Woman with Birthmark

by Håkan Nesser

  What they were looking for were two types of information, as had been stressed in the press release and repeated in the newspapers and the broadcast-news bulletins.

  First: information that could (directly or indirectly) link the wanted woman to any of the murder scenes.

  Second: evidence to indicate where Miss Adler had gone after leaving Mrs. Klausner's house on Friday afternoon.

  By noon only a regrettably small number of calls had been received in those categories. There might have been indications suggesting that Maria Adler had taken a northbound train round about six o'clock on Friday evening. One witness claimed to have seen her in the station, another standing on a platform where he was waiting for a friend—a woman who didn't quite look like the picture of her in the mass media, but might well have been her even so.

  If these two claims were correct, the train in question must have been the 1803, and shortly after half past noon Van Veeteren decided to send out a follow-up message to the mass media, urging anybody who had been traveling on that train and might have seen something to get in touch with the police.

  A few hours later a handful of passengers had contacted the police, but what they had to say was hardly of significance. It sounded more like a collection of irrelevant details and guesses, and there were therefore grounds for believing that the train line (as Reinhart insisted on calling it) was not very promising.

  By three o'clock, the officers in charge of the investigation were beginning to show the strain. They had spent the day in two rooms, Van Veeteren's and Münster's offices, which were next to each other, and the piles of paper and empty coffee mugs had increased steadily for six hours.

  “Hell's bells,” said Reinhart. “Here's another call from the old witch who's seen our woman in Bossingen and Linzhuisen and Oosterbrügge. Now she's seen her in church at Loewingen as well.”

  “We ought to have a better map,” said deBries. “With flag pins or something. I think we've had several tips from Aarlach, for instance. It would make things easier….”

  “You and Rooth can fix one,” said Van Veeteren. “Go to your office so that you don't disturb us.”

  DeBries finished off his Danish pastry and went to fetch Rooth.

  “This is a real bugger of a job, sheer drudgery,” said Reinhart.

  “I know,” said Van Veeteren. “No need to remind me.”

  “I'm beginning to think she's the most observed woman in the whole country. They've seen her everywhere, for Christ's sake. In restaurants, at football matches, parking lots, cemeteries … in taxicabs, buses, shops, the movies …”

  Van Veeteren looked up.

  “Hang on,” he said. “Say that again!”

  “What?” asked Reinhart.

  “All those places you chanted.”

  “What the hell for?”

  Van Veeteren made a dismissive gesture.

  “Forget it. Cemeteries …”

  He picked up the telephone and called the duty officer. “Klempje? Get hold of Constable Klaarentoft without delay! Yes, I want him here in my office.”

  “Now what are you onto?” asked Reinhart.

  For once things went smoothly and half an hour later Klaa rentoft stuck his head around the door after knocking tentatively.

  “You wanted to speak to me, Chief Inspector?”

  “The photographs!” said Van Veeteren.

  “What photographs?” wondered Klaarentoft, who took an average of a thousand a week.

  “From the cemetery, of course! Ryszard Malik's burial. I want to look at them.”

  “All of them?”

  “Yes. Every damned one.”

  Klaarentoft was beginning to look bewildered.

  “You've still got them, I hope?”

  “Yes, but they've only been developed. I haven't printed them out yet.”

  “Klaarentoft,” said Van Veeteren, pointing threateningly with a toothpick. “Go down to the lab this minute and print them! I want them here within an hour.”

  “Er, yes, of course, will do,” stammered Klaarentoft, and hurried out.

  “If you can do it more quickly, so much the better!” yelled the chief inspector after him.

  Reinhart stood up and lit his pipe.

  “Impressive issuing of orders,” he said. “Do you think she was there, or what are you after?”

  Van Veeteren nodded.

  “Just a feeling.”

  “Feelings can be helpful at times,” said Reinhart, blowing out a cloud of smoke. “How are Jung and Moreno doing, incidentally? With Innings and that Friday evening, I mean.”

