Borkmann's Point: An Inspector Van Veeteren Mystery

by Håkan Nesser

  How much easier it was to cash in on a one-pawn advantage when there were fewer pieces on the board.

  The question was simple: Had the point been passed?

  Did he already know enough, sitting here in his hot bath, to pick out the Axman? Was there any point in continuing to search for tracks and leads?

  He groped around the bottom of the bucket for the opener.

  Already he knew the answer. Or at least, he had made up his mind about it.

  Yes.

  Yes. The murderer was there. Carefully concealed in the mishmash of interrogations and minutes and discussions. Hidden and tucked away in the even more confused convolutions inside his own brain. The Axman was there. It was just a matter of fishing him out.

  He found the opener. That was something, at least.

  Pro primo, he thought.

  Three men have been murdered in Kaalbringen. Heinz Eggers on June 28. Ernst Simmel on August 31. Maurice Rühme on September 8. Same weapon, same method. Same killer.

  No doubt about that.

  Pro secundo.

  Despite comprehensive and assiduous work, we haven’t succeeded in finding the slightest link between the three victims (apart from the fact that they had moved to Kaalbringen this year) until a report concerning the third victim’s time in Aarlach comes into the investigators’ hands. Everybody notices immediately that a certain Eugen Podworsky occurs in the background (but only in the background, nota bene) of two of the cases. Inspector Moerk reads the report and is struck by something “bizarre.” She announces that she is going to check out the matter, does so, and—

  Pro tertio.

  —is exposed, no, discovered or observed while carrying out this check (whatever it might have been) by the murderer. (He might possibly have seen her purely by chance.) The murderer follows her and strikes (?) when Moerk appropriately enough is in the woods, in the back of beyond...

  Something like that, yes. That was it, really. Was there any possibility of different scenarios? Yes, of course. But he didn’t want to think so. This is how it must have happened. He took another drink and started wondering if he ought to get out of the bath and fetch a cigarette.

  Smoke in the bath? What decadence!

  But why not? Dripping and shivering, he padded into his room. He collected an ashtray, his lighter and Bausen’s old, crumpled pack of HB cigarettes, then flopped back into the warm water, lit up and inhaled deeply.

  Pro... what the devil’s the Latin for four? Who the hell cares?

  Fourth: What had Moerk discovered? What was it?

  What the hell was it that nobody else, not even he, had noticed? Unless it was just Podworsky, that is; and the more he thought about it, the more sure he was that it wasn’t. He had scrutinized the report once again earlier in the evening, and hadn’t found a thing—neither had Bausen nor Münster nor Kropke. It was incomprehensible. Bizarre.

  Bizarre?

  And where had she gone to?

  To check?

  Check what?

  He slammed his fist down into the water and was surprised for a second by the lack of resistance. Was she so damn stupid that she’d walked straight into the murderer’s web? Straight into his arms, like some half-witted girl in any crime movie you cared to name?

  He couldn’t believe that. Surely that wasn’t possible? If there was anybody based in this station whom he had confidence in, it was Inspector Moerk... well, Bausen as well, of course, he had to admit that. But would Beate Moerk have—

  No, he refused to believe it.

  What other possibility was there?

  That the murderer had got lucky?

  Very possible.

  That she’d been on his trail earlier and he’d realized that?

  Kept an eye on her?

  Possible, also. Münster had spoken about her ambitions as a private detective.

  He dropped the cigarette into the bucket. No need to dirty the ashtray, he thought.

  But where had she gone?

  That was the key. He took a few olives. Between half past six, approximately, and five or ten minutes past seven yesterday evening, Beate Moerk had driven her red Mazda from The See Warf to the parking lot close to the smokehouse off the Esplanade. Somewhere along the way she had checked up on something bizarre and attracted the attention of the murderer.

  Let’s hope to God, thought Van Veeteren, that the red car attracted the attention of somebody else as well... that would be enough.

