Borkmann's Point (7 page)

“Not too bad an evening, on the whole,” he maintained two
hours later. “It would be no bad thing if life were to be
enhanced by rather more of this kind of thing—good food;
intelligent conversation; sublime wines, to say the least; and
this cheese.” He licked his fingers and took a bite of a slice of
pear. “What do I owe you, by the way?”

God’s sake, so that I can grow old with dignity!”
“I knew there’d be a catch,” said Van Veeteren.
Bausen poured out the last drops of the Bordeaux.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “We’ll have a whiskey to round it

off later. Well?”
“Hmm,” said Van Veeteren. “It might be better if we take
what you have to say first. You’ve been in it from the start,
after all.”
His host nodded and leaned back in his chair. He kicked off
his shoes and put his feet up on a wooden crate of empty jars.
Wiggling his toes for a while, he seemed to be lost in thought.
“God only knows,” he said after a minute or two. “I have so
many ideas and loose ends buzzing around in my head that I
don’t know where to start. I’ve spent most of today wondering
if there really is a connection, when you get right down to it.”
“Explain!” said Van Veeteren.
“Of course we’re dealing with the same murderer; I take
that for granted—for simplicity’s sake if for no other reason.
The same murderer, the same method, the same weapon. But
the link between the victims—that’s what I’m a bit doubtful
about. I’m a bit afraid of finding out something that we might
jump at simply because we’ve found it. That they were on the
same package holiday in Sicily in 1988, or were in the same hos
pital in October 1979, or some other damn thing.”
“Two people always cross each other’s path somewhere or
other,” said Van Veeteren.
“Something like that, yes, and the fact that they do doesn’t
necessarily mean a thing. It can, but it doesn’t have to, by any
means.”
“Don’t forget that we’re talking about three paths,” said
Van Veeteren. “The murderer’s as well.”
“Yes, fair enough; of course we have to look for the third
link as well if we’re going to make a breakthrough. It’s just that
I have the feeling it might be different in this case.”
“You mean that Eggers and Simmel might have been picked
out at random?”
“Possibly,” said Bausen, staring out into the darkness. “Of
course he has picked on Eggers and Simmel on purpose, but
it’s not certain that they have much to do with him personally.
There could be much looser connections, as it were.”
“A list picked out at random from the phone book?” suggested Van Veeteren. “There are precedents, as you know. Harridge, if you remember him. He shut his eyes and stuck a pin
into the Coventry edition of the telephone directory. Then
went out and strangled them, one after another.”
“I know,” said Bausen. “One every Saturday...finished off
five before they got him. Do you know what scuppered him?”
Van Veeteren shook his head.
“One of the people he’d picked out, Emerson Clarke, if I
remember rightly, was a former boxing champion. Harridge
simply couldn’t cope with him.”
“Tough luck,” said Van Veeteren. “But he ought to have
taken the boxers off his list before he got started.”
“Serves him right,” said Bausen.
They both lit a cigarette and sat in silence for a while listening to the gentle rustling among the roses. A few hedgehogs
had appeared and sniffed around before drinking from the
saucer of milk outside the back door, and a few swallows were
still sailing back and forth from underneath loose tiles. Perhaps
not exactly the sounds and creatures of the jungle, but Van
Veeteren still had a distinct feeling of the exotic.
“Of course, we’ll be in a different position altogether if he
beheads somebody else,” said Bausen.
“No doubt about that,” said Van Veeteren.
A cold wind suddenly swept through the garden.
“Do you want to go indoors?” asked Bausen.
“No.”

“And you don’t have any suspicions?”
Bausen shook his head and tasted his whiskey and water.
“Too much water?”
“No. Not even any... little glimmers of a suspicion?”
Bausen sighed.
“I’ve been in this job for more than twenty-five years. Half

the population I know by name, and I know how they spend
their lives—the rest I recognize by sight. There might be a
thousand or two, newcomers and the like, whom I haven’t got
a finger on, but apart from that...For Christ’s sake! I’ve
thought about every one of them, I reckon, and come up with
absolutely nothing. Not a damn thing!”

