by Håkan Nesser
Twenty-three responses.
After the first so-called elimination of the idiots (those who hadn’t understood that it is not possible to submit a handwritten response using a computer – or the ones who were obviously only interested in showing off their muscles or beards before masturbating inside a woman), there were fourteen left. Plus one wild card: it was Anna who had invented and introduced that device – on pretty good and, it would transpire, foresighted grounds – after their third fishing expedition exactly a year ago.
After the next rather more careful run-through – after the lobster and the Chablis, but before the coffee and cognac, concentrating on such simple but important criteria as graphology and the ability to put thoughts into words – the number of possible candidates was down to four. Plus the wild card.
They took a break. Put on a Nick Drake CD and did the washing up. Prepared a tray with coffee and cognac glasses, moved into the living room and settled down in armchairs. It was ten o’clock, and time for the final round.
‘What about this one,’ said Ester, ‘what do you think of him? I must say he appeals to me much more than any of the others.’
‘Read it out,’ said Anna, leaning back in the armchair and sipping her cognac.
Ester started reading.
‘“I have to say I’m not a regular reader of these Contacts pages, but your advert attracted my attention – and why not. I’m a pilot and spend most of my time roaming around the world, but I have a base here in Maardam. Two marriages have stolen my youth, two children have ruined my finances, but at forty I’m too young to die. My first wife taught me to read – Maeterlinck, Kafka and the great Russians; my second wife took me to the opera. I still burst into tears when I hear the duet from The Pearl Fishers, but why should I sit sobbing to myself ? I have a house on a Greek island, but even Greece is lacking in charm at this time of year. I suggest a dinner and La Traviata instead: that’s on until the New Year.”’
‘Hmm,’ said Anna. ‘He certainly has a point, no doubt about that. If half of what he says is true he has a lot going for him. Can I have a look at his photo again?’
Ester handed it over. A powerfully built man, smiling, half-length. White shirt, open-necked. Thinning hair and his eyes perhaps a bit too close together – but what the hell? There surely can’t be any doubt that he must be one of the chosen two.
They had changed the rules of the game after the second advert, so that there were now just two finalists: one each. It would have felt wrong in the long run to have more than that, simply in order to have back-ups. Neither Ester nor Anna had been attracted to that model – it would have been cowardly, to put it bluntly. Too vague and not sufficiently uncompromising. You needed to play this sort of game with a certain elan, to take a few chances in order to achieve a romantic outcome – otherwise there was a risk of everything being watered down, something neither of them could have tolerated. A yawning Amor? No thank you. Certain rules didn’t need to be spelled out, but they were there even so.
‘Okay, the pilot is one of them,’ said Anna, handing back the photo. ‘Nothing to argue about there. Do you have a number two?’
Her friend said nothing for a while, just read the submissions and studied the pictures.
‘Not really,’ she said eventually. ‘Possibly this journalist, but it’s up to you.’
Anna took over the documents and glanced through them.
‘I’m a bit doubtful about him,’ she said. ‘Maybe I’m just biased, but that editor I wasted two months on last spring was really no Richard Burton. Even if he did knock back a few glasses.’
‘Richard Burton?’ said Ester with a laugh. ‘If he’s the one you’re after I suggest that bloke from Wahrsachsen, whatever his name is. At least he has the right sort of impressive-looking facial expression.’
Anna picked up the photo of Angus Billmaar, a forty-four-year-old with a steel business of his own. And she also burst out laughing.
‘Good God no!’ she snorted. ‘I mean Richard Burton before he became an old-age pensioner. Are you really telling me that this bloke is forty-four? I have to say I very much doubt it – he must have chopped a decade off when nobody was looking. How the hell could he get through to the last round?’
Ester shrugged.
‘Lack of competition,’ she suggested. ‘Unfortunately. Who do you suggest, then?’
Anna contemplated the remaining two photographs, holding one in each hand and weighing up first one, then the other, several times. Checked their write-ups as well, before putting everything down on the table in front of her.
‘No,’ she said. ‘I don’t find any of them uplifting.’
