Why? Why on earth should anybody feel threatened by the existence of Arnold Maager?
There was only one answer, of course. It had to do with that business in the past. Maager might have information about what had really happened sixteen years ago, and such information could be
dangerous for somebody who . . . well, somebody who – what?
Somebody who had a finger in the pie, and more than that, most likely.
Stop, Moreno thought. I’m going too quickly. It’s pure speculation. Wasn’t the most likely scenario by far – let’s face it – that Maager had run away under
his own steam? He’d packed a bag, for instance. The reason why he would want to run away was just as obscure as all the rest of it, but it seemed obvious that it must have to do with his
daughter. There were no other stimuli in his life that could set things moving in this way.
Rubbish, she then thought. What do I know about Arnold Maager’s inner landscape? And other people’s motives? Nothing at all.
But then again? She had the feeling that it could be the explanation. That he had simply run away, perhaps in a state of pure desperation to look for his daughter . . . Like an aged and crazy
King Lear looking for Cordelia. Surely that must be a possibility? She drank half a cup of coffee and rubbed her temples. It made the roots of her hair hurt, but of course didn’t do them any
harm.
When no more sensible thoughts occurred to her, she turned over the page in her notebook instead and began writing down her conclusions in order. It took quite a while, and perhaps it was over
the top to call them conclusions. It was more like therapy. Brain gymnastics for a mentally retarded detective inspector, she thought. While she was doing this she heard the first heavy raindrops
hitting against the window, and in the next-door room the young couple started making love.
She sat there listening for a while, to both the rain and the lovemaking. There’s a time for everything, she thought with a sigh. She switched on the radio to distract herself and poured
some more coffee. When she had finished she read through what she had written, and established that the problems remained.
What had happened to Mikaela Lijphart? What had happened to her father?
And the dead man on the beach? Had he anything to do with this other business?
I’ll talk to Vera Sauger tomorrow evening, Moreno thought. That should help me to make progress.
But what if Mikaela never actually visited her? she thought. What would that indicate? What do I do then?
And what should she spend tomorrow doing? Sunbathing and swimming?
In the rain? It was coming down quite heavily now. In any case, it was obvious that she couldn’t carry on pestering poor Vegesack any more than she had already done. Especially as she
hadn’t been able to make a single contribution to the case herself, despite all her efforts. There were limits, after all . . . Mind you, one might also ask oneself what on earth the police
did in these parts.
So, what should she do? Perhaps dig a bit into the past instead? Go back to 1983 again?
But where, in that case? Dig where? Who should she interrogate this time?
She suddenly felt exhaustion threatening to overwhelm her, but gulped down another half cup of coffee and kept it at arm’s length. Well? she thought. Who? Who should she turn to? Needless
to say, everybody who was around when it all happened sixteen years ago would be able to supply a certain amount of information, some more than others; but it would be helpful to acquire a better
overall view.
It didn’t take her long to hit upon an alternative that seemed promising.
The press, of course. The local daily newspaper.
Westerblatt
: she knew what it was called and where its office was, since she had passed it several times on her way down to the
beach.
Satisfied with this decision, she poured the rest of the coffee down the sink and went to bed. It was a quarter past midnight, and it occurred to her that Mikael Bau hadn’t tried to
contact her one single time during the evening.
Good, she thought as she switched off the light. But she realized that it was not a wholly satisfactory conclusion.
21 July 1999
The
Westerblatt
editorial offices in Lejnice comprised two cramped rooms, one in front of the other, in Zeestraat. The inner room was the place where most of the
work was done, and two-thirds of the floor space was occupied by two large desks, pushed up against each other and laden with computers, printers, fax machines, telephones, coffee machines and a
higgledy-piggledy mass of papers, pens, notebooks and various other things that journalists claim to need. Sagging bookshelves with files, books and old newspapers covered all the walls from floor
to ceiling, and hanging above everything was an American ceiling fan that had ceased to work in the summer of 1997.
The front room looked out on the street and had a counter where Joe Public could submit the copy for adverts and notices, pay subscriptions or complain about things that had appeared in the
paper.
