‘That’s not necessary,’ said Reinhart. ‘We’ve got more of such stuff than we can cope with already. But if we come across a light shining in the darkness, maybe we could meet and talk things over?’
‘There’s nothing I’d like better,’ said Baasteuwel. ‘And don’t forget to give that inspector a kiss from me.’
‘If I dare,’ said Reinhart, and hung up.
Ten seconds later Baasteuwel phoned again.
‘There’s one thing I forgot to ask,’ he said. ‘Have you any recent similar cases? I mean, he might have been busy between the Kristine Kurtsmaa case and the one we’re busy with now.’
‘It doesn’t seem like it,’ said Reinhart. ‘There’s nothing that’s been documented at least.’
‘That’s a pretty long gap,’ said Baasteuwel. ‘Over a year. But then, you never know how bastards like him operate — not until you meet them, at least.’
‘I’ve set my mind on meeting this particular bastard,’ said Reinhart. ‘I’ll be in touch as soon as I get a sniff of him.’
‘Good hunting,’ said Inspector Baasteuwel.
During the course of Thursday Ewa Moreno talked to seven persons in all that Rooth had dug out of Martina Kammerle’s somewhat worse-for-wear address book, and it was a pretty depressing operation.
All seven admitted that they knew what had happened, thanks to reports in the newspapers and on the television. All seven admitted reluctantly that they knew who Martina Kammerle was. All seven insisted that they were not close to the murdered woman in any way, and that they hadn’t seen her since her husband died four-and-a-half years ago.
Two of the seven were colleagues from one of the short periods when Martina had had some sort of job. Two were women she had met in hospital, one of them in Gemejnte, and the other out at Majorna. One was a man she had had a brief affair with eighteen years ago, one was a retired therapist she had visited three times, and the seventh was an old schoolmate who had been confined to a wheelchair for the last twenty years, and hadn’t seen Martina since they were in class seven together, he claimed.
Depressing, Moreno thought as she clambered into her car after visiting Martina’s former classmate out at Dikken. What the hell was the point of Martina Kammerle keeping an address book? Why all these names which must have been of no relevance whatsoever to her current life? It was as if she had listed them because it would seem bad if she hadn’t.
What an incredibly cheap life she must have led, Moreno thought.
Cheap? Where did that word come from? Surely a life couldn’t be cheap?
And she recalled once again those old maxims on the bedroom walclass="underline"
It’s better to regret what you have done, than what you never did. Give significance to your life.
What had Martina Kammerle’s and her daughter’s lives really been like? Did they have any significance at all, despite their seemingly having been immured in their own loneliness? Was there any sort of light that she hadn’t yet discovered?
Presumptuous questions, perhaps: but justified, beyond doubt. The seven people Moreno had interviewed had come up with absolutely nothing about the murdered woman’s life, and when she thought about the two teenagers covered in black make-up who had irritated her so much at Café Lamprecht the other day, she realized that. . Well, what did she realize, in fact?
Like mother, like daughter, perhaps?
Moreno sighed in despair and stopped for a red light at the Zwille-Armastenstraat crossroads. It was half past five, and traffic was racing pell-mell for the suburbs and housing estates. It had stopped raining, but a strong wind was now blowing in from the coast.
Light? Moreno thought. Meaning? In this grey city at this time of year? A presumptuous assumption. She shook her head and turned her attention back to the investigation.
Wanted notices in the newspapers and on the television had drawn a blank. No reaction whatsoever. A few pupils from the Bunge Grammar School had rung and said they knew who Monica Kammerle was, but they hadn’t seen her for ages. A girl from Oostwerdingen had said she was a friend of Monica’s when they were about ten; and a notorious, neurotic informer by the name of Ralf Napoleon Doggers had reported that he had seen both mother and daughter in mysterious circumstances in a churchyard at Loewingen only three days ago.
Martina and Monica Kammerle hadn’t exactly led their lives in the spotlight: that was obvious after just over a week’s investigations. But Moreno reminded herself that many lives looked worse from the outside than they did from the inside. That was something eleven years in the police force had taught her. Nevertheless, what was it that enabled these maltreated, abused, worn-out women to survive? There must be something, surely? Something to cling on to. Some sort of consolation, some kind of deceptive hope, because. . Well, what else could there be?
Otherwise there was not much else apart from Hamlet’s monologue, full stop.
Better the devil you know. .
In other words, the usual biological toughness, Keep Buggering On. She shook her head in disgust, and pulled up at another red light, this time in Palitzerlaan.
And there were always contradictions to be taken into account, of course. There were lives that seemed tolerable and normal when you contemplated them from the outside, but hidden inside them could be bottomless pits of darkness. Totally incomprehensible abysses.
Perhaps that’s the kind of murderer we’re looking for, it occurred to her. An apparently normal person who acts perfectly normally ninety-nine days out of a hundred, but then, when something snaps — or surges up inside him — can commit the most hair-raising acts? Yes, when she thought about that it seemed very plausible.
Or possible, at least. It could well be such a person behind these horrific acts: but then again, it could be somebody entirely different. It was risky to speculate too much, she knew that; but what else was there for her to devote here energetic brain to, for Christ’s sake? What?
And why was she so casually drawing these comparisons between Martina Kammerle and her own life? What was the point? She had a tendency — an increasingly clear tendency with every new case, in fact — constantly to see herself in relation to these poor people who were always involved. The victims and the warped lives they led.
Was she trying to make contrasts? To see herself as a shining light in contrast to their darkness? Was it as simple as that? Was it just that things could have been worse for her?
She decided that was how it had been to start with, perhaps. And it was natural enough, when she came to think about it. Vicarious suffering and all that. But that was no longer the case. Now it felt as if she were searching for some sort of common ground. A point at which she could identify with it all — with the suffering and the misery and the dark forces. At which she could understand the wretchedness of it all. Creep under its skin. Surely that was more like it?
But why? Moreno thought. Why am I doing this? Is it because I can’t find any significance in my own life? In this grey city in these grey times?
When she got out of the car outside her home in Falckstraat, she knew she was on the verge of a rhetorical question.
Jung was sitting at the computer.
It was not a situation he particularly enjoyed in normal circumstances, but Maureen had acquired a new computer so that she could do some of her work at home — and as it was standing on their shared desk in the bedroom, he thought he might as well run it through its paces and see what it was capable of. It was large, yellow and streamlined. Apparently worth over five thousand, if he had understood it rightly, and with a memory far in excess of that of a whole police force.
So it could no doubt be used in the interests of law and order.