Woman with Birthmark

by Håkan Nesser

  “Do I take it that you think this is the link? The connection between the two of them, I mean?”

  “We're following up several different lines of inquiry,” Moreno explained. “This is just one of them. Obviously, we need to follow up every possibility.”

  “Of course. Anyway, I recall Maasleitner in a bit more detail. We were frequently in the same class during training—telegraphy, general staff work, and so on. I have to say I didn't much like him. He was a bit dominant, if you see what I mean.”

  “How do you mean, dominant?” Moreno asked.

  “Well …” Tomaszewski flung out his arms. “Bigmouthed. Young and arrogant. A bit unbalanced—but he probably wasn't all that bad.”

  “Was he generally disliked?”

  Tomaszewski thought that one over.

  “I think so. Not that it was a real problem. It was just that he had something about him that could be a bit trying. But, of course, there's bound to be one or two like that in such a big group.”

  “Did you mix at all when you were off duty?”

  Tomaszewski shook his head.

  “Never.”

  “Do you know if Malik and Maasleitner did?”

  “I've no idea. I wouldn't have thought so, but, of course, I can't swear to it.”

  “Do you know if any of the others were close to them? To either one of them, that is?”

  Tomaszewski studied the photograph again. Moreno produced a list of names and handed it to him. Drank a little tea and took a chocolate biscuit while he was thinking about it. Looked around the whitewashed walls, crammed full with rows of colorful, nonfigurative paintings, almost edge to edge. Her host was evidently something of a collector. She wondered how much money was hanging here.

  Probably quite a lot.

  “Hmm,” he said eventually. “I'm afraid I can't be of much help to you. I can't think of any link between them. I can't associate Malik with anybody else at all. I think Maasleitner occasionally hung around with them.”

  He pointed to two faces in the back row.

  “Van der Heukken and Biedersen?” Moreno read the names from her list.

  Tomaszewski nodded.

  “As far as I can recall. You realize that it's over thirty years ago?”

  Moreno smiled.

  “Yes,” she said. “I realize that. But I understood that time spent on National Service had an ineradicable effect on all young men who underwent it.”

  Tomaszewski smiled.

  “No doubt it did on some. But most of us try to forget all about it, as far as possible.”

  “Charming” was the word that stuck in her mind after the visit to Tomaszewski. The discreet charm of the middle classes, she recalled, and she had to admit that on the whole, there were worse ways of spending an hour on a Saturday morning.

  She had not expected her trip to Dikken to produce anything substantial for the investigation, and the same applied to the next name on her list: Pierre Borsens.

  When she got off the bus in Maardam, she had succeeded in thrusting aside the morning's gloomy thoughts and made up her mind to call in at the covered market and buy a couple of decent cheeses for the evening meal. Pierre Borsens lived only a block away from the market, and it wasn't yet quite half past twelve.

  · · ·

  The man who sat down at the table brought with him an aroma that Jung had some difficulty in identifying. It had the same crudely acidic quality as cat piss, but it also had an unmistakable tang of the sea. Rotten seaweed scorched by the sun, or something of the sort. Most probably it was a combination of both these ingredients.

  And more besides. Jung hastily moved his chair back a couple of feet, and lit a cigarette.

  “I take it you are Calvin Lange?” he asked.

  “I certainly am,” said the man, reaching out a grubby hand over the table. Jung leaned forward and shook it.

  “My place is a bit of a mess at the moment,” the man explained. “That's why I thought it would be better to meet here.”

  He smiled, and revealed two rows of brown, decayed teeth. Jung was grateful to hear what the man said. He would prefer not to have been confronted by the mess.

  “Would you like a beer?” The question was rhetorical.

  Lange nodded and coughed. Jung gestured toward the bar.

  “And a cigarette, perhaps?”

  Lange took one. Jung sighed discreetly and decided it was necessary to get this over with as quickly as possible. It was always problematic to arrange reimbursement for beer and cigarettes; that was something he'd discovered a long time ago.

  “Do you recognize this?”

  Lange took the photograph and studied it while drawing deeply on his cigarette.

  “That's me,” he said, placing a filthy index finger on the face of a young, innocent-looking man in the front row.

  “We know that,” said Jung. “Do you remember what those two are called?”

  He pointed with his pen.

  “One at a time,” said Lange.

  The waitress arrived with two glasses of beer.

  “Cheers,” said Lange, emptying his in one gulp.

  “Cheers,” said Jung, pointing at Malik in the photograph.

  “Let's see,” said Lange, peering awkwardly. “No, no fucking idea. Who else?”

  Jung pointed at Maasleitner with his pen.

  “Seems familiar,” said Lange, scratching his armpit. “Yes, I recognize that bugger, but I've no idea what he's called.”

  He belched and looked gloomily at his empty glass.

  “Do you remember the names Malik and Maasleitner?”

  “Malik and … ?”

  “Maasleitner.”

  “Maasleitner?”

  “Yes.”

  “No, is that him?”

  He plonked his finger on Malik.

  “No, that's Malik.”

  “Oh, shit. What have they done?”

  Jung stubbed out his cigarette. This was going brilliantly.

