“If she did, yes.”
“Hard to say,” said deBries.
“Very,” said Moreno. “A thousand to one? Yes, I suppose that’s about right.”
The waiter brought the cheese board, and deBries topped up their glasses.
“What about a motive?” he said after a while. “Can you see any of these old dears having the slightest whiff of a motive? If there’s any point in all this, the visitor must have known the identity of the real murderer. I don’t think our three seemed to be particularly well informed on that matter.”
“I can’t understand why she should want to keep it to herself,” said Moreno. “If she really wanted to tell Verhaven who the murderer was, there’s surely no sensible reason for being unwilling to admit to it afterward. Or is there?”
“God only knows,” said deBries, polishing a grape on the tablecloth. “No, I can’t make head nor tail of this, swear to God.”
Moreno sighed.
“Nor can I,” she said. “It all seems a bit odd, as far as I can see. All we know for a fact is that Verhaven was visited by a woman calling herself Anna Schmidt on June fifth, 1992. We’ve no idea who she really was or what they talked about. We’re jumping to quite a few conclusions if we think along these lines: First we claim that the visit had to do with the murder. Then we say the reason was that she wanted to tell Verhaven who the real murderer was. Then we assume she lives in Kaustin…. There are some weak links in that chain.”
“Besides,” said deBries, “we’re not even a hundred percent certain that it’s Verhaven who’s dead. And we’re definitely not sure that he was actually innocent of the crimes he’s been in prison for. No, if we took this to the public prosecutor, he’d no doubt laugh us out of court.”
Moreno nodded.
“But it’s not our problem, of course,” said deBries. “We’re only obeying orders: Get over there and seek out all women who use a walking stick in that dump! Or all men with false teeth in Aarlach! All left-handed whores in Hamburg! Ask them what they were doing between three and four o’clock in the afternoon on the day before Christmas Eve 1973, and most important—write down every single word they say! It’s great fun, this sleuthing: This is exactly what I dreamed about when I made up my mind to become a detective.”
“I get the feeling you’re a little bit disillusioned this evening,” said Moreno with a benign smile.
“Not in the least,” said deBries. “You totally misjudge my motives. I would be more than happy to go to Spetsbergen and interview every damned penguin about their views on the greenhouse effect…. As long as I could do it alongside you. Cheers!”
“Cheers,” said Moreno. “But I don’t think there are any penguins at Spetsbergen. Anyway, I suppose we’ll be given new assignments tomorrow no matter what?”
DeBries nodded.
“I assume so,” he said. “Münster and Van Veeteren will be able to steer this ship home without our help. But they won’t find it all that easy, I suspect.”
“Probably not. What do you really think? Will they be able to solve this case, period?”
DeBries crunched away at the last cracker and thought for a while.
“I’ve no idea,” he said. “Strangely enough, I get the feeling that they will crack it eventually. VV will be in a hell of a bloodhound humor when they eventually let him out. He’s not easy to put up with now, according to Münster.”
“Is he ever?”
“No,” sighed deBries. “You’re right there, of course. I wouldn’t like to be married to him, I know that much.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Nothing,” said deBries.
Moreno looked at her watch.
“Speaking of that, I suppose it’s time to call it a day.”
“You’re right,” said deBries. “Thank you for a very pleasant day. The bottle’s empty, I’m afraid…. Otherwise I’d propose a toast to you.”
“You’ve already done that twice,” Moreno pointed out. “That’s quite enough. There’s a limit to the amount of flattery I can take.”
“Same here,” said deBries. “Time to go home.”
31
At first sight, for the first tenth of a second after opening the door, he had no idea where he was. The thought that he might have got the wrong room after twelve long days of absence did occur to him, but then he realized that it was the same old office as usual. Perhaps it was the strong afternoon sun slanting in through the dirty windows that confused him. The whole of the far wall, behind the desk, was bathed in generous but blinding sunlight. Dust was dancing. It was as hot as in an oven.
He opened the window. Lowered the blinds and succeeded in protecting himself to some extent from the early summer. When he looked round, he found that the changes were not in fact as great as he had at first thought.
There were three of them, to be precise.
First of all, somebody had tidied up his desk. All his papers were in neat piles instead of being splayed out like a fan. Not a bad idea, he could see that immediately. Odd that it had never occurred to him before.
In the second place, a vase with yellow and mauve flowers had been placed next to his telephone. I am obviously an outstandingly popular and well-liked person, Van Veeteren thought. Hard but fair under the rough surface.
In the third and last place, he had received a new desk chair. It was turquoise in color; he thought he could recall the shade from a coat Renate had once bought while on a catastrophic holiday in France. Provence blue, if he remembered rightly, but that was irrelevant. It had soft armrests in any case—the chair, that is—a curved back and headrest, and was vaguely reminiscent of seats in the first-class compartments of trains in one of the neighboring countries, he couldn’t remember which.
He sat down tentatively. The seat was just as soft as the armrests. He sank back into the backrest and noticed that under the seat was a selection of wheels and levers that evidently enabled him to adjust every possible feature—height, angle, headrest angle, elasticity coefficient, you name it. On the desk in front of him was a brochure in full color with precise instructions in eight languages.
Wow! Van Veeteren thought and began fiddling with the controls in accordance with the instructions. I can snooze the time away in this chair until they start paying my pension.
Twenty minutes later he had finished, and just as he had started wondering how he could most easily and smartly procure a beer, the duty operator rang to inform him that a lady was in reception, asking for Van Veeteren.
“Send her up,” he said. “I’ll meet her by the elevator.”
It was Saturday, and the building was practically empty. He would prefer to avoid the blunder made by Reinhart a year or so ago when his instructions resulted in a prospective narc with a bad sense of direction ending up fast asleep on the sofa in the chief of police’s office. Hiller himself had discovered the intruder early on Monday morning, and not even Reinhart’s tactful reminder that it was possible to lock doors with the aid of something known as a key had persuaded the authorities that there were extenuating circumstances.
“Your name is Elena Klimenska, is that right?” he began when she had settled down on the visitor’s chair.
“Yes.”
She was a rather elegant woman, he had to admit. Somewhere between forty and fifty, he would guess, with dark, dyed hair and strong features, discreetly brought out by carefully applied makeup and sophisticated perfume. As far as he could judge, that is.
“I am Detective Chief Inspector Van Veeteren,” he said. “As I explained, it’s to do with your testimony in connection with the trial of Leopold Verhaven here in Maardam in November 1981.”
“So I gather,” she said, folding her hands over her black patent-leather purse.
“Can you tell me what your testimony comprised?”