The sun went behind a cloud. She pushed her sunglasses up on top of her head, and her thoughts about Mikael to one side.
She noticed that she slowed down the moment she stopped thinking about him. As if she had shaken off an irritation that had increased her speed unnecessarily.
As if item number two — Mikaela Lijphart and her broken family — somehow needed more copious and more thorough attention. Perhaps that wasn’t all that odd.
The weeping girl on the train. The worried mother. The father who had been hidden away and forgotten for so long. And the disgusting business of him and the schoolgirl Winnie Maas.
An epilogue sixteen years later? she thought. Was that possible?
But on the other hand, what other explanation could there be?
How else was it possible to explain that Mikaela Lijphart and her father went up in smoke within only a few days? After having met for the first time in sixteen years. Having met for the first time ever in a way, since Mikaela was only two years old when Arnold Maager was shut up in an institution. She could hardly have any memories of him at all.
So the question was: could these two disappearances be totally unconnected?
Not on your life, Moreno decided. Even a seven-year-old could grasp that they must be connected.
But how?
She changed direction by thirty degrees and found herself knee-deep in the water. Cool and pleasant, but it didn’t help. The question was still unanswered.
And what ought she to do in order to disentangle it?
The more she thought about it, the more obvious at least one thing seemed to be. Maager must have said something crucial while they were walking through the grounds at Sidonis last Saturday. Absolutely crucial.
Something to do with the Winnie Maas business.
Something new?
Question mark, question mark. But Mikaela Lijphart had never heard the old version of what had happened when she met her father, so for her ears everything — every single painful admission and every single degrading disclosure — must have been completely new and fresh, irrespective of how far it fitted in with the old established picture of what had happened.
And so it wasn’t possible to be sure about anything, Moreno concluded. It wasn’t possible to speculate about whether Maager had come up with some clarification or other. That couldn’t be helped.
And where had the girl gone to on the Sunday morning, when she took the bus from the youth hostel to Lejnice? Had she been to visit somebody? If so, who?
Questions breed worse than rabbits, Moreno thought, and washed her face in cooling water. Are there no hypotheses I can come up with? Any assumptions? Any wild guesses? What’s going on here?
But unfortunately she was bereft of ideas. Although a new thought occurred to her from a different direction.
The dead body that had been buried in the sand.
A thirty-five-year-old man. Lying there for a week, if what Struntze said was correct. That meant it must have happened last Sunday, surely.
Connection? Moreno thought again.
What bloody connection? she thought soon afterwards. I’m thirsty.
She made her way through the warm, dry sand and bought a Coke in a little kiosk that seemed to be strategically placed to repair dodgy fluid balances in walkers between Lejnice and Port Hagen.
She returned to the waterline, drained the can and dumped it in a rubbish bin evidently placed there in accordance with the same strategy.
She checked her watch. It was ten minutes to five, and in the distance, in the quivering afternoon light, she thought she could make out the pier and the boats off Port Hagen.
About an hour left, she thought. Unless it’s a mirage. I’m not getting anywhere with all these thoughts. And I don’t want to start thinking about Franz Lampe-Leermann. Anything but that.
What was it that Constable Vegesack had said, incidentally? That there hadn’t been a murder out here for thirty years?
Now they had two missing persons and an unidentified body in the space of a single week. Surely that was a set of circumstances worth investigating rather more closely?
But instead of considering any more unanswered rhetorical questions, Inspector Moreno began to think about what measures she could possibly take in the next few days. If she was going to have to stay here until Thursday.
And she was.
If for no other reason than to pay for the repairs to the car of her former boyfriend (fiance? bloke? lover?).
He wasn’t sitting there waiting for her when she finally arrived at Tschandala — more tired and dehydrated than she could ever have imagined when she set off.
It was five minutes past six. The military green Trabant was parked outside the gate with an envelope tucked under a windscreen wiper and Montezuma asleep on the roof.
But no Mikael Bau: he would have been sitting out on the terrace if he’d been at home, she knew that. She took the invoice, left Montezuma to sleep in peace and went inside to pack her things.
No letter, no message, nothing to indicate that he had returned from Lejnice at all, when she came to think about it.
So be it, thought Moreno when she had finished packing. She remained standing in the kitchen while wondering whether to write anything herself, but in the end decided not to.
I can’t raise enough inspiration, she thought.
But I’ve plenty of perspiration. And I’m tired and dirty — I hope the shower in my luxurious guest room works.
She took her suitcase and her rucksack, and started walking to the bus stop. It was a quarter to seven, a bus was due at five minutes to, if she had read the timetable rightly.
It must be the same bus as passes the youth hostel, it suddenly struck her. She wondered how many drivers there were.
27
Constable Vegesack’s girlfriend was called Marlene Urdis, and the previous evening they had made a solemn promise not to make love that night. Two nights in succession and another session in the afternoon would have to suffice.
According to plan, they had gone to bed and fallen asleep before eleven o’clock — but a few hours later she rolled over and came a bit too close, and off they went again. But what else could one expect? They had been apart for three weeks (Marlene had been in Sicily with a girlfriend of hers, a combined working trip and holiday paid for partly by a glossy monthly magazine specializing in travel and interior decor and such-like), and the separation had left a sort of void, an erotic vacuum that needed to be filled and balanced out retroactively. They needed to make up for every missed opportunity, the sooner and more thorough, the better.
You only live once, after all — if that.
But it feels a bit odd even so, Vegesack thought as he drained his second cup of black coffee at about half past seven the next morning. And tiring. If they carried on like this much longer, he would have to take sick leave. Marlene was on summer vacation from her architecture studies, and could stay in bed all morning; but it was his duty to turn up at his office in the police station, and try to stay awake with the aid of every means of assistance