‘Nor do I,’ agreed Ester. ‘Mind you, I do have my period at the moment – but I don’t think I’d find any of them inspiring under any circumstances. Not in the best of worlds. So what the hell do we do?’
Anna thought for a moment.
‘I have a suggestion,’ she said.
‘Really? Let’s hear it.’
‘It goes a bit against the rules, but we’ve put them aside before now. I’m quite attracted to my wild card.’
Ester took a sip of cognac and pulled a face.
‘A plunge into the dark,’ she said. ‘I know you find it hard to resist that kind of temptation.’
‘Do you have a better solution?’
Ester shook her head.
‘Only that we work our way through them all once again – but I don’t suppose for a moment that it would help. But I’d like to make it clear that I wouldn’t want to draw lots and take that kind of risk. You’d have to take him on.’
Anna smiled.
‘We don’t need to draw lots. You take your pilot, and I’ll take on this mystery man.’
Ester frowned, and thought for a moment.
‘No photo, no name,’ she said. ‘No address and no telephone number. You can hardly say that he’s complied with the requirements. Read it out again, let me hear it once more.’
Anna cleared her throat and read out the short text written on a yellow card.
‘“Saw your advert by chance. If you really are the person you say you are, it could be interesting to meet you. I’ll reserve a table at Keefer’s on the eighth. If you turn up at about eight, I’ll treat you to a bite to eat and a chat. How to recognize me? A red tie and Eliot’s The Waste Land in the same colour.” That was all. What do you think?’
Her friend looked thoughtful and fingered the bottle of cognac.
‘Eliot?’ she said. ‘Have you read Eliot?’
Anna thought for a moment.
‘Nothing apart from the odd poem we had to study at grammar school. But he has neat handwriting – not T. S. Eliot . . . I like it. And the colour of the card he wrote on is rather attractive.’
Ester topped up their glasses, then nodded thoughtfully a few times.
‘You sound impressively rational,’ she said. ‘I’m almost inclined to agree with you. Handwriting and a feeling for colours can tell you more than lots of other rubbish. When’s the eighth? Next Friday?’
Anna worked it out rapidly inside her head.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘So, shall we say that we’ve made up our minds?’
‘Let’s do that,’ said Ester with a smile. ‘Fifth time lucky . . . A pilot and a mystery man. Cheers and good hunting, my lovely.’
‘Cheers,’ said Anna Kristeva. ‘I have to say that when it comes to foreplay, you and I are unbeatable.’
‘I reckon we’re unbeatable on all fronts,’ said Ester Peerenkaas. ‘May the gods be with us on this occasion as well.’
‘Of course they will be,’ said Anna Kristeva.
And she washed away the sudden pang of fear that flashed through her consciousness with a draught of excellent Renault.
25
‘Three weeks!’ said Reinhart. ‘Three bloody weeks since the girl was found out there on the beach! And we’ve got absolutely nowhere – did you hear that? Nowhere! It’s a scandal!’
He le
aned forward over his desk and glared at all those present in turn: but nobody seemed to have anything to say in their defence. Moreno signalled to him by means of a glance in the direction of the woman sitting diagonally opposite her.
‘Ah, yes,’ said Reinhart, with a sweeping gesture. ‘You probably haven’t met the brains trust yet . . . I’d like to introduce you all to Inspector Sammelmerk. She’s been transferred here from Saaren, to fill the gap left by deBries. About time, some might say – it’s been over a year . . . Anyway, from left to right: Krause, Moreno, Jung, Rooth, Münster, and yours truly, Chief Inspector Reinhart . . . Any questions?’
Nobody had any questions. Jung blew his nose into a paper tissue.
‘Welcome,’ said Rooth. ‘Although we met yesterday, didn’t we?’
Jung, Moreno and Münster joined in the welcome by nodding. Krause stood up and shook her hand, and Inspector Sammelmerk herself did her best to avoid looking embarrassed. She was quite a tall and well-built woman in her forties: she had asked to be transferred from Saaren for personal reasons, this Tuesday was her second day in the Maardam CID, and of course there was no reason to make a fuss about it.
