Intendent Kohler closed his notebook and put it away in his brown briefcase which looked as if it had survived at least two world wars. Baasteuwel knocked the ash off his cigarette into his
coffee cup, and scratched at his blue-grey stubble.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘We’ll be here at nine o’clock tomorrow morning. But make sure you’ve got somewhere by then. This is a murder investigation, not a
bloody children’s party.’
Vegesack could hear the grating of the chief of police’s teeth, but no words managed to force their way out – which was probably just as well. Nobody else had anything to add, so
after some thirty seconds, he and Vrommel were alone in the room.
‘Clear up in here,’ said Vrommel. ‘And for God’s sake make sure that the room is properly aired. Don’t leave until it’s done.’
Vegesack glanced furtively at the clock. Twenty minutes to five.
‘What about the interrogations?’ he asked. ‘What shall we do about them?’
‘I’ll see to that,’ said Vrommel, standing up. ‘Your job is to clear up and lock up. I’ll see you tomorrow morning. Good evening, Constable. And remember,
don’t say a word to any damned reporters.’
‘Good evening, sir,’ said Vegesack.
Moreno was sitting waiting with a half-empty glass of beer when he came to Strandterrassen.
‘I’m sorry I’m late. It lasted longer than expected.’
‘Murder investigations generally take time.’
Vegesack didn’t bother to explain that it had more to do with his clearing-up duties. He gestured to a waiter and ordered another beer instead, and sat down.
‘Did you have a restful day off?’
Moreno shrugged.
‘You could say that. I met the girl’s mother.’
‘Whose mother?’
‘Winnie Maas’s.’
‘I see. A nice lady.’
‘Do you know her?’
‘Most people do.’
‘I get you. Anyway, she was visited by Mikaela Lijphart last Sunday.’
Vegesack raised an eyebrow.
‘Good God! Well, what did fru Maas have to tell you?’
‘Not a lot. She says she spoke to the girl, and then passed her on to somebody else. Vera Sauger – is that a name that means anything to you?’
Vegesack thought about that as the waiter came with his beer.
‘I don’t think so. Who’s she when she’s at home?’
‘A friend of Winnie’s. Or so her mother claimed. If Mikaela wanted to know anything about Winnie, Vera was the person she should go and talk to, she reckoned. So maybe that’s
what she did.’
Vegesack took a deep swig, and closed his eyes with satisfaction.
‘Tastes good,’ he said. ‘But I knew that already. Well, I take it you’ve tracked her down by now?’
Moreno sighed.
‘Yes, of course. But unfortunately I only got as far as a neighbour who’s looking after her canary and potted plants. She’s touring the archipelago, and is due back home
tomorrow evening. I think it’s called a holiday.’
‘Not many people are at home at this time of year,’ said Vegesack.
‘Too true,’ said Moreno. ‘How about you? Have you got anywhere? The Wanted notice, for instance?’
Vegesack shook his head.
‘Nix, I’m afraid. She came to see us, that woman from Frigge, but she was so unsure about the person she’d seen that she didn’t dare to say anything for certain. It might
have been Mikaela she saw at the railway station, but it might just as well have been somebody else.’
‘And nobody else has reported anything?’
‘Not a living soul,’ said Vegesack. ‘But I spent some time at Sidonis, in fact. If anything useful came out of it is questionable, but I promised to have a go, and so I
did.’
He paused, and massaged his temples for a while before continuing. Moreno waited.
‘I spoke to a few people up there. Nobody can remember Maager having received any telephone calls before he went missing. They reckon that it’s out of the question than anybody could
have visited him without their being aware of it – although if anybody wanted to take him away from the care home, for whatever reason, there are apparently other ways of doing it.’
‘Such as?’ asked Moreno.
‘The park,’ said Vegesack. ‘The grounds surrounding the buildings – you’ve been there, you know what it’s like. Maager used to wander around there for a few
hours every day. It wouldn’t be all that difficult to hide away among the trees and wait for him to come along at a distance sufficiently far away from the home itself. There’s no
boundary wall nor anything similar – nothing that runs all the way round in any case. We’ll send a few officers out to search the area around the home: he could be lying somewhere in
the woods.’
