‘And then? You were talking for ten minutes after all, weren’t you?’
‘No, not as long as that. He sat thinking as well.’
‘But he must have asked you other questions?’
‘Yes, what I’d been doing that afternoon and so on, but nothing special.’
‘Nothing special?’
‘Belle has told you all that already,’ interrupted Edwina Moulder.
‘How do you know?’ asked Reinhart.
‘Eh?’
‘I asked you how you could know that,’ said Reinhart, angrily. ‘Have you read the minutes of the police interview? If you can’t hold your tongue I must ask you to go away and cut your hedge, or whatever. Is that clear?’
Edwina Moulder opened her mouth, then closed it again. Then she looked down and seemed to have decided it was best not to say anything.
‘Anyway,’ said Reinhart. ‘What else?’
‘What do you mean, what else?’
The same snooty nonchalance, he noted. Despite the fact that she still looked scared. Perhaps that’s the way kids were at that age?
‘What else did Yellinek have to say? Don’t play the innocent, young lady.’
‘Eh?’ said Belle Moulder. ‘He didn’t say much at all.’
‘He asked you not to say anything, didn’t he?’
‘Yes, of course. Although it was mainly the sisters who said that later.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes, and then we said a prayer.’
‘You and Yellinek?’
‘Yes.’
‘What kind of a prayer?’
‘Eh?’
‘What sort of a prayer? What did it say?’
‘It… No, I don’t understand what you mean.’
‘Repeat the prayer for me now!’
‘No, I can’t.’
‘Why not?’
‘Well, like, he was the one who did the praying. I just repeated it silently.’
He did the praying, I just repeated it silently, thought Reinhart, and sighed.
‘So you don’t remember the words?’
‘No… No, I don’t.’
‘And this took ten minutes?’
‘He sat thinking as well, as I said.’
Reinhart lit his pipe and waited for a while.
‘Okay,’ he said, and glanced at Edwina Moulder. ‘Did he touch you?’
‘What?’ said Edwina Moulder.
Reinhart blew a cloud of smoke in her face.
‘The final warning,’ he said before turning his attention back to the girl. ‘Well, did he touch you?’
‘He just gave me a hug.’
‘Just gave you a hug?’
‘Yes.’
‘How?’
She seemed a bit confused.
‘From behind?’
‘Yes.’
Reinhart bit hard on the stem of his pipe.
‘While you were praying?’
‘Yes.’
‘Only then?’
‘Yes.’
Edwina Moulder’s suntan seemed to have ebbed out into the yellow garden hammock, and her jaws were twitching and squeaking softly.
‘And then?’
‘Then? Er, then he left.’
‘Going where?’
Another shrug.
‘I don’t know. Headed for the lake, I think.’
‘The bathing rock?’
‘Could be.’
‘But you don’t know? He didn’t say what he was going to do?’
‘No, but…’
‘Well?’
‘I think he was going to go to the rock. He might have said that, but… No, I don’t remember.’
Reinhart paused, but nobody said anything, neither the girl nor her aunt.
‘So,’ he tried again, ‘you think Oscar Yellinek went down to the bathing rock some time round about ten o’clock or shortly before that, on Sunday evening?’
‘Yes. Maybe, in any case.’
‘Did you see him again after that?’
She paused to think.
‘No… No, I didn’t.’
‘Do you know if anybody else saw him after that?’
‘I don’t know. But I don’t think any of the girls did.’
He waited for a few moments, but she just sat there looking at her knees, especially the right one, on which he could detect the dirty remains of a plaster. He put his pipe away.
‘So, you were the last one to see Clarissa Heerenmacht alive, and possibly also the last one to see Oscar Yellinek before he went missing. Have you told the police that business about him maybe going down to the bathing rock?’
She thought it over.
‘No, I don’t think so.’
‘Why?’
‘Nobody’s asked me that.’
‘Nobody’s asked you that?’
‘No.’
Typical, Reinhart thought.
Then he left the aunt and her niece to their fates, and returned to his car.
30
Uri Zander was dressed like somebody from the 1960s, and hanging over the corduroy sofa in the living room was a signed poster featuring a pop group called Arthur and the Motherfuckers. It was by no means impossible that Mr Zander was in fact identical with one of the four grim-faced youths in bomber jackets and sunglasses, but Van Veeteren didn’t bother to pursue the matter.
