It took almost ten minutes. Tim Van Rippe had died at some point on Sunday or Monday last week. The murder weapon was a pointed but not necessarily sharp instrument, as yet unidentified and unspecified, probably made of metal, which penetrated his left eye, continued into the cerebrum and wiped out so many vital functions that Van Rippe was probably clinically dead within three to six seconds after the penetration. It was not impossible that he might have delivered the fatal blow himself, but in that case some other person, as yet unidentified and unspecified, must have taken away the weapon and buried Van Rippe on the beach.
He had been lying there buried in the place where he was found by Henning Keeswarden and Fingal Wielki, aged six and four respectively, for about a week. It was not possible to establish how long had passed between the moment of death and the burial, according to the pathologist, Dr Goormann, but there was no reason to suspect that it would have been very long.
So much for the medical science. As for the results of the efforts of the scene-of-crime officers, most of them were not yet available. Roughly sixty more or less sandy objects had been sent to the Forensic Laboratory in Maardam for analysis. All that could be said for certain at this point in time was that no possible murder weapon had been found — nor anything that could throw light on what it might have looked like.
Nor who had been holding it.
The fact that the victim had been wearing a blue short-sleeved cotton shirt, jeans and underpants, but was without shoes or socks, was not a matter that the technicians needed to comment upon, as it was obvious to everybody who had been at the scene of the crime.
Vegesack — who hadn’t been present at the scene of the crime — completed his run-through, and looked around the table.
‘Drunk?’ asked Baasteuwel.
‘No,’ said Vegesack. ‘We’ll get details of his stomach contents tomorrow.’
‘Who was the last person to see him alive?’
‘He was out fishing with a friend on Sunday morning. It could have been him.’
‘Has he been interrogated?’
‘On the telephone,’ said Vrommel. ‘I shall talk to him this evening.’
Baasteuwel didn’t seem too satisfied, but desisted from asking any more questions.
‘It must have happened during the night, I assume,’ said Kohler after a few seconds of silence. ‘The beach is presumably anything but deserted during the day, or. .’
‘Anything but,’ said Vegesack. ‘No, nobody’s going to go there and murder somebody in broad daylight.’
‘So, there we have it,’ said Vrommel, brushing aside the fly again. ‘I think that’s enough. Have our friends from Wallburg any ideas to bestow upon us? If not, I’ll declare the meeting closed for today. We have a few minor interviews to see to, as I said earlier, but Vegesack and I can deal with those without any need for assistance.’
Intendent Kohler closed his notebook and put it away in his brown briefcase which looked as if it had survived at least two world wars. Baasteuwel knocked the ash off his cigarette into his coffee cup, and scratched at his blue-grey stubble.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘We’ll be here at nine o’clock tomorrow morning. But make sure you’ve got somewhere by then. This is a murder investigation, not a bloody children’s party.’
Vegesack could hear the grating of the chief of police’s teeth, but no words managed to force their way out — which was probably just as well. Nobody else had anything to add, so after some thirty seconds, he and Vrommel were alone in the room.
‘Clear up in here,’ said Vrommel. ‘And for God’s sake make sure that the room is properly aired. Don’t leave until it’s done.’
Vegesack glanced furtively at the clock. Twenty minutes to five.
‘What about the interrogations?’ he asked. ‘What shall we do about them?’
‘I’ll see to that,’ said Vrommel, standing up. ‘Your job is to clear up and lock up. I’ll see you tomorrow morning. Good evening, Constable. And remember, don’t say a word to any damned reporters.’
‘Good evening, sir,’ said Vegesack.
Moreno was sitting waiting with a half-empty glass of beer when he came to Strandterrassen.
‘I’m sorry I’m late. It lasted longer than expected.’
‘Murder investigations generally take time.’
Vegesack didn’t bother to explain that it had more to do with his clearing-up duties. He gestured to a waiter and ordered another beer instead, and sat down.
‘Did you have a restful day off?’
Moreno shrugged.
‘You could say that. I met the girl’s mother.’
‘Whose mother?’
‘Winnie Maas’s.’
‘I see. A nice lady.’
‘Do you know her?’
‘Most people do.’
‘I get you. Anyway, she was visited by Mikaela Lijphart last Sunday.’
Vegesack raised an eyebrow.
‘Good God! Well, what did fru Maas have to tell you?’
‘Not a lot. She says she spoke to the girl, and then passed her on to somebody else. Vera Sauger — is that a name that means anything to you?’
Vegesack thought about that as the waiter came with his beer.
‘I don’t think so. Who’s she when she’s at home?’
‘A friend of Winnie’s. Or so her mother claimed. If Mikaela wanted to know anything about Winnie, Vera was the person she should go and talk to, she reckoned. So maybe that’s what she did.’
Vegesack took a deep swig, and closed his eyes with satisfaction.
‘Tastes good,’ he said. ‘But I knew that already. Well, I take it you’ve tracked her down by now?’
Moreno sighed.
‘Yes, of course. But unfortunately I only got as far as a neighbour who’s looking after her canary and potted plants. She’s touring the archipelago, and is due back home tomorrow evening. I think it’s called a holiday.’
‘Not many people are at home at this time of year,’ said Vegesack.
‘Too true,’ said Moreno. ‘How about you? Have you got anywhere? The Wanted notice, for instance?’
Vegesack shook his head.
‘Nix, I’m afraid. She came to see us, that woman from Frigge, but she was so unsure about the person she’d seen that she didn’t dare to say anything for certain. It might have been Mikaela she saw at the railway station, but it might just as well have been somebody else.’
‘And nobody else has reported anything?’
‘Not a living soul,’ said Vegesack. ‘But I spent some time at Sidonis, in fact. If anything useful came out of it is questionable, but I promised to have a go, and so I did.’
He paused, and massaged his temples for a while before continuing. Moreno waited.
‘I spoke to a few people up there. Nobody can remember Maager having received any telephone calls before he went missing. They reckon that it’s out of the question than anybody could have visited him without their being aware of it — although if anybody wanted to take him away from the care home, for whatever reason, there are apparently other ways of doing it.’
‘Such as?’ asked Moreno.
‘The park,’ said Vegesack. ‘The grounds surrounding the buildings — you’ve been there, you know what it’s like. Maager used to wander around there for a few hours every day. It wouldn’t be all that difficult to hide away among the trees and wait for him to come along at a distance sufficiently far away from the home itself. There’s no boundary wall nor anything similar — nothing that runs all the way round in any case. We’ll send a few officers out to search the area around the home: he could be lying somewhere in the woods.’
Moreno didn’t respond. She sat in silence for half a minute, gazing out over the same beach and the same sea as Constable Vegesack.
