‘I understand,’ said Sammelmerk. ‘Do you have any photographs of your daughter you could let us have for a few days? It’s probably a bit soon to send out a Wanted notice, but if we need to do that eventually we shall need a photograph, of course.’
Fru Peerenkaas produced an envelope from her handbag, and handed it over.
‘It’s a few years old,’ she said. ‘But it’s the only one we could find, and it’s a very good likeness.’
Sammelmerk took out the photograph and examined it for a moment. That was quite long enough to establish that Ester Peerenkaas was her mother’s daughter. The same clean-cut, delicate features, the same finely drawn mouth. Dark, straight hair, a generous smile.
About thirty, Sammelmerk guessed — and so a few years older than that now. Pretty. She wouldn’t have had any trouble in finding herself a man, if she had wanted one. She wondered about the trauma evidently connected with the woman’s marriage: it seemed to be more than just the divorce in any case.
She put the photograph back in the envelope.
‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘We’ll do all we can to throw light on this matter. If you just give me her address and tell me how we can get in touch with you, I’ll get back to you — will tomorrow be all right?’
Fru Peerenkaas produced a card from her handbag.
‘You’re welcome to call this evening, even if you don’t know anything by then. We’ll be driving back home this afternoon. Our mobile number is on the card as well. Ester’s address and so on is on the back of it.’
Sammelmerk promised to ring by seven o’clock at the latest. Fru Peerenkaas stood up, shook hands and left the room.
Inspector Sammelmerk switched off the tape recorder and leaned back.
A pretty woman has gone missing, she thought.
Not for the first time in the history of the world, and these things rarely end up happily. Rarely or never.
She started to think about what measures they ought to take.
Her first act was to pick up the telephone and call Inspector Moreno.
When Chief Inspector Reinhart got home, he noticed that his soul was itching.
His copper’s soul, that is, not his private one. Although it wasn’t always easy to keep them apart.
His wife and daughter were not at home, but there was a note on the kitchen table: they were three floors below, with Julek and Napoleon.
Julek was Reinhart’s daughter’s fiancé — both of them were aged three. Napoleon was a tortoise, and considerably older.
Julek also had a mother, but unfortunately she had to attend a meeting: which was why Winnifred and Joanna had gone downstairs to step into the breech.
They would be back at nine or thereabouts, it said on the note. Reinhart was welcome to go down and join them if he felt like it; otherwise there was a pie in the fridge. It just needed heating up.
He looked at the clock: only a few minutes to seven.
He hesitated for a moment, then took out the pie and put it into the oven. Sat down at the table and started scratching his soul.
It was that confounded case, of course. Yet again. It would soon be four months: that was a hell of a long time.
And hardly a feather in the police force’s cap. He’d gone in to work over the New Year as welclass="underline" it was always worrying to be lumbered with unsolved cases at this time of year, he’d noticed that before. It was as if the Christmas and New Year holidays exerted some mysterious kind of malevolent infection on all criminal cases, and in January all the loose ends seemed to feel sticky and smelly, as if officers were dealing with some kind of archaeological work rather than criminological tasks.
But of course the main reason for his copper’s soul being irritated was the visit by Inspector Baasteuwel and the conversation they had had. It had persisted all afternoon, not surprisingly.
They had eaten lunch together, and if Reinhart had not noticed it earlier, he certainly became aware then that Baasteuwel was not just any old detective inspector.
He was intelligent. That in itself was unusual. He was utterly lacking in respect for his superiors, indifferent to prestige. And evidently afflicted by the same vulnerability to an itch in the soul as Reinhart himself.
There was a murderer on the loose, that was the crux of the matter.
The whole point of a detective officer’s work was to ensure that there were no murderers on the loose. There were other aspects of the job as well, of course, but to be lumbered with three — or even four if one included Baasteuwel’s — unsolved murders, well, that was certainly nothing to boast about.
If one were to compare the situation with that of other professions, it was more or less on a par with a taxi driver who could never find his way to the correct address (or at least went to the wrong place four times in a row).
Or a locksmith who was never able to open a door, or a farmer who forgot to sow his seeds.
Shit, shit, shit, Reinhart thought and took the pie out of the oven even though it was only lukewarm: we really must make sure we get somewhere with this bloody strangler.
It’s by no means impossible that he might strike again.
Not impossible at all.
31
When Inspector Moreno stepped in through the dark, heavy door of Booms, Booms amp; Kristev’s solicitors’ offices in Zuyderstraat, she felt the stab of an inferiority complex.
She felt no better after being ushered by a discreet secretary in tweeds into Anna Kristeva’s room (with three windows overlooking the street, and furnished with solid, old Wanderlinck items, each of which no doubt cost about as much as Moreno earned in a year) and sat down in a leather armchair about the size of a small car.
And matters were not helped by the fact that when Anna Kristeva arrived ten minutes late, she turned out to be a woman more or less the same age as Moreno. She made no attempt to estimate the cost of the lawyer’s clothes, that wasn’t necessary. The situation was crystal clear already.
She heaved herself out of the armchair and shook hands.
‘Ewa Moreno, detective inspector.’
‘Anna. I know. Sorry to have kept you waiting. I hope it’s okay to use first names?’
The temperature rose slightly.
‘Would you like a sherry? I think I could do with one.’
Sherry? thought Moreno, and the temperature fell again.
‘Yes please,’ she said. ‘Why didn’t you want to talk to a male officer?’
Kristeva didn’t reply immediately, but instead opened a corner cupboard made of rosewood with intarsia marquetry. Took out a large carafe of sherry and filled two bluish glasses. Sat down in the other armchair and sighed deeply.
‘Cheers,’ she said. ‘What a bloody mess! I’m worried by what has happened. . Dead worried, to be honest.’
Moreno took a sip of wine, Kristeva emptied her glass in one gulp.
‘Anyway, that business of my not wanting to speak to a male officer,’ she said. ‘You’ll understand. It wouldn’t be much fun for me sitting here and trying to explain matters to a man with what you might call traditional views on sex roles.’
‘Really?’ said Moreno. ‘As you know, I’ve come to talk about your friend Ester Peerenkaas. . And what might have happened to her. I think it would help if you explained in more detail what you mean.’
Kristeva explained in more detail.
It took quite a while. Half an hour and another glass of sherry, to be precise, and Moreno had to admit that it was one of the most interesting conversations she had had for quite a long time.
To start with, at least. It had never occurred to her that there could be ways like this of looking at and solving sexual problems. Anna Kristeva described in detail how she and Ester Peerenkaas had developed their advertising adventure since embarking on it four years ago. About their selection procedures. About the excitement in advance of the meetings. About the outcomes (or the results, to put it another way), and about all these men they acquired a sort of control over in this way. Perhaps it was only an illusory control — but so what? Kristeva maintained: perhaps the whole of life was merely an illusion.