Or that hadn’t appeared in the paper.
When Moreno stepped in out of the light drizzle in Zeestraat it was twenty minutes past ten in the morning. A dark-haired woman of about her own age and with an energetic appearance was standing
behind the counter, telling somebody off on the telephone, gripping the receiver between her cheek and shoulder while making notes on a pad and leafing through a newspaper.
That’s what I call multi-tasking, Moreno thought. The woman nodded to her, and she sat down on one of the two plastic chairs and waited for the call to come to an end.
Which it did after about half a minute, and judging from the unconstrained wording with which she closed down the call, Moreno gathered that the woman was not unduly worried by having been
overheard.
‘Bloody idiot!’ she said as she replaced the receiver. ‘Pardon my French. How can I help you?’
Moreno hadn’t managed to make up her mind what tactics to use, but something in the woman’s bright eyes and sharp tongue told her that it was probably best to put all her cards on
the table. Besides, it was difficult to lie to somebody of the same sex and age as oneself: that was a phenomenon she had thought about before. This woman did not seem to be somebody who would
believe any old thing you told her, and if you put a foot wrong at the beginning it would probably be difficult to repair the damage.
‘Ewa Moreno, detective inspector,’ she said. ‘My errand’s a bit special. I’d like to speak to somebody on the newspaper who knows about the Winnie Maas business
from 1983 . . . and who has a few minutes to spare.’
The woman raised an eyebrow and sucked in her cheeks, suggesting she was rapidly thinking things over.
‘You’ve come to the right person,’ she said. ‘Selma Perhovens. Pleased to meet you.’
She stretched her hand out over the counter, and Moreno shook it.
‘Police officer, you said?’
‘On holiday,’ said Moreno. ‘Not on duty.’
‘Cryptic,’ said Perhovens. ‘Actually, I could do with a bit of police information myself, in fact. If you can supply me with it, maybe we could call it a fair
exchange?’
‘Why not?’ said Moreno. ‘What do you want to know?’
‘Well, my boss has instructed me to find out the name of a body that was found buried on the beach last Monday. Do you know the answer?’
‘Yes, of course,’ said Moreno.
Perhovens dropped her jaw for a moment, but picked it up again.
‘Well I’ll be . . .’
‘I know his name,’ said Moreno. ‘I’m here in Lejnice incognito, but I know a bit about this and that.’
‘Well I never!’ said Perhovens, hurrying out from behind the counter. ‘I think we’d better close the office for a while.’
She pulled down the curtain over the milk-coloured glass door, and locked it. Took hold of Moreno’s arm and steered her into the back room.
‘Please take a seat.’
Moreno removed a pile of newspapers, an empty Coca-Cola can and a half-f bag of sweets from the chair indicated, and sat down. Perhovens sat down opposite her and rested her chin on her
knuckles.
‘How do I know you’re not just a loony pretending to be a police officer?’
Moreno produced her ID.
‘All right. Please forgive my scepticism directed at fellow human beings. It goes with my job. I ought to place more trust in my intuitive judgements.’
She smiled. Moreno smiled back.
‘Gullibility is not a virtue these days,’ she said. ‘If I can explain what I’m after first, I can give you the name afterwards. Okay?’
‘Fair deal,’ said Perhovens. ‘Coffee?’
‘Yes please,’ said Moreno.
She started from the beginning. From as far back as the train journey and her meeting with the weeping Mikaela Lijphart until the previous night’s somewhat dodgy attempts to analyse the
situation in her guest-house room. But she omitted Franz Lampe-Lehmann and Mikael Bau, since they didn’t really have any connection with the matter – and even less connection with each
other – and the whole recapitulation took barely more than a quarter of an hour. Perhovens didn’t interrupt once, but managed to drink two-and-a-half cups of coffee, and fill four pages
in her notebook.
‘That’s a real bugger,’ she said when Moreno had finished. ‘Anyway, I think you’ve come to the right person, as I said. I was just finishing my apprenticeship year
when the Maager trial was taking place – I was only nineteen, but I attended it all week and followed what happened closely. I wasn’t allowed to write the newspaper reports, of course:
Wicker wrote those himself, but he made me produce basic texts every day, the slave-driver. So I remember it quite well. A nasty business.’
