contact with her before she vanished through the door, and it was that farewell look that accompanied him all the way back.
Through the hospital grounds. Through the dark forest. Along the sparsely lit road back to the little town.
He had received three negative replies to his three questions. But also a look that said… Well, what did it say?
Intuitively – before he had begun to analyse and weigh everything up – he had no doubt about the answer:
I’ve told you the truth. Believe me.
But then it went off the rails. Did he dare to trust her? Did he really dare to believe that this mad priestess – or whatever epithet one chose to hang around her neck – really didn’t have any information worth telling him?
Be it about the murder, or the girl who had disappeared, or the shepherd who had done the same thing?
He knew that everything depended on his judgement of these matters. And of course it wasn’t out of the question that she had given him a mixed bag of answers – served him up two truths and one lie, or vice versa, and as he strolled slowly back to the little town, he had the impression that his journey was not unlike the usual tightrope walk – along the blurred and tarnished borderline between true and false.
How far could he trust her? How far could he trust her three negative replies? How much was his intuition worth on this occasion?
And when shortly afterwards he sat down in the dining room at Grimm’s Hotel, he still didn’t know. But nevertheless, he had made a few decisions.
For after all, somebody needed to make interpretations and solve doubts. Mene tekel.
Mene mene tekel.
23
Suijderbeck ignored the warning notice, instead flung the gate open wide so that the whole fence shuddered. Sure enough, half a second later two fifty-kilogram German shepherds came racing round the corner of the house.
Suijderbeck stopped.
‘Sit!’ he roared when the beasts were only two metres away and the adrenaline swirled like a cloud of steam around their jowls.
It had the same effect as usual. The dogs were transformed instantly into two phlegmatic black sheep whose only ambition seemed to be to sink down into the earth at the feet of their newly acquired master.
‘Shit-scared cowards,’ muttered Suijderbeck and continued along the gravel path.
A woman in cut-off jeans and a checked man’s shirt came out onto the patio, fists clenched by her sides. Suijderbeck paused and looked her up and down. Realized that a single barked command wouldn’t work in her case.
Although it would have been fun to try. No doubt about that.
‘Mrs Kuijpers?’ he asked instead.
‘And who the devil are you?’
‘Suijderbeck. Police,’ said Suijderbeck, walking up the steps with his hand outstretched politely to greet her.
‘ID,’ said the woman, instead of shaking hands.
Suijderbeck fished it out of his inside pocket. When he held it up ten centimetres in front of the woman’s face, he could smell the strong drink on her breath. He decided to remove his silk gloves.
‘I have a few questions to ask you,’ he said. ‘Would you like to come with me in the car, or can we sort it out here?’
‘What the hell?’ said the woman. ‘Coming here and-’
‘It’s about the murder at the summer camp,’ snapped Suijderbeck, interrupting her and gesturing with his hand towards the forest and the road he’d just come driving along. ‘I assume you’ve heard what’s happened.’
‘Of course.’ She immediately seemed rather more tractable, he noticed. ‘Er, please sit down.’
She sat down on one of the plastic chairs on the patio, and Suijderbeck sat down opposite her.
‘But we haven’t done anything,’ she said without being prompted. ‘I mean, Henry came out last spring, and since then we’ve lived like angels out here.’
‘You don’t say,’ said Suijderbeck.
‘Who the hell is it?’ a gruff-sounding man’s voice enquired from inside the house.
‘The police!’ shouted the woman in a tone pitched somewhere between hope and despair.
The man appeared in the doorway. A copy of his wife, in fact, Suijderbeck noted. Big, powerful, the worse for wear. Approaching fifty it seemed.
Mind you, only the woman sported bleached hair and a nose ring.
‘Kuijpers,’ said the man, extending a hairy hand. ‘I’m as innocent as a newly wed virgin.’
The wheezing splutter was presumably laughter. Suijderbeck lit a cigarette. What a pair of idiots, he thought. If I just hold my tongue, they’ll have confessed to illicit distilling and receiving stolen goods within a quarter of an hour.
‘Anyway,’ said Kuijpers. ‘I gather it’s about that poor girl.’
‘Yes,’ said Suijderbeck. ‘Do you know anything about it?’
They both shook their heads. The woman hiccuped and put her hand over her mouth.
‘What a bloody mess,’ said Kuijpers. ‘No, we’ve had no contact with them. As for that creeping Jesus on the run… No, I’m at a loss for words.’
‘There was another police officer here a few days ago,’ said the woman.
‘I know,’ said Suijderbeck. ‘I just want to check a few things.’
‘Well?’ said the man, scratching at his crotch.
Suijderbeck took out his notebook and thumbed through a few pages.
‘We know nothing about it,’ said the woman nervously.
‘Don’t harp on about it,’ said the man.
‘Hmm,’ said Suijderbeck. ‘So you haven’t spoken to any of them? Not to the girls nor to the leaders? Not at all during the summer? The camp is less than two kilometres away from here.’
The man shook his head again.
‘A little group of them came here once or twice,’ said the woman. ‘Picking blueberries or something, but the dogs kept most of them away, you could say.’
She nodded her head at where the German shepherds were prowling around restlessly.
‘Most of them,’ she said again, to be on the safe side.
‘All we’ve done is drive past the summer camp on our way to town,’ said the man. ‘As for talking to ’em? No thank you… I can’t say I’m surprised at what’s happened, hell no. Randy old buggers like that fucking priest – there’s no saying what they can get up to.’
Suijderbeck began to draw a fat priest in his notebook.
‘What were you doing last Sunday night?’ he asked. ‘I’m referring to Sunday last week, the night the girl was murdered.’
‘What?’ said the man. ‘All night? I was at home of course. As usual.’
‘You didn’t have any visitors?’
Kuijpers shook his head, and looked enquiringly at his wife.
‘No,’ said the woman. ‘We were on our own here.’
‘Do you remember hearing anybody drive past during the night?’
‘No,’ said the man. ‘That other cop asked that as well, but we didn’t hear a thing. Mind you, we were asleep.’
‘I don’t suppose many cars come past your house?’ Suijderbeck asked, looking for somewhere to stub out his cigarette. He eventually hit upon a shrivelled pot plant standing next to his wooden leg.