  “I don't know,” said Van Veeteren. “They've found the right place, it seems, but not whoever was with him.”

  “And what's Heinemann doing?”

  “He's in his office nosying into bank-account details, apparently,” said Van Veeteren. “Just as well, this would be a bit much for him.”

  “It's starting to be a bit much for me as well, to tell you the truth,” said Reinhart, flopping back down on his chair. “I have to say I'd prefer her to come here in person and give herself up. Can't we put that request in the next press release?”

  There was a knock on the door. Münster came in and perched on the edge of the desk.

  “Something occurred to me,” he said. “This woman can hardly be older than forty That means she would have been ten at most when they were at the Staff College….”

  “I know,” muttered Van Veeteren.

  Reinhart scratched his face with the stem of his pipe.

  “And what are you trying to say in view of that?”

  “Well,” said Münster, “I thought you'd be able to work that out for yourself.”

  It took Klaarentoft less than forty minutes to produce the photographs, and when he had put them on Van Veeteren's desk he lingered in the doorway, as if waiting for a reward of some kind. A coin, a candy, a few grateful and complimentary words at least. The chief inspector grabbed hold of the pictures, but Reinhart had noticed the hesitant giant.

  “Hmm,” he said.

  Van Veeteren looked up.

  “Well done, Klaarentoft,” he said. “Very good. I don't think we need you anymore today.”

  “Thank you, Chief Inspector,” said Klaarentoft, and left.

  Van Veeteren leafed through the shiny photographs.

  “Here!” he bellowed suddenly. “And here! I'll be damned!”

  He skimmed quickly through the rest.

  “Come here, Reinhart! Just look at these! That's her, all right.”

  Reinhart leaned over the desk and studied the pictures of a woman in a dark beret and light overcoat tending a grave not far from Malik's; one was in profile, the other almost full face. They were evidently taken with only a short interval between: the photographer had simply changed his position. She was standing by the same grave and seemed to be reading what it said on the rough, partly moss-covered stone. Slightly bent, and one hand holding back a plant.

  “Yes,” said Reinhart. “That's her, by God.”

  Van Veeteren grabbed the telephone and called the duty officer.

  “Has Klaarentoft left yet?”

  “No.”

  “Stop him when he appears, and send him back up here,” he said, and hung up.

  Two minutes later Klaarentoft appeared in the doorway again.

  “Good,” said Van Veeteren. “I need enlargements of these two, can you do that?”

  Klaarentoft took the pictures and looked at them.

  “Of course,” he said. “Is it …”

  “Well?”

  “Is it her? Maria Adler?”

  “You can bet your life it is,” said Reinhart.

  “I thought there was something odd about her.”

  “He has a keen nose,” said Reinhart when Klaarentoft had left.

  “Yes indeed,” said Van Veeteren. “He took twelve pictures of the clergyman as well. We'd better arrest him right away.”

  “At last,” said Reinhart when he snuggled down behin
d Win-nifred Lynch in the bath. “It's been a bastard of a day. What have you done?”

  “Read a book,” said Winnifred.

  “A book? What's that?” said Reinhart.

  She laughed.

  “How's it going? I take it you haven't caught her?”

  “No,” said Reinhart. “More than thirteen hundred tips, but we don't know where she is or who she is. It's a bugger. I thought we might even solve it today.”

  “Hmm,” said Winnifred, leaning back against his chest. “All she needs is a wig. No suspicions, even?”

  “She's probably gone northward,” said Reinhart. “She might have taken a train. We'll be talking to a guy tomorrow who thinks he might have been in the same coach as she was. He rang just before I left.”

  “Any more?”

  Reinhart shrugged.

  “I don't know. We don't know about the motive, either.”

  She thought for a moment.

  “You remember I said it would be a woman?”

  “Yes, yes,” said Reinhart, with a trace of irritation.

  “A wronged woman.”

  “Yes.”

  She stroked his thigh with her fingers.

