Ritmeeters brewery.
It looked exactly as he remembered it. The facade cracked and disintegrating, the plaster flaking away. Even the obscene graffiti at street level seemed to be from another age.
There was no light in either of the two windows on the third floor, just as had been the case that mild and fragrant summer evening twenty-nine years ago when Van Veeteren and Inspector Munck had broken into the flat after a hysterical telephone call. Munck had gone in first and taken the volley of shots from Mr. Ocker in his stomach. Van Veeteren had sat on the hall floor, holding Munck’s head while the man bled to death. Mr. Ocker was lying on the floor three meters farther into the apartment, shot through the throat by Van Veeteren.
Mrs. Ocker and their four-year-old daughter were found by the ambulance team: strangled and stuffed into a wardrobe in the bedroom.
He tried to recall when he had last heard anything from Elisabeth Munck. It must have been many years ago; despite the fact that he had very nearly become her lover, in a desperate attempt to make amends and build bridges and come to terms with his own distorted feelings of guilt.
He continued strolling over the Alexander Bridge, while asking himself why he had chosen this particular route. For Christ’s sake, there were plenty of memories to keep the Burgerlaan 35 story alive: it wasn’t necessary to dig up anything new.
It was several minutes after half past five when he entered his office on the fourth floor, and a mere fifteen minutes later he had established contact with Ulrike deMaas. Spoken to her on the telephone, and arranged a meeting for the following day.
Then he phoned the police garage and ordered the same car as he’d had the previous Sunday. When that was sorted out, he switched off the light and remained seated in the darkness with his hands clasped behind his head.
Strange how everything fell into place.
It’s as if somebody were pulling the strings, he thought.
It wasn’t a new thought, and as usual he cast it aside.
36
The body of Elizabeth Karen Hennan was found near the edge of Leisner Park in Maardam by an early riser taking his dog for a walk. It was naked and had been thrown into a hawthorn thicket only a few meters from the path for cyclists and horseback riders that cut across the whole park, and there was good reason to suspect that the murderer had taken her there in a car or some other vehicle.
No attempt had been made to conceal the body. Mr.
Moussere saw it even before his German shepherd had reached the thicket, although his attempt to prevent the dog from following its natural instincts had been in vain.
The police were called from a nearby telephone kiosk, and the call was logged at 6:52. First on the scene, after only a few minutes, was patrol car No. 26; Constables Rodin and Markovic immediately cordoned off the area and carried out the first interrogation of Mr. Moussere.
At 7:25, Inspector Reinhart arrived, accompanied by Inspector Heinemann and two crime-scene technicians. The medical team arrived twenty minutes later, and the first journalist, Aaron Cohen from the
Almost everything was clear by then, and for once Reinhart was able to make a fairly considered and appropriately doctored summary of the situation.
The body appeared to be that of a certain Elizabeth K.
Hennan, aged thirty-six, resident in Maardam and employed as an assistant at the souvenir boutique Gloss in Karlstorget.
Although the body had been naked when discovered, identification had been easy, as the victim’s belongings had been found a little farther into the same thicket. The police had recovered her clothes-apart from her knickers- and her purse, containing money, keys, and identification documents.
The time of death had not yet been established, but the police pathologist, Meusse, had been able to make an estimate. Judging by the temperature of the corpse and the degree of rigor mortis, it would seem to have ceased to live at some time between one o’clock and three o’clock in the morning.
There was no doubt about the cause of death. Elizabeth Hennan had been strangled, probably at a different location from the place where the body was found. There was no sign of the victim’s having offered any resistance to her attacker, which could be explained by her having apparently first been rendered unconscious by a blow to the temple with a blunt instrument.
Among the details omitted from Reinhart’s summary was the fact that the body had been subjected to a degree of sexual violence, probably before as well as after the moment of death.
Chief of Police Edmund Hiller was informed of the murder at about ten o’clock that same morning, while partaking of a cup of coffee at home, and he immediately ordered Detective Inspector Reinhart to take charge of the investigation. He also withdrew Inspectors Rooth and Heinemann from the so-called teacher murder, and put them at Reinhart’s disposal.
At this point neither Hiller nor anybody else had reason to suspect a connection between the two cases.
When Chief Inspector Van Veeteren collected his red Toyota from the police pool that same morning, he was totally unaware of the night’s events; but of course, there is no reason to think that his knowing about what had happened would have altered the subsequent course of events in any significant way.
III
37
The town of Friesen seemed not to have bothered to get out of bed this gray, misty November Sunday. On the stroke of half past two he parked outside the railway station, and it only took him a couple of minutes to find the restaurant Poseidon, which was in a basement on the north side of the market square.
The premises were barren and deserted, but even so he was careful to choose an enclosed booth in a far corner. Sat down and ordered a beer. The waiter was chubby and completely bald, and reminded Van Veeteren of a film gangster he had seen many years ago.
In a whole series of movies, no doubt; but his name escaped him. Both the name of the character and of the actor.
And as he sat there, waiting for Ulrike deMaas, a new feeling started to creep up on him: that this was the right place, the very place.
That this is where he ought to have come a long time ago, for a conversation with this old friend of Eva’s. He could feel it in the atmosphere, in the damp emptiness. As if this restaurant and this Sunday afternoon had been waiting for him. If this had been a movie, what was lying in store for him would have been the inevitable key scene; the one that could have been edited and used over and over again. Showing short flash-backs, each one lasting only a second or two, from the whole story so far. . It was all very clear now, the whole thing; but this was also the kind of knowledge that he usually would prefer not to be aware of. This intuition that seemed to affect only himself, and could almost persuade him to imagine that he was some kind of a vehicle for a higher level of justice; a tool that was never wrong, not even in the twenty-first case. .
However, it was nothing to brag about. He recalled how he had once found a rapist by locking himself up in his office and playing patience for half an hour. That wasn’t something to include in lectures addressed to new recruits.
