The Stranglers Honeymoon

by Håkan Nesser

  But the most important part of the conversation as far as Münster was concerned was not that mysterious woman, but the fact that the Chief Inspector had taken the liberty of booking in a visitor to come and see him. The following day. In other words, today, Münster thought, and checked his wristwatch.

  She was due at ten o’clock – that is, in twenty minutes’ time.

  It was because of this tight schedule that Van Veeteren had felt obliged to disturb the family’s peace and quiet with a telephone call so late at night. He had also taken pains to describe the situation in so much detail – something he would never normally dream of doing, he stressed several times. He hoped Münster would excuse him. But that’s the way it was.

  No, Münster thought, he had never sounded like this in the old days.

  The visitor’s name was Ludmilla Parnak.

  She was an old acquaintance of Professor deFraan, and had agreed to talk to Intendent Münster as she happened to be in Maardam that day. She actually lived in Aarlach, so it was a sign, an indication from the finger of God, that Winnifred had happened to meet her in Maardam now, Van Veeteren had stressed.

  Half ironic, half seriously, as far as Münster could judge. In so far as he had any views on the finger of God, he had kept them to himself.

  The last five minutes of the telephone call had more or less restored the old ingrained relationship between the Chief Inspector and Münster. Van Veeteren had issued minutely detailed instructions, regarding the somewhat delicate situation fru Parnak was in, and how the intendent should conduct the interview.

  Sensitive! he had said several times. Damned sensitive, very thin ice. In no circumstances must she suspect what we suspect deFraan of having done! You must handle this delicately!

  Delicately? Münster thought as he entered his office. Huh. Van Veeteren’s humility at the beginning of the call hadn’t lasted all that long . . .

  He looked at his watch again and saw that it was high time he started planning some smokescreens.

  ‘It’s important that you understand this conversation is totally unofficial. I don’t know how much information you’ve been given . . .’

  Ludmilla Parnak made a gesture with her hands that suggested she knew little about the situation. Münster eyed her discreetly as he moved around the office, producing cups and saucers and pouring out coffee. She was quite a slim woman in her forties, with an aura of energy about her. Dark hair in pageboy style, clean-cut features and lively blue eyes. Unusually blue for such a dark face, he thought. As he understood it she was in Maardam on business, but he had no idea what kind of business.

  ‘All I know is that it has to do with Maarten deFraan,’ she said, ‘so I’d be grateful if you could enlighten me somewhat.’

  Münster gestured towards the two mazarins fröken Katz had managed to acquire at short notice, but fru Parnak shook her head.

  ‘No, thank you, just coffee would be fine.’

  ‘Me too,’ said Münster, thinking that he could eat both the buns after she had left. ‘Yes, you are right in thinking that I need to speak to you about Maarten deFraan, but I’m afraid I can’t go into detail about the reasons why. Sometimes we need to work in that way in the CID.’

  She looked at him sceptically.

  ‘Why? Is he suspected of something?’

  ‘Not directly. But he’s one of a group of people – a very large group – of which we are sure that one, only one, has committed a crime. All the others are innocent, and we have to go through a sort of elimination process. It’s absolutely essential that you say nothing about our conversation. Not to anybody. When we’ve finished I’ll require you to sign a document saying that you agree to these conditions.’

  ‘And if I refuse?’

  ‘Then we won’t take matters any further.’

  She studied him for a few seconds with her intensely blue eyes.

  ‘All right,’ she said. ‘But I don’t understand why you picked on me.’

  ‘What do you mean by that?’

  ‘I don’t know deFraan all that well. I don’t know him at all, to be frank. I haven’t set eyes on him for five or six years . . . Nor have I spoken to him.’

  ‘But you socialized with him when he lived in Aarlach, didn’t you?’

  ‘A bit. Not very much. He and my husband were colleagues at the university. We occasionally met, all four of us – that was when Christa was still alive. After that summer when she disappeared, I don’t think I’ve met him a single time.’

  ‘What year was that?’

  ‘The summer of 1995. My husband and Maarten used to meet during the autumn of that year, of course, both at work and in private, but he never came round to our place. And then he got a chair here in Maardam, and moved house. What . . . what exactly do you want to know?’

  Münster shrugged and tried to look naive.

  ‘Nothing specific. Just a few general comments about his background and his character, that’s all. He doesn’t seem to have much of a circle of friends in Maardam, so we need to spread our net a little wider.’

  ‘How did you get hold of my name?’

  ‘He gave you as a contact person in connection with his university appointment. Maardam University, that is. It’s a standard procedure: the usual thing of course is to name a close relative, but deFraan doesn’t seem to have any.’

  She said nothing for a while.

  ‘He must be a bit of a hermit, then?’

  ‘Presumably,’ said Münster. ‘Our understanding is that he’s a bit of a lone wolf.’

  She took a sip of coffee, and he could see that she was weighing up what she wanted to say, and what she didn’t. He looked down at his notebook, and waited.

  ‘He was pretty distant in Aarlach as well.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes. To be honest, we didn’t have much in common . . . I assume that you will be subject to the same degree of professional secrecy as I am?’

