‘Because we like peanuts,’ said Rooth.
Moreno and Reinhart went together to Ockfener Plejn on Sunday evening. It was only a few blocks from the police station, and despite the wind and the driving rain, they went on foot.
‘We need to give our minds a good soaking and blow away all the dust,’ explained Reinhart. ‘And it would be no bad thing if our internal and external landscapes were in harmony.’
‘How did he take it?’ Moreno asked.
Reinhart thought it over before answering.
‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I’ll be damned if I know. But he didn’t have much to say for himself, that’s for sure. Mun-ster found it hard to cope. It’s such a bloody mess.’
‘Was he on his own?’
‘No, he had his new woman with him, thank God.’
‘Thank God for that,’ agreed Moreno. ‘Is she okay?’
‘I think so,’ said Reinhart.
They came to the old square, and located the property. One of a row of cramped houses with high, narrow gables: pretty run-down, filthy frontages and badly maintained window frames. A few steps led up to the front door, and Moreno pressed the bell push next to the handprinted name plate.
After half a minute and a second ring, Marlene Frey opened the door. Her face seemed to be a little swollen, and her eyes were about three times as red and tearful as they had been when Moreno interviewed her in her office at the police station that morning. Nevertheless, the frail-looking woman displayed signs of willpower and strength.
Moreno noted that she had changed her clothes as well. Only a different pair of jeans and a yellow jumper instead of a red one, it was true: but perhaps that indicated that she had begun to accept the situation. Understood that life must go on. Nor did she give the impression that she had been taking sedatives — although that was hard to judge, of course.
‘Hello again,’ said Moreno. ‘Have you managed to get any sleep?’
Marlene Frey shook her head.
Moreno introduced Reinhart, and they went up the stairs to the second floor.
Two small rooms and a cramped, chilly kitchen, that was all. Wine-red walls and a minimum of furniture, mainly big, colourful floor cushions to sit or lie down on. A few big, green plants and a couple of posters. In the bigger room two wicker chairs and a low stool stood in front of a calor gas stove. Marlene Frey sat down on the stool, and invited Moreno and Reinhart to sit on the wicker chairs.
‘Can I offer you anything?’
Moreno shook her head. Reinhart cleared his throat.
‘We know that this is extremely difficult for you,’ he said. ‘But we have to ask you a few questions even so. Say if you don’t feel up to it, and we can come tomorrow instead.’
‘Let’s get it over with now,’ said Marlene Frey.
‘Have you got anybody staying with you?’ Moreno asked. ‘A girlfriend, for instance?’
‘A friend is due this evening. I’ll get by, you don’t need to worry.’
‘So you lived here together, is that right?’ Reinhart asked, moving a bit closer to the stove. It was evidently the only source of heat in the whole flat, so it was important not to be too far away from it.
‘Yes,’ said Frey, ‘we live here. Or lived…’
‘How long had you been together?’ Moreno asked.
‘Two years, more or less.’
‘You know who his father is, I take it?’ said Reinhart. ‘It’s not relevant, of course, but it makes it all rather more unpleasant from our point of view. Even if-’
‘Yes, I know,’ said Frey, interrupting him. ‘They didn’t have much contact.’
‘We’d gathered that,’ said Reinhart. ‘Was there any at all? Contact, that is?’
Frey hesitated before answering.
‘I’ve never met him,’ she said. ‘But I think… I think things were getting a bit better recently.’
Reinhart nodded.
‘Did they meet at all?’ Moreno wondered.
‘Erich went to see him a few times during the autumn. But that’s irrelevant now.’
Her voice shook a little, and she stroked the palms of her hand quickly over her face, as if to switch it off. Her red hair looked dyed and not very well cared for, Moreno noted, but there were no obvious signs of drug abuse.
‘Let’s concentrate on last Tuesday,’ said Reinhart, taking out his pipe and tobacco, and receiving an encouraging nod from Marlene Frey.
‘Erich drove out to that restaurant in Dikken,’ said Moreno. ‘Have you any idea why?’
‘No,’ said Frey. ‘No idea at all. As I said this morning.’
‘Was he working?’ Reinhart asked.
‘A bit of this, a bit of that,’ said Frey. ‘He did odd jobs as a carpenter and painter and labourer… On various building sites and similar. Most of it was the black economy, I’m afraid, but that’s the way it is nowadays. He was good with his hands.’
‘What about you yourself?’ Moreno asked.
‘I’m attending a course for the unemployed. Economics and IT and that kind of crap, but I get a grant for doing it. I do the odd hour in shops and supermarkets when they’re short-staffed. We get by in fact… Or got by. Financially, that is. Erich worked at a printing works as well now and then. Stemminger’s.’
‘I understand,’ said Reinhart. ‘He had a bit of form, if one can put it like that…’
‘Who doesn’t?’ said Frey. ‘But we were on the straight and narrow, I want you to be quite clear about that.’
It looked for a moment as if she were about to burst into tears; but she took a deep breath and blew her nose instead.
‘Tell us about last Tuesday,’ said Reinhart.
‘There’s not a lot to say,’ said Frey. ‘I attended my course in the morning, then I worked for a few hours in the shop in Kellnerstraat in the afternoon. I only saw Erich here at home between one and two — he said he was going to help somebody with some boat or other, and then he had something to see to in the evening.’
‘A boat?’ said Reinhart. ‘What sort of a boat?’
‘It belongs to a good friend,’ said Frey. ‘I assume he was helping with fitting it out.’
Moreno asked her to write down the friend’s name and address, which she did after consulting an address book she fetched from the kitchen.
‘That something he had to see to in the evening,’ said Reinhart when the boat business was over and done with. ‘What was that about?’
Marlene Frey shrugged.
‘I don’t know.’
‘Was it a job?’
‘I assume so.’
‘Or something else?’
‘What do you mean by that?’
‘Well… Something that wasn’t a job.’
Frey took out her handkerchief and blew her nose again. Her eyes narrowed.
‘I understand,’ she said. ‘I understand exactly what’s going on. It’s only for his celebrated father’s sake that you’re sitting here being so damned polite to me. If it weren’t for that you’d treat him like any other yob you care to name. And you’d treat me like a drugged-up whore.’
‘Steady on…’ said Moreno.
‘You don’t need to put on a show,’ said Frey. ‘I know the score. Erich had a lot on his conscience, but he’s packed all that in during the last few years. Neither of us shoot up nowadays, and we’re no less law-abiding than anybody else. But I suppose it’s a waste of time trying to make the fuzz believe that?’
Neither Moreno nor Reinhart responded. Marlene Frey’s outburst remained hanging for a while in the warm silence over the calor gas stove. But this was shattered when a tram clattered past in the street outside.
