by Håkan Nesser
With the possible exception of the murderer himself, as deBries very rightly pointed out: but he would presumably not be especially keen to unburden himself simply because he’d been asked a few polite questions. Everybody in the investigation team was agreed on that score.
Instead, Reinhart decided to proceed with all his cards laid on the table. There was information to suggest that Vera Miller might have been having an affair with a doctor at one of the two hospitals: did anybody know anything about this? Had anybody heard any rumours? Could anybody contribute any guesses or speculations?
The latter question was perhaps on the borderline of bad taste, but what the hell? If you asked a hundred people to guess, Reinhart thought, there could well be somebody who guessed right.
For his part Inspector Jung had never counted this type of mass interrogation among his favourite tasks (informal conversations like the one he’d had with Nurse Milovic were an entirely different category, of course), and when he met Rooth for a well-earned coffee break in the afternoon, he took the opportunity of thanking him for the weekend’s stimulating work.
‘A pity you picked on the doctors, of all people,’ he said.
‘What are you on about?’ said Rooth, swallowing a bun.
‘Well, if you’d hit upon a shop-assistant hypothesis instead, we’d have had ten times as many nice interviews to carry out. Or a student hypothesis.’
‘I’ve already told you I don’t know what a hypothesis is,’ said Rooth. ‘Am I not allowed to drink my coffee in peace?’
As had been the case with conversations with Erich Van Veeteren’s friends and acquaintances, all the new interviews were recorded; and when Reinhart contemplated the pile of cassettes on his desk on Sunday evening – especially if he were to combine them with those from the earlier interviews – the material began to acquire a scope comparable to that in the investigation into Prime Minister Palme’s murder.
Borkmann’s point? he thought. The Chief Inspector had talked about that some time ago. Was it not true to say that the quantity of evidence had long since superseded the quality? Without his having noticed. Did he not already know what he needed to know? Surely the answer . . . or answers? . . . were contained (and hidden) in the vast mass of investigation material already collected? Somewhere.
Perhaps, he thought. Perhaps not. How could one possibly know? Intuition as usual? Bugger that for a lark.
A little later on the Sunday evening they had a run-through meeting. Reinhart bore in mind Hiller’s insistence that there should be no holding back of resources, and in order to help his colleagues survive had purchased four bottles of wine and two large savoury sandwich layer cakes. Since there were only six officers involved, he felt he had followed the chief of police’s exhortations to the letter.
Not even Rooth was able to eat the last half of the sandwich layer cake.
It was always possible to summarize work done in terms of quantity. And they did just that.
In the course of two-and-a-half days six detective officers had interviewed 189 doctors, 120 of them male, 69 female.
None of those questioned had confessed that he (or she) had murdered Vera Miller – or even that they had had a sexual relationship with her.
Nobody had fingered anybody else as a possible candidate (although it was not clear if this was a result of the legendary so-called esprit de corps). Not so much as a guess, so Reinhart had no need to worry about taking into consideration the ethical aspect of it all. Something for which he was grateful.
None of the six police officers had conceived any direct suspicions in the course of their conversations – at least, not in connection with what they were trying to discover. If Chief Inspector Reinhart wanted to check the judgement of his colleagues in this respect, all he needed to do was to listen to the tapes. On the assumption that he restricted himself to just one run-through of each interview, that would take him in round figures a total of fifty-two hours.
Not counting pauses while cassettes were changed, visits to the toilet and sleep. In the aftermath of the sandwich layer cakes, he thought he might well be able to cut back on breaks for refreshments.
‘It’s not a lot,’ said Rooth. ‘To coin a phrase. The results, I mean.’
‘Never in the history of human endeavour have so few had so many to thank for so little,’ said Reinhart. ‘Hell’s bells. How many have we left?’
‘Twenty-eight,’ said Jung, checking with a document. ‘Five on secondment somewhere else, six on holiday, nine on days off and not in town . . . Seven on sick leave and one about to give birth in half an hour’s time.’
