another aspect of the syndrome, isn’t it? No, I don’t know.”
Munster sighed.
“But you must have put them under a little bit of pressure, surely?”
“Obviously,” said deBries. “The butcher’s a bit of a shady type, for instance. He has at least two mistresses in the village.
Or has had, rather. Perhaps he had it off with Beatrice Holden now and again, before she made a pitch at Verhaven, but that’s not certain. She was a bit of a dolly, it seems. Not too difficult to persuade.”
“Her relationship with Verhaven was a stormy one, if I’m not much mistaken?” said Reinhart.
“You can say that again,” said Moreno. “A bit of a cat and dog relationship, apparently. Sparks would fly now and then.
Only a week before she was murdered, she knocked on the door of her neighbors’ house in the middle of the night, looking for refuge. He’d given her a good beating, evidently. She was naked, just wrapped up in a blanket.”
“Did they let her in?”
“They certainly did. They let her sleep on a sofa. She was pretty drunk, but insisted she was going to report Verhaven to the police the next day. Grievous bodily harm, that kind of thing.”
“But when she woke up the next morning,” said deBries,
“she just wrapped the blanket around her and went back to him.”
“For Christ’s sake!” said Reinhart. “The faded embers of second thoughts.”
“Frailty, thy name is woman,” said Moreno, with a quick smile.
“Hmm,” said Munster. “Anything else of interest?”
“Quite a bit about his childhood and school days,” said Moreno. “The former janitor at the village school is still alive.
He’s nearly ninety, but unusually clear in the head and not unwilling to talk. Verhaven was a bit of an odd bird from the start, it appears. A loner. Introverted. But strong. His fellow pupils respected him. There’s plenty of evidence for that.”
Munster nodded.
“There were a few who thought he was innocent,” said
deBries. “Of the Beatrice murder, at least. But that’s no longer an opinion people are willing to shout in the streets.”
“Why not?” asked Jung.
“Same boat,” muttered Reinhart.
“Yes, that’s about it,” said deBries. “Standing in the village shop in Kaustin and maintaining that Verhaven is innocent is a bit like going to Tehran and claiming that the ayatollah has shit his trousers.”
“Ayatollahs don’t wear trousers,” said Jung. “They wear those black dresses, whatever they’re called.”
“All right, all right,” said Munster.
“Maintaining that Verhaven is innocent implies something else as well,” said Reinhart.
“What?” wondered Rooth.
“You’re accusing somebody else in the village of murder.”
Nobody spoke, and Munster could see exactly how long it took for Reinhart’s words to sink into each one of them.
“But that’s not certain,” said Rooth.
“No,” said Reinhart. “Of course it’s not certain that there’s another murderer in the village, but it’s shit-hot certain that the thought will occur to people. Suspicion. If you keep your mouth shut, you’re not going to put your foot in it.”
“Very true,” said Moreno.
“Well,” said Munster when he had switched off the tape recorder and the others had left them alone. “What do you think?”
“I don’t think anything,” sighed Rooth. “Or rather, I think anything’s possible. I’d give a lot for a couple of hot tips at this stage. What the hell should we be concentrating on?”
“I don’t know,” said Munster. “I have the feeling Hiller will want to take several officers off the case. It’ll probably be just you and me from now on. And the boss, of course.”
He nodded toward the tape recorder.
“Unless we come across something vital,” said Rooth.
“Unless the newspapers decide to make a meal of it, more likely,” said Munster. “They’ll have the story tomorrow, in any case. Maybe that’s just as well. We need all the help we can get.”
“What do you really think yourself?” said Rooth before they went their separate ways in the underground car park. “Do you really think there’s a triple murderer on the loose in this backwater? That sounds to me like a damn awful film.”
“It wouldn’t be a better film even if the locals knew who it is,” said Munster. “No, I think I’d switch it off right away.”
Rooth pondered.
“Maybe we are sort of sitting in a movie theater, as well,”
he said. “It can be damn hard getting out if you’re stuck in the middle of a row.”
“Dead right,” said Munster.
They stood in silence for a while.
“How about a beer?” said Roth.
Munster checked his watch.
“No time,” he said. “I have to visit the patient. They won’t let me in after eight.”
“Pity,” said Rooth, and shrugged. “Pass on greetings. I reckon we could do with him around.”
“I couldn’t agree more,” said Munster.
Why do I keep lying? Munster asked himself as he sat in the car on the way to his suburb. Why couldn’t I have simply told him straight up that I wanted to go home to Synn and the kids? Why did I have to drag in the chief inspector?
Van Veeteren would get his tape after breakfast the next morning, as they had agreed. But if he didn’t want to offend Rooth by turning down his offer of a drink, why should some old cop recovering from an operation be a better excuse than his wife and children?
A good question, no doubt about it.
He decided to think about something else instead.
26
Van Veeteren folded up the
Elgar’s cello concerto. The sun in his face and a warm breeze. Could be worse.
It wasn’t exactly normal routine to allow patients to lie out on the balcony and enjoy themselves, he had realized that. On the other hand, it was hardly the only rule the hospital staff had broken during the five days he’d been in their care. The hospital rules left a great deal to be desired in every respect, but at least the staff had begun to grasp who they were dealing with. Modified rapture.
“But no more than half an hour at most,” Sister Terhovian had insisted, and for some reason held up four fingers close to his face.
“We’ll see about that,” he’d responded.
Getting on for three quarters of an hour must have passed by now. Presumably they’d discovered that it was less trouble to let him be outside.
He called up from his memory the stuff he’d just been reading. There wasn’t a lot to say about it, in fact. Bold headlines on the front page, of course, and two columns summarizing the case on an inside page, but surprisingly
