Woman with Birthmark

by Håkan Nesser

  “Pass,” said Reinhart.

  “We've got nowhere,” deBries explained. “We've interviewed over seventy people at number 26 and the building opposite. Nobody's seen or heard a squeak. The light over the front door of 26B had blown out, by the way, so it would have been hard to get an image of the murderer anyway.”

  “Did he smash that as well?” asked Moreno.

  “Probably not, but it's hard to say. It's been out of order for the past six days.”

  “Nothing else?” asked Van Veeteren.

  “No,” said Reinhart. “The transcripts of the interrogations are at your disposal if you want something guaranteed to send you to sleep over the weekend.”

  “Good,” said Van Veeteren. “Well done.”

  “Thank you,” said deBries.

  The rest of the meeting proceeded in more or less the same way. As far as the character and general reputation of the deceased was concerned, a number of reports came up with the same conclusion. Rickard Maasleitner was a shit. A bully and a self-centered know-it-all of the very worst sort, it seemed. Even so, it was difficult to see that anybody would have had sufficient cause to kill him. As far as was known he hadn't had any affairs—indeed, it was not at all clear if he'd had a single relationship with a woman since his divorce eight years earlier. He might possibly have resorted to prostitutes occasionally, but this was pure speculation that couldn't be confirmed or disproved. He had no debts. No commitments. No shady deals.

  And nobody had been close to him.

  His former wife had nothing positive to say about him, nor had anybody else. His children were naturally a bit shocked, but any sorrow they might have felt would no doubt be able to be assuaged successfully, according to both amateur and professional diagnoses.

  Both of Rickard Maasleitner's parents were dead, and one could be forgiven for thinking that his last real ally had been buried three years ago, in the shape of his mother.

  “A right bastard!” was Reinhart's summary of the victim's character. “He sounds so awful, it would have been interesting to meet him.”

  Van Veeteren switched off the tape recorder.

  “A good finishing line,” he explained.

  “Wouldn't it be possible to track down the weapon?” Jung asked.

  Van Veeteren shook his head.

  “DeBries, tell the assembled masses how one goes about getting hold of a gun. You've been looking into this.”

  “By all means,” said deBries. “Pretty straightforward, in fact. You get in touch with somebody who gives the impression of being just outside the reach of the law—some seedy-looking type hanging around the Central Station or Grote Square, for instance. You say you need a gun. He tells you to wait, and a quarter of an hour later he comes back with an envelope. You slip him a hundred guilders for his services, then you go home and open the envelope. The instructions are inside. You have to send money—let's say a thousand guilders—to a general delivery address. Müller, General Post Office, Maardam, for instance. You do as bidden, and a week or so later you receive a letter with a key inside it. It's for a safe-deposit box at the Central Station. You go there, open the box, and presto!—you find a little box containing a gun….”

  “Then all you need to do is get off your ass and start killing,” said Van Veeteren.

  “A sound method,” said Rooth again.

  “Devilishly clever,” said Reinhart. “But we have to assign Stauff or Petersén to the job of looking into that. Just to be sure.”

  Van Veeteren nodded. Reached over the table and took a cigarette out of deBries's pack.

  “And what are the rest of us supposed to do, then?” asked Münster.

  “Jung,” said the chief inspector, when he'd finally managed to light his cigarette. “Could you go and search for Heinemann? It'll be a real mess if we can't nurse a single horse over the winning line.”

  “Sure,” said Jung, rising to his feet. “Where is he?”

  Van Veeteren shrugged.

  “Somewhere in the building, I assume. In his office, if you're lucky.”

  · · ·

  Ten minutes later Jung returned with Heinemann in tow.

  “Sorry,” said Heinemann, flopping down onto an empty chair. “I was a bit delayed.”

  “You don't say,” said Reinhart.

  Heinemann put a large envelope on the table in front of him.

  “What have you got there?” asked Münster.

  “The connection,” said Heinemann.

  “What do you mean?” wondered Rooth.

  “I was supposed to look for the connection, wasn't I?”

  “Well, I'll be damned!” said deBries.

  Heinemann opened the envelope and took out an enlarged photograph. He handed it to Van Veeteren.

  The chief inspector studied it for a few seconds, looking bewildered.

  “Explain,” he said eventually.

  “Of course,” said Heinemann, taking off his glasses. “The photograph is of the leaving class—that really is what they call it—from the United Services Staff College in 1965. Third from the left in the bottom row is Ryszard Malik. Second from the right in the middle row is Rickard Maasleitner.”

  You could have heard a pin drop. Van Veeteren passed around the photograph of thirty-five formally dressed young men in gray-green military shirts with innocent expressions on their faces.

  “Did you say 1965?” asked Münster when everybody had seen it.

  “Yes,” said Heinemann. “They were called up in April ′64, and left at the end of May ′65. Anyway, that's what I've found…. Apart from the fact that they have the same initials, of course, but I expect you've thought about that?”

  “What?” said Rooth. “My God, you're right!”

  “R.M.,” said Reinhart. “Hmm, I don't suppose it means anything.”

  “Have you got the names of all of them?” asked Van Veeteren.