  “There are many ways of wronging a woman, but one is infallible.”

  “Rape?”

  “Yes.”

  “She was ten years old at most when they left the Staff College,” said Reinhart. “Can't be more than forty now—what do you think … ?”

  “No, hardly,” said Winnifred. “Awful, but there's something of that sort in the background, believe me.”

  “Could well be,” said Reinhart. “Can't you look a bit deeper into your crystal ball and tell me where she's hiding as well? No, let's forget this for a while. What was the book you read?”

  “La Vie Devant Soi,” said Winnifred.

  “Emile Ajar?”

  “Yes.”

  “And?”

  “I think I need a child.”

  Reinhart leaned his head against the tiles and closed his eyes. Sensed two completely irreconcilable images flashing through his brain, but it all happened so quickly that he never managed to grasp their significance.

  Assuming they had any.

  “May I give you one?” he said.

  “If you insist,” she said.

  31

  “She could well have taken that train,” said Münster. “He seems pretty sure of what he's talking about.”

  “Good,” said Van Veeteren. “Where did she go to?”

  Münster shook his head.

  “Alas,” he said. “He got off in Rheinau, but she didn't. So … somewhere farther north than Rheinau, it seems.”

  “There must be more people who saw her?” said Reinhart.

  “You'd have thought so. In any case, there was somebody else in the same coach, according to Pfeffenholtz.”

  “Pfeffenholtz?”

  “Yes, that's his name. There was somebody else there all the way from Maardam. A skinhead. And it seems he was still there after Rheinau.”

  “Wow,” said Reinhart.

  “Dark glasses, Walkman, and a comic book,” said Münster. “Between eighteen and twenty about. Eating candy all the time, and a cross tattooed over his right ear.”

  “A swastika?” Reinhart asked.

  “Evidently,” sighed Münster. “What should we do? Send out a ‘wanted’ notice?”

  Van Veeteren grunted.

  “A swastika and candies?” he said. “Good God, no. Somebody else can go chasing after neo-Nazi puppies. But this Pfeffen-berg …”

  “Holtz,” said Münster.

  “Okay, okay, Pfeffenholtz. He seems to know what he's talking about?”

  Münster nodded.

  “Okay,” said Van Veeteren. “Go back to your office and pick out the ones from the Staff College who might fit in. The ones who live north of Rheinau, in other words. Fill me in when you've done that.”

  Münster stood up and left the room.

  “Have you thought about the motive?” Reinhart wondered.

  “I've spent the last month wondering about that,” muttered the chief inspector.

  “Really? What do you reckon, then? I'm starting to think in terms of rape.”

  Van Veeteren looked up.

  “Go on,” he said.

  “It must be a woman looking for revenge for something or other,” Reinhart suggested.

  “Could be.”

  “And rape would fit the bill.”

  “Could be,” repeated the chief inspector.

  “Her age makes it a bit complicated, though. She must have been very young at the time. Only a child.”

  Van Veeteren snorted.

  “Younger than you think, Reinhart.”

  Reinhart said nothing and stared into thin air for a few seconds.

  “My God,” he said eventually. “That's a possibility, of course. Sorry to be so thick.”

  “No problem,” said Van Veeteren, and reverted to leafing through papers.

  DeBries arrived at the same time as Jung and Moreno.

  “Can we take mine first?” said deBries. “It won't take long.”

  Van Veeteren nodded.

  “She's not in criminal records.”

  “A pity” said Reinhart. “Still, as things are now it probably wouldn't help us if we knew who she was. But it could be interesting, of course.”

  “Innings?” said Van Veeteren when deBries had left the room.

  “Well,” began Moreno. “We've fixed the restaurant. He had a meal at Klumm's Cellar out at Loewingen, but we haven't managed to find out who he was with.”

  “Good,” said Van Veeteren. “That was no doubt the intention. How carefully have you checked?”

  “Extremely carefully,” said Jung. “We've spoken to all his colleagues and friends, and all his relatives up to seven times removed. None of them was out with Innings that Friday evening.”

