15
Erich Reijsen was a well-groomed gentleman in his sixties with a wife and a terraced house in the same good condition as himself. Moreno had telephoned and made an appointment, and when she arrived the tea tray was already waiting in the living room, where a realistic electric fire was burning in the hearth.
She switched off her soul, and sat down on the plush sofa.
‘We don’t eat anything sweet,’ said herr Reijsen, gesturing towards the coarse rye bread and red pepper rings. ‘We’ve started to live a healthy life as we grow older.’
His weather-beaten face and neatly trimmed moustache bore witness to that – as did his wife’s tight tracksuit and mop of blonde hair kept in place by a red and gold headband.
‘Help yourself,’ she said, demonstrating her successful facelift by opening her eyes wide. ‘My name’s Blenda.’
‘Inspector Moreno,’ said Moreno, fishing up her notebook from her briefcase. ‘Please take as much time as you like, but of course it’s mainly herr Reijsen I need to speak to.’
‘Of course,’ said Reijsen, and Blenda scampered off to some other part of the house. After only a few seconds Moreno could hear the characteristic whining noise of an exercise bike at full speed.
‘It’s about Waldemar Leverkuhn,’ she said. ‘I take it you know what’s happened?’
Reijsen nodded solemnly.
‘We’re trying to piece together a more all-round picture of him,’ said Moreno, as her host poured out some weak tea into yellow cups. ‘You were a colleague of his for… for how long?’
‘Fifteen years,’ said Reijsen. ‘From the day he started work at Pixner until he retired – 1991, that is. I carried on working for five more years, and then the staff cuts began. I was offered early retirement, and accepted it like a shot. I have to say that I haven’t regretted that a single day.’
Neither would I, Moreno thought in a quick flash of insight.
‘What was he like?’ she asked. ‘Can you tell me a little about Waldemar Leverkuhn?’
It took Erich Reijsen over half an hour to exhaust the topic. It took Moreno rather less time – about two minutes – to realize that the visit was probably going to be fruitless. The portrait of Waldemar Leverkuhn as a reserved and grumpy person (but nevertheless upright and reliable) was one she had already, and her attentive host was unable to add any brush strokes that changed it, or provided anything new.
Nor did he have any dramatic revelations to make, no insightful comments or anything else that could be of the slightest relevance to the investigation.
In truth, she had difficulty at the moment in envisaging what a relevant piece of the puzzle might look like, so she dutifully noted down most of what herr Reijsen had to say. It sapped her strength, there was no denying it – both to write and to keep awake – and when she stood up after three slices of rye bread and as many cups of tea, her first instinct was to find her way to the bathroom and sick it all up. Both herr Reijsen and the sandwiches.
Her second instinct was to take a hammer and batter the exercise bike that had been emitting its reproachful whining for the whole of her visit, but she managed to restrain herself. After all, she did not have a hammer handy.
I’m a bloody awful police officer at the moment, she thought shortly afterwards, sitting at the wheel of her car again at last. Certainly nothing for the force to be proud of… It’s a good job we’re not busy with something more serious than this case.
She was not at all clear about what she meant by that last thought.
Something more serious? Was the death of Waldemar Leverkuhn not serious, or what? She shook her head and bit her lower lip in the hope of becoming more wide awake. It felt increasingly clear that all this accumulated tiredness was approaching a borderline beyond which it would probably be safer to switch over to automatic pilot as far as work was concerned. Not rely on her own judgement. Not make any decisions. Not think.
Not until she had managed to get a few nights of decent sleep, in any case.
She started the car and set off for the town centre. It was turned five o’clock, and the town seemed to comprise approximately equal amounts of exhaust fumes, damp and darkness – a mixture that corresponded pretty well with her own state. She stopped at Keymer Pleijn and did some shopping at Zimmermann’s – yoghurt, juice and fifteen grapes: that was more than enough after the rye sandwiches, she told herself – and when she parked outside her temporary refuge in Gerckstraat, she was convinced that there were only two things in the world that could put her back on her feet.
A long, hot bath and a large cognac.
Fortunately both these phenomena were within the realm of possibility, so she switched on her soul again and clambered out of the car. She broke with her usual practice and took the lift up to the fourth floor, and even began to hum some modern ear-fodder she must have heard on the car radio or in Zimmermann’s.
When she opened the lift door, the first thing she saw was Claus. He was sitting on the floor outside her flat, with a large bouquet of red roses in his lap.
He stared at her with blank, worn-out eyes.
‘Ewa,’ he said.
The sandwiches made their presence felt. Hell’s bells, she thought. I don’t have the strength for this.
She slammed the lift door closed again and went back down. Half-ran over the paved area outside the entrance door and had just managed to sit down in her car again when he appeared in the lit-up doorway.
‘Poor you,’ she mumbled as she rummaged for the ignition key. ‘I’m sorry, but I just don’t have the strength.’
Then she started the car and drove away to look for an acceptable hotel.
Munster was dreaming.
At first it was all perfectly innocent. Some sort of party with cheerful people in their gladrags, drinks in their hands and laughter in their faces. He recognized several of them – both colleagues and good friends, of himself and Synn. Only the premises seemed to be unfamiliar: a confusion of various rooms, staircases and corridors. And then, gradually, a hint of something unpleasant began to insinuate itself into the dream. Not to say frightening… He went from one to another of these cubbyholes, each one smaller than the last, darker, occupied by increasingly unknown men and women up to more and more dodgy business. And all the time he kept bumping into people who wanted to speak to him, to drink a toast with him, but he felt unable to stay in any given place for more than a couple of minutes… There was something beckoning to him, something he was looking for, but didn’t understand what it was until he was there.
He entered yet another room. It was dark, and at first he thought it was also empty – but then he heard a sound. Somebody whispered his name. He went further in, and suddenly he felt a woman’s hand on his chest. She huddled up to him, and he knew immediately that it was for her sake that he was here. Exclusively and only for her sake.
She was obviously naked, and it was obvious that they were going to make love. She led him to a low, wide bed in front of a fire which had almost burned out, but the embers were still glowing… Yes, it was obvious that they were going to make love, and he knew almost immediately that the woman was Ewa Moreno. Her eyes like halved almonds, her small, firm breasts that he had never seen before but nevertheless had always known that they would look exactly like this… And her skin reflecting the glowing embers – no, nothing could be clearer. In no more than a second he was also naked, lying on the bed, and she was astride him, guiding him into her eager pussy, and he watched her gleaming body raising and lowering itself, and it was ineffably blissful. Then he noticed the door slowly opening without really registering it… until he saw his children, Bart and Marieke, standing there watching him only a metre away, with their serious and somewhat sorrowful eyes.
He was woken up by his own cry. Synn stirred restlessly, and he could feel the cold sweat all over his skin like an armour plate of angst. He lay there motionless for a few seconds, then slid cautiously out of bed, tiptoed into the bathroom and showered for ten minutes.
When he returned to the bedroom he saw that it was a quarter past four. He lifted the duvet and crept down to lie close to Synn’s warm back. Close, very close.
Then lay there, holding her tightly, without sleeping a wink all night.
Something is happening, he thought.
It mustn’t happen.
