lodging house in Armastenstraat at getting on for one o’clock in the morning, he had various things buzzing around inside his head — but none of them was a dead body in a deserted car park out at Dikken, nor did he hear any stern voices from what remained of his withering conscience.
The next day, a Friday, was wet and miserable. He spent most of it in bed, feeling ill and hungover; and so it was Saturday morning before Andreas Fische rang the police from one of the free public telephones at Central Station, and asked them if they were interested in a tip-off.
Yes, of course they were, he was told — but they were not prepared to pay for it, he should be quite clear about that from the start.
Fische considered the odds briefly. Then his sense of civic responsibility took over and he informed them without charge that there was a dead body out at Dikken. In the car park near the golf course, outside that restaurant whose name he bloody well couldn’t remember.
Murdered, if he wasn’t much mistaken.
When the police officer began asking for his name and address and all that stuff, Fische had already hung up.
‘How long?’ asked Chief Inspector Reinhart.
‘Hard to say,’ said Meusse. ‘I can’t say for certain yet.’
‘Have a guess,’ Reinhart suggested.
‘Hmm,’ said Meusse, glancing at the body on the large marble slab. ‘Three or four days?’
Reinhart considered.
‘So Tuesday or Wednesday, then?’
‘Tuesday,’ said Meusse. ‘But that’s pure speculation.’
‘He looks pretty worn out,’ said Reinhart.
‘He’s dead,’ said Meusse. ‘And it’s been raining.’
‘Yes, yes,’ said Reinhart.
‘But I expect you’ve been indoors, Chief Inspector?’
‘Whenever possible,’ said Reinhart. ‘Only two blows, you said?’
‘Only one is needed,’ said Meusse, running his hand over his own bald head. ‘If you know where to aim.’
‘And the murderer knew that?’
‘Perhaps,’ said Meusse. ‘But it’s only natural that you would hit him about there. Near his temple. The other blow, on the back of his head, is more interesting. Rather more professional. Broke the cervical spine. You can kill a horse with a blow like that.’
‘I’m with you,’ said Reinhart.
Meusse went over to the washbasin in the corner of the room and washed his hands. Reinhart remained by the slab, contemplating the dead body. A man in his thirties, it seemed. Perhaps slightly younger. Quite thin and quite tall — 186 centimetres, Meusse had said. The man’s clothes were lying on another table and seemed to be very ordinary: blue jeans, a green half-length windcheater, a thin and quite worn-out woollen jumper that had once been light grey and still was here and there. Simple brown deck shoes.
No identity papers. No wallet, no keys, no personal belongings at all. Somebody had emptied his pockets, that was obvious.
Somebody had killed him by hitting him on the temple and the back of his head with a blunt instrument, that was equally obvious.
Ah well, Reinhart thought. Here we go again.
Meusse cleared his throat and Reinhart gathered it was time for him to go and leave the pathologist in peace. Before leaving he took a final look at the dead man’s face.
It was long and thin. Rather haggard with a broad mouth and heavy features. Long hair, pulled back from behind the ears and tied in a ponytail at the back of his head. Dark stubble and a little scar just underneath his left eye. There was something familiar about him.