Monday and Tuesday were low season, and apart from Reinhart and Van Veeteren there was only a handful of listless customers sitting at the shiny metal tables. The Chief Inspector was already installed when the chief inspector arrived. For the first time — the first time ever, as far as he could remember — Reinhart thought he was looking old.
Or perhaps not old, rather resigned in that way a lot of elderly people gave the impression of being. As if some strategic muscles in the spine and the back of the head had finally had enough and contracted for the last time. Or snapped. He assumed Van Veeteren must be sixty by now, but he wasn’t sure. There were a lot of mysterious circumstances surrounding The Chief Inspector, and one of them was the question of his real age.
‘Good evening,’ said Reinhart, sitting down. ‘You look tired.’
‘Thank you,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘No, I don’t sleep at night any more.’
‘Oh dear,’ said Reinhart. ‘When the Good Lord robs us of our sleep, he doesn’t exactly do us any favours.’
Van Veeteren opened the lid of his cigarette-rolling machine.
‘He stopped doing us favours hundreds of years ago. The devil only knows if he ever did us any.’
‘Could well be,’ said Reinhart. ‘I’ve just been reading about God’s silence after Bach. Two Dunckel, please.’
The latter request was addressed to a waiter who had just emerged from the shadows. Van Veeteren lit a cigarette. Reinhart started filling his pipe.
Hard going, he thought. It’s going to be hard going this evening.
He took the tape out of his jacket pocket.
‘I’m afraid I don’t have a Gospel for you either,’ he said. ‘But if you want an indication of where we are, you can always listen to this. It’s a recording of today’s discussions. Not exactly a climactic experience, of course, but you know what it’s usually like. The voice you won’t recognize is a detective-sergeant called Bollmert.’
‘Better than nothing,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘Ah well, I’m not finding it easy to keep my nose out of things.’
‘Perfectly understandable,’ said Reinhart. ‘As I’ve said before.’
He took out the photograph of Vera Miller.
‘Do you recognize this woman?’
Van Veeteren looked at the picture for a couple of seconds.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I do, in fact.’
‘What?’ said Reinhart. ‘What the devil do you mean by that?’
‘If I’m not much mistaken,’ said Van Veeteren, handing the photograph back to Reinhart. ‘A nurse at the Gemejnte. Looked after me when I had my colon operation a few years ago. A very pleasant woman — how have you come across her?’
‘That’s Vera Miller. The woman who was found murdered out at Korrim last Sunday morning.’
‘The woman who’s linked with Erich somehow or other?’
Reinhart nodded.
‘It’s only a hypothesis. Extremely shaky so far — but perhaps you can confirm it?’
The waiter came with the beers. They each took a swig. Van Veeteren looked at the photograph again, then slowly shook his head and looked sombre.
‘No,’ he said. ‘It’s sheer coincidence that I happen to remember her. Have I understood it rightly, and that it’s Meusse who has indicated this link?’
‘Meusse, yes. He thinks the blow to the back of the head suggests a connection. It indicates a degree of expertise, he says. In both cases… Well, you know Meusse.’
Van Veeteren was lost in silence. Reinhart lit his pipe and allowed him to ponder to his heart’s content. Suddenly felt extreme anger bubbling up inside himself. A fury directed at whoever had killed The Chief Inspector ’s son. Who had killed Vera Miller.
Was it the same person, or two different ones? Who cares? A fury directed at this murderer or these murderers, but also at all killers, whoever they might be… And so the coldest and darkest of all his memories began to stir. The murder of Seika. Of his own girlfriend. Seika, whom he should have married and built up a family with. Seika, whom he had loved like no other. Seika with the high cheekbones, the half-Asian eyes and the most beautiful laugh the world has ever heard. It was almost thirty years ago now: she had been lying in that accursed grave out at Linden for three decades. Nineteen-year-old Seika who ought to have been his wife.
If it hadn’t been for that evil killer, a knifeman on that occasion, a drugged-up madman who had stabbed her to death one evening in Wollerims Park without the slightest trace of a reason.
Or at least, nothing more than the twelve guilders she had in her purse.
And now The Chief Inspector ’s son. Bloody hell, Reinhart thought. He’s absolutely right, it was a long time ago that the Good Lord stopped doing us favours.
‘I went out to Dikken to have a look around,’ said Van Veeteren, interrupting his train of thought.
‘What?’ said Reinhart. ‘You?’
‘Me, yes,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘I took the liberty — I hope you’ll forgive me.’
‘Of course,’ said Reinhart.
‘I spoke to a few people at that restaurant. It’s more like a sort of therapy really. I don’t expect to find anything that you lot won’t find, but it’s so damned hard just sitting around, doing nothing. Can you understand that?’
Reinhart paused for a few seconds before answering.
‘Do you remember why I joined the police?’ he asked. ‘My fiancee in Wollerims Park?’
Van Veeteren nodded.
‘Of course I do. Okay, you understand. But anyway, there’s one thing I wonder about.’
‘What?’ said Reinhart.
‘The plastic carrier bag,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘That plastic carrier bag that changed owners. Or was supposed to change owners.’
‘What bloody plastic bag are you on about?’ said Reinhart.
Van Veeteren said nothing for a moment.
‘So you don’t know about it?’
Oh, shit, Reinhart thought. Now he’s put us on the spot again.
‘There was somebody who said something about a plastic carrier bag,’ he said, trying to sound offhand about it. ‘That’s true.’
‘It seems that this Mr X, who is presumably the killer…’ said The Chief Inspector, noticeably slowly and in a tone of voice that sounded to Reinhart painfully like some pedagogue explaining the obvious to ignorant pupils, ‘… had a plastic carrier bag by his feet when he was sitting in the bar. And it appears that Erich was carrying that bag when he left the restaurant.’
He raised an eyebrow and waited for Reinhart’s reaction.
‘Oh, shit,’ said Reinhart. ‘To tell you the truth… Well, to tell you the truth I’m afraid it looks as if we’d missed this. The second half, that is. Several witnesses said Mr X had a plastic carrier bag with him, but we haven’t heard anything about Erich having taken it over. How did you find out about that?’
‘I happened to meet the right people,’ said Van Veeteren modestly, contemplating his newly rolled cigarette. ‘One of the waitresses seemed to recall having seen him carrying a plastic bag when he left the restaurant, and when she said that the barman remembered it as well.’
And you happened to ask the right questions as well, no doubt, Reinhart thought, and felt a flood of deep- rooted admiration surging through his consciousness, removing all trace of anger and embarrassment. Admiration for that psychological insight that The Chief Inspector had always been blessed with, and which… which could cut like a scalpel through a ton of warm butter faster than a hundred riot police in bullet-proof vests could work out the whiff of a suspicion.
Intuition, as it was called.
‘So what conclusion do you draw?’ he asked.
‘Erich was there to collect something.’
‘Obviously.’
‘He drove out to the Trattoria Commedia in order to collect the plastic carrier bag in an agreed location — perhaps in the gents.’
