‘The worst thing of all?’
‘Yes. That he’d spoken to my dad at the Sidonis home, while Mum and I were in Aarlach. I don’t know how he managed to squeeze the information out of my dad — but then, he got my story out of us so I assume he’s pretty good at that kind of thing.’
‘He’s well known for it,’ said Moreno. ‘What was it that your dad told him?’
Mikaela clenched her teeth and tried to blink away the tears that flooded into her eyes.
‘That he thought it was my mum who had killed Winnie Maas. That was why he said nothing. In order to protect us.’
She fell silent. Moreno suddenly felt a burning sensation behind her eyelids, and she took a swig of mineral water to balance it out. Is that possible? she asked herself.
But she could see immediately that it was.
Not just possible. It was logical, and it all fitted together.
‘But of course, it all drove him round the bend,’ said Mikaela. ‘He really did go mad. But he’s always thought it was my mum who did it. All the time. She was the one who received the telephone call from Winnie that night. . And found out about what had happened. She got furious, and went storming out into the night. And then when my dad found Winnie lying dead by the railway line, he thought. . Well, you can understand the situation, can’t you?’
‘Yes,’ said Moreno. ‘I understand.’
And Van Rippe was protected by the chief of police, she thought. Who had an affair with his mother.
Selma Perhovens had explained that on the telephone during the afternoon. And that the investigation, as far as she could understand it, was no longer being conducted especially intensively.
For certain reasons.
What certain reasons? she had asked: but Perhovens knew no more than that.
Now, however, everything was clear. Crystal clear. The equation had worked out at last. Baasteuwel’s equation.
The Skunk was going to get away with it.
But Mikaela was also going to get away with it.
And Winnie Maas’s murderer had received his punishment.
Moreno noticed that she was clasping her hands so tightly that they almost hurt, and she had her mouth half open. She closed it, and tried to relax.
Bloody hell! she thought. Have the gods finished their games now? Yes, it seemed like it, and the final result seemed to be a sort of draw, you could say. At least, that’s how Van Veeteren would have put it, she was sure of that. . A Solomonic draw.
‘I intend to get my dad back on his feet,’ said Mikaela, breaking Moreno’s train of thought. ‘I’ll have a jolly good try, anyway.’
‘Good,’ said Moreno. ‘That’s certainly the right thing to do. But make sure you get back on your feet yourself first. It’s difficult to carry such a lot of this kind of stuff inside you — you ought to get some help, somehow or other.’
Mikaela’s response came as a surprise.
‘That’s already organized,’ she said. ‘I’m going to see a vicar here in Maardam once a week. He’s a brother of Inspector Baasteuwel’s.’
Moreno stared at the girl.
‘Are you telling me that there’s a vicar here in Maardam with the name Baasteuwel, with all its links with the devil?’
Mikaela shook her head and managed a faint smile.
‘He’s changed his name. He evidently didn’t think it was appropriate for his job, so he changed it to Friedmann. That’s much more suitable.’
‘You can say that again,’ said Moreno. ‘Hmm. Shall we ask them to warm up our food in the microwave? I think it’s gone cold.’
Mikaela looked at her plate and smiled a little more broadly.
‘Oh dear,’ she said. ‘I’d forgotten I was hungry.’
Mikaela was collected by her mother and stepfather outside Vlissingen, as they had arranged. Moreno suspected that Helmut had been brought along as a sort of safety measure — so that Moreno wouldn’t take it into her head to ask Mikaela’s mother any awkward questions. It wouldn’t have surprised her.
For there was at least one unanswered question.
The one about where exactly Sigrid Lijphart had been that night.
Had she been up on the viaduct or not? Had she seen the girl’s body lying on the railway line before her husband did?
And hence had she known that the murderer must have been somebody else? Somebody she had protected by keeping silent for so long.
And had she possibly. . well, could she possibly have known all along what Arnold had believed?
Yes, Moreno thought. That question still needs to be answered. That one above all others.
When all the implications slowly dawned on her, she started to feel sick.
She would eventually be able to create a situation in which she could speak this suspicion out loud, but of course there was no reason to do it in Mikaela’s presence. No reason at all — the girl had travelled far enough into the heart of darkness as it was.
‘Let’s meet again some other time,’ she said instead. ‘Then it’ll be my turn to treat you.’
After they had left Moreno went for a long walk to think over the whole business, and by the time she got home it was twenty minutes past eleven. She hesitated for a moment, then phoned Inspector Baasteuwel.
‘Congratulations,’ she said. ‘I mean it.’
‘Thank you,’ said Baasteuwel. ‘I mean it.’
‘A Solomonic solution. Was it you who persuaded the girl to keep quiet, or was it her mother?’
‘Hmm,’ said Baasteuwel. ‘Mostly Mikaela herself, in fact. Why?’
‘I’m not certain it’s right.’
‘Nor am I,’ agreed Baasteuwel after a pause. ‘But when I’d squeezed it all out of them, I explained that I was no longer involved in the case, and that I had only called in on them out of pure curiosity. I left the choice in their hands, and promised to help out if things became too difficult and she wanted to go public with it.’
‘Help out?’ wondered Moreno. ‘How would you do that?’
‘I’ve no idea,’ said Baasteuwel. ‘Cometh the hour, cometh the thought. But I reckon it would be pretty stupid to start talking, given her position. For Christ’s sake, she’s ensured justice all round. Well done! The murderer’s dead, RIP. We can take Vrommel some other time.’
‘I suppose there’s no doubt that it really was Van Rippe?’
‘No doubt at all. His mother banished any doubts there might have been on that score. She knew her son, and she was having it off with Vrommel at the time, and. . Well, he made sure things turned out as they did. He’d had some kind of hold over that doctor for quite some time, it seems, but we didn’t poke our noses into that. Anyway, of course it was that bloody Tim Van Rippe who killed Winnie Maas, but that doesn’t mean it would be absolutely straightforward for the girl to plead that she killed him in self-defence. There’s a crystal-clear revenge motive, and she’s kept quiet about it for rather too long.’
‘And why was Van Rippe forced to kill Winnie Maas?’
‘There’s forced and forced,’ said Baasteuwel. ‘Necessity can always be argued about, but it’s quite obvious that he was responsible for her pregnancy. And that he very definitely — and successfully — tried to put the blame on Arnold Maager. It’s remarkable that he was actually present that evening when Winnie seduced her teacher. If you were to ask me to speculate, I’d say that he was involved in the plot and that they’d worked out in advance that they’d make Maager appear to be the father. You can say what you like about Winnie Maas, but she wasn’t much of a bright spark. But this is only speculation, of course.’
‘So what really happened that evening up on the viaduct?’
‘Van Rippe shoved her over the edge, I’d bet my life on it. But the question is to what extent it was planned.