‘So I’ve gathered,’ said Moreno.
‘Besides . . .’ said Perhovens, and seemed to be unsure of what to say next. ‘Besides, I had my doubts about the whole proceedings, I suppose you could say; but everything went
like clockwork, and I was much more of a wide-eyed innocent in those days.’
Moreno felt something click inside her.
‘Doubts? What kind of doubts?’
‘Nothing precise, I’m afraid, but the whole trial seemed to be prearranged. Theatre. A sort of play set in a courtroom that was written long before it actually started. The girl was
dead, the murderer was found with her dead body on his knee. He was branded a loony from the start, and in people’s eyes he was as guilty as anybody could be. A teacher gives a pupil a bun in
the oven and kills her! We had no problem selling the paper that summer.’
‘What was his defence? What line did his lawyer take?’
‘Mentally deranged.’
‘Mentally deranged?’
‘Yes. Not responsible for his actions. There was no other possible strategy. The lawyer’s name was Korring. Maager pleaded guilty through him – he hardly uttered a single word
from start to finish of the trial.’
Moreno thought for a while.
‘But what was it that made you think it might not be as simple and straightforward as it seemed? I gather that’s what you thought, is that right?’
Perhovens shrugged.
‘I don’t know. Perhaps just my juvenile instinct to rebel. I didn’t like the consensus – still don’t, come to that. I prefer fruitful differences of opinion. But
never mind that, what does all this that you’ve just told me about mean? What the hell has happened to that poor girl?’
‘That’s what I would like help in sorting out,’ said Moreno with a sigh. ‘I’ve been brooding over it for quite a few days now, and the only possible thing I can
come up with is that there must be a link with the past. Something fishy about that whole business, not everything can have been satisfactorily explained . . . Mikaela Lijphart talks to her dad for
the first time in sixteen years. The Murderer with a capital M. Then she starts visiting several other people – I think there are several of them at least – here in Lejnice. Then she
goes missing.’
‘And then her father goes missing as well. Why the hell haven’t we written about this? I know we’ve asked for information about the girl, but we haven’t written anything
about this background.’
‘Do you have a good relationship with the local police?’ Moreno asked tentatively.
Perhovens burst out laughing.
‘A good relationship? We’ve been conducting trench warfare that makes the Western Front seem like a kiddies’ playground.’
‘I see,’ said Moreno. ‘Vrommel?’
‘Yes, Vrommel,’ said Perhovens, and her eyes suggested a regrettable degree of impotence.
They could hear a cautious tapping on the glass door in the outer room, but she ignored it with a snort. Moreno took the opportunity of changing tack.
‘Did Maager have any sort of support during that time?’ she asked. ‘From any quarter? Were there any other suspects, for instance?’
Perhovens sucked her pen and thought hard.
‘No,’ she said. ‘Not as far as I can remember. He seemed to have every bloody inhabitant of the whole town against him. And I mean every single one of ’em.’
Moreno nodded.
‘In some societies the poor bastard would have been lynched.’
‘I understand.’
It was not the first time Moreno had come across a comment similar to Perhovens’ last, and she wondered briefly how she would have reacted herself. Given what the circumstances must have
been. Perhaps it was better not to follow up that question too assiduously. It was better, of course, to believe that she would never have entertained the possibility of joining a lynch mob, that
no matter what the circumstances she would be able to retain her own sense of justice and integrity.
‘What exactly is it you’re thinking?’ asked Perhovens after a short pause. ‘That it was somebody else who did it? Forget it, if so. It’s impossible. The bastard was
sitting there weeping with the corpse on his knee.’
Moreno sighed.
‘Isn’t it possible that she jumped?’
‘Why would he confess in that case?’
Good question, Moreno thought. But not a new one.
‘Who was the doctor?’ she asked, without really understanding why. ‘The one who carried out the post-mortem, that is.’