  The chief inspector broke a toothpick in half and looked pleased. As pleased as he was able to look, that is, which wasn't all that much. Nevertheless, Reinhart noticed his state.

  “What's the matter with you?” he asked. “Don't you feel well?”

  “Hmm,” said Van Veeteren. “But you have the witness from the restaurant, I gather?”

  “Only a waiter,” said Moreno. “And he didn't get to see much of the person Innings was with. A man aged between fifty and sixty, he thought. He had his back toward the waiter most of the time, it seems.”

  “You can bet your life he had,” said Van Veeteren. “Anyway take those photographs of the group who attended Staff College together. The new ones, of course. Ask him if he thinks he can point anybody out.”

  Jung nodded.

  “Do you think Innings was eating with one of them, then?”

  Van Veeteren looked inscrutable.

  “Moreover,” he said, “be a bit generous when you ask him if he can identify anybody. If he's not sure, get him to pick out the three or four most likely even so.”

  Jung nodded again. Moreno looked at the clock.

  “Today?” she asked hopefully. “It's half past four.”

  “Now, right away,” said Van Veeteren.

  Shortly after Van Veeteren got home, Heinemann phoned.

  “I've found a connection,” he said.

  “Between what?”

  “Between Malik, Maasleitner, and Innings. Do you want me to tell you about it now, over the phone?”

  “Fire away,” said Van Veeteren.

  “Okay,” said Heinemann. “I've been going through their bank records, all three of them—it's more awkward than you might think. Some banks, Spaarkasse, for instance, have some routines that are highly peculiar, to say the least. It can't be much fun dealing with financial crimes, but I suppose that's the point….”

  “What have you found?” asked Van Veeteren.

  “Well, there's a similarity.”

  “What, exactly?”

  “June 1976,” explained Heinemann. “On June eighth, Malik tak
es out ten thousand guilders from his savings account at the Cuyverbank. On the ninth, Maasleitner draws an identical amount from the Spaarkasse. The same day, Innings is granted a loan by the Landtbank for twelve thousand….”

  Van Veeteren thought for a moment.

  “Well done, Heinemann,” he said eventually. “What do you think that implies?”

  “You can never be sure, I suppose,” said Heinemann. “But a spot of blackmail might not be out of the question.”

  Van Veeteren thought again.

  “You see where we need to go from there, I suppose?”

  Heinemann sighed.

  “Yes,” he said. “I suppose I do.”

  “You need to check and see if anybody else in the group made a similar transaction at the same time.”

  “Exactly,” said Heinemann. “I'll start on that tomorrow.”

  “Don't sound so miserable,” said the chief inspector. “You can start with the ones who live up north—with a bit of luck that might be enough. Have a word with Münster, and he'll give you a list tomorrow morning.”

  “All right,” said Heinemann. “I have to go and look after the kiddies now.”

  “Kiddies?” asked the chief inspector in surprise. “Surely your children are grown up now?”

  “Grandchildren,” said Heinemann, and sighed again.

  Well, well, Van Veeteren thought as he replaced the receiver. We're getting there, the noose is tightening.

  He fetched a beer from the fridge. Put on the Goldberg Variations and leaned back in his armchair. Placed the photographs on his knee, and began to study them with a slight feeling of admiration.

  Thirty-five young men.

  Five dead.

  Three of them thanks to this woman's efforts.

  This woman in a dark beret and a light overcoat, with the trace of a smile on her face. Leaning over a gravestone. A birthmark on her left cheek—he couldn't recall seeing that on the picture the artist had drawn, but then it was no bigger than a little fingernail.

  Klaarentoft had made an excellent enlargement in any case, and as Van Veeteren sat in his chair, studying her face, he suddenly had the impression that she had raised her gaze a little. Peered over the top of the gravestone and looked at him.

  A bit cheeky, he thought. A little bit roguish even, but at the same time, serious.

  And very, very determined.