‘Shouldn’t she be added to the list of those on sick leave?’ wondered Rooth.
‘She’s certainly not on holiday, that’s for sure,’ said Moreno.
There was also another arithmetical sum to be solved, involving rather fewer unknowns. The so-called Edita Fischer trail. Moreno and Jung, who had shared responsibility for the Rumford Hospital investigation, had worked out exactly which day it was that Vera Miller had gone there with the pulmonary emphysema patient. And precisely how many male doctors had been on duty that day, and on which wards. Unfortunately Vera Miller had taken the opportunity of having lunch in the large staff canteen, where she could theoretically have met anybody at all – but the sum of all their efforts had been a comparatively small number of doctors.
Thirty-two, to be precise. Jung was in favour of eliminating all those who had passed their fifty-fifth birthday, but Moreno refused to go along with such a prejudiced suggestion. Grey temples were not to be underestimated. Especially if they were on doctors. In any case they had met twenty-five of this ‘high potency’ group ( Jung’s term), none of whom had behaved in a remotely suspicious manner nor had anything of interest to say.
That left seven. One on holiday. Four on days off, not in town. Two off sick.
‘It must be one of them,’ said Jung. ‘One of those seven. It sounds like a film – shall we lay bets?’
‘You’ll have to find somebody else to bet against,’ said Moreno. ‘I agree with you.’
When the others had gone home, Reinhart shared the last bottle of wine with Moreno. Rooth was also present, but had fallen asleep in a corner.
‘This is a right bugger,’ said Reinhart. ‘I don’t know how many times I’ve said it during this investigation . . . Sorry, these investigations! . . . But we’re getting nowhere. I feel as if I were working for some bloody statistics institute. If we’d thought of asking them about their political views and drinking habits as well, we could no doubt have sold the material to The Gazette’s Sunday supplement. Or some public opinion firm or other.’
‘Hmm,’ said Moreno. ‘The Chief Inspector used to say that one had to learn how to wait as well. To have patience. Perhaps we ought to think along those lines.’
‘He used to say something else as well.’
‘Really?’ said Moreno. ‘What?’
‘That you need to solve a case as quickly as possible. Preferably on the very first day, so that you don’t have to lie awake thinking about it all night. For Christ’s sake, it’s five weeks now since we discovered the body of his son. I don’t like admitting it, but the last time I met Van Veeteren I felt ashamed. Yes, ashamed! He explained to me that the whole thing was based on a blackmailing scam . . . There’s no doubt that he’s right, but still we’re not getting anywhere. It’s a right bug— No, I’ll just have to learn to live with it.’
‘Do you think she was the blackmailer?’ asked Moreno. ‘Vera Miller, that is.’
Reinhart shook his head.
‘No, for some reason or other I don’t think so. Despite the fact that the story about her being linked to a doctor rings true. Why should a woman about whom nobody has a bad word to say stoop to something like that?’
‘Blackmail involves a weakness of character,’ said Moreno.
‘Exactly,’ said Reinhart. ‘Both axe murderers and wife beaters have a higher status in prison. Blackmail is one of the m
ost . . . immoral crimes there is. Not the worst, but the lowest. Cheap, if that word still exists in this context.’
‘Yes,’ said Moreno, ‘I think you’re right. So we can exclude Vera Miller. And we can also exclude Erich Van Veeteren. Do you know what we have left?’
Reinhart poured out the last drops of wine.
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I’ve thought about that as well. We’re left with a blackmailer. And his victim. The victim is the murderer. The question is: has the blackmailer been paid yet?’
Moreno sat quietly for a while, swirling her glass.
‘I don’t understand how Vera Miller became involved in this,’ she said. ‘But if we establish that she’s linked with Erich, well we have . . . I suppose we have somebody who has murdered twice in order to avoid paying. If the blackmailer isn’t as daft as the proverbial brush, he will have raised the price a bit and . . . Well, I’d suppose he was living a bit dangerously.’