“It’s not easy to imagine people as murderers,” said Van
Veeteren. “Not until you meet them face-to-face, that is. Besides, he doesn’t have to be from here, does he?”

Bausen thought for a moment.
“You might be right there, of course, but I doubt it. I’d
stake all I’ve got on his being one of our own. Anyway, it
would be nice to be able to come up with something useful.
For Christ’s sake, we’ve spent thousands of hours on this
damned Eggers!”

“There’s no justice in this job,” said Van Veeteren with a
smile.
“Not a trace,” said Bausen. “We might as well put our faith
in the general public. They always come up with something.”
“You may be right,” said Van Veeteren.
Bausen started scraping out his pipe, looking as if he were
turning something over in his mind.
“Do you play chess?” he asked.
Van Veeteren closed his eyes in delight. The icing on the
cake, he thought.
Better make the most of everything that comes along. It
looked suspiciously as if things might get more difficult.
It wasn’t only the radio station and the local press that had
taken Chief of Police Bausen’s orders
ad notam.
On Sunday,
several national newspapers issued a serious exhortation to the
conscientious burghers of Kaalbringen to go to the police
without delay with any scrap of information that might possibly lead to the rapid capture of the Axman.
When Inspector Kropke and Constable Mooser compiled
the results of the general public’s first day of sleuthing, quite a
lot of things were crystal clear. It is true that Kropke had not
had time to prepare any overhead projector transparencies
before he addressed his colleagues in the conference room that
evening, but everything was neatly set out in his notebook
with detachable pages and dark-blue leather covers:

1
) In the course of the day, forty-eight persons had
reported to the police station and testified about various
aspects of the evening of the murder. Of them, eleven had
been interrogated previously. Six of the remaining thirtyseven were considered to be irrelevant because they were
in the wrong part of town (three), or had been out at the
wrong time (two) or had got the date wrong (one—old
Mrs. Loewe, a widow, had been out to buy some cat food
on the Monday morning, and had observed and noted
down several mysterious characters with axes hidden
under their overcoats).

2
) The remaining forty-two witnesses, of all ages, had
been without exception in the area—Langvej, Hoistraat,
Michel’s Steps, Fisherman’s Square, Harbor Esplanade,
municipal woods—at some time between 2300 and 2400
hours. Everyone’s name, address and telephone number
had been meticulously recorded, and they had also been
forbidden by Kropke to leave the town and its environs
for the coming week, in case any of them should be
required to present themselves for supplementary
questioning. (A measure that smacked very much of
abuse of power, of course, but Van Veeteren suppressed
his objections. He was not in charge of the investigation,
after all.)

3
) All the witnesses had at some time or other and in
various locations noticed one another, in accordance with
an extremely complicated and potentially even more
involved pattern that Kropke had failed to program into
his PCB 4000, despite repeated attempts. (The fact that
this had led to a degree of annoyance and frustration
was something Constable Mooser could not have failed
to appreciate during the late afternoon, the hierarchy
and pecking order of the police force being what it is.)

4
) The earlier evidence provided by Miss deWeutz and
Mrs. Aalger, who had been conducting a conversation in
Dooms Alley and had noticed Ernst Simmel walking
across the square, had now been confirmed by four new
witnesses. Two couples, who had crossed the square at
around about 2320, albeit in different directions, had also
noticed a lone pedestrian who, now that they came to
think about it, could be identified as the deceased
property developer.

5
) Two teenagers on scooters (as likely as not in
circumstances that placed them somewhat to the wrong
side of the letter of the law) had ridden across the square
toward the Esplanade about a minute later, and claimed to
have passed a person who, to all appearances, seems to
have been Simmel.

6
) A courting couple, of which the lady for certain
reasons wished to remain anonymous and therefore
preferred to confirm the man’s account by telephone
rather than appearing in person at the police station, had
been sitting, or more likely semi-recumbent, in a car down
by the marina between approximately 2300 and 0100, and
at 2330 or thereabouts had seen a man smoking at the edge
of the quay, scarcely more than ten yards away from their
car. Both were more or less convinced that it was Ernst
Simmel.

