Perhaps Synn could sense his unrest, for she placed her hand over his and pressed it harder against her breast.
“I like it,” she said. “I like your hands. Maybe we’ll manage an afternoon outing? Lauerndamm or somewhere like that. It would be good to make love in the open air; it’s been a long time…. Or what do you say, darling?”
He swallowed the lump of ecstasy that welled up inside him.
“Of course, my darling,” he said. “I’ll be back before one. Just get yourself ready.”
“Ready?” she smiled. “I’m ready now, if you want to.”
“Oh, hell!” said Münster. “If it weren’t for the kids and Van Veeteren, then…”
She let go of his hand.
“Maybe we should ask him to babysit?”
“Huh,” said Münster. “I’m not convinced that is the best idea you’ve ever had.”
“All right,” said Synn. “We’ll stick to this afternoon, then.”
Van Veeteren was waiting on the sidewalk when Münster pulled up outside 4 Klagenburg. There was no concealing his suppressed eagerness, and when he had settled into the passenger seat, he immediately fished out two toothpicks that he proceeded to roll from one side of his mouth to the other. It was clear to Münster that this was one of those frequent occasions when any kind of conversation was, if not prohibited, at the very least pointless.
Instead he switched on the radio, and as they drove through the deserted streets that Sunday morning, they were able to listen to the eight o’clock news, which was mainly about developments in the Balkans and yet more neo-Nazi disturbances in eastern Germany.
Then came the weather forecast, promising glorious weather with cloudless skies and temperatures approaching sixty degrees.
He sighed discreetly, and it struck him that if it had been his wife in the passenger seat beside him, instead of a newly operated on fifty-seven-year-old detective chief inspector, he would probably have placed his hand on her sun-warmed thigh at about this point.
Ah well, one o’clock would arrive sooner or later, even today.
They parked outside the overgrown opening in the lilac hedge. Münster switched off the engine and unfastened his safety belt.
“No, you stay here,” insisted Van Veeteren, shaking his head. “I don’t want you breathing down my neck. This calls for solitary reflection. Leave me in peace and wait for an hour down by the church.”
He started to wriggle his way out of the car. He was obviously hampered by his surgical wound; he was forced to cling on to the roof of the car and pull himself up by the strength of his arms, rather than straining his stomach muscles. Münster rushed round to assist him, but the chief inspector was adamant in rejecting any attempt to help.
“One hour,” he repeated, checking his watch. “I’ll walk down to the church under my own steam. The slope is in the right direction, so there shouldn’t be a problem.”
“Wouldn’t it be best if…,” began Münster, but Van Veeteren interrupted him.
“Stop nannying me, damn you! I’ve had enough of that. If I haven’t turned up at the church by half past ten, you can drive up and see where I’ve got to!”
“All right,” said Münster. “But be careful.”
“Clear off,” said Van Veeteren. “Is the door open, by the way?”
“The key’s hanging from a nail under the gutter,” said Münster. “On the right.”
“Thanks,” said Van Veeteren.
Münster got back into the car, managed to turn around in the narrow road and set off through the trees toward the village.
It’s amazing, he thought. We must have spent a hundred hours sniffing around this place. But I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he found something we’d missed.
Not surprised in the least.
Van Veeteren stayed by the roadside until Münster’s white Audi had vanished among the trees. Then he forced his way though the hedge and took possession of The Big Shadow.
The garden was overgrown, no two ways about that. He stuck a toothpick in his mouth and looked around. He began walking around the house but was forced to give up about halfway when he found himself up to the armpits in nettles. No matter, he thought. It wasn’t too difficult to get an impression of what it must have looked like once upon a time. A plot of land taken over by man around the middle of the last century, tamed by plow and harrow, a lot of hard work and tender loving care. But now well on the way back into the arms of Mother Nature. Aspen and birch saplings had eaten into large chunks of the orchard; paved areas, the cellar and outhouses were lost in undergrowth and covered in moss; and the big barn, which had presumably been the famous poultry farm, would surely not survive many more winters. It was very clear that a border had been crossed—the limit beyond which it was no longer possible to reclaim what nature had taken hold of.
Not for an old lag living on his own, at least.
The Big Shadow?
With hindsight it was obvious that the house name was prophetic. He found the key, and after considerable effort succeeded in opening the door. He had to bend down so as not to hit his head on the door frame, and inside there was only just sufficient headroom for him to stand upright. He recalled having read in the newspapers about a month ago that the average height of people had shot up remarkably over the past hundred years. His own six feet two inches would presumably have been considered abnormal when the first settlers moved into this house.
Two rooms and a kitchen on the ground floor. A narrow, creaking staircase led up from a three-foot-square hall to a loft full of old newspapers, broken furniture and other junk. A faint smell of soot and sun-warmed dust clung to the rafters. He sneezed several times, then went back down to the kitchen. He felt the big iron stove, as if expecting to find it hot. Examined the bad reproduction of an almost equally bad original landscape painting hanging over the sofa, then entered the living room. The cracked windowpanes. A sideboard. Table and four ill-matched chairs. A sofa and a typically 1950s television set. A sagging bookshelf with getting on for a hundred books, most of them cheap crime novels or adventure stories. On the wall to the right of the stove was a mirror and a framed black-and-white photograph of a runner breaking the finishing tape. His face seemed tormented, almost tortured. At first he thought it was Verhaven himself, but when he went up to it and examined it more closely, he saw the caption and recognized the man: Emil Zatopek. The Czech locomotive, as he was called. The self-torturer. The man who overcame the pain barrier.
Had he been Verhaven’s ideal?
Or was it just typical of the time? Zatopek had been the king of the track in the early fifties, if his memory served him rightly. Or one of them, at least.
He left the living room for the bedroom and stood gazing at the double bed that, despite its modest size, took up almost all the floor space.
But a double bed? Yes, of course, Verhaven had lived with a lot of women. Not all of them had been murdered. At least, he assumed not.
“Was this your bedroom, then?” muttered Van Veeteren, fumbling for a new toothpick. “Did you get one night’s sleep as a free man, or didn’t he even allow you that?”
He left the bedroom.
What the hell am I doing here? he thought suddenly. What am I kidding myself that I can sort out by strutting around here? Even if I begin to form an impression of what Verhaven was really like, that’s not going to get me one inch closer to the answer.
The answer to the question of who murdered him, that is.
He was overcome with exhaustion and sat down at the kitchen table. Closed his eyes and watched the flickering yellow light that floated past from right to left. Always from right to left: He wondered what that might be due to. They had warned him that he would have moments of weakness, but he hadn’t fully realized that they would be as treacherous as this, practically making his legs give way under him.