MAARDAM
NOVEMBER 2000
20
Van Veeteren lifted the carrier bags onto the counter, and began taking out the books.
Forty in all, Professor Baertenow had said. He couldn’t carry any more than that nowadays, unfortunately. A mixed bag, you could say: but mainly novels in foreign languages.
He thought it was a pity he needed to offload them: but at least he knew that giving them to Krantze’s antiquarian bookshop meant they were in good hands. Or rather, that they had been delivered into good hands. Which would have been necessary sooner or later, no matter what. No, he didn’t want paying for them this time either. Money was of no use to him any more.
Van Veeteren studied the titles, one after an other, and was surprised yet again by the range of languages — Russian, Czech, Hungarian, Finnish. A collection of poetry in Basque. Norwegian, Danish and Swedish.
An impressive character, this Baertenow, to say the least. An old philologist, retired several years ago, and now in the habit of turning up several times a year, bringing with him a couple of carrier bags of books. They say he spoke fifty-five living languages. Plus an unknown number of dead ones.
He used to say that he was busy tidying up his bookshelves — you have to sort things out when death is breathing down your neck.
Van Veeteren used to pay him with a glass of port wine, sometimes two, and a chat: but today the professor didn’t have time. He was planning to move into a somewhat smaller and rather more convenient flat, it seemed: there simply wasn’t room for all his books. . That was life — there was a time for collecting and a time for getting rid. Or, as the Estonians say, Kui oikk in vahe hauakivil kahe aastaarvu vahel.
‘Very true,’ Van Veeteren had said.
But what immediately attracted his attention was not any of the Estonian books: there was another title that sent his mind spinning
The Determinant.
That really was the title. His eyes were not deceiving him. Two books, in fact. He stood there with one of them in each hand, staring at them. One was white with a woman’s face on the front cover, and with the subtitle Eva. The other was pale red with lots of strange configurations in some sort of system of coordinates.
The author’s name: Leon Rappaport. Language: Swedish.
Rappaport didn’t sound all that Swedish. Jewish, rather. Van Veeteren investigated and found the years when the books had been copyrighted: 1962 and 1978. The first book was evidently written in Polish, with the original title Determinanta. The second one, with the woman’s face, seemed to have been written in Swedish.
He shook his head. Very odd, he thought. Would he now have to teach himself Polish and Swedish? In order to get to the bottom of it all. He had spent half his life believing in a concept that he thought he had invented: but now he was standing here with two books that had been written about it. Or at least had been called that.
The Determinant.
Very odd, to say the least. He thought for a while. Then put both the books into his briefcase, and took out his cigarette machine. Time for the day’s first cigarette, no doubt about that. What was needed now was time to think things over; to keep things at arm’s length. .
Before he’d had time to light his cigarette, Moreno rang.
And he sat there with it unlighted throughout the whole of the conversation.
‘Come in,’ Van Veeteren said an hour and a half later. ‘Let’s withdraw to the kitchenette, we can be undisturbed there.’
He pulled down the blind over the glass pane in the door, and locked up. Moreno took off her jacket and hung it round the back of a chair.
‘Fire away,’ he said. ‘I had a feeling that damned priest wouldn’t leave me alone for long. A premonition, it seems.’
‘Yes, indeed,’ said Moreno, flopping down into one of the Greek armchairs in the cramped kitchenette. ‘You can say that again. As I said, we discovered his name when we searched through that flat yesterday. . Martina Kammerle’s flat in Moerckstraat. She was found murdered last Sunday evening, but the body had been lying there for over a month — I don’t know if you’ve read about it, Chief Inspector-’
‘Belay there!’ warned Van Veeteren.
‘Oops!’ said Moreno. ‘A slip of the tongue. Anyway, I don’t know if you’ve read about it?’
Van Veeteren nodded.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I still plough my way through a few newspapers. Allgemejne had quite a detailed article about it today, in fact. A strangled woman. . and a missing girl as well, is that right?’
‘Correct,’ said Moreno. ‘Although we didn’t discover the link with that priest until yesterday, so there hasn’t been anything about that in the newspapers. We don’t really know any more than I said on the phone. It might be a blind alley, of course, but to be honest that seems a bit unlikely. Or what do you think?’
Van Veeteren opened a cupboard and dug out a couple of cups.
‘Blind alley?’ he said. ‘Like hell. I take it you fancy some coffee?’
Moreno nodded; he put the kettle on and started rummaging in another cupboard.
‘Shall we take things in chronological order?’ he suggested, putting a tray of cinnamon biscuits on the table. ‘That might make sense. As far as I’m aware causes still usually come before effects in most circumstances. So, where do we begin?. .’
‘Well,’ said Moreno, ‘if we look at the cards we have in our hands at present, it all starts when Pastor Gassel comes to see you. .’
She looked around and made a hesitant gesture.
‘. . in this very room, if I’ve understood it rightly.’
Van Veeteren nodded and scattered some coffee powder in the two mugs.
‘Some time around the middle of September?’
‘The fifteenth, I seem to recall.’
‘The fifteenth? In that case it was just over two weeks before he was found dead under a train in Maardam’s Central Station. At about the same time, or possibly slightly later, a certain Martina Kammerle was murdered in her flat in Moerckstraat. Her sixteen-year-old daughter Monica disappeared at the same time, and is still missing. Martina’s body was lying there for over a month before it was discovered, and in a notebook in her daughter’s room we found the name Tomas Gassel. . Well, that’s about it in a nutshell, you could say.’
‘Nothing else?’ asked Van Veeteren after a few moments’ thought. ‘Was there nothing else apart from the name in that notebook? Telephone number or address, for instance?’
‘No. She’d written it at the very bottom of an empty page. There was nothing else at all.’
Van Veeteren nodded and poured hot water into the mugs.
‘It’s not exactly a common name.’
‘No.’
‘But not all that uncommon either.’
‘No.’
‘Can there be any doubt that he’s the one?’
‘No doubt at all. Krause has checked. There’s one other person in the area with the same name, but he’s only four years old. Lives in Linzhuisen and has no links with the Kammerles whatsoever.’
‘Hmm,’ muttered Van Veeteren. ‘So it hangs together, does it?’
‘It certainly does,’ said Moreno. ‘Thus far, at least. It’s obviously possible that Monica Kammerle has some kind of normal link with Pastor Gassel, something that has nothing to do with his death or her disappearance, but, well. . we’ll find that out in due course. At the moment we must assume that there is a more significant connection, of course. .’
‘Of course,’ said Van Veeteren.
‘We can naturally speculate about how that contact came about.’
‘One can always speculate,’ said Van Veeteren, adding milk to the coffee. ‘How long is it since you caught onto this?’
Moreno took a sip and smiled innocently.
‘Can you tell by looking at me?’ she asked. ‘Can you really? Can you see that I haven’t slept a wink, lying in bed, thinking about nothing but this? Rooth caught on last night, and was kind enough to phone me right away.’