‘Yes, of course. They buy potatoes and milk from us. Eggs and carrots, and a few greens sometimes. They come every evening to collect it.’
Aha, Van Veeteren thought. A close contact at last.
‘Who actually comes?’
‘It varies.’
‘Meaning what?’
‘Always four of them. Plus Yellinek, of course.’
‘Four girls every evening?’
‘And Yellinek. I suppose the girls take it in turns.’
Van Veeteren thought for a moment.
‘Do you usually speak to them?’
‘Well, not really. We don’t usually say much. Why do you ask?’
The chief inspector put a finger to his lips, and that seemed to be a sufficient explanation. As usual. Even if respect for officers of the law might vary, people seemed to accept that this secrecy business was something you just didn’t question; it was an observation he’d made many times.
Stupidity is best clad in secrecy as Reinhart used to say.
‘Do you ever talk to the girls?’
Fingher thought for a moment, then shook his head.
‘No, they… they always stay in the background, sort of.’
‘The background?’
‘Yes, they always wait by the wagon until Yellinek tells me what they want. Very quiet little girls, they seem a bit…’
‘A bit what?’
‘Hmm, I don’t really know. You sometimes wonder what they get up to over there.’
‘Really?’
‘Well, I don’t want to accuse anybody of anything. People have a right to think whatever they like, and they always pay up, no problem – which is more than you could say about some folk.’
Van Veeteren wondered who the some folk might be.
‘What’s your own opinion of them? There are all kinds of rumours going round…’ It was worth a try.
Fingher scratched the back of his head, and dropped his cap. Picked it up and stuffed it into his back pocket.
‘God knows. I wouldn’t trust any of my kids with them, that’s for sure. But they don’t do me any harm. As I said.’
‘What about Oscar Yellinek?’
Fingher suddenly seemed embarrassed.
‘I know nothing about him. Nothing at all.’
‘But you know what some people say?’
It was obvious that Fingher was unsure of what to say about his unholy alliance.
‘Hmm,’ he said eventually. ‘That he lives with his three women, I suppose.’
Aha, the chief inspector thought again. We’re getting somewhere at last.
‘Exactly,’ he said. ‘What about the girls?’
Fingher shrugged.
‘No idea. But they bathe naked, and I expect they get up to all sorts of things as well…’
‘Really?’
‘According to what you hear, that is. But I know nothing… No, best to leave them alone and mind one’s own business.’
Maybe you’re right, Van Veeteren thought. But as I’ve come all this way…
‘How many of them are there?’ he asked.
Fingher looked as if he were counting.
‘I don’t really know,’ he said. ‘Ten, fifteen perhaps. I really don’t know.’
‘Do you go to Waldingen sometimes?’
Fingher shook his head.
‘Hardly ever. Only if they need help with something. They had some problems with the pump, and we were there a couple of afternoons a few weeks ago. But it’s usually them who come here.’
Van Veeteren took out his pack of cigarettes and offered it to them, but both father and son shook their heads. He considered taking one himself, but thought better of it and went for a toothpick instead.
‘How often do their parents come to visit?’
‘Never,’ said Fingher. ‘I’ve never seen an adult there – apart from that Yellinek and his three women. But they don’t do us any harm, as I said. They haven’t been up to something, have they?’
Van Veeteren didn’t respond. Wondered if he ought to continue firing questions at them just in case, or whether it would be more sensible to save them for another occasion later on. If that should become necessary.
‘I might well get back to you,’ he said. ‘Thank you for talking to me, Mr Fingher.’
Fingher and son nodded and took their hands out of their pockets. All four of them. Van Veeteren eased himself into the car and continued his journey along the narrow forest track. By the time he turned the first bend, he could hear the sound of the chainsaws again.
Well I’ll be damned, he thought. Three of them?
Shouldn’t he have realized that right away?
But the bottom line was that the range of his sexual imagination had shrunk somewhat as the years passed.
What could be more natural? he asked himself in a flash of depressing honesty.
No, enough of fantasies! Time for the lion’s den.
Or was it a snake pit?
I’m still on a roll when it comes to stringing words together! he thought as he parked between the same pine trees as last time. Every cloud has a silver lining. If the Krantze thing fell through, maybe he could start writing his memoirs instead. The main thing was that he had alternative moves to fall back on… if it turned out that he had to choose between check or a knight gambit.
Alternative moves?
A length of bleached cotton was approaching, and he did his best to put a hasty stop to the flow of imagery.
11
There was barely room on the rickety bedside table for the necessaries. Two bottles of beer, some crispbread, a little plastic tub of marinated garlic cloves and a few generous slices of game pate. He had found the whole lot at Kemmelmann amp; Sons, a little deli only fifty metres from the hotel, and when he realized that he had already been to all the decent eating places in town, he had given in to temptation. A quiet evening in his room was not a bad idea at all; it was ages since he had eaten marinated garlic, and of course there was nothing to stop him going out later on for a glass of beer or wine.
After he’d finished his homework, that is.
Satisfied with these arguments, he leaned back on the bed and slid a clove of garlic into his mouth. Followed it up with a piece of bread, a chunk of pate and a substantial swig of beer before switching on the tape recorder and starting to listen to the fruits of his afternoon exertions.
Yellinek first.
VV:
Your name, please.
OY:
