Beate Moerk nodded.
“So you think he’ll be the one who cracks this one as well?”
Munster shrugged.
“Highly likely. The main thing is that we get him, I suppose.
There’ll be enough glory to go around for all of us. Don’t you think?”
Beate Moerk blushed. She turned her head away and ran her hand through her hair, but Munster had noted her reaction.
Aha, he thought. An ambitious young inspector. Maybe fancies herself as a private detective?
“Have you any theories of your own?” he asked.
“Of my own? No, of course not. I think about it a lot, natu rally, but I don’t seem to get anywhere.”
“That’s how it usually looks,” said Munster.
“Meaning what?”
“That you think you’re just marking time and getting nowhere; then suddenly, off you go-some little detail starts to grow and becomes significant, and then it goes very quickly.”
“Hmm,” said Beate Moerk. She stirred her coffee and scraped at another blob of candle wax with her nail.
“Do you mind if I make a confession?” she said after a pause.
“Go ahead,” said Munster.
“I think… think it’s exciting, being in the middle of it all. I mean-”
“I know,” said Munster.
“I realize my first thought ought to be that it’s terrible and awful, and I should be out there hunting down this mad Axman because he’s a horrific criminal, and because honest people need to be able to sleep at night. And I do think that, of course, but… but I have to admit that I quite enjoy it as well.
That’s pretty perverse, don’t you think?”
Munster smiled.
“I don’t think so,” he said.
“You think the same!” exclaimed Beate Moerk, and sud denly, for one giddy fraction of a second, something happened inside Munster’s head-the unfeigned look on her face as she said it, the fresh, slightly childlike expression in her face genuine, pure; he didn’t really know why, but it gave him a jolt, in any case, and reminded him of something that… that belonged to another chapter of his life. Something he’d already read. Enjoyed and given in to. Of course, he ought to have been expecting it and, needless to say, he was. There had been something about that walk through the town, the beer at The Blue Ship, their conversation in between the interviews-playful and almost wanton-something that was so banal and so obvious that he quite simply didn’t dare put it into words.
“Well,” he said. “I have thought… in the beginning, that is. You get your fingers burned.”
It wasn’t that she was trying to lead him on. On the con trary, really. Presumably, he tried to convince himself, it was the knowledge that he was married, the knowledge that Synn existed that had caused her to let herself go a bit, allowed him to come close to her-because she knew she was safe.
Safe? What about him, though?
“A penny for your thoughts.”
He realized that she was looking at him again, and that his mind must have wandered off for a few seconds.
“I… don’t know really,” he said. “The Axman, I suppose.”
“What does your wife think about your job?”
“Why do you ask?”
“Answer first.”
“What Synn thinks about my job?”
“Yes. That you have to be away from home. Now, for instance.”
“Not much.”
“Did you quarrel before you left for here?”
He hesitated.
“Yes, we quarreled.”
Beate Moerk sighed.
“I knew it,” she said. “I’m asking because I want to know if it’s really possible to be a police officer and be married as well.”
“Possible?”
“Tolerable, then.”
“That’s an old chestnut,” said Munster.
“I know,” said Beate Moerk. “Can you give me a good answer, though, as you’ve been in the job for some time?”
Munster thought it over.
“Yes,” he said. “It must be possible.”
“As easy as that, is it?”
“It’s as easy as that.”
“Good,” said Beate Moerk. “You’ve taken a weight off my chest.”
Munster coughed and wished he could think of something sensible to say. Beate Moerk was watching him.
“Maybe we should change the subject?” she said after a while.
“That would probably be safest,” said Munster.
“Shall we look more closely at my private thoughts? About the Axman, that is.”
“Why not?”
“Unless you think it’s too late, of course.”
“Too late?” said Munster.
The only thing that’s preventing her from seducing me is herself, he thought. I hope she’s strong enough… I wouldn’t want to look myself in the eye tomorrow morning.
“Would you like any more wine?”
“Good God, no,” said Munster. “Black coffee.”
27
“Melnik has gallstones,” said Kropke.
“What in hell’s name…?” said Van Veeteren. “I’m not sur prised, actually.”
“That’s why the report’s been delayed,” explained Bausen.
“He phoned from the hospital.”
“Did he phone himself?” asked Van Veeteren. “Good for him… Well, what shall we do today, then?”
The chief of police sighed.
“You tell me,” he said. “Continue gathering information, I suppose. Before long every single citizen of Kaalbringen will have had a say in this case. Not a bad collection of documents.
Perhaps we can try to sell them to the folklore archives when we’ve finished-”
“If we ever finish, that is,” muttered Kropke. “How’s it going with the ax?”
Van Veeteren put a cigarette and a toothpick on the table.
“Not very well,” he said. “Although I don’t suppose it mat ters much. I doubt that we’ll find the shop that sold it-if they sell gadgets like that in shops, anyway. And as for asking some shop assistant to recall who bought an ax a dozen or fifteen years ago, assuming it was the man himself who did, no, I think we’ll give the ax trail a rest.”
“What about Simmel’s children?” wondered Inspector
Moerk, looking up from her papers.
“Led us nowhere,” said Bausen. “They haven’t had much contact with their parents for the last ten years or