  ‘Of course,’ Münster assured her. ‘You can regard me as a hole in the ground.’

  She smiled. He could see that she appreciated this gesture of masculine unpretentiousness.

  ‘But I liked Christa. The feeling was mutual. We socialized a bit, the pair of us – not a lot, but I was new to the town and I needed a bit of guidance . . . No doubt you can understand that.’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ said Münster. ‘How did she die?’

  ‘Don’t you know that?’

  ‘No,’ said Münster. ‘We haven’t been interested at all in Professor deFraan until very recently.’

  ‘She disappeared,’ said fru Parnak. ‘In Greece. She and her husband were on holiday there. It was assumed that she drowned. That she’d gone for a swim in the sea one evening and was carried off by an underwater current.’

  ‘And her body was never found?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Very sad,’ said Münster.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It must have been traumatic for him. Why was it assumed that she died in the way you have described?’

  Fru Parnak made the same gesture with her hands again.

  ‘I don’t really know. I think it had something to do with the fact that her bathing costume was missing . . . And I think they found a towel and some clothes on the beach, but I’m not sure. In any case, they never found her body. My husband talked to Maarten when he came back home after that trip, but as I said, I didn’t.’

  ‘Ninety-five, did you say?’ asked Münster, writing the year down in his notebook.

  ‘Yes. Perhaps he chose to leave Aarlach because he thought it would be easier to start all over again in a new location – that would be understandable. But then again, he was very keen on getting a professorship somewhere.’

  ‘He has good academic qualifications, does he?’

  ‘Oh, yes. Maarten deFraan has always been considered a bit of a genius. Even by my husband, and he’s not one for throwing words like genius around.’

  Münster made another note, and thought for a f
ew moments.

  ‘They didn’t have any children, I gather,’ he said. ‘What was their relationship like?’

  Fru Parnak hesitated.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Christa didn’t want to talk about it – we didn’t know each other all that well, after all. They’d been together for a long time, and I think she looked up to him in a way . . . A lot of people did. But perhaps it was wearing off a bit. Admiration is not a good basis for a relationship, don’t you think? Not in the long run.’

  ‘That’s what my experience tells me,’ said Münster. ‘I don’t suppose you know if he had other women as well as his wife?’

  ‘No idea,’ said fru Parnak. ‘I don’t think so – but then again, it wouldn’t surprise me. In any case I think Christa was faithful to him for as long as I knew her. She was honest, never any shady dealings . . .’

  ‘So she was a likeable woman, was she?’

  ‘Very much so,’ said fru Parnak. ‘It was a damned shame that her life was cut short. She was only thirty-two or thirty-three. I don’t think I’ve ever become reconciled to her death.’

  Münster leaned back on his chair and looked out of the window. He noted that the sun actually seemed to be about to burst through the clouds.

  ‘Thirty-three is a critical age,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘Jesus was thirty-three . . . And Mozart and Alexander the Great, if I’m not much mistaken.’

  She looked at him in mild surprise. Then she looked at her watch.

  ‘Do you think you’ve found out what you wanted to know now?’

  Münster nodded.

  ‘Thank you for taking the trouble of coming to see me,’ he said. ‘And what we have discussed will go no further. I don’t think we need bother about signing that bit of paper . . . Would you like me to order you a taxi?’

  Fru Parnak looked out of the same window as Münster, and smiled briefly.

  ‘I think I’ll walk instead. I don’t have far to go, and it looks almost spring-like outside.’

  She stood up, shook hands, and left the room.

  When she had closed the door he hesitated for a moment, then rolled his desk chair closer to the window. Poured out more coffee from the thermos flask, put the plate with the mazarins on his knee and put his feet on the window ledge. Sat there and waited for the sun to appear, and began to discern the outline of a murderer.

  Van Veeteren woke up with a start and looked around.

  Books to the right of him, books to the left, and books straight ahead.

  No doubt about it. He was sitting in the armchair in the antiquarian bookshop, and had fallen asleep. There was a cup half-full of coffee on the arm of his chair. He looked at the clock. A few minutes to five. So he had been asleep for about fifteen minutes at most. As usual.

  Had the doorbell rung? He didn’t think so, and he couldn’t hear any sounds coming from the main area of the shop. But there was something. Must have been. He had been woken up in unnecessarily brutal fashion out of a dream: there must have been some detail, some little recollection, it was on the tip of his tongue. If only he could remember the dream itself; it would be remarkable if he couldn’t . . .

  Blake!

  That was it. William Blake was on the tip of his tongue, and that name was so damned important that he hadn’t been able to keep it hidden beneath the brittle surface of his dream. Neither the name nor himself. Remarkable.

  Blake?

  It took him five seconds to hit upon the connection.

  Monica Kammerle – William Blake – Maarten deFraan.

  He sat there for a while longer without moving a muscle, weighing up the links in the chain.

  Kammerle – Blake – deFraan.

  He recalled how he had stood and leafed through Songs of Innocence and of Experience that day some five or six months ago when he had visited the flat in Moerckstraat. Recalled how surprised he had been to find an author like that among the books of a sixteen-year-old girl.