  But all hell would have to be let loose first, he reminded himself.

  Then Laurids Reisin came into his head—and Mrs. Reisin in her shabby coat, and Miss Marnier, one of Simmel’s lady friends he’d interviewed one afternoon a hundred years ago; and he realized that he was being subjected to yet another unnecessary information attack. He put the light on and decided to go through the Melnik report one more time. As an antidote, if nothing else.

  Then he would have a chat with Münster in the bar.

  He needed to find out for sure if Münster really did want to get back to his family and garden.

  “It’s not necessary,” said Münster.

  “What do you mean, not necessary? And what the hell are you sitting there smiling at?”

  Münster turned his head away and coughed into his hand.

  “Excuse me,” he said. “But Synn and the kids are coming up here tomorrow. She phoned half an hour ago.”

  “Coming up here?” exclaimed Van Veeteren, looking confused.

  “Yes, she’s borrowed a holiday cottage from a friend of hers out at Geelnackt. That’s only about six miles from here. I’m moving out there tomorrow afternoon.”

  Van Veeteren thought for a moment.

  “Münster,” he said, “I think that’s a fantastic woman you’ve got hold of.”

  “I know,” said Münster, looking embarrassed.

  They drank each other’s health, and Van Veeteren gestured to the waiter.

  “Just a small beer,” he explained. “How many times have you read the Melnik report?”

  “Twice,” said Münster.

  “Found anything?”

  Münster shook his head.

  “What do you think about that bomb business?” he asked.

  Van Veeteren hesitated briefly.

  “Hard to say,” he said. “I don’t really understand what somebody like Heinz Eggers could have to do with Basque separatists, or the others, come to that. We’ll hear tomorrow morning if Bausen has found out any more about it, I expect. What do you think?”

  “Nothing,” said Münster. “I hope I don’t have to go to the Costa del Sol, in any case, now that I’ve got my family up here and so on.”

  “You can take my word for that,” said Van Veeteren.

  “Where’s Cruickshank, by the way? I thought he was a permanent resident in the bar.”

  “He went up to bed about a quarter of an hour ago,” said Münster. “I think he was sulking because you canceled that insider interview.”

  “Oh, yeah. Poor bastard,” said Van Veeteren. “Still, if he can keep calm until Monday, he’ll have all the more to report.”

  He certainly will, thought Münster.

  37

  The Sunday before the infernal Monday served up a clear morning with warm winds from the southwest. Without needing to exchange any words on the subject, Van Veeteren and Münster chose to walk to the police station.

  It was quite simply one of those mornings, and Münster could feel the sluggishness and reluctance in both his own and Van Veeteren’s footsteps. The very moment they emerged from Weivers Gränd, the Bungeskirke bells started ringing for the first service of the day. Van Veeteren paused for a moment to gaze at its dark portals and muttered something incomprehensible. Münster contemplated the canvas spread out before him. The splendid Hanseatic gables. The mythological bronze sculptures with the gently trickling water. The lopsided square resting peacefully under the tinkling chimes, complet
ely deserted apart from an occasional pigeon strutting around, pecking food from between the cobbles. And a dark-skinned road sweeper standing by the bookshop, whistling Verdi.

  Münster plunged his hands into his pockets and gripped his thin briefcase under his arm, and as they crossed over the uneven cobbles, a perception of the absurdity of his surround-ings slowly took possession of him. The inherent and indisputable lunacy. Their task and activities seemed preposterous in this sleepy little coastal town on a Sunday morning like this.

  How pale a murderer looks in daylight, as somebody once said.

  And how impossible it was to grasp that they were on their way yet again, for the nth time, to assemble around the oval table in the bilious-yellow conference room at the police station, to sit down and roll up their shirtsleeves for yet another discussion of who this madman might be.

  The man wandering around this idyllic little town chopping the heads off his fellow men.

  The man because of whom a whole community was living in fear and trembling, and whose doings had been on everybody’s lips as practically the only topic of conversation for week after week now.

