Lejnice?’
‘Garage?’
‘Yes. A repair workshop. Not too expensive. It’s about mending a Trabant.’
‘A Trabant? Surely you don’t drive around in a Trabant?’
‘Did,’ said Moreno. ‘Well?’
‘Er. . Let’s see. . Yes, Kluiverts, they are reliable.’
She made a note of the number, and another one of a guest house that Vegesack thought charged reasonable rates. He pointed out that he had never actually stayed in a B amp;B establishment in Lejnice, and that of course it was the summer season now.
Naturally, Moreno could have used the police station telephone to make the two calls, but something told her that it was high time she started restoring that old dividing line between work and her private life.
Start sketching it in at least, she thought with grim self-irony as she shook Vegesack’s hand and thanked him for his help.
‘Oh, I nearly forgot,’ she said as she stood in the doorway. ‘What had happened down on the beach? You said that Vrommel had been called out.’
Vegesack frowned again.
‘I don’t really know,’ he said. ‘But they’ve evidently found a body.’
‘A body?’
‘Yes. Some little kids were playing around in the sand and dug it up, I think.’
‘And?’
‘That’s all I know,’ said Vegesack apologetically, looking at the clock. ‘We heard about it just over an hour ago. Vrommel took charge of it. Apparently there are officers there from Wallburg as well — scene-of-crime boys and technicians: we don’t have resources like that, and. .’
He fell silent. Stood there with his hands half raised, as if he had been going to start massaging his temples again, but didn’t need to as a thought had struck him.
‘Good Lord! Surely you don’t think. .?’
‘I don’t think anything at all,’ said Moreno. ‘Man or woman?’
‘No idea. He just said a body, that’s all the Skunk said. A dead body.’
The Skunk? Moreno thought and hesitated for a moment with her hand on the door handle.
‘I’ll be in touch,’ she said eventually, and went out into the sunshine.
26
She came to Florian’s Taverna — a somewhat shabby-looking establishment that according to Mikael had looked exactly the same ever since the fifties, and presumably made a point of maintaining that profile — at five minutes past two, and suddenly realized that she had eaten nothing at all since that morning’s wretched cheese sandwich. She had drunk quite a lot, of course — juice and water and coffee and more water — but her stomach was rumbling and it dawned on her that it was time she started using her teeth for something other than grinding and gritting. Especially as she had thirty-two of them. Or was it only twenty-eight?
She didn’t get round to counting them, but sat down at a table on the terrace under a parasol instead. She ordered some garlic bread, a shellfish salad and a telephone directory. The latter was to enable her check that all the local garages were not shut due to holidays and the local guest houses were not full up, thanks to the lovely weather.
They were not, thank goodness. Neither type of establishment. A gruff-voiced woman at Dombrowski’s guest house promised to hold a room for her until nine o’clock — for three nights: they didn’t let rooms for a shorter time than that during the holiday season. No balcony and not much of a view, but the price was not unreasonable. By no means. So there was no reason not to thank the woman and confirm the booking.
She thanked the woman and confirmed the booking. Monday night, Tuesday night, Wednesday night, she thought. I’ll go back home on Thursday. That suited her down to the ground: by then no doubt things would have become sufficiently clear for Vrommel (the Skunk?) and Vegesack to handle everything without assistance.
Egon Kluivert, of Kluivert, Kluivert and Sons, claimed he was up to his ears in work; but after a bit of bargaining (despite the fact that he couldn’t understand for the life of him why a sweet girl like Moreno — yes, you could tell that from her voice if you had ears to hear and were a man of the world — why such a sweet girl should be driving around in a bloody sardine tin like a Trabant) he promised both to fix the ignition and arrange for the sardine tin to be transported to Tschandala in Port Hagen. No problem, he knew where the house was situated. If not this evening, then tomorrow morning at the latest — where should he send the bill to?
She explained that she would call in and pay it before Wednesday.
He wondered if she needed a new car. It so happened that he had a few peaches standing in his forecourt. Ridiculously cheap prices, and just nicely run in.
No, she didn’t need a new car at the moment, she told him. But she promised to be in touch as soon as she did.
The food arrived, and she ate with the vague feeling that things were going to turn out okay, despite the fact that she had no right to believe that they would. Never mind to demand that they should.
She ordered a small calvados with her coffee, to remind herself that she was still on holiday, and then she made another call. This time to her old friend and confidante Clara Mietens.
She got through to an answering machine. In thirty-five seconds Moreno gave her a summary of the situation, explained that she would probably be returning to Maardam towards the end of the week, and asked if the planned project of a several-day bicycle tour around the Sorbinowo region was still on the cards. Next week, perhaps?
She left her mobile number, and urged Clara to respond as soon as she had checked her messages and thought it over.
I need to get some exercise, Moreno thought. My head will coagulate if I don’t.
Then she paid her bill and headed for the sea.
The beach was just as full as it had been during the hot days of the previous week, but she saw the red- and-white police tape the moment she passed over the brow of the hill and started walking down towards the sands.
A bit to the north and quite a long way up from the waterline (it was almost low tide, and the shiny ridges of the sandbanks were becoming visible) an area about half the size of a football pitch had been cordoned off. The tape formed a rectangle all the way round, and was fluttering peacefully in the gentle sea breeze. It occurred to Moreno that it was a long time since she had seen anything so surrealistically bizarre.
To both the north and the south — more or less as far as the eye could see — people were romping around merrily, swimming, sunbathing, playing beach tennis and football, and throwing frisbees: free and easy in both mood and dress. But things were different inside the grim rectangle of death. There uniformed scene-of-crime officers were crawling around sweatily in their hunt for clues, and three dog-handlers patrolled the cordoned-off area to make sure curious spectators kept their distance while fine-grained sand slowly but surely filled their regulation low black shoes.
The spot where the body had been found, roughly in the middle of the half football pitch, was marked by another square of police tape, but this area had obviously been searched already. The scene-of-crime crawlers — she counted five of them plus a senior officer standing upright — were currently in a concentric circle a good ten metres away from the hole.
It was indeed a hole. And she knew the score: the team started in the middle and worked outwards, of course. Picked up everything they could find in the sand that seemed to have come from a human hand, and put each item into a plastic bag which was then sealed. Cigarette butts. Bits of paper. Chewing gum. Capsules. Condoms and spent matches.
All with the aim of finding a clue. Preferably a murder weapon. Even before she started walking down towards the warm, powdery sand, she knew that this was a murder investigation. Everything pointed to murder.