  It had been a high-class edition as well, he remembered that. Not a cheap paperback, it must have been expensive. Not something a young girl would run to a bookshop and buy with her pocket money.

  A gift?

  That was a very plausible assumption.

  From somebody who was very fond of English literature?

  That was feasible in any case.

  ‘Professor deFraan,’ he muttered as he stood up. What was that line? ‘Rude thought runs wild in contemplation’s field’?

  Something along those lines at least. He went out into the shop to make sure there were no customers there, then returned to the kitchenette and filled the kettle to make some more coffee.

  What next? he thought. How should I make use of this new piece of the jigsaw puzzle that has just turned up?

  Potential piece, at least.

  Another author. Another sort of literary clue. Surely that was convincing?

  Or was it just him who was constructing this pattern, these links – against a background of some bizarre illness due to his profession? Why not? Books are the long route to wisdom and the short route to lunacy, as some bright spark once said.

  It was hard to decide. Not to say impossible. It would make more sense to find a method of testing the validity of it all, he thought as he poured the boiling water over the coffee powder. Blake!

  How?

  How? What damned method could he hit upon?

  Although he was only an old newly awakened antiquarian bookseller with highly doubtful mental abilities, it didn’t take him long to find the answer. Half a cup of coffee and a cigarette, more or less.

  He picked up the telephone and rang Münster at the police station.

  The intendent has just gone home, he was informed.

  He dialled Münster’s home number.

  ‘He hasn’t come home yet,’ said Münster’s son Bart.

  Blasted slowcoach, Van Veeteren thought, but he didn’t say that. Instead he instructed Bart to ask his father to ring Krantze’s antiquarian bookshop the moment he’d stuck his snitch inside the door.

  ‘Snitch?’ wondered Bart.

  ‘The moment he gets home,’ said Van Veeteren.

  While he was waiting he checked the weather through the shop window. It was raining.

  That’s odd, he thought. Wasn’t the sun shining when I fell asleep in the armchair?

  It was half an hour before Münster rang, and his only excuse was that he had done some shopping on the way home. Van Veeteren snorted, but decided to err on the side of mercy.

  ‘Where are their household goods?’ he asked.

  ‘Whose what?’ said Münster.

  ‘The personal property from Moerckstraat, of course. Get a grip! The belongings left behind by the mother and daughter Kammerle.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Münster.

  ‘Don’t know? Call yourself an investigation leader?’

  ‘Thank you . . . I expect they are in store somewhere. Why?’

  ‘Because we need to get hold of them.’

  Silence at the other end of the line.

  ‘Are you still there?’

  ‘Yes . . . Of course I’m still here,’ said Münster. ‘Why do we need to get hold of their personal belongings?’

  ‘Because they might contain vital proof there to nail a murderer.’

  ‘Really?’ said Münster non-committally.

  ‘A book,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘The girl had a book by William Blake on her shelves, and I have the feeling that the Strangler left his fingerprints all over it.’

  Another brief silence.

  ‘How can . . . ? How can you possibly know that?’

  ‘It’s not a question of knowledge, Münster! I said I had a feeling. But that’s irrelevant, just make sure you find that book no matter where it is, and make sure the fingerprint boys do their job properly! You’ll get another set of prints to compare with them in a day or so. If they correspond, it’s game, set and match!’

  Once again Münster was struck dumb for a few second
s. But Van Veeteren could hear him breathing: he sounded as if he had a cold. Or perhaps he was tense.

  Or sceptical?

  ‘DeFraan’s?’ he asked eventually. ‘Are you talking about Professor deFraan’s fingerprints?’

  ‘Right first time,’ said Van Veeteren and hung up.

  He waited for a few minutes.

  Then he rang Winnifred Lynch – who had got back home from both work and the hospital some considerable time ago – and gave her some new instructions and orders.

  No, not orders. You don’t give orders to women of Winnifred’s calibre, he thought. You ask for help. And urge her to be careful.

  After all that intricate bloodhound work he finished off his cold coffee, locked the shop, and walked home through the rain.

  47

  Time stood still on Saturday and Sunday.

  At least, that’s how it seemed to him. The rain came and went, daylight was sucked down into the wet earth, and he realized how deeply involved he had become in the hunt for this murderer. Whether his name was Maarten deFraan or something else.

  Yet again. Yet again a criminal would shortly be captured. It was easy to imagine that such goings-on would never end.

  On Saturday evening he played chess with Mahler at the Society, and lost both matches due entirely to a lack of concentration. Despite the fact that Mahler had just undergone an operation on his leg. Despite a spirited Nimzo-Indian defence.

  On Sunday they looked after Andrea in the afternoon, as usual: but not even during that time could he prevent himself from thinking about Maarten deFraan. Ulrike wondered how he was, and in the end he gave up and tried to explain what the matter was.

  The hunt. The scent of the criminal. The prey.

  He said nothing about the moral imperative. Nothing about duty. Instead, she was the one who took up those aspects, and he was grateful to her for doing so. He had always found it difficult to attribute good motives to his own actions. Or to believe in them, at least, for whatever reason.