Borkmann's Point

by Håkan Nesser

  Bausen agreed.

  “Three o’clock,” he decided. “And we can expect the whole parade, as I said before—television, radio, the lot. It’s not all that common for a murderer to put the cuffs on the police, you have to say.”

  “The general public reckon it ought to be the other way around,” said Van Veeteren. “One can see their point, it has to be admitted.”

  “What shall we say about Podworsky?” wondered Kropke.

  “Not a goddamn word,” said Bausen. “Mouths shut is the order of the day.” He looked around the table. “DCI Van Veeteren and I will talk to the press, nobody else.”

  “Typical,” muttered Kropke.

  “That’s an order,” said Bausen. “Go home and get some sleep now. Tomorrow is another day, and we’re certain to be on TV. It might help if we looked like normal human beings. I’ll release Podworsky.”

  “I’ll come with you,” said Van Veeteren. “It might be useful for there to be more than one of us.”

  It was past eleven before the kids finally went to bed. They opened a bottle of wine and put on a Mostakis tape, and after several failed attempts, they finally managed to get a fire going. They spread the mattresses out on the floor and undressed each other.

  “We’ll wake them up,” said Münster.

  “No, we won’t,” said Synn. She stroked his back and crept down under the blankets. “I put a bit of a sleeping pill into their hot chocolate.”

  “Sleeping pill?” he thundered, trying to sound outraged.

  “Only a little bit. Won’t do them any lasting harm. Come here!”

  “OK,” said Münster, and restored relations with his wife.

  Monday announced its arrival with a stubborn and persistent downpour that threatened to go on forever. Van Veeteren woke up at about seven, contemplated the rain for a while and decided to go back to bed. This place changes its weather more often than I change my shirt, he thought.

  By a quarter past nine he was sharing a breakfast table in the dining room with Cruickshank, who seemed to be remarkably invigorated and in a strikingly good mood, despite the early hour and the fact that he must have been up working for most of the night.

  “Phoned it through at three this morning,” he said enthusiastically. “I’ll be damned if the night desk didn’t want to stop the presses, but they eventually settled for the afternoon edition. Talk about Jack the Ripper hysteria!”

  Van Veeteren looked decidedly miserable.

  “Cheer up!” said Cruickshank. “You’ll soon have cracked it. He’s gone too far this time. Did she really have some idea who he was?”

  “Presumably,” said Van Veeteren. “That’s what he must have thought, at least.”

  Cruikshank nodded.

  “Have you sent out the press release yet?” he asked, looking around the empty dining room. “I don’t notice any of my colleagues rushing in for the kill.”

  Van Veeteren checked his watch.

  “Another quarter of an hour, I think. Must finish breakfast and then go into hiding. It’s pissing out there.”

  “Hmm,” said Cruickshank, chewing away at a croissant. “It’ll be shit over the ankles down there.”

  “Down where?”

  “On the beach and in the woods, of course. With all the photographers and private dicks.”

  “You’re probably right,” said Van Veeteren, sighing again. “Anyway, I think it’s time I went to the police station and locked myself in.”

  “Good luck,” said Cruickshank. “I’ll see you this afternoon. I expect I’ll still be here, waiting for my fellow union members.”

  “Well, that was that,” said the chief of police, flopping back onto the leather sofa. “I have to say that I prefer the newspaper boys.”

  Van Veeteren agreed.

  “Those well-oiled talking heads on TV make me vomit; they really do. Do you have a lot to do with that crowd?”

  He kicked off his shoes and wiggled his toes rather cautiously, as if he were uncertain whether or not they were still there.

  “I can’t say that I have much of an interest in encouraging them,” said Van Veeteren. “Let’s be honest; it’s reasonable that they should start forming their own ideas. But you handled them pretty well, I thought.”

  “Thank you,” said Bausen. “But we’re definitely in trouble, no matter how you look at it. Has Hiller been onto you?”

  Van Veeteren sat back in his chair behind the chief of police’s desk.