Moreno didn’t respond. She sat in silence for half a minute, gazing out over the same beach and the same sea as Constable Vegesack.
The same people, the same dogs running after sticks, the same clusters of holidaymakers. But nevertheless, it somehow seemed that the passage of time, albeit only a few days, had cast a sort of
membrane over it all. As if it didn’t concern her any more, that kind of life.
‘But why would anybody want to attack Arnold Maager?’ she asked.
Vegesack shrugged.
‘Don’t ask me. But he’s gone missing, and there must be something behind it.’
‘What about his wife?’ Moreno asked. ‘Sigrid Lijphart. What do we know about her?’
‘She rings every day, wondering why we haven’t done anything.’
‘How did she react to the fact that Maager had also disappeared?’
‘It’s hard to say,’ said Vegesack, frowning. ‘It’s the daughter she’s interested in. To be honest, I don’t think she cares all that much if her
ex-husband is dead or alive. But nevertheless, we’ll be issuing new Wanted notices tomorrow. In newspapers, magazines and so on.’
Moreno thought that over for a while. Tried to conjure up an image of Arnold Maager the man, but the only images of him she had were from a few old photographs, and it was hard to produce a
clear picture. The story attached to him became all the more vivid – what he had been guilty of doing sixteen years ago. It seemed as if actions could somehow overshadow the people who had
carried them out, make them incomprehensible, irresponsible: it wasn’t an implausible way of looking at things, and perhaps there were resonances with that membrane she seemed to have sensed,
covering the beach. He must be an absolute wreck of a human being, she thought. Must have been even then.
‘What a fascinating story,’ she said in the end. ‘The girl’s missing and her father’s missing. Can you tell me what the hell is going on?’
‘Hmm,’ said Vegesack. ‘I haven’t really got round to thinking about it all that much. I’ve been too busy trying to sort out that business of the bloke buried in the
sand. Tim Van Rippe.’
‘Yes, of course,’ said Moreno. ‘Where have you got to with him?’
‘The only thing we’re sure about is that we aren’t sure about anything,’ said Vegesack, draining his glass of beer.
‘Hmm,’ muttered Moreno. ‘As far as I remember, that is the basis of all knowledge.’
Aaron Wicker, editor of the Lejnice local newspaper
Westerblatt
, was not exactly enamoured of the town’s chief of police.
He probably wouldn’t have been, no matter what the circumstances; but as things stood, he thought he had unusually good reasons. Ever since Vrommel had succeeded in raiding the newspaper
offices on false pretences at the beginning of the nineties, Wicker felt such a deep and genuine hatred for the main local upholder of law and order that he never bothered to try to hide it. Or to
analyse it.
Shit is shit, he used to think. And you don’t always reap what you sow.
The ostensible reason for searching the premises was that the police had received an anonymous bomb threat aimed at the newspaper. No bomb was found, but Wicker had known from the start that
there had been no threat either. The real reason for the raid was an attempt to find the names of some of Wicker’s informants for an article about financial irregularities in the town
council. So that was that, and ever since, relations between two of the town’s powerful institutions had been irreparable. As long as the chief of police was called Vrommel, at least.
No names had been found during the operation, since Wicker had had time to erase them; but the mere thought that the forces of law and order could ignore such fundamental matters as freedom of
the press in this way was enough to send shivers of impotent fury down Wicker’s spine. Still.
And now he was expected to submit once again.
‘We know who the victim is, of course,’ said the chief of police.
‘Bravo,’ said Wicker.
‘But unfortunately I can’t give you his name.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because we haven’t been in touch with his next of kin yet.’
‘The mass media can be pretty effective in getting through to people,’ said Wicker. ‘If your telephones are out of order, for instance. And we are pretty good
judges.’
‘That may be,’ said Vrommel. ‘But there is nothing wrong with our means of communication. I’m speaking on the telephone just now, for instance, even though I ought to be
devoting myself to more important things. But that aside, you’re not going to get the victim’s name.’
‘I shall find out what it is even so.’
