and sharp tongue told her that it was probably best to put all her cards on the table. Besides, it was difficult to lie to somebody of the same sex and age as oneself: that was a phenomenon she had thought about before. This woman did not seem to be somebody who would believe any old thing you told her, and if you put a foot wrong at the beginning it would probably be difficult to repair the damage.
‘Ewa Moreno, detective inspector,’ she said. ‘My errand’s a bit special. I’d like to speak to somebody on the newspaper who knows about the Winnie Maas business from 1983. . and who has a few minutes to spare.’
The woman raised an eyebrow and sucked in her cheeks, suggesting she was rapidly thinking things over.
‘You’ve come to the right person,’ she said. ‘Selma Perhovens. Pleased to meet you.’
She stretched her hand out over the counter, and Moreno shook it.
‘Police officer, you said?’
‘On holiday,’ said Moreno. ‘Not on duty.’
‘Cryptic,’ said Perhovens. ‘Actually, I could do with a bit of police information myself, in fact. If you can supply me with it, maybe we could call it a fair exchange?’
‘Why not?’ said Moreno. ‘What do you want to know?’
‘Well, my boss has instructed me to find out the name of a body that was found buried on the beach last Monday. Do you know the answer?’
‘Yes, of course,’ said Moreno.
Perhovens dropped her jaw for a moment, but picked it up again.
‘Well I’ll be. .’
‘I know his name,’ said Moreno. ‘I’m here in Lejnice incognito, but I know a bit about this and that.’
‘Well I never!’ said Perhovens, hurrying out from behind the counter. ‘I think we’d better close the office for a while.’
She pulled down the curtain over the milk-coloured glass door, and locked it. Took hold of Moreno’s arm and steered her into the back room.
‘Please take a seat.’
Moreno removed a pile of newspapers, an empty Coca-Cola can and a half-full bag of sweets from the chair indicated, and sat down. Perhovens sat down opposite her and rested her chin on her knuckles.
‘How do I know you’re not just a loony pretending to be a police officer?’
Moreno produced her ID.
‘All right. Please forgive my scepticism directed at fellow human beings. It goes with my job. I ought to place more trust in my intuitive judgements.’
She smiled. Moreno smiled back.
‘Gullibility is not a virtue these days,’ she said. ‘If I can explain what I’m after first, I can give you the name afterwards. Okay?’
‘Fair deal,’ said Perhovens. ‘Coffee?’
‘Yes please,’ said Moreno.
She started from the beginning. From as far back as the train journey and her meeting with the weeping Mikaela Lijphart until the previous night’s somewhat dodgy attempts to analyse the situation in her guest-house room. But she omitted Franz Lampe-Lehmann and Mikael Bau, since they didn’t really have any connection with the matter — and even less connection with each other — and the whole recapitulation took barely more than a quarter of an hour. Perhovens didn’t interrupt once, but managed to drink two-and-a-half cups of coffee, and fill four pages in her notebook.
‘That’s a real bugger,’ she said when Moreno had finished. ‘Anyway, I think you’ve come to the right person, as I said. I was just finishing my apprenticeship year when the Maager trial was taking place — I was only nineteen, but I attended it all week and followed what happened closely. I wasn’t allowed to write the newspaper reports, of course: Wicker wrote those himself, but he made me produce basic texts every day, the slave-driver. So I remember it quite well. A nasty business.’
‘So I’ve gathered,’ said Moreno.
‘Besides. .’ said Perhovens, and seemed to be unsure of what to say next. ‘Besides, I had my doubts about the whole proceedings, I suppose you could say; but everything went like clockwork, and I was much more of a wide-eyed innocent in those days.’
Moreno felt something click inside her.
‘Doubts? What kind of doubts?’
‘Nothing precise, I’m afraid, but the whole trial seemed to be prearranged. Theatre. A sort of play set in a courtroom that was written long before it actually started. The girl was dead, the murderer was found with her dead body on his knee. He was branded a loony from the start, and in people’s eyes he was as guilty as anybody could be. A teacher gives a pupil a bun in the oven and kills her! We had no problem selling the paper that summer.’
‘What was his defence? What line did his lawyer take?’
‘Mentally deranged.’
‘Mentally deranged?’
‘Yes. Not responsible for his actions. There was no other possible strategy. The lawyer’s name was Korring. Maager pleaded guilty through him — he hardly uttered a single word from start to finish of the trial.’
Moreno thought for a while.
‘But what was it that made you think it might not be as simple and straightforward as it seemed? I gather that’s what you thought, is that right?’
Perhovens shrugged.
‘I don’t know. Perhaps just my juvenile instinct to rebel. I didn’t like the consensus — still don’t, come to that. I prefer fruitful differences of opinion. But never mind that, what does all this that you’ve just told me about mean? What the hell has happened to that poor girl?’
‘That’s what I would like help in sorting out,’ said Moreno with a sigh. ‘I’ve been brooding over it for quite a few days now, and the only possible thing I can come up with is that there must be a link with the past. Something fishy about that whole business, not everything can have been satisfactorily explained. . Mikaela Lijphart talks to her dad for the first time in sixteen years. The Murderer with a capital M. Then she starts visiting several other people — I think there are several of them at least — here in Lejnice. Then she goes missing.’
‘And then her father goes missing as well. Why the hell haven’t we written about this? I know we’ve asked for information about the girl, but we haven’t written anything about this background.’
‘Do you have a good relationship with the local police?’ Moreno asked tentatively.
Perhovens burst out laughing.
‘A good relationship? We’ve been conducting trench warfare that makes the Western Front seem like a kiddies’ playground.’
‘I see,’ said Moreno. ‘Vrommel?’
‘Yes, Vrommel,’ said Perhovens, and her eyes suggested a regrettable degree of impotence.
They could hear a cautious tapping on the glass door in the outer room, but she ignored it with a snort. Moreno took the opportunity of changing tack.
‘Did Maager have any sort of support during that time?’ she asked. ‘From any quarter? Were there any other suspects, for instance?’
Perhovens sucked her pen and thought hard.
‘No,’ she said. ‘Not as far as I can remember. He seemed to have every bloody inhabitant of the whole town against him. And I mean every single one of ’em.’
Moreno nodded.
‘In some societies the poor bastard would have been lynched.’
‘I understand.’
It was not the first time Moreno had come across a comment similar to Perhovens’ last, and she wondered briefly how she would have reacted herself. Given what the circumstances must have been. Perhaps it was better not to follow up that question too assiduously. It was better, of course, to believe that she would never have entertained the possibility of joining a lynch mob, that no matter what the circumstances she would be able to retain her own sense of justice and integrity.
