wanted by the police? You really must fill me in.’
She adjusted her rust-red shawl so that the designer label was a little more obvious.
‘It’s not completely clarified as yet,’ said Moreno.
‘Really? But you must know why you want him, surely?’
‘He’s disappeared.’
‘Has something happened to him?’
Moreno put down her knife and fork and wiped her mouth with her napkin.
‘We have certain suspicions about him.’
‘Suspicions?’
‘Yes.’
‘What kind of suspicions?’
‘I’m sorry, but I can’t go into details about that.’
‘He’s never displayed any of those kind of tendencies.’
‘What kind of tendencies?’
‘Criminal. That’s what you’re saying, isn’t it?’
‘Do you still meet at all?’ asked Moreno.
Kodesca leaned back and looked at Moreno with a smile that seemed to have been drawn with a pair of compasses on a refrigerator door. She must have toothache, Moreno thought. I don’t like her. I must be careful not to say anything stupid.
‘No, we don’t meet at all.’
‘When did you see him last?’
‘See?’
‘Meet, then. Exchange words… However you’d like to put it.’
Fru Kodesca breathed in a cubic metre of air through her nostrils, and thought that one over.
‘August,’ she said, blowing out the air. ‘I haven’t seen him since August.’
Moreno made a note. Not because she needed to, just to tame her aggressions.
‘How would you describe him?’
‘I’d rather not describe him. What are you after?’
‘A rather more detailed picture, that’s all,’ said Moreno. ‘A few more general characteristics, that kind of thing.’
‘Such as?’
‘Such as what could happen if he became violent, for instance.’
‘Violent?’
She fished the word up at the end of a very long line, from a different social class.
‘Yes. Did he ever hit you?’
‘Hit me?’
The same long line.
‘If you’d rather come to the police station to conduct this conversation, that’s fine by me,’ said Moreno in a friendly tone. ‘Maybe this isn’t the right kind of milieu?’
‘Hmm,’ said Kodesca. ‘Sorry, I was gobsmacked, pure and simple. What do you take us for? I can imagine Pieter being subjected to something, but that he himself would… No, that’s out of the question. Totally out of the question. You can write that down in your little book. Was there anything else?’
‘Do you know if he’d had any new relationships since you divorced?’
‘No,’ said Kodesca, looking out of the window. ‘That’s not my problem any more.’
‘I understand,’ said Moreno. ‘So you have no idea where he might have gone? It’s ten days since he disappeared… He hasn’t been in touch with you at all?’
A disapproving wrinkle appeared between fru Kodesca’s right nostril and the corner of her mouth, and made her look five years older at a stroke.
‘I’ve already told you that we have absolutely no contact with each other any more. Have you problems in understanding?’
Yes, thought Moreno. I have problems in understanding how you managed to find yourself a new husband.
But then, perhaps she hadn’t seen Marianne Kodesca from her best side.
Half an hour later she met Jung in his office in the police station.
‘Liz Vrongel,’ said Jung. ‘Disappeared without trace.’
‘Her as well?’ said Moreno.
Jung nodded.
‘But twenty years ago. She was married to Keller for a year… Well, ten months if you want to be finicky… Then they divorced and she moved to Stamberg. A mixed-up devil, obviously. Took part in all kinds of protest movements, and was kicked out of Greenpeace after she bit a police officer in the face. Joined various sects and is said to have gone to California at the beginning of the eighties. After that the trail goes cold. I don’t know if there’s any point in looking for her.’
Moreno sighed.
‘Presumably not,’ she said. ‘We can start thinking about celebrating Christmas instead and hope Reinhart comes home with something from New York.’
‘Do you think that’s likely?’
‘Not very,’ said Moreno. ‘To be honest.’
‘And what was the former fru Clausen like?’
Moreno wondered how best to put it.
‘A different type from the former fru Keller at any rate,’ she said. ‘Discreet bourgeois fascism, more or less. And not all that discreet, in fact, come to think of it. But she had nothing to offer us, and I don’t think I want to talk to her again.’
‘Rich bitch?’ said Jung.
‘You could say that,’ said Moreno.
Jung checked the time.
‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘don’t you think we can allow ourselves to go home now? Maureen has started going on about how I ought to get a new job. I’m beginning to agree with her.’
‘What would you become if you did?’ asked Moreno.
‘I don’t really know,’ said Jung, pulling thoughtfully at his lower lip. ‘A cinema usher sounds attractive.’
‘Cinema usher?’
‘Yes. One of those people who show customers to their seats with a little torch, and sell goodies in the intervals.’
‘They don’t exist any more,’ said Moreno.
‘That’s a pity,’ said Jung.
Chief Inspector Reinhart drove himself out to 44th Street in Brooklyn on the Sunday morning. He arrived exactly half an hour late: the night shift had just packed up, but the brown house numbered 602 was not unguarded. Bloomguard had decided to post an extra car there in addition to Reinhart’s — in view of his European colleague’s knowledge of the city that was no doubt a good move.
He parked between 554 and 556, where there was a space, got into the car on the other side of the street — a 3-metre-long Oldsmobile — and greeted the police officer inside it.
Sergeant Pavarotti was small and thin and looked unhappy. Reinhart didn’t know if that was because of his name, or if there was some other reason behind it.
Having to spend a whole Sunday sitting in an old car in Brooklyn, for instance.
‘I’ve considered changing my name lots of times,’ said Pavarotti. ‘I sometimes get to a point where I’d much rather have been called Mussolini. I sing worse than a donkey. How are things in Europe?’
Reinhart explained the situation, then asked if Pavarotti had any special interests.
Baseball and action films, evidently. Reinhart stayed with him for another five minutes, then returned to his own car. He had asked Bloomguard if it wouldn’t look suspicious, sitting behind the wheel of a stationary car for hours on end, but Bloomguard had merely given him a knowing smile and shaken his head.
