And of course it was this insight that gave rise to the feeling of surrealism. Of bizarre reality.
Inspector Moreno had been there before, and knew the significance of what her eyes were telling her.
One of the three armed dog-handlers had blue eyes, and she chose him.
His name was Struntze, it turned out. She allowed him to take his time over studying her ID, then explained that she had just been allocated to the case, and had come to get a clear picture of what was happening. Where was Chief Inspector Vrommel? She had expected to find him here.
Strunze said that he had left only a quarter of an hour ago, but would be coming back.
Moreno said it didn’t matter as she would meet him later in any case. Meanwhile, could Struntze please explain what had happened.
Constable Struntze was more than willing to put her in the picture, and did so in a series of well-judged stage whispers.
Murder. Everything pointed to murder.
The body was that of a man between thirty and forty, according to the doctor’s preliminary conclusions. It had been lying there, buried in the sand, for about a week — give or take a day or two, it was difficult to be precise at this early stage.
He had been killed by a stab from a sharp instrument straight into his eye. His left eye. He must have died on the spot. Or within a few seconds, at least. Presumably quite close to the place where he had been buried. And where he had been found. By a couple of small boys — wasn’t that awful?
Moreno agreed that it certainly was.
Struntze thought it would leave them marked for life.
Moreno pointed out that they would see a hundred and twenty murders every week on the telly. And time heals the occasional wound. But who was he? The dead man.
They didn’t know yet, Struntze explained. He’d been dressed in jeans and a short-sleeved cotton shirt, but he had no identification papers on him. No money or anything else in his pockets. About a hundred and seventy- five centimetres tall. Dark brown hair. Quite sturdily built. Thirty-five, plus or minus five, as he’d said already.
What about the weapon, Moreno wondered.
No idea. Something pointed. It had passed right through his eye and into the brain. They hadn’t found it, of course. Somebody had suggested that it might have been a tent peg. Or a pair of scissors.
A tent peg? Moreno wondered. In that case it hardly seemed like a premeditated murder.
‘Do you know if they’ve found anything?’ she asked by way of conclusion, pointing at the crawling scene-of- crime officers.
Struntze stroked his dog and permitted himself a grim smile.
‘Sand,’ he said. ‘A hell of a lot of sand.’
It was a few minutes past four when Moreno left Constable Strunze and his King in peace. After a few moments’ thought she decided to go back to Port Hagen on foot along the beach. It was at least a seven- or eight-kilometre walk and would take a couple of hours, but as she had already established, she needed some exercise. She might as well take this opportunity.
She also needed to think. To work out exactly where she stood with regard to Mikael Bau, and all the other things. Her voluntary involvement in the Lijphart-Maager problem, for instance. Always assuming it was a problem. . In any case, few things were more appropriate when it came to disentangling a mish-mash of thoughts than a long walk by the sea.
That’s what Van Veeteren always used to say.
If you don’t have a car in which to drive around and think, you can always try the sea. If it happens to be handy.
Perhaps it was a bit on the warm side for such a walk today, but never mind. She walked out to the waterline, put her sandals into her rucksack and started walking barefoot on the firm, wet sand that felt pleasantly smooth and cool. Less than an hour ago it had been the bottom of the sea. If she wanted to cool down the rest of her body as well, she only needed to walk a bit further out — a little salt water on her thin, faded cotton dress she’d been wearing for ten years or more was nothing to complain about. Nothing at all.
And a sandy beach all the way. Never-changing sea, never-changing sand dunes up to the edge of the shoreline. Sky, sea and land. Why haven’t I been for a walk here before? she wondered. I ought to have done.
Then she switched on her thoughts. Started with the problem that entered her mind first: Mikael Bau.
Why had it turned out like this? she asked herself, determined to be broad-minded about it. It had started so well. He had claimed that he loved her, and she had almost been prepared to move in with him only a few days ago. So why?
There was no satisfactory answer, she soon realized. No clear and unambiguous answer, in any case; but if she was going to walk along at the water’s edge for the next two hours, she might as well spend a little time thinking about it.
Had she grown tired of him? Could it be that simple? When it came down to the nitty gritty, was the answer as mundane as that?
Was she ready to share her life with somebody else in any circumstances, no matter who he might be? she asked herself, in the best girl’s magazine fashion. Or woman’s magazine fashion come to that — it was a long time since she’d read either.
Well, was she? Nothing crucial had happened between her and Mikael Bau, for God’s sake. Nothing at all to justify a hasty break-up like the one that had happened. He hadn’t hit her, even if she thought he might do for one brief, dizzying moment.
He hadn’t played the male chauvinist pig. Hadn’t done anything stupid. Hadn’t displayed any hitherto hidden obnoxious sides to his character.
No skeletons in the cupboard. No sudden yawning gaps in his character. Just an old Trabant.
Had she simply grown tired of him? Would that be enough?
There hadn’t been anything wrong with their relationship, nothing disturbing had happened in their daily existence together — nothing she could put her finger on, at least: but perhaps that was the best that could be said about it. That there was nothing wrong.
There’s nothing wrong with my old refrigerator either, she thought, but I wouldn’t want to have a child with it.
Perhaps something more was needed. Not simply the absence of negatives.
It was a stroke of luck that I had to leave that wretched old banger at Sidonis, she thought. So that things were brought to a head at last.
The Trabant syndrome?
She found it hard not to burst out laughing at that thought. Bitch? she then asked herself. Am I really becoming a bitch? For several years Clara Mietens had claimed to be one with regard to the opposite sex, but Moreno hadn’t bothered to try to understand or to analyse that relationship. And she didn’t need to do so now, she decided. She found it hard to imagine a whole life without a man; but as for the rest of her holiday — there were less than three weeks to go — well, that was another matter.
Nothing to worry about. Being together with Mikael had been no problem at all in that respect — and there was no need to analyse it, she decided. Why should women always feel obliged to hum and haw about their putative emotional lives? To put everything into words? (An example of a permanently bad conscience, perhaps?) Surely it was enough simply to feel things. In a way women were much more guilty of intellectualizing emotions than men were — of making them tangible, as Clara used to say — it wasn’t the first time this had occurred to her. Men just kept quiet, and made the most of the feelings instead.
Well, the former at least.
In any case, she hadn’t given him any promises or commitments. None at all. So what?
No matter how you look at it, I’m a free woman. The first one in the history of the world. Ah well, hallelujah.
I hope he’s not sitting there waiting for me when I go back, she thought in horror. With a bottle of wine and some new delicacy or other. I couldn’t cope with any emotional outbursts and dramatic farewells today.
