Just to be left in peace.
But presumably it was not as easy as that. Van Veeteren wouldn’t be fooled. He sat with his bulky body crouched over the cassette recorder, looking like a threatening and malicious trough of low pressure. His face was crisscrossed by small blue veins, many of them burst, and his expression was reminiscent of a petrified bloodhound. The only thing that moved was the toothpick, which wandered slowly from one side of his mouth to the other. He could talk without moving his lips, read without moving his eyes, yawn without opening his mouth. He was much more of a mummy than a person made up of flesh and blood.
But beyond doubt a very efficient police officer.
It seemed not at all improbable that the chief inspector would know the extent of Mitter’s guilt long before Mitter himself did. Van Veeteren’s voice modulated between two quarter tones below low C. The higher one denoted a question, doubt, or scorn. The lower one stated facts.
“So, you have not achieved any more insight,” he stated.
“Would you kindly extinguish that cigarette! I have not come here to be poisoned.”
He switched on the cassette player. Mitter stubbed out his cigarette in the washbasin. Returned to his bed and stretched out on his back.
“My lawyer has advised me not to answer any of your questions.”
“Really? Do whatever you like, I shall unmask you anyway.
Six hours or twenty minutes, it makes no difference to me. I have plenty of time.”
He fell silent. Mitter listened to the ventilation system and waited. Van Veeteren did not move a muscle.
“Do you miss your wife?” he asked after several minutes.
“Of course.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“I couldn’t care less what you think.”
“You’re lying again. If you don’t care what I think, why are you telling me such idiotic lies? Use your brains, for God’s sake!”
Mitter made no reply. Van Veeteren reverted to the lower quarter tone.
“You know I’m right. You want to talk me into believing that you miss your wife. But you don’t, and you know I know you don’t. If you tell the truth, at least you don’t have to be ashamed of yourself.”
It was not a criticism. Merely a statement of fact. Mitter said nothing. Stared up at the ceiling. Closed his eyes. Perhaps it would be as well to follow his lawyer’s advice to the letter. If he didn’t say a word and avoided all eye contact, no doubt it would. .
But behind closed eyelids something different became clear.
Something different came instead and pinned him against the wall. There was always something.
Wasn’t Van Veeteren right after all?
The question nagged at him.
You don’t miss her, do you?
He was damned if he knew. She had entered his life.
Smashed down an open door, charged forward like a dark princess, and taken him into her power. Completely, totally.
Taken him, held on to him. . and then gone away.
Is that how it was?
No doubt it could be described like that, and once he’d started putting things into words, there was no going back.
Eva Ringmar turned up in the fourteenth chapter of his life.
Between pages 275 and 300, roughly. She played the role that overshadowed all others; the priestess of love, the goddess of passion. . And then she went away, would probably continue for a while to live a sort of life between the lines, but soon she would be forgotten. It had all been so intense that it was preor-dained to come to an end. An episode to add to the plot? A sonnet? A will-o’-the-wisp?
Finished. Dead, but not mourned.
End of valediction. End of contradiction.
The chief inspector’s chair scraped. Mitter gave a start. No doubt this was. . no doubt this must be the paralysis, the state of shock that was driving his thoughts into such chan-nels. That had crushed and demolished everything, made it impossible for him to grasp what had happened. To grasp what was happening to him. .?
“I’m right, am I not?”
Van Veeteren spat out a toothpick and took a new one from his breast pocket.
“Yes, of course. I grew tired of her and drowned her in the bath. Why should I miss her?”
“Good. Exactly what I thought. Now we’ll move on to something else. She had rather a beautiful body, did she not?”
“Why do you ask that?”
“I shall ask whatever questions I like. Was she strong?”
“Strong?”
“Was she strong? Will it be easier for you if I ask each question several times?”
“Why do you want to know if she was strong?”
“In order to exclude the possibility of her having been drowned by a child or an invalid.”
“She was not especially strong.”
“How do you know? Did you fight?”
“Only when we were bored.”
“Do you have a tendency to be violent, Mr. Mitter?”
“No, you don’t need to be afraid.”
“Can you give me six candidates?”
“Eh?”
“Six candidates who might have murdered her, if it wasn’t you who did it.”
“I’ve already named several possibilities.”
“I want to know if you remember the persons you mentioned.”
“I don’t understand why.”
“That’s irrelevant. I have no exaggerated ideas about your intelligence.”
“Thank you.”
“Don’t mention it. Now I’ll explain. Tell me if I’m going too fast for you. In seven out of ten cases it’s the husband who m i n d ’ s e y e
kills his wife. In two out of ten it’s somebody else in the circle of acquaintances.”
“And in the tenth?”
“It’s an outsider. A madman or some kind of sex killer.”
“So you don’t regard sex murderers as madmen?”
“Not necessarily. Well?”
“Our mutual enemies, you mean?”
“Or hers.”
“We didn’t have much of a social life. I’ve already talked about this.”
“I know. You stopped meeting most of your so-called friends when you got together. Well? If you give me six names, you can have a cigarette! Isn’t that how you do things at school?”
“Marcus Greijer.”
“Your former brother-in-law?”
“Yes.”
“Whom you hate. Go on!”
“Joanna Kemp and Gert Weiss.”
“Colleagues. Languages and. . social studies?”
“Klaus Bendiksen.”
“Status?”
“Close friend. Andreas Berger.”
“Who’s he?”
“Her former husband. One more?”
Van Veeteren nodded.
“Uwe Borgmann.”
“Your neighbor?”
“Yes.”
“Greijer, Kemp, Weiss. . Bendiksen, Berger, and. .
Borgmann. Five men and a woman. Why these particular people?”
“I don’t know.”
“Yesterday you gave me a list of ”-he picked up a sheet of paper and added up rapidly-“twenty-eight names. Andreas Berger is not on that list, but all the rest are. Why did you pick out this particular six?”
“Because you asked me to.”
Mitter lit a cigarette. The chief inspector’s advantage was not as great now, that could be felt clearly, although he might have slackened off a little in the hope that Mitter would give something away.
But what?
Van Veeteren glared sullenly at the cigarette and switched off the cassette recorder.
“I shall tell you how things stand. I have received the final medical report today, and it is completely out of the question that she could have killed herself. That leaves three possibilities. One: you killed her. Two: one of the people on your list did it, either one of the six whose names you have just given me, or one of the others. Three: she was the victim of an unknown murderer.”
He paused briefly, took the toothpick out of his mouth, and contemplated it. Evidently it was not quite completely chewed up, so he put it back between his front teeth.
“Personally, I think it was you who did it, but I admit that I’m not quite certain.”