‘Thank you,’ she said in any case. ‘I’m not usually difficult to work with – and I hope you aren’t either. Anyway, shall we get going?’
‘Excellent,’ said Reinhart. ‘We all have our pluses and minuses, of course, but several of us are fairly normal human beings. If you feel you’d like to make a good impression on us, we have just the case for you to take on. Let’s call it the Kammerle–Gassel case, for want of anything better. I thought of asking Inspector Krause to spell everything out – he’s the youngest and least depraved brain we have access to, and as I said, we haven’t exactly been making progress these last few weeks. Let’s hear it then.’
Krause moved over to the short end of the table and switched on the overhead projector.
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Thank you for having faith in me. I’ve prepared a short presentation of this case: I thought I might run through it, and then we could discuss what to do next . . .’
‘Off you go, then,’ said Rooth. ‘We’re all agog.’
‘Perhaps I ought to explain,’ Reinhart felt it necessary to mention for the benefit of Inspector Sammelmerk, ‘that when Inspector Rooth isn’t stuffing his face, things sometimes come tumbling out of his mouth instead. He doesn’t know any better. Carry on, Krause!’
‘Hey ho,’ said Rooth. ‘I’m misunderstood and slandered – but never mind: let’s hear what you’ve got to say.’
Krause inserted his first slide, which spelled out the case in chronological shorthand.
‘The first thing that happened – before anything started to happen, as it were – was that a certain Pastor Gassel paid a visit to our former Chief Inspector at the antiquarian bookshop where he now works. It’s the fifteenth of September. The pastor has something he needs to get off his chest, but Van Veeteren hasn’t time to listen to him. Just over two weeks later, on Monday, the second of October, Gassel falls – or jumps or is pushed – under a train in Maardam Central Station, and dies on the spot. No witnesses. At about the same time – we don’t have exact data – two women are murdered: Martina Kammerle and her sixteen-year-old daughter Monica. Both of them are strangled. The mother was probably strangled in her flat: her body was found there a month later, eleven days before Monica’s corpse was dug up by a dog in the sand dunes out at Behrensee. As far as the daughter is concerned, we haven’t the slightest idea about the location of the actual murder. Nor do we know why the murderer sawed her legs off.’
‘Her legs?’ asked Sammelmerk.
‘From the knees down, yes,’ said Krause. ‘It’s totally incomprehensible: but nevertheless there are a few other things that we do understand.’
‘You reckon?’ said Rooth, but Krause ignored him.
‘Unfortunately there is no conclusive technical evidence in either of these cases – no fingerprints, for instance . . . And nothing else: although after a few days we did find a link between this Pastor Gassel and the murdered women . . . Or the daughter, at least. She had written down his name in a notebook she kept in her room, and this link led us to conclude that in all probability she had met him on one or more occasions in order to discuss something specific. He paid a visit to the Bunge Grammar School at the beginning of term, on church business – and that might well have been when she made contact with him. There is reason to believe that the reason for Gassel’s visit to Van Veeteren was to do with Monica Kammerle – that is not definite, of course, but we don’t have a better theory. Needless to say, this presumes that the priest’s visit and the deaths of the women are connected.’
‘I can add to that,’ said Reinhart. ‘An analysis of the pastor’s estate produced no further evidence whatsoever. Le Houde and Kellermann completed their investigation into that yesterday – it was by no means easy to gain access to the place where his belongings were stored, it seems. But in any case, there was evidently no reference to any Kammerle anywhere at all.’
‘No doubt he had it tucked away inside his head,’ said Rooth.
‘I’d have thought so,’ said Reinhart. ‘But it would be useful if we knew what it was. And what exactly was going on in Moerckstraat.’
Krause cleared his throat.
