conditions, the result could be that the police would be knocking on his door as soon as tomorrow morning. In just a few hours from now. It was not impossible.
He felt the package. Wondered whether his opponent would be able to tell immediately that it didn’t contain all the money he was expecting, or would he only find out when he got home? The two old newspapers he had torn up and stuffed into the plastic carrier bag were not intended to create the illusion of money. They were merely to give it a certain amount of bulk.
Two old newspapers and an envelope.
Five grand and a request for a delay of three days — that is what his opponent would receive for his night’s work.
The amount was carefully considered. It was exactly half of what had been demanded the previous time, and he would never receive any more. He would believe that 200,000 would be waiting for him on Thursday night instead, and surely he would swallow the bait? Three extra days to wait plus a bonus of 5,000 — what the hell did he have in the way of choice? Go to the police and collect nothing at all? Hardly likely.
He checked his watch. A quarter to four. He picked up the carrier bag, got out of the car and entered the park.
He had checked up earlier on the precise location of the Hugo Maertens statue, and that proved to be a good move. The darkness inside the overgrown park made it feel like a black hole, and it was not until he glimpsed the faint beam from the spotlight aimed at the statue that he was sure he hadn’t gone astray. He paused briefly before stepping out into the little opening where paths converged from four or five different directions.
He stood there listening to the silence. Thought that his opponent was presumably somewhere in the vicinity: perhaps he was also standing on tenterhooks with his mobile phone out there in the darkness, waiting. Or perhaps in a nearby telephone box.
Billiard balls, he thought again. Balls rolling towards each other, but avoiding a collision by no more than a couple of millimetres. Their paths cross, but the clash is avoided by minutes. Or even seconds.
Ridiculously short fractions of time.
He walked over to the rubbish bin and pressed down the plastic carrier bag.
On the way back to Boorkhejm he wondered what would happen if his car broke down. It was not a particularly pleasant thought. Standing by the side of the road and trying to hail some early bird of a driver to ask for help. It would be difficult to explain what he’d been doing, out at that time, to a police officer, especially if they started investigating. Supposedly off work sick, but on his way back home at half past four in the morning. And the back seat covered in traces of blood, which would hardly escape a trained eye.
Not to mention the consequences if he wasn’t at home to answer the telephone. No, not a pleasant thought at all.
But his car didn’t break down. Of course it didn’t. His four-year-old Audi performed immaculately today as on every other day. It had just been an idea he’d played with. He had lots of ideas these days… Bizarre thoughts that had never troubled him before, and he sometimes wondered why they had suddenly turned up in his head. Just now.
He parked the car in the garage, took one-and-a-half tablets and crept down into bed to wait for the call. Wondered rather vaguely if the blackmailer was intending to say anything, or if he would simply hang up. The latter seemed more likely, of course. There was no reason to risk the slight possibility of being unmasked. One’s voice is always naked. It was more likely that he would ring back later — when he had checked the contents of the bag and read the message. Much more likely. When he realized that he hadn’t been paid as much as he’d expected for all his efforts. For all his evil machinations.
If his clock radio was accurate the call came at exactly five seconds past five. He let it ring three times before answering — if for no other reason, to demonstrate that he wasn’t sitting by the telephone, tense and nervous. It could be important to make that clear.
He picked up the receiver and said his name.
For a few seconds he could hear the presence of the caller, then the line went dead.
Okay, he thought. Let’s hear what you have to say for yourself next time.
He rolled over in bed, adjusted the pillows and tried to sleep.
He succeeded very well. When he was woken up by the telephone ringing again, it was a quarter past eleven.
During the brief moment that passed before he picked up the receiver he began to realize that something had gone wrong. That things had not proceeded as he had expected. What had happened? Why had his opponent waited for several hours? Why had…?
It was Smaage.
‘How are you, brother?’
‘Ill,’ he managed to say.
‘Yes, I’d heard. The priest curses and the doctor’s ill. What sort of an age are we living in?’
He laughed in a way that made a rasping noise in the receiver.
‘Just a touch of flu. But it looks as though I’ll be off all week.’
‘Oh dear. We thought we’d have a little session on Friday evening, as I said. Will that be too much for you? At Canaille.’
He coughed and managed to produce a few heavy breaths. They sounded pretty convincing.
‘I think so,’ he said. ‘But I’ll be back at work by Monday.’
When he had said that, and when Smaage had expressed the hope that he’d soon be well again and hung up, it occurred to him that his prognosis had been one hundred per cent wrong.
Whatever happened — no matter how the balls rolled over the next few days — one thing was absolutely clear. Only one. He would not be going to the hospital on Monday.
He would never set foot inside the place again.
There was something extremely attractive about that thought.
24
‘Right then, let’s kick off this brainstorming session,’ said Reinhart, placing his pipe, tobacco pouch and lighter in a neat row on his desk in front of him. ‘I’ll be meeting The Chief Inspector this evening, and as you can well imagine he’s more than a little interested in how things are going for us. I intend to give him a tape recording of this run-through, so that I have at least something to deliver. So think about what you say.’
He pressed the button and started the recorder running. Immediately, Van Veeteren’s presence was felt in the room as something almost tangible, and a respectful silence ensued.
‘Hmm, okay,’ said Reinhart. ‘Tuesday, the eighth of December, fifteen hundred hours. Run-through of the cases Erich Van Veeteren and Vera Miller. We’ll take them both even though the connection is far from definite. Let’s hear your comments.’
‘Have we anything more than Meusse’s guess to suggest that the two cases are linked?’ wondered deBries.
‘Nothing,’ said Reinhart. ‘Apart from the fact that our esteemed pathologist’s guesses can usually be taken as dead-certs. But I suppose even he will have to get something wrong one of these days.’
‘I doubt that,’ said Moreno.
Reinhart opened the zip of his tobacco pouch and sniffed the contents before continuing.
‘Let’s start with Vera Miller,’ he suggested. ‘We have no new technical evidence relevant to her case. Unfortunately. Apart from the time being slightly more precise now. She evidently died some time between a quarter past two and half past three in the early hours of Sunday morning. It’s difficult to say when she was dumped out there at Korrim. If she’d been there long, you might think she ought to have been discovered sooner: but we must remember that the body was hidden and there’s hardly any traffic on those roads. Not at the weekend at this time of year, at least. Oh, we’ve spoken again to Andreas Wollger
… That is, Inspector Moreno and I have spoken to him. The gods should be aware that he didn’t have much to tell us — like everybody else we’ve talked to. But at least he’s begun to admit that their marriage wasn’t entirely
