‘All right,’ she began. ‘Let’s take things in chronological order. Sixteen years ago — almost to the day, in fact — something happened here in Lejnice that. . well, I suppose you could say it left its mark. A teacher at the local school, Arnold Maager, had an affair with one of his pupils, a certain Winnie Maas. She became pregnant, and he killed her. That’s the official version, at least. They say he threw her down from a railway viaduct — it’s pretty high, she fell on to the rails down below and was killed. He was found sitting by the rails with the girl’s body in his lap. In the middle of the night. He went out of his mind as a result, and he’s been in a mental hospital ever since. The Sidonis care home, which isn’t far from here. He was found guilty, although he never confessed because he wasn’t of sound mind when the trial took place. Maager was married and had a little daughter when it happened; his wife distanced herself from him without further ado, and he hasn’t seen her or his daughter since then. They moved away from Lejnice that same autumn. Anyway, that’s the background. In outline. Any questions?’
She looked round the table.
‘What a nice story,’ said Baasteuwel, taking a swig of beer.
‘Very,’ said Moreno. ‘But let’s fast-forward to the present. When I came out to Lejnice, let’s see — ’ she worked it out in her head — ‘twelve days ago, I met a young girl on the train who turned out to be Maager’s daughter. We got talking. She’d just celebrated her eighteenth birthday, and was on her way to visit her father at the Sidonis care home for the first time. She hadn’t seen him since she was two years old, and didn’t even know he existed. Her mother had told her about him the previous day, and the girl was pretty nervous about meeting him.’
‘No wonder,’ said Kohler.
‘Yes indeed. Anyway, a few days later her mum turned up here in Lejnice — Maager’s ex-wife, that is — and announced that her daughter hadn’t returned home. She’d gone missing.’
‘Gone missing?’ said Baasteuwel. ‘What the hell. .?’
‘Exactly,’ said Moreno. ‘We know she visited her dad at the home on Saturday, and spent the night at the youth hostel out at Missenraade: but nobody’s seen her since Sunday. And now the strange goings-on begin.’
‘Begin?’ said Kohler. ‘The strange goings-on
Moreno shrugged.
‘Well,
‘What’s her name?’ interrupted Baasteuwel.
‘Mikaela. Mikaela Lijphart. As I said, I’d met her, and now I bumped into her mother as well. She was very worried, for obvious reasons. Eventually Chief of Police Vrommel agreed to issue a Wanted notice — but don’t let me hear anybody claiming that he prioritized it. The point, of course, was to ask if anybody had seen Mikaela last Sunday. Or later in the week. As far as we know only two people contacted the police as a result. One was a woman in Frigge who claimed to have seen the girl at the railway station up there, the other was a certain Vera Sauger — I spoke to her last night. It was after that conversation that Vegesack and I decided to arrange this meeting.’
‘You don’t say,’ said Baasteuwel, leaning forward over the table. ‘Go on.’
‘Vrommel spoke to both the women, and according to him nothing significant emerged. Nevertheless, Vera Sauger told me last night that she’d been visited by Mikaela that Sunday, and they’d had quite a long talk. The girl was trying to make contact with anybody who’d been involved in one way or another in the happenings of 1983. Anybody who’d known her father or the dead girl Winnie Maas. We don’t know why Mikaela wanted to do this, but it could be a result of something her dad told her when she visited him at the Sidonis home. That’s mere speculation, of course; but she must surely have had some reason for starting to root around. Unless it was mere curiosity. In any case, she went to see Winnie’s mother — I’ve spoken to her as well. But neither she nor Vera Sauger could be of much help to Mikaela — or so they say, at least. Fru Maas is more than a bit of a drunk, incidentally. We don’t know if the girl met anybody else apart from these two.’
She paused briefly.
‘I was under the impression that all this business was supposed to be linked with the case we’re working on, somehow or other,’ said Kohler.
Moreno cleared her throat.
‘That’s right. Vera Sauger gave Mikaela Lijphart two possible names. People she could contact if she wanted to pursue her queries further. And she gave the same names to Vrommel. One of them was Tim Van Rippe.’
‘The gent buried in the sand,’ said Kohler.
‘Bloody hell!’ said Baasteuwel.
Silence enveloped the table.
‘This isn’t the only complication,’ said Moreno after Vegesack had nipped out into the kitchen to fetch four more beers. ‘A week after Mikaela went to visit her father at the care home, he disappeared. Last Saturday afternoon, to be precise. Nobody knows where he is. Vegesack was there and spoke to him a few days earlier, but it was evidently impossible to get much out of him.’
‘Not a word,’ said Vegesack.
Baasteuwel ran his hands through his tousled hair and stared at Moreno; but it was Kohler who spoke.
‘This Tim Van Rippe,’ he said. ‘Our body on the beach. What role does he play in this old story?’
Moreno turned over a page in her notebook to check on the details.
‘According to Vera Sauger he knew the girl Winnie Maas pretty well. He might even have been in a relationship with her as well, before she jumped into bed with Arnold Maager. But that isn’t so important. The important thing is that there is a clear connection here. Mikaela Lijphart was given his name, plus another one that I haven’t had time to check up on yet, and it’s very possible that she might have been to meet him on the Sunday. A week later he’s found murdered and buried on the beach. It’s an amazing coincidence that the body was discovered, of course — but then you’d have thought that the murderer would have been a bit more careful and dug a bit deeper down. Or what do you think?’
Kohler nodded.
‘His head was very close to the surface, in fact. It would no doubt have been exposed sooner or later by the wind, or by the running around of holidaymakers.’
Baasteuwel stood up.
‘And so all this business of what Vera Sauger said and did has been hushed up by the chief of police, has it? What the hell’s going on? In addition to the fact that Vrommel’s a berk. I need a smoke. Is out there okay?’
Vegesack nodded and Baasteuwel went out through the balcony door.
‘Irrespective of what’s behind it all,’ said Moreno, ‘it’s obvious that Vrommel isn’t playing the game. He doesn’t want to root around in what happened sixteen years ago. He doesn’t want anybody to find a link between the Maager case and the body on the beach. I don’t know what, but it seems pretty clear that something wasn’t what it seemed all those years ago. Correct me if I’m wrong.’
‘Are there any more. . irregularities?’ Kohler wondered.
Moreno thought for a moment.
‘There’s bound to be,’ she said. ‘It’s just that we don’t know what they are. I spoke to the pathologist, the man who did the post-mortem on Winnie Maas, and I must say his reaction was astonishingly strong. He became terribly upset for some reason — as if I were somehow questioning his honour and credibility. Just because I wanted to put a few simple things to him. I didn’t have a chance to ask him a single question before he boiled over.’
‘It sounds like a damned conspiracy,’ said Kohler. ‘Or a cover-up at the very least. Has anybody taken a look at the trial records? Is there anything dodgy there?’
‘I haven’t got round to it, I’m afraid,’ said Moreno with a sigh. ‘Don’t forget I’m here on holiday.’
‘Hmm,’ said Kohler, with what could possibly have been interpreted as a melancholy smile.
Baasteuwel returned from his smoking break.
‘Well, what do you think?’ he asked, looking first at Moreno and then Vegesack. ‘Personally, I’ve only had the time it takes to smoke one miserable little cigarette to think things over, and I have to say I just don’t understand it. . For those of you who don’t know me, I should point out that this is very unusual.’
He pulled a face and flopped down into the armchair. Moreno hesitated for a few moments before
