Moreno took a deep drink of wine and thought about that. Blew out a candle whose flame was coming dangerously close to her cuff.
‘Power,’ she said eventually. ‘If you want a one-word answer. If you can’t get love from the person you desire, you can at least get submission. . You can control the object of your desire. It’s a motive that’s as old as the hills, but it’s probably a variation on that which drives our strangler. That’s what I think, at least.’
‘Very likely,’ agreed Sammelmerk with a frown. ‘I remember reading something once: “When a man says no to a woman, she wants to die. When a woman says no to a man, he wants to kill.” — That seems to sum it up rather neatly, don’t you think?’
‘In a nutshell,’ said Moreno. ‘We’re on pretty good form this evening, aren’t we?’
‘It must be the wine,’ said Sammelmerk. ‘And the company. Anyway, I’ll be blowed if it isn’t time for me to go and see to my flock.’
Moreno looked at the clock.
‘Half past eleven. Ah well, another working day tomorrow, I suppose.’
‘The first of many,’ said Sammelmerk with a sigh. ‘I think I’ll have to ask you to ring for a taxi. I’ve no great desire to come up against unknown men in the dark.’
‘“When a woman says no to a man. .”’ said Moreno, standing up. ‘Yes there’s a lot of truth in that. Ugh.’
‘Ugh indeed,’ said Sammelmerk. ‘I hope we find him soon.’
‘It’s a matter of time,’ said Moreno, picking up the telephone. ‘Only a matter of time.’
34
Five minutes before Inspector Rooth was due to meet Karen deBuijk, he was seized by acute depression.
He had just entered the square Grote Torg from Zwillesteeg, and very nearly fallen into the arms of Jasmina Teuwers. He would have had nothing against that — in different circumstances. They had both attended Italian classes, and also met as a couple three times in November and December — at a cafe, a cinema and a restaurant, in that order, and although those meetings could best be described as very slow progress, there had nevertheless been some progress made.
Or at least, Rooth thought that was the case.
Until this grey, damp, windswept January morning when their eyes had met and he felt as if his heart had just burst.
Jasmina Teuwers had not been alone. Anything but. She was very obviously in close contact with a superficially handsome type in a light-brown ulster and with a ponytail. His arm was wrapped around her shoulders, they were gazing into each other’s eyes, and laughing at some shared joke.
Until she became aware of Rooth for just a fraction of a second.
A podgy lady with a dachshund blundered her way in between him and the loving couple, and they didn’t even need to pretend they hadn’t seen one another. Rooth and Teuwers, that is. They continued on their way as if nothing had happened. Tra la perduta gente.
A ponytail! Rooth thought when the analytical side of his brain started working again some five seconds later. Bloody hell!
Frailty, thy name is woman!
He staggered on across the square as far as Olde Maarweg. Karen deBuijk lived in one of the old warehouses that had been converted into flats from the mid-1990s onwards — way beyond the means of a mere detective inspector, for instance. DeBuijk’s flat comprised just one large room, but it was at least fifty square metres, and the exposed wooden beams in the ceiling were ideal if one had any intention of hanging oneself.
Thought Rooth as he sat down together with his depression in a basket chair under a roof window. The sky was grey, he noted. He cleared his throat and took a notebook and pencil out of his briefcase as if in a dream.
I’ve done this ten thousand times before, he thought. I wonder how many bloody notebooks I’ve filled and how many bloody pencils I’ve worn out?
How many pointless questions I’ve churned out, and how many daft answers I’ve written down?
Karen deBuijk had left him alone for a moment, but now came back in carrying a ridiculously small tray with two ugly coffee cups. And a dish of what looked like dog biscuits. She sat down in the other basket chair, crossed her legs and smiled faintly and somewhat insecurely at him. He registered that she was pretty. Suntanned and blonde-haired.
The devil’s illusion, he thought. From today onwards I shall never ever look at a woman again.
‘Well?’ she said, and he realized that it was time to get started.
‘I’m not feeling too good,’ he said.
That wasn’t what he had intended saying, but he could hear for himself that those were the words he produced.
‘I can see that,’ said deBuijk. ‘Have a drink of coffee.’
‘Really?’ said Rooth. ‘Can you really see that?’
‘Yes. . But I thought you’d come to talk about Ester Peerenkaas rather than the state of your soul.’
‘I don’t have a soul,’ said Rooth.
‘If you can feel lousy, that must mean you have a soul. That’s where the pain comes.’
Rooth thought that one over. It sounded plausible.
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Just a drop. But what the hell, Ester Peerenkaas it is. What do you think?’
‘What do I think?’
‘Yes.’
‘About what?’
‘About all kinds of things. About what’s happened, for instance. About that man she had begun meeting. You spent a couple of weeks with her on one of the Canary Islands recently: my experience tells me that in those circumstances women tend to talk to each other. But correct me if I’m wrong — I don’t understand women.’
She laughed, but put her hand over her mouth — as if laughing was wrong in the circumstances. A friend who had gone missing and a depressed police officer.
‘Please forgive me. But you’re funny. It’s true, of course.’
‘What’s true? That I’m wrong?’
‘No, that we talked quite a lot while we were on holiday.’
‘What about?’
‘About everything under the sun, of course.’
‘What, for instance?’
She paused, and took a bite of a dog biscuit.
‘That little spot of danger, for instance.’
‘That little spot of danger?’ said Rooth.
‘Yes.’
‘Go on.’
‘That little spot of danger,’ said deBuijk again, sucking in her lower lip like a little schoolgirl, and looking too enchanting for words. . ‘What it is that makes one interested in a man, but which is also. . well, dangerous. Exciting.’
‘You don’t say,’ said Rooth, starting to draw a matchstick man with horns in his notebook. ‘What exactly do you mean?’
‘That’s the way it is with men,’ said deBuijk, and it struck him that she had effortlessly struck a chord of intimacy that he didn’t feel he had earned, and that some idiotic impulse told him to destroy.
‘Really?’ he said in a neutral tone.
‘That man, Brugger. She talked a bit about him. Only a bit, mind you. She said she felt ambivalent about him.’
‘Ambivalent?’ said Rooth, drawing a vertical line right through the middle of his matchstick man’s head.
‘Yes. She said she felt attracted to him, but at the same time there was something that made her feel unsure. I suppose she didn’t quite know what to make of him.’
‘Perhaps that little spot of danger wasn’t all that little?’ Rooth suggested.
‘Yes, maybe. . Ugh.’
‘Did she say anything about what he looked like?’
‘No, only that he was rather attractive. I think she said his hair was dark.’
‘And she’d only met him once?’
‘Yes.’
‘When was that?’
‘At Keefer’s in December.’
‘What was he wearing?’
‘She didn’t say.’
‘Job?’
‘I think he had a business.’
‘What sort of business?’
‘I don’t know. But he was self-employed. I don’t really know what he did. We didn’t talk all that much about him. It was mainly on the plane home — she was going to meet him a few days later. . Are you really sure that he has something to do with her disappearance?’