Moreno sighed and shook her head.
‘No sign of her.’
‘But you reckon he’s the one behind it, do you? Our strangler friend?’
‘Very possibly,’ said Moreno. ‘But not certain. If you twisted my arm, though, I’d say it was him.’
‘Hmm,’ said Baasteuwel. ‘I’ve been thinking about what you said regarding that name. It seems very plausible, but it’s a blasted nuisance that he can’t leave anything more substantial behind. Something concrete.’
‘That’s why I’m here,’ said Moreno. ‘My chief inspector is starting to get a bit desperate, but he thinks we ought to work a bit more closely together on searching for links with that old case of yours. It’s worth exploring every possibility when you’re as stuck as we are.’
‘We mustn’t let the bastards get us down,’ said Baasteuwel optimistically. ‘Let’s see what we can do. I take it you’re fully informed about fröken Kortsmaa?’
‘Yes, indeed,’ said Moreno. ‘But it won’t do any harm if you run through it all once more. I don’t suppose this palace you work in can produce a cup of coffee out of nowhere? I didn’t bother to stop for one on the way here.’
Baasteuwel smiled again and dug his fingers into his tousled hair.
‘Mon dieu,’ he said. ‘Forgive my disgraceful lack of courtesy. Sit back here and meditate — I’ll be back in two shakes of a puppy dog’s tail. Sugar and milk?’
‘Milk,’ said Moreno. ‘But just a drop.’
Baasteuwel’s oral recapitulation of the Kristine Kortsmaa case took about half an hour, but contained no significant information that Moreno didn’t know already. As he held forth, a feeling of despondency began to undermine her concentration. Despite the strong coffee. To undermine it very significantly, in fact: she felt she had heard it all before, and it wasn’t until he took a dark-brown cardboard box out of a desk cupboard that a flicker of interest raised her spirits slightly.
A cardboard box, she thought: something concrete at last. Something substantial.
‘What’s that?’ she asked.
‘Technical evidence,’ said Baasteuwel, lighting his eleventh cigarette of the day.
‘Technical evidence? You’re rambling again.’
‘I only ramble in my spare time,’ said Baasteuwel. ‘Hardly ever then even, in fact. But never mind. Proof would be too strong a word.’
He took off the lid and began taking plastic bags out of the box, placing them quite meticulously on the desk in front of him. Moreno watched him in silence. He summed up the result.
‘Thirteen significant pieces of circumstantial evidence,’ he said. ‘Let’s call them pieces of circumstantial evidence, fröken, since you are so finicky. . I assume you are still a fröken?’
‘Just about,’ said Moreno. ‘What exactly is it?’
‘What is it?’ said Baasteuwel. ‘Bits and pieces from her flat, of course.’
‘Kristine Kortsmaa’s flat?’
‘Who else’s? Needless to say we have a hell of a lot of other plastic bags with fibres and fluff and God only knows what other crap, but these are a bit more tangible.’
He held up one of the bags so that Moreno could see the contents.
‘A pen?’ she said.
‘Give her a prize,’ said Baasteuwel. ‘I’m glad to see that there are still officers in the force with powers of observation like that. Anyway, I asked three of fröken Kortsmaa’s friends to look through the flat and point out any items they didn’t think seemed to belong. Things that might — this is obviously one of the case’s most dodgy mights — have been left behind by that bloke she took home with her from the music bar. Her murderer, in other words. And so I’m sitting here with thirteen mysterious objects. I’m sure you agree that life in the CID is one big thrill after another.’
He held up another plastic bag that seemed to contain a bus or a tram ticket.
‘I’ve spent quite a lot of time contemplating them,’ said Baasteuwel glumly. ‘Turning them over and staring at them from all angles for nineteen or twenty months now, or however long it’s been. You’re welcome to take over the whole caboodle.’
Moreno stood up and tried to get an overview of the thirteen significant pieces of circumstantial evidence that he had laid out over the top of the piles of paper on his desk.
A beer-bottle cap. A matchbox. A little nail file.
She couldn’t help but laugh.
‘A nail file? Why in God’s name should he have left a nail file behind at the scene of the crime? Are you pulling my leg?’
‘Not at all,’ said Baasteuwel in a serious tone. ‘I never pull anybody’s leg, not even in my spare time. The nail file was found under the table in the room where the dead body was found. None of Kortsmaa’s friends was sure that it belonged to her.’
Moreno sat down again.
‘Good,’ she said. ‘Brilliant detective work — he filed his nails before he strangled her. I don’t suppose you found any bits of nail among the dust and fluff?’
‘I’m afraid not,’ said Baasteuwel. ‘You can forget DNA. No, seriously, I’d be only too pleased if you took care of this crap. . Although there is one item that’s rather interesting.’
‘You don’t say,’ said Moreno. ‘What?’
He held up another of the bags so that she could see the contents. It seemed to be a little lapel badge of some sort. He took it out of the bag and handed it over to her.
Moreno examined the badge somewhat sceptically, twisting it around between her thumb and index finger. The badge itself was yellow, presumably brass or something similar, she guessed. Four or five centimetres in diameter, and at the top a little triangular plate, pointing downwards, no more than half a centimetre square. Dark green enamel, and a little red strand that might have been a letter S, or possibly a stylized serpent.
‘Some club or other?’ Moreno wondered. ‘A membership badge?’
Baasteuwel nodded.
‘Something like that,’ he said.
‘Or maybe one of those badges people wear to indicate that they are suffering from some disease or other — epilepsy or diabetes, for instance?’
‘No,’ said Baasteuwel. ‘I’ve checked every disease that occurs north of the South Pole, and none of them has a symbol anything like that.’
Moreno thought for a moment.
‘So a club, perhaps?’
‘Possibly.’
‘What kind of a club?’
‘I haven’t the slightest idea,’ said Baasteuwel.
‘Have you checked?’
‘What do you think?. .’
‘Forgive me.’
Baasteuwel scratched his head again, and looked melodramatically devastated again.
‘Her friends didn’t recognize it in any case. The only association she ever belonged to was a handball club when she was in her teens, and they were short of cash and didn’t have club badges. This is the kind of badge people like to wear on their lapels because they want to show off the fact that they are members of some association: Alcoholics Anonymous or Siegbrunn’s Rowing Club or Left-Handed Vicars Against Abortion — anything you like as long as they can show that they belong. But we don’t have a register of badges in this country, and I don’t suppose they have them in other countries either. Believe you me, I spent a week chasing up that damned badge.’
‘Where was it found?’
‘That’s what makes it interesting,’ said Baasteuwel. ‘Assuming you don’t have too ambitious pretensions, that is. It was lying inside a shoe in the hall. Under the coat rack and hat shelf. One of the victim’s shoes, of course — the badge could well have come loose and fallen off an overcoat or jacket. It could have belonged to the murderer. Or some other visitor. . But I’m fed up of seeing it now. We put a picture of it in the local newspaper, but nobody got in touch. I expect she bought the damned thing in a flea market in Prague or Casablanca or somewhere like that.’
‘Shouldn’t it be possible to find out where it was made?’
‘We tried, but we didn’t find that out either,’ said Baasteuwel with a sigh. ‘I think you should take it, so that you have something to keep yourself occupied.’