7
) Up in Hoistraat, three new witnesses (to add to the
other two) had seen the murdered man on the way from
The Blue Ship. In addition, all three had observed one
or possibly two unaccompanied male persons; in all
probability this was a case of witnesses observing one
another.

8
) One lone witness had seen an unaccompanied man
come out of Hoistraat and walk down Michel’s Steps
sometime between 2310 and 2315, in all probability Ernst
Simmel. It is true that the distance between the witness
and the person observed was some twenty yards; but since
the man was under a streetlight at the time, the witness
had been able to register a fairly clear picture of him. The
most interesting aspect of this picture was probably that
the man in question had been wearing a hat with a broad
brim, which had kept his face shaded. This was one of the
facts suggesting that this sighting was actually of the
murderer; if that really was the case, it was the only direct
sighting thus far. No male person wearing a hat had
figured in any of the other reports submitted by the
citizens of Kaalbringen frequenting their town by night.

The name of the witness was Vincent Peerhoovens,
and unfortunately he had been somewhat inebriated at
the time of his observation and hence not entirely
reliable—a fact he freely admitted and one that was
confirmed by several of the other witnesses. Nevertheless,
his account must naturally be regarded as extremely
interesting with regard to further investigations.

9
) Perhaps the most significant piece of evidence to
emerge on this Sunday—which had been Chief Inspector
Bausen’s view, at least, when he passed comment on the
material summarized by Kropke—came from four young
people in their early teens who had been strolling through
the woods from the harbor toward Rikken—in other
words, the very path the investigation was concerned
with. They appeared to have passed by the scene of the
murder shortly after 2340. Since Ernst Simmel had been
smoking a cigarette down by the marina about ten
minutes earlier, according to witness number six, and
since none of the young people appeared to have seen
him, it could be concluded that when they passed the
scene of the crime, the murderer had just struck and was
presumably crouching over his victim in the bushes,
waiting for them to go away. (On realizing this, one of the
girls had burst into a fit of hysterical sobs—the very girl,
incidentally, for whose sake they had avoided contacting
the police sooner. Her father was the pastor at the local
Assembly of God; and at the time in question, she ought
to have been at home in bed at her friend’s house [another
of the girls in the party of young people] instead of
wandering about in the woods with a group of boys.)

Whatever, this piece of evidence suggested that the
time of the murder could most probably be fixed at 2340—
give or take a minute or so.

“We ought to give Meuritz a cigar,” said Van Veeteren. “It
looks as if he was spot-on regarding the time of death. What I
want to know is how the murderer managed to cross the
square. I mean, there were—let me see—six or seven people
there at the critical moment.”

“Eight,” said Kropke. “At least eight. He probably walked
along the arcade. There’s a line of columns along the western
side of the square, the Waalska Building—I don’t know if
you’ve noticed them, Chief Inspector. The lighting is pretty
bad there. None of our witnesses went that way.”

