available.
In other words, coffee.
And a murder, he reminded himself.
And perhaps also that attractive detective inspector. She had got her teeth into that old Maager business, God only knows why. Ah well, it’s good that there are things to occupy oneself with, he thought optimistically as he took his bicycle out of its stall. There might be enough to keep him awake today as well.
Always assuming he didn’t fall off his bike on the way to the police station, and he didn’t usually do so.
Chief of Police Vrommel hadn’t turned up for work yet today, but froken Glossmann in the office, and one of the probationers — Helme — were present and correct as usual.
Plus a blonde well into her thirties who seemed to have spent at least a hundred hours lying in the sun this last week. She was sitting opposite Helme at his desk, chewing at her cerise lower lip while Helme wrote something down in his notebook.
‘Ah,’ he said when he saw Vegesack appear in the doorway. ‘This is Damita Fuchsbein. She’s been waiting for a quarter of an hour, but I thought it was best if you or Vrommel took care of her.’
Vegesack shook her hand and introduced himself.
‘What’s it all about, then?’ he asked.
‘That dead body on the beach,’ said Helme in a stage whisper before Damita Fuchsbein had stopped chewing her lower lip.
‘I see,’ said Vegesack.
He looked at the clock. A few minutes to eight. Vrommel rarely put in an appearance before nine. Perhaps he might turn up a bit earlier today, in view of the situation and the circumstances. . There was supposed to be a summary session with colleagues from Wallburg as well. But why wait?
Why indeed. He nodded, and invited the woman to move over to his desk. Asked her if she’d like a cup of coffee, but she shook her head. There was a rustling sound from her dry locks of hair.
‘Well,’ he said, clicking his ballpoint pen. ‘What do you have to say for yourself?’
‘I think I know who it is.’
‘The man on the beach?’
‘Yes. I heard about it last night, they said you hadn’t identified him yet.’
‘That’s right,’ said Vegesack, wondering quickly if he knew her. He didn’t think so, but he was far from certain. Both her hair and her skin could well be very different in colour, depending on the time of year. In any case, Damita Fuchsbein seemed to have a hobby that was very much in tune with the times, and one she made no attempt to hide. Her body.
‘Who is it?’ he asked.
She cleared her throat and blinked a few times.
‘Tim Van Rippe,’ she said. ‘Do you know who that is?’
Vegesack wrote the name down in his notebook. Thought for a moment, and said that he didn’t think he knew who that was.
‘He lives out at Klimmerstoft. Works at Klingsmann’s. How should I put it — we haven’t exactly been having a relationship, but we see each other now and again. And we’d agreed to go to Wimsbaden last Monday. . To the music festival. But he never turned up. I’ve been ringing and trying to get hold of him all week, but he hasn’t answered.’
Her voice was shaky, and Vegesack realized that she was on the point of crying underneath her elastic exterior.
‘Tim Van Rippe? Have you any special reason for thinking that it’s him? Anything more besides the fact that he’s been difficult to get in touch with?’
Damita Fuchsbein sighed deeply and adjusted her hair.
‘I’ve spoken to quite a few others who’ve been trying to contact him. Nobody seems to have seen him since Sunday — last Sunday, that is.’
‘Does he have a family?’
‘No.’
‘Any relatives that you know of?’
‘He has a brother in Aarlach, I know that. His father’s dead, but I think his mother’s still alive. But she doesn’t live here either. I think she married again, and lives in Karpatz now.’
Vegesack noted it all down.
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘We’d better go and take a look. Do you think you’re up to it? It might be a bit unpleasant.’
Talk about understatement, he thought.
‘Where is. . Where’s the body?’
‘Wallburg. The forensic medicine centre. I can take you there — we’ll be back here in an hour and a half.’
Damita Fuchsbein seemed to be at a loss for a second or two, then pulled herself together and clasped her hands in her lap.
‘Okay. I suppose I don’t have any choice.’
It was Tim Van Rippe.
If one could believe what Damita Fuchsbein said, that is: and of course there was no reason to doubt her tear-soaked identification. Together with the pathologist himself, an incredibly overweight Dr Goormann, and a police nurse, Vegesack spent some considerable time consoling the devastated woman, and he began to wonder if she was in fact on rather more intimate terms with the dead man than she had admitted so far.
Perhaps, perhaps not, Vegesack thought. No doubt that would become clearer in due course. While they were sitting in Goormann’s poky little office, supplying a steady stream of paper handkerchiefs to Fuchsbein, Detective Intendent Kohler turned up: he was one of the two Wallburg officers who had been loaned to Vrommel as a result of the discovery of the dead body on the beach. He was a reserved, thin-haired man in his fifties, and immediately made a positive impression on Vegesack. He undertook to track down and make contact with Van Rippe’s relatives — his brother in Aarlach and his mother in Karpatz, if one could believe the information Fuchsbein had provided while she was still able to talk.
Although there was no reason to doubt that either.
Vegesack took care of froken Fuchsbein. Escorted her gently out of death’s visiting room and treated her to a cup of coffee and a glass of calvados in one of the cafes in the square before they got into the car and set off to return to Lejnice.
He drove her to her home in Gloopsweg, and promised to telephone her later that evening to see how she was.
Don’t go and lie down in the sun again, he thought, but he didn’t say so.
By the time he returned to the police station it was ten past eleven, and Chief of Police Vrommel had just started a small press conference in connection with yesterday’s macabre discovery on the beach. Vegesack sat down on a vacant chair behind a dozen journalists, and listened in.
Yes, the police were working all out.
Yes, they had every reason to believe that a crime had been committed. It was difficult to die a natural death in that way, and then dig oneself down into the sand.
Yes, they were following several lines of investigation, but there was no principal line. Extra resources had been moved in from Wallburg.
Yes, the leader of the investigative team was the chief of police himself; but there was no suspect, and they were still awaiting the results of certain technical tests.
No, the dead man had not yet been identified.
I ought to have rung him from Wallburg, Vegesack thought.
Moreno was woken up at a quarter to seven by the sun shining into her face. She had pulled down the old-
