“Horrible!…” Du Barnstoker muttered behind me. “Now there won’t be a rematch… nothing…”
“Go back to your room,” I told him. “Lock yourself in and stay there until I call you… Wait a second. Was the note yours?”
“It was mine,” Du Barnstoker said. “I…”
“All right, we’ll deal with that later,” I said. “Go on.” I turned to the owner. “I need to take both your sets of keys. There aren’t any more, are there? Good. I need you to do something for me, Alek. Don’t tell our one-armed visitor about this. Make something up if he gets too restless. Look in the garage, see if all the cars are where they should be… And one more thing: if you see Hinkus, don’t let him leave—even if you have to use force. That’s it for now. I’ll be in my room. And not a word to anyone, understand?”
The owner nodded his head without saying anything and went downstairs.
Back in my room I set Olaf’s suitcase on the filthy table and opened it. Here, too, nothing seemed right. It was even worse than Hinkus’s dummy suitcase. At least that had had rags and books in it. But there was only one thing inside this flat and elegant suitcase, and that was some sort of device: a black metal box with a rough surface, some multicolored buttons, little glass panels with nickel-plated verniers on them… No underwear, no pajamas, no soap dish… I closed the suitcase, collapsed back into the armchair and lit a cigarette.
All right. What do we have here, Inspector Glebsky? Instead of deep sleep between clean sheets. Instead of getting up early so you can take a snow bath and ski around the whole valley. Instead of eating a good dinner and then indulging in a game of pool, and flirting with Mrs. Moses, and in the evening installing yourself comfortably by the fireplace with a glass of hot port. Instead of enjoying every day of your first real vacation in four years… What do we have instead of all this? We have a fresh corpse. Cold-blooded murder. Crime’s tedious confusion.
All right. At twenty-four minutes past midnight on the third of March of this year, I, Police Inspector Glebsky, in the presence of the good citizens Alek Snevar and Du Barnstoker discovered the dead body of one Olaf Andvarafors. The corpse was found in the room of the aforementioned Andvarafors; the room was locked from the inside, but the window was wide open. The body was lying facedown, stretched out on the floor. The head of the dead man was turned one hundred and eighty degrees in a brutal and unnatural fashion, so that, even though the body was lying facedown, its face was turned towards the ceiling. The hands of the dead man were extended towards, and had almost reached, the small suitcase that was the only piece of luggage belonging to the deceased. The victim’s right hand was clutching a necklace made out of wooden beads, which belonged, as is well known, to the good citizen Kaisa. The features of the victim were distorted, his eyes were wide, his mouth was open. An acrid chemical smell, either from carbolic or formalin, was noted around the mouth. No specific and unambiguous signs of a struggle were present in the room. The bed linen was rumpled, the closet door was open, the heavy chair meant in these rooms to stay at the table had been moved. Traces on the windowsill, or for that matter the snow-covered ledge, could not be found. No traces on the key itself (I took the key out of my pocket and examined it closely again)… Visual inspection of the key did not reveal any marks. Due to the lack of technicians, instruments and a lab, medical and fingerprint examination, as well as all other forms of specialized investigation are not possible (and will not be possible). Taking everything into account, death resulted from Olaf Andvarafors’s neck being twisted with enormous force and brutality.
I had no idea what to make of the strange odor coming from his mouth, not to mention how much strength the killer must have possessed in order to twist this giant’s neck without causing a long and noisy struggle that left behind many traces. But then as everyone knows, multiply two negatives together and you get a positive. It was possible to assume that Olaf had been first given poison, putting him in some sort of helpless state, at which point he was finished off in this brutal manner—a feat that would have required quite a bit of strength on its own, by the way. Yes, this hypothesis explained one thing, though in doing so it immediately raised new questions. Why finish off an incapacitated victim in such a violent and difficult way? Why not just stab him with a knife or wrap a rope around his neck, if worst came to worst? Rage, bloodlust, hatred, revenge?… Sadism?… Hinkus? All right, maybe it was Hinkus, although Hinkus looked too rubbery for that kind of exertion… Or maybe it wasn’t Hinkus, but whoever had written me the note about Hinkus?…
It didn’t make any sense. Why couldn’t this be about a fake lottery ticket or doctored account book? Those I could have sorted out quickly… This is what I had to do: I had to get in the car and drive until I reached Bottleneck; from there I would try to make my way on skis. I’d reach Mur and come back with the boys from homicide. I even stood up, but then I sat down again. It was a good way out, of course, but it would have had bad consequences. To leave everyone here to their own devices, giving the killer time and possibilities… to leave Du Barnstoker, who’d been threatened… And anyway, how was I supposed to make it work? You can imagine for yourself what an avalanche in Bottleneck would look like.
There was a knock on the door. The owner came in, carrying a tray with hot coffee and sandwiches on it.
“All the cars are here,’ he said, setting the tray down in front of me. “The skis too. There’s no sign of Hinkus anywhere. His coat and hat are up on the roof—but you’ve probably seen those already.”
“I have,” I said, as I sipped the coffee. “And what about the one-armed man?”
“He’s sleeping,” the owner said. He put his lips together and pressed his fingers against the seams of spilled glue on the table. “Yes… He’s asleep all right. A strange guy. His color has come back, and he already looks pretty good. I put Lel in with him, just in case.”
“Thank you, Alek,” I said. “You can go now, and let’s keep everything quiet. Let everyone sleep.”
The owner shook his head.
“That’s not going to work. Moses is already up, his light’s on… Well, I’ll be going, at least I can lock up Kaisa, she’s an idiot. Although she doesn’t know anything so far.”
“Keep it that way,” I said.
The owner left. I savored my coffee, pushing the sandwich plate away as I lit another cigarette. When was the last time I saw Olaf? I was playing pool, he was dancing with the kid. That was before the card game had broken up. And then they left, when the clock struck half past… something. Immediately after that Moses announced that it was time for him to go to bed. Well, it wouldn’t be hard to figure out when that was. But then, how long before that had I seen Olaf for the last time? Maybe not that long. All right, we’ll work on that. Now, what about Kaisa’s necklace, Du Barnstoker’s note, whether or not Olaf’s neighbors—Du Barnstoker and Simone—had heard anything…
I had just started feeling that I was putting some sort of a picture together, when suddenly I heard a dull, quite heavy thud against the wall bordering the memorial room. I groaned slightly in anger. I threw my jacket off, rolled up my sleeves and tiptoed carefully out into the corridor. One for the kisser, then a slap on each cheek, I thought briefly. I’ll give him a practical joke, whoever it was…
I opened the door and flew like a bullet into the memorial room. It was dark and I quickly flipped the light switch. The noise stopped suddenly; the room was empty, but I had the feeling that someone was in here. I examined the bathroom, the closet, the curtains. There was a dull moan behind me. I jumped towards the table and hurled a heavy armchair out of the way.