The alarm had sounded just as he was preparing to pack up for the day. Half past four. He and Munster had been at the apartment in Weijskerstraat a quarter of an hour later, more or less at the same time as the forensic guys and the medical team. Rickard Maasleitner was lying in exactly the same posture as Ryszard Malik had been some… how long ago was it now? Two weeks, more or less? Yes, that was correct.
He had been convinced from the very first glance that it was the same killer. And that the method had been the same.
A ring on the doorbell, and then shots the moment the door opened.
A sound method, Rooth had said.
Most certainly. Once it was done, all that remained was to close the door and walk away. What sort of time was involved? Ten seconds? That would probably be long enough. You could fire four shots from a Berenger in half that time, if need be.
He emptied his glass.
And then?
Well, then everything got under way, of course. Police tape around the crime scene, a thorough search, taking care of the poor daughter who had found him. And so on.
Questions.
Questions and answers. No end to it already. And yet it was just the beginning. As already stated.
But if one were to look a little more closely at the whole business, one thing stood out, of course. Only one so far, that is. There was an enormous difference between the risk involved in the two murders.
In the case of Malik, the chances of being seen were as minimal as it is possible to be; but yesterday, all it needed was for somebody to happen to go out with a garbage bag, or to glance out through a half-open door.
It had been nighttime, of course; but even so.
Ergo: either there were witnesses or there weren't.
Perhaps, and this was much to be desired, somebody (or several people) had seen the killer on one of the two occasions when he must have visited the apartment block-while he was fiddling with the lock (because it must surely be the murderer who was responsible for that?), or when the shooting took place. Either on the way there or while leaving.
Or while he was standing waiting?
A case of either-or, then. If Reinhart and deBries did their job properly, we should know tomorrow. And even if the neighbors, or Reinhart and deBries, had missed something, there was still a good chance of striking lucky. A press release had been issued at ten o'clock, and it would be in all the main newspapers and in the radio and television news bulletins later this morning. Everybody who thought they might have some relevant information, or had merely been in the Weijskerstraat area around midnight on Wednesday evening, was urged to get in touch with the police immediately.
So there were grounds for hope.
Having come thus far in his deliberations, Van Veeteren gave in to temptation and lit a cigarette. It was time to address the big question, and that would no doubt need a bit of extra effort.
Why?
Why in hell's name should anybody march up to somebody's door, ring the bell, and shoot whoever opened it?
What was the motive?
What was the link between Ryszard Malik and Rickard Maasleitner?
And furthermore: What would have happened if somebody else had opened the door? Could the murderer be one hundred percent certain who it would be? Was it all the result of meticulous planning, or was coincidence involved?
There's no such thing as coincidence, Reinhart had once said, and that was no doubt basically true. Nevertheless, there was a hell of a difference between some causes and others. Between some motives and others.
Why had Malik and Maasleitner been singled out by the murderer?
Dvorak fell silent, and Van Veeteren could feel the weariness behind his eyes now. He stubbed out his cigarette and heaved himself up out of the armchair. Switched off the CD player and went to bed. The blood-red digital numbers on the clock radio showed 2:21, and he realized that he had less than five hours' sleep to look forward to.
Ah well, he'd been through worse situations in the past, and no doubt would be faced with worse in the future as well.
When Detective Inspector Reinhart snuggled down under the covers on his big iron-frame bed, the night had ticked its way through twenty more red minutes; but even so, he considered phoning Miss Lynch and asking her if she felt like popping over. In order to exchange a few words, if nothing else; and to remind her that he loved her.
However, something-he was confident it had to do with his good character and upbringing-restrained him from submitting to his desires, and instead he lay for a while thinking about their efforts during the course of the evening, and the way in which people seemed to notice nothing of what was happening round about them.
Or their stupidity, as some would doubtless have expressed it.
In any case, a lack of awareness. In the old, well-maintained 1930s apartment block where Rickard Maasleitner lived, there were no fewer than seventy-three inhabitants. In apartments off the relevant staircase- 26B-there were seventeen tenants at home at the time of the murder, in addition to the victim himself. At least eight of those had been awake when the murderer fired the fatal shots (assuming that the incident took place before two in the morning). Five of those had been on the same floor. One had come home at ten minutes to twelve.
Nobody had noticed anything at all.
As for the front-door lock, which the murderer had sabotaged by jamming a piece of metal between the bolt and the drum, at least three persons had noticed that there was something amiss, but none of them had done anything about it, or drawn any conclusions.
Stupid idiots! Reinhart thought.
There again, of course, he knew that this was not an entirely fair judgment. He himself hadn't the slightest idea of what his neighbors got up to of an evening-he hardly knew what they were called, never mind anything else-but after seven hours of interrogation, and with so many possible witnesses among them, one would surely have been justified in expecting a rather more positive outcome.
Or any outcome at all, to be honest.
But there had not been any.
What was pretty clear, however, was the time sequence. The front door of Weijskerstraat 26 was locked automatically at 2200 hours every evening. In order to tamper with the lock in the way the murderer had done, he (or she, as Winnifred Lynch maintained) must have waited until after that time, presumably somewhere inside the building. And then, when the automatic locking took place, he or she must have calmly opened the door from the inside and inserted the piece of metal. The alternative was that the murderer stood hidden somewhere in the shrubbery outside the front door, and slipped in when one of the residents went in or came out. A pretty risky operation, and hence not very likely, as deBries and Reinhart had agreed.
What the murderer did after that was impossible to say, of course; but when Maasleitner came home at about midnight after his night out with Faringer, he (or she) had presumably wasted no time hanging around. Everything suggested that Maasleitner hadn't been at home for more than a few minutes before the doorbell rang.
And then four bullets. Two in the chest, and two below the belt. Exactly the same as on the previous occasion. Close the door and melt away. And no witnesses.
Good God, thought Reinhart with a shudder. It was so simple, enough to make you afraid of the dark.
Nevertheless he stretched out his arm and switched off the light. And as he did so he remembered that there were a couple of straws to grasp. Two of the apartment owners had been at home during the night in question, but had not been available for an interview. What is more, one of them-a certain Mr. Malgre-lived next door to Maasleitner; for want of anything better, Reinhart made up his mind to attach his best hopes for the next day's interviews to the one with him. This was scheduled for midday, when Malgre would be back from a conference in