‘That is obviously the key to it all,’ he said. ‘Both the mother and the daughter led pretty solitary lives – we haven’t been able to find a single witness who could supply us with a bit more information about them. Martina Kammerle was a manic depressive, of course, and wasn’t fit and well by any stretch of the imagination. And the girl was a bit of a hermit as well. She didn’t seem to have any school friends. Neither of them apparently had any friends, no social life at all. The fact that nobody reported Monica Kammerle as a missing person seems to be connected with the fact that she changed schools – it’s pretty disgraceful that the authorities didn’t have a proper check on what was happening, but I suppose that’s life. In any case, it seems there was a man involved. Fru Paraskevi, a next-door neighbour in Moerckstraat, says she heard a man’s voice in the Kammerle flat several times in August, and a witness saw Martina Kammerle together with a man in Maardam. But we haven’t managed to obtain anything remotely close to a detailed description of him. Anyway, we’ve since established a possible link with a case in Wallburg some eighteen months ago – perhaps it would be best if Reinhart were to go into that?’
Reinhart produced a document out of a red folder.
‘By all means,’ he said. ‘It could well be relevant. And quite possibly is. On the fifteenth of June last year a woman by the name of Kristine Kortsmaa was strangled in Wallburg. Strangled in more or less the same way as our two victims. She met a bloke at a pub with music and dancing, and invited him back home. It seems pretty clear that he was the one who killed her. I’ve been through the case with Inspector Baasteuwel, who was in charge of it, but all we’ve concluded is that it . . . shall we say probably? . . . that it was probably the same murderer. The same bloody lunatic that we don’t know so much as a little fingernail about. No fingerprints, incidentally.’
‘A discreet type,’ said Rooth.
‘Extremely discreet,’ said Reinhart. ‘All we’ve managed to scrape together about him is that he must have very strong hands, that he’s probably somewhere between thirty and fifty – otherwise Kristine Kortsmaa would never have seduced him, according to her friends – and that he doesn’t have any unusual physical characteristics that would draw attention to him. Let’s face it, he spent an hour or more prancing around with his victim at that disco!’
‘Good luck,’ said Rooth. ‘He must have been incredibly lucky, for Christ’s sake.’
‘I’m sure you’re right,’ muttered Reinhart. ‘Let’s ignore this stupid perpetrator profile – at least for now. The man we’re dealing with is as weird as it gets when it comes to sex – that’s what we must bear in mind. He hasn’t had sex with his victims before or after killing them. But bo
th Kortsmaa and the Kammerle girl had their knickers removed. Hmm. If any of you happen to know a bloke like this, I’d be most grateful for a tip-off.’
Nobody had any comment to make, and Krause fitted in a new slide. There were two names, and a question mark by each of them.
Benjamin Kerran?
Henry Moll?
‘Up to you now, Jung,’ said Reinhart. ‘Your turn.’
Jung nodded, and adjusted his posture so that he had eye contact with Inspector Sammelmerk.
‘Well, I don’t really know,’ he said. ‘What I have to say could be pure coincidence: and even if there’s more to it than that, it’s hard to see what the implications could be in the long run.’
‘Well said,’ said Rooth.
‘Shut up, Rooth,’ said Reinhart.
‘Thank you, Chief Inspector,’ said Jung. ‘Anyway, we discovered this name, Benjamin Kerran, when we were combing through the flat where the murder took place, Rooth and I . . . It was the only one of the forty-six names in all that we couldn’t pin on a real person, if you see what I mean. So I did a simple search on the Internet, and discovered that this Kerran is a character in an English crime novel. The author’s name is Henry Moll, and Kerran is the murderer in the book. It’s pretty obscure, written in the thirties, but I managed to get hold of a copy from the university library and I’ve read it. I didn’t think much of it, I have to say, but it was fun reading a crime novel in working hours.’
Reinhart started filling his pipe.
‘I don’t doubt that for a moment,’ he said. ‘Anyway, what conclusions did you draw?’
‘None at all, to be honest,’ said Jung. ‘This Kerran character is a particularly nasty type. He’s a strangler, just like our own killer, but there’s no sexual motivation behind what he does. He’s driven more by religion. He wanders around the streets of London and strangles female drop-outs, mainly prostitutes – I suppose you could say he’s a variant of Jack the Ripper. But as I said, it’s a pretty awful book. And completely unknown. I’ve spoken to a few crime novel fans – Kevin A. Bluum among others – but nobody has ever heard of it. Nor have they heard of Henry Moll.’