‘I’d have thought so,’ agreed Reinhart.
He emptied his glass and lit his pipe for the tenth time in the last hour.
‘That’s what’s so bloody annoying,’ he said. ‘That we don’t know what’s behind it all. The motive for the blackmail. We have a series of events, but we don’t have the first link in the chain . . .’
‘Nor the last,’ said Moreno. ‘We presumably haven’t seen the last round between the blackmailer and his victim yet, don’t forget that.’
Reinhart looked at her with his head resting heavily on his hands.
‘I’m tired,’ he said. ‘And a bit drunk. That’s the only reason why I haven’t said that I’m quite impressed. By your reasoning, that is. A bit, anyway.’
‘In vino veritas,’ said Moreno. ‘But we could be quite wrong as well. It doesn’t have to be blackmail, and there doesn’t have to be a doctor involved . . . And perhaps there’s no connection at all between Vera Miller and Erich Van Veeteren.’
‘Oh, don’t start that,’ groaned Reinhart. ‘I thought we were just getting somewhere.’
Moreno smiled.
‘It’s midnight,’ she said.
Reinhart sat up on his chair.
‘Ring for a taxi,’ he said. ‘I’ll wake Rooth up.’
When he got home both Winnifred and Joanna were sound asleep in the double bed. He stood in the doorway for a while, looking at them and wondering what he had done to deserve them.
And what the payment would be . . .
He thought about The Chief Inspector’s son. About Seika. About Vera Miller. About what would happen to Joanna in fifteen to twenty years’ time when young men began to take an interest in her . . . All kinds of men.
He noticed that the hairs on his lower arms were standing on end when he tried to imagine that, and he carefully closed the door. Took a dark beer out of the refrigerator instead, and flopped down on the sofa to think things over.
To think about what, if anything, there was he could be absolutely sure about regarding the Van Veeteren and Miller cases.
And what he could be fairly sure about.
And what he thought.
Before he had got very far, he fell asleep. Joanna found him on the sofa at six o’clock the following morning.
30
Winnifred had only one seminar on Monday morning, and would be home by noon. After a short discussion with himself, Reinhart phoned the childminder and gave her the morning off. Then devoted himself exclusively to Joanna. Brushed her teeth and hair, drew pictures and flicked through books, and had a nap between nine and ten. Ate yoghurt with bananas, danced and flicked through more books between ten and eleven. Strapped her into the child seat in the car at half past eleven and twenty minutes later collected mother and wife from the university.
‘Let’s go for a drive,’ he said. ‘I think we need it.’
‘Terrific,’ said Winnifred.
It was not difficult to decide to leave the police station to its own devices after the work put in over the last few days. On that December Monday the weather comprised equal doses of wind and a distinctly dodgy absence of rain. Nevertheless, they chose the coast. The sea. Walked along the promenade at Kaarhuis and back – Reinhart with a singing and shouting Joanna on his shoulders – and enjoyed some fish soup at Guiverts restaurant, the only one in town that was open. The tourist season seemed to be further away than Jupiter.
‘Ten days to Christmas,’ said Winnifred. ‘Will you really have a whole week off, as you tried to trick me into believing?’
‘That depends,’ said Reinhart. ‘If we solve the case we’re busy with, I think I can promise you two.’
‘Professor Gentz-Hillier is keen to rent us his cottage up at Limbuijs. Shall I accept? . . . Ten to twelve days over Christmas and New Year? It would be nice to live the simple life out in the wilds – or what does the chief inspector think about that?’
‘The simple life out in the wilds?’ said Reinhart. ‘Do you mean a log fire, mulled wine and half a metre of books to read?’
‘Exactly,’ said Winnifred. ‘No telephone and a kilometre to the nearest native. If I’ve understood it correctly, that is. Shall I clinch the deal?’
‘Do that,’ said Reinhart. ‘I shall sit down tonight and solve these cases. It’s about time.’
