And now here she was, sitting at this cafe table with this ravaged, drunken woman, and experiencing this same vibrating excitement once again. Mikaela Lijphart had been to see her. That Sunday. Exactly as she’d thought.
Exactly as she would have done if she had been Mikaela Lijphart — gone to see the mother of the poor girl her father had killed. Sought her out so that. . Hmm, why?
Hard to say. Certain moves were so obvious that you didn’t really need to ask yourself why you had made them: reflex reactions in a way, but nearly always correct in the context. Just as instinctively straightforward as that nervous twinge.
‘Why the hell are you looking for this young lass?’ asked fru Maas, interrupting her train of thought.
‘She’s gone missing,’ said Moreno again.
‘Gone missing?’
‘Yes. Nobody has seen her since that Sunday when she came to see you. Nine days ago.’
‘Hmm. I expect she’s run off with a bloke. That’s what they do at that age.’
She took a swig of coffee, then poured the contents of the glass of cognac into the cup. Sniffed at the resultant brew with the expression of a connoisseur. Moreno didn’t doubt for a second that fru Maas used to run off with blokes when she was at that age, but she doubted whether Mikaela Lijphart had done that.
‘What did you talk about?’ she asked.
‘Not much. She wanted to talk about her bloody father, that bastard, but I didn’t want to. Why should I have to sit there remembering that shit-heap who killed my daughter? Eh? Can you tell me that?’
Moreno was unable to do so.
‘Do you know that he’s in the Sidonis care home, Arnold Maager?’ she asked instead.
Fru Maas snorted.
‘Of course I bloody well know. He can be where the hell he likes, as long as I don’t have to think about him. Or listen to people talking about him.’
‘And so you spoke about something else instead, then?’ asked Moreno. ‘With Mikaela Lijphart, that is.’
Fru Maas shrugged.
‘I don’t remember. We didn’t talk about much at all. She was quite a cheeky young lady, that Mikaela girl, yes indeed.’
‘Cheeky? What do you mean?’
‘She suggested that it wasn’t him.’
‘Not him? What do you mean?’
‘She started going on about how she might have jumped down from the viaduct of her own accord, and a load of crap like that. My Winnie? What? I was furious of course, and told her to hold her tongue.’
‘Did she say why?’
‘Eh?’
‘If she suggested that her dad might be innocent, she must have had some reason for saying that.’
Fru Maas stubbed out her cigarette and immediately started fumbling in the pack for another one.
‘God only knows. A lot of crap in any case — although she had been out at the loony bin and spoken to him. He evidently hadn’t the courage to admit to his own daughter what he’d done, the cowardly bastard! Of course he did it. Screwing a schoolgirl! A sixteen-year-old! My Winnie! Can you imagine it, such a shit-heap?’
Moreno thought for a moment.
‘What did she do next?’
‘Eh?’
‘Do you know where Mikaela went after she’d been speaking to you?’
Fru Maas lit her cigarette and seemed to be thinking things over.
‘I don’t know,’ she said eventually.
Moreno said nothing, and waited.
‘I suppose she wanted to speak to a few others,’ said fru Maas after a while, reluctantly. ‘Friends of Winnie — though God only knows what good that would do.’
She took a deep swig from her cup, and closed her eyes as she swallowed it.
‘Who exactly? Did you give her any names?’
Fru Maas inhaled and tried to look nonchalant. As if she didn’t want to say any more.
‘You haven’t exactly earned your reward,’ said Moreno.
‘A few,’ said fru Maas. ‘A few names, I seem to remember. . Since she was so bloody stubborn and wouldn’t shut up. I couldn’t get rid of her. So in the end I told her to go to Vera Sauger and leave me in peace.’
‘Vera Sauger?’
‘Yes, a hell of a nice girl. Best friends with Winnie since infants’ school. And she’s kept in touch as well, while all the others have just ignored me, and looked God in the arse when I’ve bumped into them in town.’
Looked God in the arse? Moreno thought. Reinhart would love that.
‘So you suggested that Mikaela should go and see Vera Sauger, did you?’
Fru Maas nodded as she emptied her cup. Pulled a face.
‘Do you know if she did visit her?’
‘How the hell should I know? I just gave her a telephone number. No, come on, it’s time for you to cough up. I’ve got better things to do than sitting around here being pestered.’
Moreno realized that she’d had enough as well. She handed over the money, and thanked fru Maas for her help. Maas grabbed the note and marched off without a word.
Vera Sauger? Moreno thought. The name sounds familiar.
28
‘Van Rippe?’ said Intendent Kohler. ‘And what do we know about him?’
Vrommel brushed aside a fly that seemed to have taken an incomprehensible liking (as far as Constable Vegesack was concerned, at least) to his sweaty bald pate. (Presumably it thought it was just another dung heap, Vegesack thought, and made a mental note to enter this analysis into his black book.)
‘We know what we know,’ asserted the chief of police, and began reading from the sheet of paper he was holding in his hand. ‘Thirty-four years old. Lived out at Klimmerstoft. Born and bred there, in fact. Bachelor. Worked at Klingsmann’s, the furniture manufacturer, had done so for the last four years. There’s not a lot to say about him. Lived with a woman for a few years, but they split up. No children. Played football for a few years, but stopped after a knee injury. No criminal record, never involved in anything dodgy. . No enemies as far as we know.’
‘Churchgoer, Friends of the Earth and the Red Cross?’ wondered the other detective officer from Wallburg. His name was Baasteuwel, and was a small, somewhat unkempt detective inspector in his forties. With a reputation for being shrewd, if Vegesack had understood the situation rightly. In any case, he was the direct opposite of Vrommel, and it was a pleasure to observe their mutual antipathy. To crown it all, Baasteuwel smoked evil-smelling cigarettes more or less all the time, totally oblivious to the chief of police’s objections, stated and unstated. This place wasn’t a day nursery, for Christ’s sake.
‘Not as far as we know,’ muttered Vrommel. ‘Not yet, at least. We only identified him this morning, and so far we’ve only talked to a few of his friends. He has a brother and a mother still living: we’ve made contact with the brother and he’s on his way here. His mother is on a motoring holiday in France, but will probably be back home tomorrow. The day after at the latest.’
‘Mobile phone?’ asked Kohler.
‘Negative,’ said Vrommel. ‘We’ll know more about Van Rippe when we’ve talked to a few more people. He seems to have been missing since last Sunday in any case. Can we move on to the technical details?’
‘Why not?’ said Baasteuwel. He stubbed out his cigarette and lit a new one.
Vrommel gathered together his papers, then nodded to Constable Vegesack who took a sip of mineral water and began speaking.