  “Of course,” he said. “He wanted to send ten men from Selstadt and another ten from Oostwerdingen—plus a team of forensic officers to run a fine-tooth comb over the jogging track.”

  Bausen linked his hands behind the back of his head and gazed out of the window.

  “A brilliant idea, in weather like this,” he said. “Does he want you to take charge completely? I mean, damn it to hell, I’ve only got five days left. I’m quitting on Friday, no matter what. Made up my mind last night—I’m starting to feel like a football coach with a two-year losing streak.”

  “The leadership question never came up,” said Van Veeteren. “In any case, I’ve promised to clear up the whole thing by Friday.”

  Bausen was distinctly skeptical.

  “Glad to hear it,” he said, filling his pipe. “Let’s leave it at that. Have you spoken to her parents?”

  “Mrs. Moerk, yes,” said Van Veeteren.

  “Did it go well?”

  “Not especially. Why should it?”

  “No, it’s a long time since anything went well,” said Bausen.

  “I’ve been watching TV,” said Synn. “They don’t give you very good marks.”

  “That’s odd,” said Münster. “Something smells good; what are we eating?”

  “Creole chicken,” said his wife, giving him a kiss. “Do you think she’s dead?” she whispered in his ear; there’s a limit to what the children of a police officer can be expected to put up with, after all.

  “I don’t know,” he said, and just for a moment he once again felt the cold despair well up inside him.

  “I saw Dad on TV,” said his daughter, interrupting their conversation and hugging his thigh. “I’ve been swimming in the rain.”

  “You’ve been swimming in the sea, you idiot,” said his son.

  “Have we any more sleeping pills?” wondered Münster.

  Van Veeteren leaned back against the pillows and picked up the Melnik report yet again. He weighed it in his hand for a while, his eyes closed.

  Horrific, he thought. Absolutely horrific.

  Or perhaps painful might be a better word to describe it. Hidden away somewhere in these damn documents was the answer, but he couldn’t find it. Thirty-four pages, a total of seventy-five names. He’d underlined them and re-counted twice—women, lovers and possible lovers, good friends, fellow students, colleagues, neighbors, members of the same golf club—right down to the most casual acquaintances, marginal figures who had happened to cross the path of Maurice Rühme at one time or another. And then occasions—journeys, exams, final exams, appointments, parties, new addresses, congresses, cocaine withdrawal clinics—it was all there, noted down in those densely packed pages, neatly and comprehensively recorded in the dry prose of DCI Melnik. It was a masterpiece of detective work, no doubt about it; but even so, he couldn’t draw any conclusions from it. Not a damn thing!

  What was it?

  What the hell had Beate Moerk noticed?

  Or did she know something that the others didn’t know? Could that be it? Could it be that he hadn’t passed Borkmann’s point yet, despite everything?

  He had her notebooks on his bedside table. Three of them, which he hadn’t gotten around to looking at yet.

  It went against the grain. If they really did contain something of significance, why had the murderer left them there? He’d had plenty of time, and didn’t seem to be a person who left anything to chance.

  And if in fact she was still alive, despite everything, would he be intruding upon t
he holy territory of her private life? Trampling all over her most sacred ground? Before he opened them, he couldn’t have the slightest idea about what she had confided to these notebooks. They hadn’t been meant for him to read, that was for sure.

  Did the same reservations apply if she was still alive, come to that?

  Yes, of course. Maybe even more so.

  He shut his eyes and listened to the rain pattering down. It must have been raining for more than twenty-four hours, heavy and relentless, from an unremitting sky. Leaden and impenetrable. Did the weather never change in this godforsaken hole? he thought.

  Whatever; it wasn’t a bad way of presenting what they were up against. Nonstop nudging at the same point. Marking time and never moving on. Waves in a dead sea . . .

  The clock in St. Anna’s church struck twelve. He sighed, opened his eyes, then concentrated for the fourth time on the report from Aarlach.

  40

  “Well, what the hell was I supposed to do?” said Wilmotsen with a sigh, contemplating the layouts.

