Jung nodded.
“Leopold bought that smallholding when he moved back there. That was after the athletics scandal.”
“Tell me about it,” said Jung. “I’m all ears.”
She sighed.
“Leo had a lot of problems when he was growing up,” she said. “I think he was a very lonely child. He had a hard time at school, found it hard to get on with his schoolmates, if I’ve understood it rightly. But you can no doubt find out more about this from others. He left school at twelve, in any case. Helped Dad in the smithy for a while, but then moved out to Obern. Just packed up and moved out: I assume there was some kind of row between him and Dad, but we never knew any details. He must have been fifteen, sixteen. It was 1952, if I remember rightly.”
“But things went well for him in Obern?”
“Yes, they did. He wasn’t afraid of work, and there were plenty of jobs at that time. Then he joined that athletics club and started running.”
“Middle distance,” added Jung, who was quite interested in athletics. “He was a brilliant runner—I’m a bit too young to have seen him, but I’ve read about him. Middle distance and upward.”
Mrs. Hoegstraa nodded.
“Yes, they were good years, in the mid-fifties. Everything seemed to be going well.”
“He held several records, didn’t he? National records, that is…For the fifteen hundred and three thousand meters, if my memory serves me correctly.”
She shrugged and looked apologetic.
“Forgive me, Inspector, but I’m not very good at sports. And in any case, he was stripped of them all afterward.”
Jung nodded.
“It was an enormous scandal, obviously. Banned for life—that must have been a bitter blow for him…very bitter. Had you any contact with him during those years?”
Mrs. Hoegstraa looked down.
“No,” she said. “We didn’t. Neither my brother nor I.”
Jung waited for a while.
“But we were not the only ones at fault. That’s the way he wanted it. He was a loner, always preferred to be on his own. He was always like that. Obviously, we would have preferred it to be different, but what can we do about it now? What could we have done then?”
She suddenly sounded weary.
“I don’t know,” said Jung. “Can you bear to go on a bit longer?”
She took another sip of tea, then continued.
“He left everything and moved back to Kaustin. Bought that house—he’d evidently managed to save a bit of money, from his work and his running. He was found guilty of taking drugs, and for…what do they call it? Breach of amateur regulations?”
Jung nodded again.
“I’ve read about it,” he said. “He collapsed during a five-thousand-meter race while going for the European record. He’d been promised a large sum of money if he broke it, on the quiet, of course…. And they discovered the amphetamine and quite a few other things when they got him to hospital. He was one of the first athletes to be caught for drugs offenses in the whole of Europe, I think. Ah well, please go on, Mrs. Hoegstraa.”
“Well, he bought that house, as I said. The Big Shadow, as they used to call it when I was a child, I don’t know why. It’s a bit off the beaten track, of course. It had been empty for a few years, and he got it cheap, I suppose. And then he got going with his chickens. He’d been working in that line while he was in Obern and had no doubt seen the potential. He could be quite enterprising when he put his mind to it. Had a good business sense, that sort of thing.”
She paused. Jung took a swig of beer, then asked:
“And then there was Beatrice?”
She suddenly looked very dejected.
“Do we really have to take that as well, Inspector?”
I don’t know, he thought. Besides, I’m not an inspector yet. Might never be, come to that.
“Just a few little questions?” he suggested.
She nodded and clasped her hands on her knees. He started to feel for the vocabulary book in his inside pocket, but decided yet again to do without it.
“Did you ever meet her?”
“Not when she was grown up. I knew her when she was a child in Kaustin. They were more or less the same age. In the same class at school.”
“But she hadn’t stayed put in the village either, had she?”
“No. She came back a few months after Leopold. She’d been living in Ulming for a time, I think. Left a man behind there as well.”
Jung pondered. Didn’t really know what he was trying to find out. What it was permissible to ask about, and what the point of it was. Surely this poor old lady couldn’t have anything to do with it? What was the justification for his sitting here and plaguing her with memories she’d spent all her life trying to forget?
There again, one never knows.
“Was she pretty?” he asked eventually, when the silence was starting to become too much for him.
She hesitated.
“Yes,” she said. “From a man’s point of view, she must have been very beautiful.”
“But you never saw her.”
“No, only in photographs. In the newspapers.”
He changed track. Completely.
“Why did you wait so long before contacting the police, Mrs. Hoegstraa?”
She swallowed.
“I didn’t know anything. Believe me, Inspector. I had no idea that anything had happened to him. We had no contact, none at all; you have to understand that.”
“Don’t you think it’s odd that your brother could be dead for eight months without anybody missing him?”
“Yes, I’m so sorry…. It’s terrible.”
“You never visited him when he was in prison?”
“Once, that first time. He made it very clear that he didn’t want any more visits.”
“And you respected that?”
“Yes, I respected that.”
“What about your brother?”
“Yes. He tried once after the second murder. Leo refused to see him.”
“Did you write to him?”
She shook her head.
“But you looked after the house for him?”
“No, not at all. I just looked after the key. We went there twice during the last twelve years. The second time was a week before he was due for release. He sent me a postcard asking me to leave the key there for him.”
“And that was all?” Jung asked.
“Yes,” she said, looking slightly embarrassed. “That was all, I’m afraid.”
Huh, Jung thought as he crossed the street a quarter of an hour later. I must remember to phone my sister this evening. This is not what ought to happen.
I’d better call Maureen as well, come to that. About the vocabulary book if for nothing else.
He had already driven a few miles before it occurred to him that he’d forgotten to ask about the testicle business; but no matter how he looked at it, he couldn’t see that it was significant. In any case, it would be easier to deal with that detail on the telephone.
And not to have to be so embarrassingly close, that is.
I suppose I’m a bit of a prude really, he thought, switching on the radio.
16
On the way to Ulmentahl, Inspector Rooth found himself sitting at the wheel while thinking about various geographical circumstances; in retrospect he realized that those thoughts must have been triggered when he drove through Linzhuisen and happened to see the place names Kaustin and Behren on the same signpost.
Kaustin 10. Behren 23.
In different directions, of course. Kaustin to the northwest. Behren almost due south. If his rudimentary knowledge of geometry had not let him down, that should mean that the distance between the two places was…thirty miles or more?
Why had the murderer chosen to place the dead body just there?
In Behren. A little town with, perhaps, twenty-five thousand inhabitants? No more than thirty, in any case.
Pure coincidence?
Very possible. If the murderer’s intention had been no more than to dump the body sufficiently far away from Kaustin for the link with Verhaven not to strike anybody, then yes, that was probably far enough. But on the other hand, a greater distance would have been even better for his purpose.