“When you’re hunting a murderer, Miss Meuhlich,” said Bausen, “you have to accept a few minor inconveniences.”
“What do you think, Chief Inspector?” asked Cruickshank.
“Just between you and me.”
“You, me and two others, if I’m not much mistaken,” said Van Veeteren. “I don’t think anything.”
“The Bausen guy seems to like throwing his weight around,” said Muller. “Do you think you’ll be able to work with him?”
“You can bet your life,” said Van Veeteren.
“Have you anything to go on?”
“You can write that we have.”
“But you haven’t, in fact?”
“I never said that.”
“How long is it since you last had to leave a case unsolved?” asked Cruickshank.
“Six years,” said Van Veeteren.
“What was that, then?” asked the photographer, curious.
“The G-file…” Van Veeteren stopped chewing and stared out of the window.
“Oh, yes, I remember,” said Cruickshank. “I wrote about that one-”
Two young ladies came in and were about to sit at the next table, but Muller drove them away.
“Sit in the corner instead,” he urged them. “There’s a terrible stink here!”
“Well,” began Cruickshank, “are we dealing with a mad man, or is it planned?”
“Who says that madmen don’t plan?” said Van Veeteren.
“Is there a link between the victims?”
“Yes.”
“What is it?”
“…”
“How do you know?”
“Give me a Danish pastry!”
“Will there be any more top brass coming?”
“If necessary.”
“Have you any previous experience with ax murderers?” wondered the photographer.
“I know a fair amount about murderers,” said Van Veeteren.
“And everybody knows how an ax works. How long can your esteemed journals afford to do without your services and leave you here in Kaalbringen? Six months?”
“Ha ha,” said Muller. “A few days, I should think. Unless it happens again, that is.”
“It’ll be some time before that, no doubt.”
“How do you know that?”
“Thank you for the coffee,” said Van Veeteren, standing up.
“I’ll have to leave you now, I’m afraid. Don’t stay up too late, and don’t write any rubbish!”
“Have we ever written rubbish?” asked Cruickshank.
“What the hell are we doing here?” wondered the photog rapher when Van Veeteren had left them on their own.
What the hell am I doing here? thought Van Veeteren, and clambered into the passenger seat next to Bausen.
“It’s not a pretty sight,” said Bausen. “I think I’ll stay out here and do a bit of planning.”
Van Veeteren followed the limping pathologist.
“Meuritz,” he said when they had entered the room. “My name’s Meuritz. Actually based in Oostwerdingen, but I gener ally do one day a week here as well. It’s been a bit more than that lately.”
He pulled the trolley out of the deep freeze, and removed the sheet with an extravagant gesture. Van Veeteren was re minded of something Reinhart had said once: There’s only one profession. Matador. All the rest are substitutes and shadows.
Bausen was right, no doubt about it. Even if Ernst Simmel hadn’t exactly been a handsome specimen of a man while on this earth, neither the Axman nor Meuritz had done anything to improve the situation. He was lying on his stomach, and for reasons that Van Veeteren didn’t fully understand but which were no doubt pedagogical, Meuritz had placed the head at ninety degrees to the neck in an upward direction, so that the incision was clearly visible.
“A pretty skillful blow, you have to give him that,” he said, poking into the wound with a ballpoint pen.
“Skillful?” wondered Van Veeteren.
“Look at this!”
Meuritz held out an X-ray film.
“This is Eggers. Note the angle of entry! Only a couple of degrees difference. They were exactly the same depth, inciden tally…”
Van Veeteren scrutinized the picture of the maltreated white bones against a black background.
“… lands from above, diagonally from the right.”
“Right-handed?” asked Van Veeteren.
“Presumably. Or a left-handed badminton player. Who’s used to playing forehands way out on the backhand side, if you follow me.”
“I play three times a week,” said Van Veeteren.
Who was it who had said something about tennis balls not so long ago?
Meuritz nodded and pushed his glasses up onto his forehead.
“Is it the same weapon?” asked Van Veeteren. “Take that ballpoint out of his throat, if you don’t mind.”
Meuritz wiped his pen clean on his white coat and put it in his breast pocket.
“Definitely,” he said. “I can even claim to be able to describe it-an ax with a very sharp blade, sharpened by an expert no doubt. Five inches deep and quite wide. Maybe six inches, pos sibly more.”
“How do you know that?”
“It penetrated exactly the same distance in both cases, and then it was stopped by the handle. If the blade had been deeper, the skull would certainly have been severed. Have you seen the things butchers use to cut up bones with?”
Van Veeteren nodded. Began to regret the fact that he’d eaten three Danish pastries at Sylvie’s luxury cafe.
“Time of death?”
“Between half past eleven and half past twelve, roughly speaking.”
“Can you be more precise?”
“Closer to half past eleven-twenty to twelve, if you were to really press me.”
“Have you come across anything like this before?” Van
Veeteren indicated the pale blue corpse.
“No. You never stop learning in this business.”
Although it was three and a half days since Ernst Simmel’s body had been found, and almost four days since he’d been murdered, the scene of the crime had not lost its attraction.
The police had sealed it off with red-and-white tape and warn ing notices, but a trickle of people was still flowing past this woodland corral, a narrow stream of Kaalbringen citizens who didn’t want to miss the opportunity of seeing the white mark ers in among the bushes and the increasingly dark-colored patch of human blood on the path.
Constable Erwin Bang had been given the task of maintain ing order and keeping the most curious at bay, and he carried out this mission with all the dignity and attention to detail that his 160-pound frame allowed. The moment there were more than two visitors at a time, he would get them moving.
“Come on! Move it! Keep going!”
It seemed to Van Veeteren that Bang was handling the situ ation as a spot of traffic policing more than anything else. But that was of minor significance, of course.