  Heinemann dug down into the envelope and produced a sheet of paper.

  “Just the names and dates of birth so far, but Krause and Willock are working on more. It'll take a while, as you'll appreciate.”

  “The main thing is that it's done scrupulously,” said Reinhart.

  Silence again. Münster stood up and walked over to the window, turning his back on the others. Van Veeteren leaned back and sucked in his cheeks. Moreno took another look at the photograph.

  “Well,” said deBries after a while, “this is worth thinking about, I reckon.”

  “Presumably,” said Van Veeteren. “We'll take a break now. I need to contemplate. Come back here half an hour from now, and then we can decide where to go from here. DeBries, can you let me have a cigarette?”

  “Where exactly is this military college?” asked Moreno when they had reassembled.

  “Up in Schaabe nowadays,” said Heinemann. “It was moved from here in Maardam at the beginning of the seventies—it used to be out at Löhr.”

  “Did you find any other connections?” Münster wondered.

  “No, not yet. But I think this one is spot-on. If there are any others, they will probably be further back in the past.”

  “How should we go about this, then?” asked Rooth.

  Van Veeteren looked up from the list of names.

  “This is what we'll do,” he said, checking how many of them there were. “There are eight of us. Each of us will take four names and track them down over the weekend. It ought to be possible to find at least two out of four. You can check addresses and suchlike with Krause and Willock. They can distribute the names among you as well. On Monday morning I want comprehensive reports, and if you come across anything significant before then, get in touch.”

  “Sound method,” said Reinhart.

  “Exactly what I was going to say,” said Rooth. “When will Krause and Willock be ready?”

  “They'll be working all evening,” said Van Veeteren. “Joensuu and Klempje have been roped in as well. You can all go home and then ring here and get your four names tonight, or tomorro
w morning. Okay? Any questions?”

  “One more thing, perhaps,” said Reinhart.

  “Of course, dammit,” said Van Veeteren, tapping at the photograph with his index finger. “Tread carefully. It's by no means certain that these are the guys we're looking for. Don't forget that!”

  “Should we release this information to the general public?” Münster asked.

  Van Veeteren thought for three seconds.

  “I think we should be extremely careful not to do that,” he said eventually. “Bear that in mind when you ask your questions as well—don't say too much about what's going on. I don't think Hiller would be too pleased if thirty-three people suddenly turned up and demanded police protection all around the clock.”

  “Mind you, it would be fun to see his face if they did,” said Reinhart.

  “If they did,” said Van Veeteren.

  Russian roulette? Münster thought as he was sitting with the kids on his knee an hour later, watching a children's program on the TV Why do the words “Russian roulette” keep coming into my head?

  It could be a coincidence, of course, Van Veeteren thought as he settled down in the bath with a burning candle on the lavatory seat and a beer within easy reach. Pure coincidence, if Reinhart hadn't already banned that expression. Two people living in the same town might well end up sooner or later in the same photograph, whether they want to or not.

  Wasn't that more likely than their not doing so?

  God only knows, Van Veeteren thought. In any case, we'll find out eventually.

  16

  Saturday, February 3, began with warm southwesterly winds and a misleadingly high and bright sky. Van Veeteren had already made up his mind in principle to attend Ryszard Malik's funeral, but when he stood in the balcony doorway to check the weather situation at about nine o'clock, he realized that he also had the gods on his side.

  Still standing there, he tried to establish what had led him to make that decision. Why he felt it was so necessary for him to be present at the burial ceremony in the Eastern Cemetery, that is. And, to his horror, it dawned on him that it was because of an old movie. Or several movies, rather. More specifically that classic introductory scene with a group of people dressed in black around a coffin being lowered slowly into a grave. And then, a short distance away, two detectives in their crumpled trench coats observing the mourners. They turn up their collars and begin a whispered conversation about who's who…. Who is that lady with the veil, half-turned away from the grave; why isn't the widow crying, and which of the bastards is it who pumped a bullet into the head of the stinking-rich Lord Ffolliot-Pym?

  What reasoning! Van Veeteren thought as he closed the balcony door. Downright perverse! But then, there's nothing one won't do….

  Out in the windswept cemetery later that day there seemed to be a distinct shortage of possible murderers. The one who behaved most oddly was without doubt a large man in a green raincoat and red rubber boots; but he had been instructed to attend by the chief inspector.

  Constable Klaarentoft was known as the force's most skillful photographer, and his task on this occasion was to take as many pictures as he possibly could. Van Veeteren knew that he had stolen this idea from another movie, namely Blow-Up, from the mid-sixties. Antonioni, if he remembered rightly. The theory was, of course, that somewhere among all these faces, which would slowly emerge from the police photographic laboratory, would be the murderer's.

  Ryszard Malik's and Rickard Maasleitner's murderer.

  He recalled seeing the film—which was a pretty awful mishmash—three times, simply to observe how the face of a killer could be plucked out of the lush greenery of an English park.

  Another kind of perversion, of course, and Klaarentoft had evidently not seen the film. He traipsed around between the graves, snapping away to his heart's content, totally ignoring Van Veeteren's instruction to be as unobtrusive as possible.