  The man, in fact, whose identity it was his own, DCI Van Veeteren’s, and all the others’ duty to discover and establish so that these goings-on could be banished from this world at last.

  And what the hell were people going to say tomorrow?

  Yes, preposterous is the only word for it, thought Münster, squinting up at the sun above the copper roof of the police station. Or perhaps bizarre, to use Beate Moerk’s word.

  And the most difficult thing to understand, the most impossible thing to comprehend, was, of course, what could have happened to her.

  Could it really be that at this very moment she was lying with her head cut off somewhere in the town or its vicinity? A slowly decomposing corpse just waiting to be discovered. Was that possible to imagine? She, the woman he had so nearly...

  He swallowed and kicked at an empty cigarette pack that had evidently avoided the attention of the road sweeper.

  And this afternoon he would be reunited with Synn and the children.

  He had to ask himself how she could have made the deci- sion to come here without the slightest warning—a sudden impulse, she had explained over the telephone—and just right now?

  A quarter to eight last Friday evening.

  It must have been more or less exactly the moment when...

  During the long time they had been working together, on two or three occasions Van Veeteren had started talking to him about the patterns in life. About hidden connections, orches-trated incidents and similar phenomena—determinants, whatever they are; but this one must surely surpass most others.

  He shuddered, and held open the door for the oracle.

  “We’ve got him,” said Bausen.

  “Got who?” said Van Veeteren, with a yawn.

  “Podworsky, of course,” said Kropke. “He’s in one of the cells down below. We picked him up half an hour ago, in the harbor.”

  “In the harbor?”

  “Yes. He’s been out fishing since yesterday morning—or so he says, at least. Hired a boat from Saulinen, it seems, evidently does now and then.”

  Van Veeteren flopped down on a chair.

  “Have you confronted him?” he asked.

  “No,” said Bausen. “He has no idea what it’s all about.”

  “Good,” said Van Veeteren. “Let him stew a bit longer, I’d say.”

  “I agree entirely,” said Bausen. “I don’t want us to get ahead of ourselves this time.”

  Miss deWitt came in with a coffee tray.

  “As Sylvie’s is closed on Sundays,” she explained, revealing two aromatic Rillen cakes.

  “Bramble?” asked Bausen.

  Miss deWitt nodded and tried to suppress a smile.

  “Irmgaard, you’re a star,” said Bausen, and the others mumbled polite agreement.

  “What’s new since yesterday?” asked Van Veeteren, wiping his mouth clean.

  “I’ve spoken to Melnik,” said Bausen. “He’s busy looking into that barroom brawl, of course, but he doubted if he’d be able to find out very much. It never became a police matter, after all. He’s only dug up one witness, a woman who was present, but she has no idea what started it. Perhaps it was just a drunken brawl, a quarrel over something completely insignificant that got out of hand for some reason. In any case, it’s no doubt best if we try to press Podworsky on the matter ourselves.”

  Van Veeteren nodded.

  “And the Spain thing?” asked Münster.

  Bausen shrugged and looked doubtful.

  “As we said yesterday, it seems to be pure coincidence. Bleuwe wasn’t one of Rühme’s inner circle in Aarlach. Neither of them had any known links with Spain, and the bombing seems to have been purely a terrorist outrage. ETA claimed responsibility, and they normally do that only when they were, in fact, behind it.”

  “And Grete Simmel had no idea what Bang was talking about,” said Kropke.

  “That doesn’t necessarily mean much,” said Bausen.

  “Pure chance, then,” said Van Veeteren, contemplating his empty plate. “There seems to be a lot of that around.”

  Bausen lit his pipe.

  “Anything else before we confront Podworsky?”

  Kropke cleared his throat.

  “Well, nothing important,” he said. “But I’ve also retraced Moerk’s steps. I jogged the same route this morning.”

  “And?” said Bausen.

  “I didn’t find anything either,” said Kropke.