  “All right,” said the editor. “If we’ve printed a double run, we might as well make everything double.”

  The news of Inspector Moerk’s disappearance and the circumstances in which it took place had clearly proved to be a trial of manhood for Wilmotsen, the headline setter on de Journaal. The opposing concepts Important Information and Big Letters were simply not possible to reconcile within the space available, and for the first time in the newspaper’s eighty-year-old history, they had been forced to prepare two separate placards.

  In order not to abandon the duty to provide full information, that is. In order not to undervalue the dignity of this hair-raising drama that was now entering its fourth (or was it the fifth?) act in their peaceful hometown of Kaalbringen.

  NEXT VICTIM?

  it said on the first placard, over a slightly blurred picture of a smiling Beate Moerk.

  HAVE YOU SEEN THE RED MAZDA?

  the public was asked on the second one, where it was also stated that

  BAFFLED POLICE APPEAL FOR HELP.

  Inside the newspaper, more than half the space was devoted to the latest development in the Axman case. There were a mass of pictures: aerial photographs of the parking lot at the smokehouse (with a white cross marking the spot where Moerk had left her car; since Sunday evening it had been securely garaged in the police station basement after being searched for eight hours by forensic officers from Selstadt) and another of the beach and the woods, and more photos of Moerk and of Bausen and Van Veeteren taken at the press conference. Van Veeteren was leaning back with his eyes closed, a position that was mainly reminiscent of a state of deep peace—a mummy or a yogi sunk deep inside himself was the first thing that came to mind. Far removed from the exertions and idiocies of this life, and perhaps one had to ask oneself if these people were really the ones best equipped to track down and put away criminals of the caliber of the killer they were seeking in this case.

  Indeed, had there ever been anything like this? A police inspector abducted, probably murdered! In the middle of an ongoing investigation! The question was justified.

  The text was also variable in character, from the cool assessment in the leading article that the only honorable thing for the local council to do in the current circumstances was to accept responsibility for the Axman scandal and announce new elections, to the eloquent if divergent speculations about the lunatic, the madman (the ice-cold psychopath) or the terrorist (the hired hit man from an obscure murderous sect)—and, of course, the still very popular theory featuring the perfectly normal, honest citizen, the respectable head of the family, the man in the same apartment block with a murky past.

  Among the more reliable items, and hopefully also the most productive ones from the point of view of the investigation, was Bausen’s renewed and urgent appeal to the general public to come forward with any information they might have.

  In particular, the critical period between six-fifteen and seven-fifteen on the Friday evening needed to be pinned down in detail—Inspector Moerk’s movements from the moment she left The See Warf until she set off jogging and was observed by Detective Chief Inspector Van Veeteren. If it was possible to establish the route taken by Beate Moerk during those sixty minutes, with and without her red Mazda, well, “it would be a damn scandal if we couldn’t nail the bastard,” wrote Herman Schalke, quoting the exact words used by the chief of police.

  As early as four in this infernal afternoon, Bausen and Kropke withdrew to the latter’s office in order to go through and collate the tip-offs and information that had been received so far—a total of no fewer than sixty-two firsthand sightings, as well as another twenty or so pieces of secondhand information of various kinds. Münster and Mooser were delegated to receive and conduct preliminary interviews with the nonstop stream of witnesses, who were held in check by Bang and Miss deWitt in the office downstairs, all names and personal data duly recorded.

  Nobody was quite clear about what Detective Chief Inspector Van Veeteren was up to. He had left the police station after lunch to “make a few inquiries,” but he had not confided their nature to anybody. On the other hand, he had promised to be back by five p.m. for the compulsory run-through. A small press conference was then scheduled for seven-thirty; the time was a concession to the local television company, whose regular news program took place then. Anything other than a live broadcast would be regarded by viewers as a failure and a crime against all press ethics, the company had argued peremptorily, and even if Bausen could have taught the young media guru a thing or two about the law and justice, he had swallowed his objections and acceded to his request.

