I think there was something you wanted to see me about?’
Moreno put her glass down on the table and leaned back in her chair.
‘Maager,’ she said. ‘Arnold Maager. You were still the headmaster at Voellerskolan when it happened, weren’t you?’
‘I suspected as much,’ said Salnecki.
‘Suspected? What do you mean?’
‘That that was what you wanted to talk about. You see, I’ve worked in schools all my life, and I’ve no doubt there have been a few irregularities during that time — but if a detective inspector on holiday comes and asks to talk to me, there’s only one conclusion I can draw. It’s not a pretty tale, that Maager business.’
‘So I’ve gathered,’ said Moreno.
‘Why do you want to drag it up again? Isn’t it better to let things lie in peace?’
‘Perhaps,’ said Moreno. ‘But now there are certain circumstances that have come to light.’
Salnecki burst out laughing.
‘Come to light? I like it! You’re speaking more like a lawyer, Inspector, if I might be allowed to say so. But in any case, I understand that discretion can be a virtue, and my natural curiosity has waned as the years have gone by. . I’m not sure if one should be pleased about that, or sorry. . But what’s not in doubt is that I talk too much. What do you want to know?’
Moreno held back a smile.
‘What happened,’ she said. ‘What you thought about Maager, and so on.’
‘You don’t know the details already?’
‘Very few,’ said Moreno.
Salnecki emptied his glass and put it down firmly on the table.
‘A tragedy,’ he said. ‘There’s no other word for it. And yet at the same time such a banal business. Maager was a good teacher. Liked by both his pupils and his colleagues. Young and ambitious. . And then he goes and jumps into bed with that young chit of a girl. Beyond belief. You have to be able to handle young teenaged girls with hormones, that’s among the first things a male teacher has to get to grips with.’
‘He didn’t just jump into bed with her,’ said Moreno, ‘if I’ve understood the situation rightly.’
Salnecki shook his head and suddenly looked sombre.
‘No. But that’s what started everything off. A cautionary tale, in a way. There’s always a price to pay.’
Moreno raised her eyebrows.
‘Are you saying it was Maager who paid the price? Surely you could say that the girl also paid a price. .’
‘Of course,’ said Salnecki, quick to correct that impression. ‘Of course. That’s what makes it so tragic. Everybody has to pay for a moment of thoughtlessness. Some with their life, others with their sanity. You get the impression that the gods sometimes overdo the retribution thing.’
Moreno thought for a moment. Her host took off his cap, fished a comb out of his back pocket and drew it a few times through his thin, white hair.
‘How did people react?’ asked Moreno. ‘They must have been rather shocked.’
‘Hysterical,’ said Salnecki with a sigh, replacing his cap. ‘People went mad, there were those who wanted to lynch him — I kept getting phone calls in the middle of the night. In a way it was lucky that it happened during the summer holidays, we’d have had to shut down the school otherwise. It was my final year, incidentally. I finished in December. I wish I’d gone in June instead. . But there again, it wouldn’t have been much fun for a new headmaster to start his career with a scandal like that.’
‘What about their relationship?’ Moreno wondered. ‘Maager and the girl, I mean. Had it been going on for long? Did the other pupils know about it, for instance?’
‘Relationship!’ snorted Salnecki. ‘It wasn’t a relationship. The girl offered herself to him on a plate on one single occasion, and they ended up in the same bed. I would guess they were both drunk. I mean, Maager had a family — a wife and a little daughter.’
‘I know about that,’ said Moreno. ‘How did it go for Maager afterwards? Have you had any contact with him?’
Salnecki looked sombre again. A bit of a guilty conscience, presumably, Moreno thought. Wondering if he could have intervened and prevented the disaster in some way. He leaned forward and refilled his glass from the jug.
‘No,’ he said. ‘None at all. He went mad. He’s in a home not far away from here. A few colleagues used to go and visit him during the first few years, but they could never get a single word out of him. . No, it finished him off for the rest of his life.’
‘What happened when they. . met, Maager and young Maas? It happened only once, you said.’
Salnecki shrugged.
‘As far as I know. It was after a disco at the school for the pupils. Maager and a few other teachers had acted as stewards. Afterwards the teachers went to a colleague’s house, a handicraft teacher — a bachelor — and had a few drinks and sat and talked. There was only a week of term left. Anyway, a gang of pupils turned up in the small hours. It should never have happened, of course, but they were invited in and things just went on from there. Maager jumped into bed with Winnie Maas, and-’
‘- she got pregnant and he killed her,’ said Moreno. ‘Six or seven weeks later, was it?’
‘More or less, yes,’ said Salnecki. ‘Not a pretty tale, as I said before. Anyway, your good health!’
They drank. Moreno decided to try another line.
‘This girl, Winnie Maas — she seems to have been a bit, er, precocious. Is that right?’
Salnecki cleared his throat and tried to find the appropriate words.
‘
‘Why did he kill her?’
Salnecki pulled at an ear lobe and looked thoughtful.
‘He lost control, I would guess. It really was as simple as that. The girl presumably wasn’t prepared to have an abortion. She wanted to have the child — and might well have demanded lots of money in return for her silence. Or alternatively force him to admit that he was the father. . I don’t know, but I guess those were the conditions. She phoned him the night when it happened. They met on the railway viaduct, and he took leave of his senses. And went mad as well, as I’ve said before. If he went mad before or after he’d thrown her down is a matter for discussion — and it certainly was discussed. That became a crucial point in his trial — how far he was responsible for his own actions and compos mentis: if he knew what he was doing or not when it actually happened. Ah well, it’s a pretty vulnerable contraption, this thing that drives us. .’
He smiled and tapped his right temple with two fingers. Moreno smiled.
‘Mind you, this one has kept going for eighty-one years,’ he added, with a modest smile.
‘What about the girl’s family?’ Moreno asked.
‘Ah well, yes,’ muttered Salnecki. ‘Single mother. No siblings. The mother took it very badly. She was one of the lynch mob, you might say. Calmed down a bit afterwards. But she still lives here in Lejnice, I bump into her occasionally. . Poor woman, she doesn’t seem to have any strength left. But now it’s my turn to ask if there’s any justice left in the world. What are you after? There must be a reason for your interest in these unpleasant goings-on.’
Moreno hesitated. She had expected the question, of course. And she had several more or less plausible responses already worked out: but somehow or other it didn’t seem right to come out with half-truths and evasive answers when faced with this outspoken and foxy old schoolmaster. Not tempting and certainly not right. Especially bearing in mind her thoughts about ethics.
She thought for a few seconds while taking a sip of the mixture of red and white. Of life and death. Then she told him the absolute truth.
‘In the name of all that’s holy!’ exclaimed Salnecki. ‘What the hell’s going on?’
‘That’s what I’m trying to find out,’ said Moreno.
While Moreno was talking to Salnecki, Mikael had been buying groceries in the market, which had been held in Grote Marckt every Saturday within living memory. That morning both of them — especially Moreno — had been sceptical about swimming and sunbathing, and when a cold front began to move in from the south-west that
