Okay, Van Veeteren thought and sat down at a table a few metres further into the oblong-shaped room. Another drop in the chemical brew. He knows that I’m here, and that I have him under observation.
And he must be wondering why I didn’t say hello to him.
It was obvious that deFraan had come to Zimmer’s for his evening meal. Van Veeteren restricted himself to some garlic bread and salad, and a small carafe of red wine. He started leafing through the Telegraaf while keeping half an eye on deFraan, and tried to relax.
That was not easy. He soon registered that the optimistic chemistry metaphor had begun to be replaced by nagging doubts — by the perfectly justified questions he had been keeping at bay so successfully all day. But after just a few seconds they had dug their claws into him in earnest. He had to confront them now, that was clear.
What on earth was he doing?
Why the hell was he sitting here?
Good questions. Extremely well-founded queries, in fact.
He took a mouthful of wine and sighed. Was there anything at all in the way Maarten deFraan behaved or reacted to suggest that he might be the Strangler? he asked himself. Anything at all?
That he didn’t remember a book and an author — among hundreds of others — that he had written about fifteen years ago?
That he had been irritated when he was woken up at twenty minutes past seven by an importunate bookseller?
That he was sitting in a restaurant having his dinner after a lecture?
Oh, incredibly suspicious, Van Veeteren thought and drank another half-glass of wine.
Just as irrefutable as the chain of indications that picked him out in the first place, one could argue. A few sinister literary characters. A lapel badge in a shoe in Wallburg. An advanced process of elimination that reduced 152 freemasons to just one!
Oh, shit! he thought as he contemplated his pitiful salad with galactic indifference. I’m a complete ass!
After today’s incontrovertibly correct conclusion — and his no-holds-barred self-criticism — he immediately felt a little better. After all, there was nobody who knew what he was up to, he tried to convince himself. Apart from Winnifred, of course (and presumably Reinhart as well, but he would have to try to cope with that). He picked out the thin mozzarella slices from the salad, and ate them. Then he slid the plate to one side, rolled a cigarette and smoked it.
DeFraan was still sitting there, eating. Completely at ease, it seemed. Van Veeteren drank up the rest of his wine and beckoned to the waitress, so that he could pay and go home. As the person he was shadowing (his prey? his quarry? the Strangler?) did exactly the same at almost exactly the same moment, the bloodhound decided he might as well continue trailing him for a bit longer — now that he had decided to play the role of an ass. A bloodhound ass? The odds on deFraan simply heading back home to his flat in Kloisterstraat were pretty good, so keeping a check on that shouldn’t waste more than a few minutes of this already wasted day.
Make or break? Bollocks to that! Van Veeteren thought. I only hope he doesn’t report me to the police.
But his straightforward plan was thwarted by the fact that deFraan received his bill first — and that he paid and got up to leave as soon as the procedure was finished. The ass of a bookseller tried in vain to attract the attention of his waitress, who had found other matters to attend to. He considered for a second simply leaving a more than adequate banknote on the table, but changed his mind when he saw the veiled woman emerge from one of the booths on the other side of the bar and cash desk, and follow deFraan as he left the restaurant.
Changed his mind and remained sitting there with a quite new thought in his mind. What the hell? he thought. What the. .?
He quickly conjured up his memories of her — how she had been standing up against one of the pillars outside the university building, evidently waiting for somebody. How she had moved on shortly after deFraan had walked down the steps. How she had followed him through the wind and rain, and slunk into the same restaurant.
And how she had left the premises only a few seconds after him.
Could that be coincidence?
Never, he thought.
Not on your life.
There were evidently several people interested in what Professor deFraan did and said on this miserable February evening.
But a veiled Muslim woman?
Shadowing a professor of English literature?
That seemed bizarre, to say the least. Van Veeteren remained sitting there for a while, smoking and drinking a glass of iced water. Then he paid his bill unhurriedly, and decided that he would phone Winnifred again the moment he got home.
Perhaps together with a representative of Maardam’s bloodhound association.
For even if the chemical brew had not reacted quite as he had hoped, there seemed to be more ingredients in it than he had realized.
46
Detective Intendent Münster contemplated his wife’s stomach.
He had never seen anything more beautiful — well, possibly twice before, when she was pregnant with Bart and Marieke. But that was years ago.
‘I’m a bloody hippopotamus,’ said Synn with a sigh. ‘But not as agile.’
‘Rubbish,’ said Münster. ‘You look so beautiful that I almost wish you were in this condition all the time.’
She slapped him with her pillow, rolled over onto her side and got out of bed.
‘It’s all right for you. .’ she said. ‘But if it doesn’t become a Nobel Prizewinner I shan’t think it was worth the effort.’
‘There are only two months to go,’ said Münster, and got out of bed as well. ‘Then I shall take care of everything.’
‘The breastfeeding as well?’ wondered Synn.
‘Sure,’ said Münster magnanimously, and began kissing her. ‘How do you do it? I’ve almost forgotten.’
She laughed. Continued to embrace him, and played with his tongue.
‘To tell you the truth, I like it,’ she said. ‘And it’s so satisfying to make love when I’m in this condition — isn’t that a bit odd? There can’t be any biological justification for that.’
‘There’s always a point with love-making,’ said Münster. ‘It’s the most natural thing there is — bollocks to whether it’s biological or not. . But I think I must go to work now.’
‘Do you really have to?’
‘I think so. Mind you, twice on an ordinary weekday morning wouldn’t be a bad idea. . Are you really serious?’
Synn looked at the clock.
‘My God! Are the children awake? They’ll never get to school on time.’
‘So what?’ said Münster. ‘When I was a lad I was once late for school, I remember it clearly.’
In the car on the way to the police station he thought that he’d never been as happy as he was now.
It wasn’t just this morning. It was the last few days, the last few weeks, all the time in fact. He had already written about it in his yellow notebook, in which he recorded the best and the worst periods of his life. It was naturally difficult to assess this period together with other times, to compare them — but that wasn’t necessary. Spells of happiness didn’t compete with one another, that was something he had learned. The most important thing — what made it feel stronger than any previous occasion — was that it persisted, and that he was beginning to believe in all seriousness that it would last for the rest of his life.
Him and Synn. And the children. Marieke and Bart, and another one whose name he didn’t know as yet, nor even its sex.
What was new was the benevolent undercurrent: he would never need to look for another woman. Synn would never find herself another man instead of him. In thirty years’ time or so they would sit next to each other on a beach in their deckchairs, and think about times gone by. Hold tightly each other’s wrinkled hands and remember all the millions of details and events and thoughts that had bound their lives together. . and gaze into the sun that was slowly setting behind the horizon.