  “Damn Jesuits!” he had nevertheless exclaimed after replacing the receiver. “Inquisitors in silver ties, huh, no thank you!”

  But given the circumstances, of course, it was a question of making the most of a bad job.

  41

  “What the hell is that?” asked Van Veeteren, leaning forward over the table.

  “It’s a map,” explained Kropke. “The drawing pins represent sightings of Inspector Moerk and her Mazda—or rather, of red Mazdas in general.”

  “There are several in Kaalbringen,” said Bausen. “Presumably at least two of them were on the streets on Friday evening—in addition to hers, that is.”

  “Pins with red and yellow heads stand for sightings of the car,” said Kropke, keen to take over and assert his ownership of the patent. “Red for the period six-fifteen to six-forty-five, yellow for six-forty-five to seven-fifteen.”

  Van Veeteren leaned farther over the table.

  “The blue and white pins are witnesses who claim to have seen her in person—blue for the first half hour, white for the second. That one is DCI Van Veeteren, for instance.”

  He pointed to a white pin on the beach.

  “I’m honored,” said Van Veeteren. “How many are there?”

  “Twenty-five red and twenty yellow,” said Kropke. “That’s the car—and then twelve blue and five white.”

  Münster moved up alongside his boss and studied the pattern of the drawing pins. Not a bad idea, he had to admit—provided you knew how to interpret it properly, that is. They seemed to be quite widespread; evidently sightings had been made in all parts of town, but in most cases there was just one isolated pin.

  “The point,” said Kropke, “is that we don’t need to worry about whether a single witness is sufficient or not. Places where there are several pins ought to be a sufficiently clear pointer.”

  He paused to allow the others to count the pins, and recognize the stroke of genius behind the method.

  “Quite clear,” muttered Münster. “The white ones as well.”

  “Indubitably,” said Van Veeteren. “No doubt about it.”

  “Exactly,” said Kropke, looking pleased. “As you can see, there are only three conglomerations—in Fisherman’s Square outside The See Warf, in Grande Place, and the smokehouse. Twenty-four pins outside The See Warf, eleven out
here, eight by the smokehouse—forty-three out of sixty-two. The rest are scattered all over the place, as you will have noticed. And it seems that nobody saw her after DCI Van Veeteren’s sighting. Apart from the murderer, that is. The beach must have been pretty deserted.”

  “True,” said Van Veeteren.

  “Hmm,” said Bausen. “I still don’t think we should get carried away—a third of the sightings must be wrong, if I understand things.”

  “Well,” said Kropke. “I think you realize—”

  “And both The See Warf and the smokehouse have been written about in the newspapers.”

  “True enough,” said Kropke. “But I think it’s fair to say that doesn’t matter. The most interesting thing is, of course, Grande Place—there are eleven witnesses who claim to have seen either Moerk or her car outside the police station here between half past six and seven, roughly. Two saw her getting out of the car . . . those two white drawing pins over there.”

  He pointed, and Bausen nodded. Van Veeteren snapped off a toothpick and dropped it in St. Pieter’s churchyard.

  “Which direction was she going?” he asked.

  Kropke looked at Bausen.

  “Toward here,” he said.

  Bausen nodded again.

  “OK,” he said. “So there are indications that she came here. Back to the station.”

  “Well?” said Münster, feeling as if he’d just missed the point of a long and complicated joke. Van Veeteren said nothing. He dug his hands deeper into his pockets, stood erect again and emitted a slight hissing noise through his teeth. Münster recalled his boss’s back trouble, which occasionally manifested itself.

  They sat down around the table again. Kropke was still looking pleased with himself, but also slightly bewildered, as if he couldn’t quite work out the implications of what his efforts had produced. Once again Münster could feel those butterflylike vibrations in his temples—the ones that usually suggested something was afoot, that a critical point was being approached. That the breakthrough could come at any moment. He looked around the untidy room. Bang was sitting opposite him, sweating. Van Veeteren appeared to be half asleep. Bausen was still studying the map and the drawing pins, sucking in his cheeks and looking almost as if he was dreaming.