  “Do you remember anything at all from your year as a National Serviceman?”

  “National Service? Why are you asking about that?”

  “I'm afraid I can't go into that. But we're interested in these two people. Staff College 1965—that's right, isn't it?”

  He pointed again.

  “Oh, shit,” said Lange, and had a coughing fit. “You mean this picture is from the Staff College? Fuck me, I thought it was the handball team. But there were too many of 'em.”

  Jung thought about this for three seconds. Then he returned the photograph to his briefcase and stood up.

  “Many thanks,” he said. “You're welcome to my beer as well.” “If you twist my arm,” said Lange.

  Mahler advanced a pawn and Van Veeteren sneezed.

  “How are things? Under the weather again?”

  “Just a bit, yes. I was out in the rain at the cemetery for too long yesterday afternoon.”

  “Stupid,” said Mahler.

  “I know,” sighed Van Veeteren. “But I couldn't just walk away. I'm rather sensitive about that kind of thing.”

  “Yes, I know how you feel,” said Mahler. “It was that Malik, I gather. How's the case going? They're writing quite a lot about it in the newspapers.”

  “Badly,” said Van Veeteren.

  “Have you found a link yet?”

  Van Veeteren nodded.

  “But I'm not sure it's the right one. Well, I suppose I am, really…. But that doesn't mean very much yet. You could say that I'm looking for a stone and I've found the market square.”

  “Eh?” said Mahler.

  Van Veeteren sneezed again.

  “For Christ's sake,” he said. “Looking for a star and I've found a galaxy, how about that? I thought you were supposed to be the poet.”

  Mahler chuckled.

  “I know what you mean,” he said. “But isn't it an incident that you're looking for?”

  Van Veeteren picked up his white knight and sat there for a few seconds, holding it in his h
and.

  “An incident?” he said, placing the knight on c4. “Yes, that's probably not a bad guess. The problem is that such a lot is happening.”

  “All the time,” said Mahler.

  17

  Of the four people eventually allocated to Inspector Münster, it turned out that one lived in central Maardam, one in Linzhuisen, barely thirty kilometers away and one down in Groenstadt, a journey of some two hundred kilometers. On Saturday afternoon, Münster conducted a short telephone interview with the last—a certain Werner Samijn, who worked as an electrical engineer and didn't have much to say about either Malik or Maasleitner. He had lived in the same barrack room as Malik and remembered him most as a rather pleasant and somewhat reserved young man. He thought Maasleitner was a more cocksure type (if the inspector and the man's widow would excuse the expression), but they had never mixed or gotten to know each other.

  Number one on the list, Erich Molder, failed to answer the several phone calls Münster made to his house in Guyderstraat; but number two, Joen Fassleucht, was available; Münster offered to drive to his home late on Sunday afternoon.

  Münster's son, Bart, aged six and a half, objected strongly to this arrangement, but after some discussion, it was decided that Bart could go along in the car, provided he promise to stay in the backseat reading a Monster comic while his father carried out his police duties.

  It was the first time Münster had agreed to anything of this nature, and as he sat in Fassleucht's living room nibbling at cookies, he became aware that it did not have a particularly positive influence on his powers of concentration.

  But perhaps that didn't matter so much on this occasion—it was hardly an important interrogation, he tried to convince himself. Fassleucht had mixed with Malik quite a lot during his National Service: they were both part of a group of four or five friends who occasionally went out together. Went to the movies, played cards, or simply sat at the same table in the canteen and gaped at the goggle-box. After demobilization, all contact had ceased; and as for Maasleitner, all Fassleucht could do was confirm the opinion expressed by Samijn the previous day.

  Overbearing and rather cocky.

  Münster had been apprehensive, of course, and when he returned to his car after about half an hour he saw immediately that Bart had disappeared.

  A cold shudder ran down his spine as he stood on the pavement wondering what the hell he should do; and, of course, that was the intention. Bart's disheveled head suddenly appeared in the back window—he had been lying on the floor hidden under a blanket, and his broadly grinning face left no doubt about the fact that he considered it an unusually successful joke.

  “You really looked shit scared!” he announced in glee.

  “You little bastard,” said Münster. “Would you like a hamburger?”

  “And a Coke,” said Bart.

  Münster drove toward the center of town in search of a suitable establishment for the provision of such goods, and decided that his son would have to grow several years older before it was appropriate to take him along on a similar assignment.

  “There's an in-depth article about your case in the Allgemejne today” said Winnifred Lynch. “Have you read it?”

  “No,” said Reinhart. “Why should I do that?”

  “They try to make a profile of the perpetrator.”

  Reinhart snorted.

  “You can make a perpetrator profile only in the case of a serial killer. And even then it's a decidedly dodgy method. But it sounds good in the press, of course. They can write and make up stories about murderers who don't exist. A green flag for any fantasies you like. Much more fun than reality naturally.”

  Winnifred Lynch folded up the newspaper.

  “Isn't it a serial killer, then?”

  Reinhart looked hard at her over the edge of his book.

  “If we go and take a bath, I can tell you a bit more about it.”

