“Dunno,” said Kropke.
“No,” said Bausen. “It’s unclear if he simply got tired of try ing, or if there was some other reason, as rumor had it. Has had it for years.”
“What kind of rumor?” wondered Munster.
“All kinds,” said Bausen. “That Podworsky had scared the shit out of Simmel, for instance-to put it bluntly-or that he had some kind of hold over him.”
Van Veeteren nodded.
“OK,” he said. “They weren’t especially well liked in Kaal bringen, either of them, if I’ve understood the situation cor rectly?”
“Right,” said Kropke.
“Why was Podworsky given early retirement?” asked Van
Veeteren. “Was that immediately after he was released from jail?”
“More or less,” said Bausen. “He’d managed to pick up a back injury or something of the sort while in prison- didn’t have much chance of getting another job anyway, I suppose.”
“And so he’s been living out there on his own ever since,” said Kropke. “Since 1974… a real prairie wolf, you could say.”
“No more brushes with the law since then?” asked Munster.
“Well…” said Bausen. “It was rumored that he was distill ing and selling moonshine, or buying it from the Eastern bloc duty-free. I was out there at the end of the seventies, but I didn’t find anything. Maybe he’d been tipped off.”
Van Veeteren scratched his head with a pencil.
“Yep,” he said. “And then there’s this Aarlach business…”
“I must say it’s a damn peculiar coincidence,” said the chief of police. “Don’t you think? What the hell was he doing there? It’s a hundred and fifty miles from here, and Eugen Podworsky has never been renowned as a great traveler, quite the contrary.
What was the date, by the way?”
“March 15, 1983,” said Kropke. “For some reason or other he gets involved in a violent barroom brawl with two young med ical students, one of whom is Maurice Ruhme. They smash up furniture and fittings to the tune of thousands of guilders, and both Podworsky and Ruhme’s pal are hospitalized for several weeks. There’s talk of prosecution, but eventually a settlement is reached-”
“Jean-Claude Ruhme?” said Van Veeteren.
“Presumably,” said Bausen. “We have to dig deeper into this, I guess. Get more flesh on the bones from Melnik; and track down this other student, Christian Bleuwe, wasn’t that his name?”
“Unfortunately-” said Van Veeteren.
“Unfortunately what?”
“He’s dead. It doesn’t say so in the report, but I phoned
Melnik this morning and he told me. Died in connection with an explosion two years ago. I asked Melnik to find out more details of that brawl as well. He says he’ll get back to me.”
Kropke was making notes. Bausen frowned.
“An explosion?” he said.
Van Veeteren nodded and dug into his breast pocket.
“No toothpicks left,” he said. “Do you happen to have a cig — arette?”
Bausen handed over a pack.
“What kind of explosion?”
“A terrorist thing, it seems,” said Van Veeteren, clicking away at his lighter. “Basque separatists, according to Melnik, but he wasn’t sure.”
“Where?” asked Munster.
“Where?” said Van Veeteren, managing to light his ciga rette at last. “In Spain, of course. Somewhere on the Costa del
Sol. Car bomb. Bleuwe and two Spaniards killed-”
Kropke stood up and seemed to be chewing his words.
“Was it… was it in… what the hell’s the place called?”
“Could it be that you are trying to think of Las Brochas?” wondered Van Veeteren, attempting to produce a smoke ring.
He sometimes almost excels himself, thought Munster.
“Las Brochas, yes, that’s it!” almost yelled Kropke.
“Not quite,” said Van Veeteren. “Fuengirola, but that’s only a dozen miles away.”
“But what the hell does all this mean, in fact?” said Kropke.
“Can somebody explain it to me?”
Bausen was filling his pipe, and looked at Van Veeteren.
“Well,” said Van Veeteren. “Hard to say. In any case, we’ll have to wait until we hear more about that barroom brawl. It could be just a strange coincidence-there are more of those than we often imagine. But it’s possible that it might be of sig nificance, of course.”
Nobody spoke for a few seconds, and suddenly Munster could detect a tremor in the air. The concentration and intense thinking being done by everyone in the room seemed tangible, and a familiar shiver ran up his spine. Was this the moment when things started to fall into place? Were they about to start wrapping it up now?
“I’ll contact Melnik,” said Bausen.
“What are we going to do about Moerk?” asked Kropke.
Bausen hesitated.
“Hmm,” he said. “What do you think?”
“Munster and I will go to her flat,” said Van Veeteren after another pause. “I think we might try to do a bit of ferreting around as well, without making it obvious-”
“Are we going to keep this hushed up, then?” asked Kropke, looking at everybody in turn.
“For a while, at least,” Bausen decided. “When the news papers get hold of this, all hell will let loose.”
“No doubt about that,” said Van Veeteren.
“Kropke and Mooser,” said Bausen. “Go find Podworsky!”
Kropke nodded.
“Any tips?”
“No.”
“And Bang?” wondered Bang.
Bausen thought for a moment.
“Cycle over to Mrs. Simmel’s and find out if she knows any thing about the car bomb. And about Podworsky, of course.”
“Er…?” said Bang, looking rather worried.
“Kropke will tell you what questions to ask.”
“All right,” sighed Kropke.
“We meet again and report at six o’clock,” said Bausen.
Van Veeteren stood up.
“Have you got any good picklocks?” he asked.
Bausen shook his head.
“OK, we’ll have to tell the janitor some fairy stories instead.”
Munster crumpled a paper cup and threw it into the trash can.
“Forgive me for asking,” he said, “but is it really right not to put all available resources into finding Inspector Moerk?”
“You mean the mass media and search parties and the whole shebang?” said Bausen.
“Yes.”
Bausen scratched the back of his head and looked worried.
“You’re wrong, Munster,” said Van Veeteren. “We mustn’t start thinking with our hearts. If she’s alive, she’s