‘If you do, I forbid you to publish it.’
‘Forbid? Since when have we had official censorship in this town? Not that it would surprise me if we did, but it must have escaped my notice.’
‘It’s not the only thing that escapes your notice,’ said the chief of police. ‘The way things are nowadays we don’t need to keep an eye simply on compliance with
the law. As the press can’t be trusted to obey its own ethical rules, we have to ensure that they do. I’m rather busy at the moment – is there anything else you’d like to
raise?’
I would quite like to raise my right fist and give you a punch on the nose, Wicker thought, but he made do with slamming down the receiver and decided to put Selma Perhovens on the case.
Selma Perhovens was Wicker’s only colleague on the newspaper: only part-time, it’s true, but if there were two people in Lejnice – or in the whole of Europe come to that
– who knew the identity of the dead man on the beach, Selma was just the person to discover his name in no more than a few hours. Unless he misjudged her.
The first murder here in sixteen years, and the local newspaper didn’t know the name of the victim? Bloody hell!
He took two tablets to lower his blood pressure, and started looking for her mobile number.
Moreno had dinner at a restaurant called Chez Vladimir, and promised herself that this would be not only the first time, but also the last. She assumed the same would apply to
the evening’s other three diners. The minced meat pie with salad she had ordered – and was served after a long wait, and tried to eat – was not something that inspired a desire to
set foot inside the place again.
Nor did the wine, despite the fact that it matched rather accurately the roughness and sourness of the waitress. Moreno thanked her lucky stars that she had only ordered one glass.
Whether or not the following day would be her last one in Lejnice was a more open question.
Or perhaps it wasn’t so open after all. Go home now? she thought as she forced down the last of the gall. With two people missing and an unsolved murder on the beach? Is it really
Detective Inspector Moreno asking herself that question? The first liberated woman in the history of the world?
She couldn’t help but smile at the implausibility.
I’ll make up my mind tomorrow, she thought. A pot of hot coffee in my room tonight, then I’ll massage my temples until either I make a hole or reach a conclusion. It would be quite
nice to settle down in my own bed one of these nights.
She started off by writing down the names of those involved on a blank page in her notebook.
Winnie Maas
Arnold Maager
Mikaela Lijphart
It looked neat. She thought for a while before adding another name.
Tim Van Rippe
Not because he seemed to have anything to do with it, but he had been murdered after all. And then two more.
Sigrid Maas
Vera Sauger
She gave free rein to her thoughts for a few minutes while she wrote question marks after Mikaela Lijphart and Arnold Maager, and a cross after Tim Van Rippe. But she wrote
nothing after the last two names.
Brilliant, my dear Holmes, she thought, and then tried to regain control of her thoughts. Took a sip of the coffee her hostess had prepared for her, reluctantly and extremely expensively. Press
on!
What do I know? Are these names connected at all? All of them? Some of them? How?
Vera Sauger clearly didn’t have so much to do with the others – those dead or missing persons – she was just a link. A presumed supplier of information, not a mystery. She
would have to be handled especially carefully.
She suddenly realized why she thought the name had sounded familiar. Surely it had been mentioned in one of the interrogation records she had been provided with by Constable Vegesack.
Yes, no doubt about it. She couldn’t remember in what connection, but Vera Sauger had been there, she was convinced of that, despite the fact that her temples had barely been massaged at
all.
It wasn’t all that remarkable, in fact. Sigrid Maas had told Mikaela Lijphart to contact Vera Sauger, and if the latter girl had been interrogated in connection with the events of 1983, it
merely confirmed the fact that she was someone who was closely linked with Winnie in one way or another.
And that Sigrid Maas was telling the truth – in this respect, at least.
She went back to the first trio. One dead, two missing.
What had happened to Mikaela Lijphart was just as incomprehensible as ever. Before beginning to think about her and speculating, she turned her attention to her father. What were the possible
scenarios as far as he was concerned?
There were only two, as far as she could see.
Either Maager had run away from the Sidonis home of his own free will – the little of that he might still possess. Or there were other motives behind his disappearance. Somebody wanted him
out of the way.