  The fact that he managed to take no less than twelve pictures of the clergyman conducting the ceremony suggested that he might not have grasped the point of his contribution.

  On the other hand, of course, the group that followed Ryszard Malik to his final resting place was on the sparse side, so there was a shortage of motifs. Van Veeteren counted fourteen persons present—including himself and Klaarentoft—and during the course of the ceremony he was able to identify all of them, apart from two children.

  He was unable to detect furtive observers keeping some distance away from the grave (there were a few persons tending other graves in the vicinity of course, but none of them behaved strangely or alerted his famous intuition in the slightest), and when the rain started to fall and he had managed to give Klaarentoft discreet instructions to go away and snap something else, he had long been aware that there was not much point in his hanging around.

  And an hour or so later, when he had finally managed to drink a glass of mulled wine at the Kraus bar, he realized that the cold he had succeeded in keeping at bay over the last few days had now gotten a second wind.

  The next funeral will be my own, he predicted.

  “It's Saturday. Do you really have to do that today?” he had asked.

  “Today or tomorrow. Don't you think it's best if I get it out of the way as soon as possible?”

  “Yes, of course,” he'd replied, and turned over in his bed. “I'll see you this evening.”

  It wasn't an especially unusual exchange. Nor unexpected. As she sat in the bus she felt a nagging pain at the back of her head, like a bad omen. She had been with Claus Badher for fifteen months now—maybe sixteen, it depended on what criteria you used—and it was probably the best relationship she'd ever been involved in. In fact, it certainly was. It involved love and mutual respect, shared values and interests, and everything else one could reasonably expect.

  Everything in the garden was lovely. Pure bliss. All their friends thought they ought to take things further. Move in together permanently, with all that implied. Claus thought so too.

  There was just that little irritation. That tiny little snag that frightened her. That might be rooted in contempt, despite everything, and if so was destined to grow and become even more worrying. She didn't know. Contempt for her job. Needless to say he was extremely careful not to make it obvious—probably didn't even realize it himself; but sometimes she couldn't help but notice. It just crept up on her, flashed briefly on the surface, then vanished: but she knew it was there. As in the little exchange they'd just had, for instance, which wasn't really significant in itself as yet…. But she suspected it could grow into something really threatening as the years passed by.

  A threat to their equal status. And to her life.

  Claus Badher worked as a foreign-exchange broker in a bank, and was on his way up. She worked as a detective inspector and was on the way … where was she on the way to?

  She sighed. At the moment she was on the way to a house in Dikken, where she was due to meet a fifty-two-year-old lawyer and ask him about his time as a National Serviceman.

  Absurd? Yes, it was absurd. She often thought that Claus was absolutely right. Always assuming that that was what he was thinking, of course….

  She got off the bus and walked the hundred meters or so to the house. Went in through the gate and was greeted by two boxer puppies, enthusiastically barking and wagging their stumpy tails. She paused on the gravel path to stroke them. Looked up at the big two-story house in dark brown English brick with green shutters. Behind one of the gable ends she could just make out a swimming pool, and some wire netting she assumed must be surrounding a tennis court.

  Why not? she thought. If I really had to, I suppose I might manage to cope with living like this.

  “Ewa Moreno, detective inspector. I'm sorry to trouble you. I just have a few questions I'd like to ask you.”

  “No problem. I'm at your disposal.”

  Jan Tomaszewski was wearing something she assumed must be a smoking jacket—and indeed, the rest of him seemed to belong to another a
ge. Or in a movie. His dark hair was powdered and immaculately combed, and his slim body gave the distinct impression of being aristocratic. Leslie Howard? she wondered. He reached out over the smoke-gray glass table and served her tea from a charmingly sculpted silver pot.

  Another world, she thought. I'd better get going before I swoon.

  “Thank you,” she said. “As I mentioned, I need to ask you about the time you spent during your National Service at the Staff College in Löhr. I think that was 1964 to 1965—is that right?”

  He nodded.

  “That's correct. Why on earth should you be interested in that?”

  “I'm afraid I can't tell you that. And I'd appreciate it if you would be discreet about our conversation as well. Perhaps we can meet again at a later stage if you want to know more.”

  That was a formulation she had thought out in advance, and she could see that it had fallen on fruitful ground.

  “I understand.”

  “Anyway, we are mainly interested in a couple of your fellow students at the college. Ryszard Malik and Rickard Maasleitner.”

  She took the photograph out of her briefcase and handed it to him.

  “Can you point them out?”

  He smiled and took a pair of glasses from his breast pocket. Scrutinized the photograph for some thirty seconds.

  “Maasleitner isn't a problem,” he said. “We were in the same barrack room nearly all the time. I'm not so sure about Malik, but I think that's him.”

  He pointed and Moreno nodded.

  “Correct. Can you tell me what you remember about them?”

  Tomaszewski took off his glasses and leaned back in his chair.

  “I can hardly remember Malik at all,” he said after a while. “We were never in the same group and we didn't mix when we were off duty He was a bit introspective and pretty anonymous, I think. I should mention that I'm not completely unaware of what has happened….”

  Moreno nodded.