When he entered his office in the police station it was half past five. The pile of cassettes on his desk had grown a little, since during the day Jung, Rooth and Bollmert had been in contact with ten more doctors. There were also a few scribbled notes to the effect that nothing especially exciting had emerged from any of those interviews. Krause had submitted a report after having spoken to the Pathology Laboratory – the contents of Vera Miller’s stomach had been analysed and it had been established that she had consumed lobster and salmon and caviar during the hours before she died.
Plus a considerable quantity of white wine.
So he fed her pretty well before killing her at least, Reinhart thought as he lit his pipe. Every cloud . . . Lets hope she was a bit numb after drinking all that wine as well – but they’d known about that earlier.
He sat back in his chair and tried to recall the previous day’s conversation with Moreno. Cleared an area of his desk and took a sheet of paper and a pencil and began recapitulating with iron-hard, systematic logic.
At least, that was what he intended doing, and he was still hard at work half an hour later when the telephone rang.
It was Moreno.
‘I think I’ve found him,’ she said. ‘Are you still in your office? If so, I’ll be there shortly.’
‘Shortly?’ said Reinhart. ‘You have three minutes, not a second longer.’
He screwed up his iron-hard thoughts and threw them into the waste-paper basket.
Van Veeteren didn’t think the temperature in the flat had become much better than the previous time he’d been there, but Marlene insisted that there had been a significant improvement. She served tea, and they shared fraternally the apple strudel he had bought in the bakery on the square. The conversation was somewhat inhibited, and he soon realized that there was not going to be a straightforward lead-in to what he really wanted to talk to her about.
‘How are things for you?’ he asked in the end. ‘Financially and so on, I mean?’
That was heavy-handed, and she buttoned up immediately. Went out into the kitchen without answering, but came back half a minute later.
‘Why do you ask?’
He thrust out his arms and tried to adopt a mild, disarming expression. That was not something that came naturally to him, and he felt like a shoplifter who had been caught red-handed with six packets of cigarettes in his pockets. Or condoms.
‘Because I’d like to help you, of course,’ he admitted. ‘Let’s not beat about the bush – I’m bloody useless when it comes to beating about the bush.’
That was much more disarming than any facial expression, it seemed, for she smiled at him after a moment’s hesitation.
‘I can manage,’ she said. ‘So far, at least . . . And I
have no desire to become a burden on anybody. But I like the fact that you exist. Not with regard to money, but because of Erich, and this.’
She stroked her stomach, and for the first time Van Veeteren thought he could discern a slight bump there. A trace of a protuberance that was just a little bit more than a normally rounded female stomach, and he felt a faint wave of dizziness surge through him.
‘Good,’ he said. ‘I’m glad you exist as well. Do you think we know where we stand now?’
‘I think so,’ said Marlene.
Just before leaving, he remembered another thing.
‘That note,’ he said. ‘That scrap of paper with the name. Did you phone the police about it?’
She raised her hand to her forehead.
‘I forgot all about it,’ she said. ‘I didn’t give it another thought . . . But I’ve still got it, if you’d like to look at it.’
She went back into the kitchen, and returned with a small piece of lined paper, evidently torn out of a notebook.
‘I’ll take care of it,’ said Van Veeteren, putting it in his inside pocket. ‘Don’t worry about it. I’ll phone Reinhart tomorrow morning.’
When he got back home he checked the telephone directory. There was half a column of people with the surname Keller in the Maardam section. Twenty-six, to be precise. He wondered whether he ought to ring Reinhart straight away, but as it was a quarter past nine by now, he let it be.
No doubt they are up to the eyes in it, he thought. I’d better not keep poking my nose in all the time.
It was three quarters of an hour before Moreno put in an appearance. Meanwhile Reinhart had managed to drink three cups of coffee, smoke the same number of pipefuls, and started to feel queasy.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I really had to gobble a sandwich and take a shower first.’
‘You look like a young Venus,’ said Reinhart. ‘Well, what the hell do you have to say for yourself?’