  “Good that you have such a big bathtub,” commented Winnifred ten minutes later. “If I do take you on, it'll be because of the bathtub. So don't imagine anything else. Okay?”

  “The murderer?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I don't know,” said Reinhart, sinking down further into the bubbles. “Of course it's possible that there's going to be a series, but it's almost impossible to judge after only two. And then, what kind of a series is it? Continue this series of numbers: one, four … then what? There are all kinds of possibilities.”

  “And the former National Servicemen have nothing useful to say?”

  Reinhart shook his head.

  “I don't think so. Not the ones I spoke to, in any case. But the key might well be there somewhere, even so. It's so damned easy to hide something, if you want to. If there's something you don't want stirred up, then all you do is say nothing about it. It was thirty years ago, after all….”

  He leaned his head against the edge of the bath and thought for a while.

  “It's going to be extremely difficult to solve this case, no matter what. If there are no more after these two, that is. There's a bit of difference in the work input, I can assure you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Reinhart cleared his throat.

  “Well, hypothetically Let's say I make up my mind to kill somebody, anybody at all. I get up at three o'clock on a Tuesday morning. I get dressed in dark clothes, hide my face, go out and find a suitable place, and wait. Then I shoot the first person to come past and go home.”

  “Using a silencer.”

  “Using a silencer. Or I stab him with a knife. What chance is there of my being found out?”

  “Not a lot.”

  “Next to none. But if I do it even so, how many working hours do you think it costs the police? Compared with the hour it took me.”

  Winnifred nodded. Stuck her right foot into Reinhart's armpit and started wiggling her toes.

  “That's nice,” said Reinhart. “When war breaks out, can't we just come here and lie like this?”

  “By all means,” said Winnifred. “But what about a motive? That's what you're getting at, I take it?”

  “Exactly,” said Reinhart. “It's because of this imbalance that we have to look for a motive. A single thought on the right lines can save thousands of working hours. So you can see why I'm such a trump card at the police station.”

  She laughed.

  “I can imagine it. But you haven't had that thought on the right lines in this case, is that it?”

  “Not yet,” said Reinhart.

  He found the soap and started lathering her legs.

  “I think it's a wronged woman,” said Winnifred after a while.

  “I know that's what you think.”

  He thought for half a minute.

  “Would you be able to fire those other two shots?”

  She thought about it.

  “No. Not now. But I don't think it's impossible. You can be driven to it. It's hardly inexplicable, let's face it. On the contrary, in fact.”

  “A madwoman who goes around shooting the willies off all men? With good reason?”

  “For specific reasons,” said Winnifred. “Specific causes. And not just any old willies.”

  “Perhaps she's not mad, either?” said Reinhart.

  “Depends on how you look at it, I suppose. She's been wronged, as I said. Affronted, perhaps…. No, let's change the subject, this is making me feel unwell.”

  “Me too,” said Reinhart. “Shall I do the other leg as well?”

  “Yes, do that,” said Winnifred Lynch.

  · · ·

  Van Veeteren had arranged to meet Renate for a while on Sunday afternoon, but when he got up at eleven o'clock, he was pleased to discover that his cold had gotten so much worse that he had a perfectly good excuse for canceling the meeting. All his respiratory passages seemed to be blocked by something thick and slimy and more or less impenetrable, and the only way in which he could breathe at all was by walking around with his mouth wide open. For a few p
ainful seconds he observed what this procedure looked like in the hall mirror, and he recognized that today was one of those days when he ought not to force his presence on another human being.

  Not even an ex-wife.

  It was bad enough putting up with himself, and the day progressed in a fashion reminiscent of a seal traveling through a desert. At about ten in the evening he slumped over the kitchen table with his feet in a bubbling footbath and a terry towel draped over his head—in the vain hope that the steam from an aromatic concoction in a saucepan would banish the slime in his frontal cavities. It certainly had an effect: fluid poured out from every orifice, and he was covered in sweat.

  Bugger this for a lark, he thought.

  And then the telephone rang.

  Van Veeteren recalled Reinhart's early morning call the other day and formed a rapid but logical conclusion: if I didn't wish to receive any calls, I ought to have pulled out the plug.

  I haven't pulled out the plug, and therefore I'd better answer.

  “Hello. Enso Faringer here.”

  For a few blank seconds he hadn't the slightest idea who Enso Faringer was.

  “We met down at Freddy's and talked about Maasleitner.”

  “Yes, of course. What do you want?”

  “You said I should give you a call if I remembered anything.”

  “And?”

  “I've remembered something.”

  Van Veeteren sneezed.

  “Excuse me?”

  “It was nothing. What have you remembered?”

  “Well, I remember Maasleitner talking about that music.”

  “What music?”

  “Somebody had telephoned him over and over again, and played him a tune, it seems.”

  “A tune?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “I don't know. It had annoyed him, in any case.”

  A diffuse memory began to stir in the back of the chief inspector's brain.

  “Hang on a minute. What kind of music was it?”

  “I don't know. He never said what it was—I don't think he knew.”

  “But why did this person call him? What was the point?”

  “He didn't know. That's what irritated him.”

  “Was it a man or a woman?”