happiness and never discov ered the reason for my visit. He kept her out of the way, and when I wanted to talk to him about Brigitte, we went out and sat in a bar. Sat on a peculiar plush velvet sofa and he waved his arms around and wondered what the devil I wanted; he paid for the wine and asked me if I wanted money… I think that’s when he sowed the seeds of his own destruction, but it wasn’t until he came back here, and the others as well, that I realized the time was ripe. When I killed him, the pleasure was all the greater. Somehow deeper and more intense than with Eggers and Simmel, and that doesn’t surprise me. He was the one who had started it all off, it was the image of a living Maurice
Ruhme who caused the greatest torture during all those sleep less nights before I made up my mind… a living, smiling
Maurice Ruhme sitting on that sofa, flailing his arms about and regretting that Brigitte wasn’t made of sterner stuff. That she would fall so badly and hurt herself so much… he had never imagined that, the little rich boy with the strong safety net.”
He fell silent once again and shifted his position on the chair.
“I have to leave you now,” he said. “I’ll tell you about the others another time. If nothing unexpected happens…”
He remained sitting there for another minute, then she heard him stand up and open the door. Heard the squeaking hinges as he closed it again, locked and bolted it, and it was only after his footsteps had long since faded away that her tongue loosened again.
“And what about me?” she whispered, and for a moment she thought her words remained hanging like symbols in the darkness.
Small, rapidly fading sparks in a black, black night.
Then she wrapped the blankets around her and tried to close the eyes of her soul.
46
When he drove out of the parking lot behind The See Warf, it was no later than half past seven, and the sun had barely risen over the high coast to the east. A clear day seemed to be in store, and he was rather looking forward to sitting behind the wheel for a few hours.
Sitting there and traveling through an autumnal landscape with glowing colors and the sharp contours of a drypoint engraving. Perhaps he could pretend that he was an ordinary person on some mundane errand-on the way to Bochhuisen to give a lecture on modern management techniques. Check ing the sulfur dioxide emissions from some obscure chemical factory. Meeting a relative at the airport.
Or whatever ordinary folk did.
Sometime in March he had hemmed and hawed and won dered if he ought to change his car, or be satisfied with buying a better auto stereo system. He’d gradually come around to the latter option, and as he now crawled along Kaalbringen’s narrow alleys he was grateful that he had made such a sensible decision. He would never have been able to afford the extra few thousand he’d invested in some very exclusive loudspeak ers if he’d had to buy a new car as well.
As things were now, the value of his stereo system was far more than anybody could be expected to give for the rest of his old Opel, and he preferred it that way.
The car was a means of transport. The music was a luxury.
No doubt about which ought to be given priority.
He selected something Nordic for this morning. Cold, clear and serene. Sibelius and Grieg. He inserted the CD, and as the first notes of Tuonela enveloped him, he could feel how the hairs on his arms bristled.
It was dazzlingly beautiful. Like being in Lamminkainens cave and the whole mountain echoing with this inspiring music. For the first time in weeks-indeed, ever since he had come to Kaalbringen-he managed to exclude the Axman from his thoughts. Forget him. Just sat there, lost in the music… inside a dome of crystal-clear sound, as the mists lifted and disappeared over the extensive, rolling countryside.
After a stop at a mundane and gloomy roadside cafe on a level with Urdingen, however, there was a sea change. He realized that instead of traveling farther away, it was now a question of coming closer. His starting point was dropping farther and far ther behind, his destination looming… rising, falling… as ever. He had passed the crown of the hill. He would soon be there. The time was out of joint, and everything would click into place.
Or fall apart. This damn case!
And although he tried once again to distance himself from it, to banish it from his mind, it kept popping up in his con sciousness, not in the form of thoughts, speculations or con clusions, but as images.
All the way through the “Hall of the Mountain King” and “Anitra’s Dance” flowed a constant stream of sharp, unre touched photographs. They throbbed their way forward with a regular and persistent but quite slow rhythm. Like one of those old film strips from a history lesson at school, it struck him. There was plenty of time to evaluate each individual image, although the content was rather different, of course.
Ernst Simmel’s head at an unnatural angle on the patholo gist’s marble table, and the latter’s ballpoint pen poking around inside the open gullet.
The lawyer Klingfort’s trembling double chin when he gaped in surprise.
The hall carpet soaked in blood in Maurice Ruhme’s apart ment. And the butcher’s ax, the origin of which they had never managed to establish.
Louise Meyer, Eggers’s heavily made-up whore, whom he had spent a whole afternoon trying to interview, but she was so high that it was totally impossible to get through to her.
The ice-cold eyes of Jean-Claude Ruhme, and Inspector Moerk’s beautiful hair when she entered the room with the Melnik report in her hand…
Dr. Mandrijn and his wife carting that deformed creature around the grounds at the Seldon Hospice.
And Laurids Reisin. An imagined and persistent image of the man who didn’t dare to set foot outside his home.
And the Axman.
The image of the Axman himself. Still blurred in outline and unidentifiable, but if Van Veeteren really was on the right track now, it was only a matter of an hour or so before the image emerged with all the clarity that could be wished for.
A few little checks. Confirmation of a nasty suspicion, and it would all be over.
Perhaps.
He was sitting behind his desk, twiddling his mustache. Slim, in a black suit and with thin hair combed back, he was more reminiscent of a funeral director than anything else. That was precisely how Van Veeteren remembered him; in fifteen years he seemed to have aged by one, or at most two months. There was no sign of his having been operated on only a week ago.
With a slight, somewhat acid smile he welcomed his visitor and indicated the visitor’s chair, which was directly in front of the immaculately tidy desk.
“What the devil’s all this about, then?”
Van Veeteren recalled that the man was reputed to be inca pable of opening his mouth without swearing. He turned the palms of his hands in the direction of the ceiling and tried to look apologetic.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Just let me have a look at the material
I came here to see… it’s a rather delicate matter.”
“Like hell it is!” He opened a desk drawer and took out a brown folder.
“Here you are. You’re welcome to the damn thing!”
Van Veeteren took the folder and wondered for a moment if he ought to read it there and then, on the visitor’s chair, but when he looked at the man in black he knew that the matter was over and done with. Finished! He remembered also that his host had never been one to indulge in superfluous details conversation and that sort of thing. He stood up, shook hands and left the office.
The whole visit had taken less than two minutes.
People who claim I’m bad tempered ought to meet this happy guy, thought Van Veeteren as he hurried down