  “Really?” said Van Veeteren.

  “Podworsky, then,” said Bausen. “How shall we approach this?”

  Münster looked around the table—Kropke, Mooser and Bausen. Van Veeteren and himself. Constable Bang had evidently overslept, or perhaps the chief of police had granted him the day off—nothing very startling about that, when you think about it.

  Van Veeteren spoke up.

  “If you’ve nothing against it,” he said, “I’d like to take the first round, along with Münster.”

  It’s possible that Kropke looked slightly put out, but Bausen merely nodded and went to fetch the tape recorder.

  38

  Eugen Podworsky certainly looked as if he was in a very bad mood. When Kropke and Mooser brought him to the interview room, his furrowed face was red with indignation; and to make his attitude crystal clear, he thumped his enormous fists on the table.

  “Get these fucking things off my wrists!” he bellowed.

  Van Veeteren gave the signal. Kropke unlocked the handcuffs and left the room, together with Mooser.

  “Please sit down,” said Van Veeteren. “My name is Detective Chief Inspector Van Veeteren.”

  “I couldn’t give a shit what your name is,” said Podworsky, sitting down on the chair. “What the hell is all this?”

  “I’m going to ask you some questions in connection with the murders of Heinz Eggers, Ernst Simmel and Maurice Rühme.”

  “What the fuck?” said Podworsky. “Again?”

  Van Veeteren indicated that Münster should start the tape recorder. Münster pressed the appropriate button, and his superior went through the formalities. Podworsky answered mainly by snorting or swearing, but once he’d been allowed to light a cigarette, he started—at least as far as Münster could see—to be a little more cooperative.

  “OK,” he said. “Let’s move it, and get this out of the way; I have half a ton of fish starting to go bad.”

  “What were you doing last Friday evening?” asked Van Veeteren to set the ball rolling.

  “Last Friday?” said Podworsky. “What the hell do you want to know what I was doing last Friday for? It’s ages since the last of them died, surely—?”

  “If you answer my questions instead of repeating them, it will go more quickly,” said Van Veeteren. “I thought you said you were in a hurry.”

  Podw
orsky opened his mouth, then shut it again.

  “All right,” he said, and seemed to be thinking back.

  Van Veeteren didn’t move a muscle.

  “Nothing special in the evening,” Podworsky eventually decided. “I went around to chat with Saulinen about the boat in the afternoon—got the keys and so on. Then I drove home. Next question, please!”

  “What were you doing the night Simmel was murdered?”

  “I’ve already explained that to the skirt who’s supposed to be a cop. I was at home asleep. That’s what I usually do at night.”

  “Can anybody confirm that?” asked Münster.

  “My cats,” said Podworsky.

  “And when Rühme died?” asked Van Veeteren.

  “When was that?”

  “The night between the eighth and ninth of this month.”

  “God only knows. The same, I suppose.”

  “Did you know Heinz Eggers?”

  “No.”

  “Any alibi for the Eggers murder?”

  “I was in Chadów. Stop pissing around and asking me things I’ve already told you guys!”

  “All right,” said Van Veeteren. “What were you doing in Aarlach in March 1983?”

  “What?”

  “You heard.”

  “Aarlach in 1983?”

  “Stop messing me around,” snorted Van Veeteren. “You were in the hospital for a week, for God’s sake.”

  “Ah,” grunted Podworsky. “You mean that damn business. What the hell has that got to do with this?”

  “Is it you or me who’s asking the questions?”

  Podworsky groaned.

  “You’re a real ugly bastard!”

  “I think we’ll take a pause there,” said Van Veeteren. He pushed back his chair and stood up. “I gather they eat rotten fish in some countries—Sweden, unless I’m much mistaken.”

  “Hang on, for fuck’s sake!” said Podworsky. “Aarlach—of course I can tell you about that, if you damn well insist. Sit down!”

  Van Veeteren sat down. Podworsky lit another cigarette and scratched his head.