“As if built for a murderer,” sighed Bausen. “Well, gentlemen, what do you think? A good day?”
Mooser scratched himself behind the ear with a pencil and
yawned. Kropke studied his notes. Van Veeteren drained the
last drops from his cardboard cup and registered that there was
a world of difference between stale, lukewarm coffee and
white Meursault.
“Hard to say,” he said. “At least we’ve acquired a great deal
of information. And tomorrow is another day.”
“Monday,” Mooser made so bold as to point out.
“He could have been waiting there in the woods,” said
Kropke, who had evidently been following his own line of
thought. “We shouldn’t dismiss that possibility out of hand.”
“Nevertheless,” said Van Veeteren, “I think I’d like to conduct a series of little interviews now. Unless our leader has
other tasks lined up for me, of course?”
“None at all,” said Bausen. “Good police officers know how
to keep themselves usefully occupied.”
Mooser yawned again.
“You were his legal adviser, is that right?” asked Van Veeteren,
taking a toothpick out of his breast pocket.
“More a good friend of the family,” smiled the lawyer.
“One doesn’t exclude the other, does it?”
“Not at all.”
Eugen Klingfort’s office had the touch of a luxury cabin
about it. Bright teak panels with heavy brass fittings here and
there. Built-in bookcases with rows of leather-bound volumes,
every one of them unopened since they’d left the printer’s. A
leather-covered filing cabinet, a bar counter that could fold into
the desk, a Wassermann/Frisch safe.
The incarnation of bad taste, thought Van Veeteren. The
more money they have to satisfy it with, the more ghastly it
gets.
“And for how long?” he asked.
“How long? Oh, you mean...let’s see, twenty-five or
thirty years, something like that. Ever since I established
myself in Kaalbringen, I think it’s fair to say. Would you like a
cigar, Chief Inspector?”
“No, thank you,” said Van Veeteren. “What state were his
affairs in?”
“His affairs? What do you mean?”
“I want to know what state Ernst Simmel’s affairs were in.
You were his financial adviser, after all; I thought we’d agreed
on that.”
Klingfort lay back in his chair and let his chins rest on his
chest. A bit on the corpulent side, thought Van Veeteren.
“His affairs were in perfectly good shape.”
“And his will?”
“There is no will. He didn’t need one. Grete and the children will each get a share of his estate; there are no unusual circumstances.”
“How much are we talking about?”
“Now, listen here, Mr. Veeteren—”
“Van Veeteren.”
“—Van Veeteren. I’ve already wasted enough time on that
with Inspector Kropke. If you imagine that I have any intention of going through everything once again just because you
are a rank higher, well...”
“Well what?” asked Van Veeteren.
“Well, you’re deluding yourself.”
“Thank you, Mr. Klingfort. I gather there must be something fishy hidden away, but we’ll no doubt be able to track it
down without your help.”
Eugen Klingfort snorted and lit a cigar.
“Let me make one thing crystal clear to you,” he said after
creating a few thick clouds of smoke. “There isn’t the slightest
trace of any irregularity with regard to Ernst’s affairs or his
estate.”
“So you exclude the possibility that the murderer could
have had financial motives?” asked Van Veeteren.
“Yes.”
“But were there not people who owed him money?”
“Of course he had debtors. But not the kind of debts you
are implying.”
“What am I implying?” asked Van Veeteren, placing his
toothpick on the arm of his chair. “Tell me!”
Klingfort didn’t answer, but his face had started to turn
somewhat redder.
“What do you think about the murder?” asked Van
Veeteren.
“A lunatic,” replied Klingfort without hesitation. “I’ve said
that right from the start. Make sure you catch him, so that lawabiding citizens can wander about the streets at night without
fear of assault.”
“Did you go to prostitutes with him?” asked Van Veeteren.
The question came just as Klingfort was inhaling, and the
lawyer had a coughing fit that Van Veeteren realized must have
been quite painful. Klingfort stood up as quickly as his massive
frame allowed, and staggered over to the window. When he
came back, he took a swig of soda water from the bar shelf.
“What the hell do you mean by that?” he said when he had
recovered, trying to bellow. “This is clearly nothing short of
abuse of power.”
“It’s public knowledge that Simmel used prostitutes,” said
Van Veeteren, unconcerned. “I just wondered if you could give
me any names.”
“Would you please get out now and leave me in peace.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it. Sit down and answer my questions.
This is a murder inquiry and I have the authority to take you to
the station if I want to. Don’t get so high and mighty, Mr.
Klingfort. I’m used to shooting down much higher fliers than
I’ve noticed around here.”
Eugen Klingfort remained standing in the middle of the
room with his chins on his chest. He looks like a sick walrus,
thought Van Veeteren.
“You’re spilling ash on the carpet,” he said. “Well? I’m waiting for some names of those women.”
“I have...I have nothing to do with that side of Ernst’s
life,” said Klingfort, going back to his desk chair. “Nothing! I
suppose he might have gone off with the odd one of...the
usual ones... occasionally. I have no doubt the chief of police
has their names.”
“I want the ones who are not known to the police,” said
Van Veeteren. “You are comfortably married, Mr. Klingfort.
Wife, children, your own house—don’t you realize that I can
make things very difficult for you if you insist on being
willful?”
The solicitor rummaged in his desk drawer. He produced a
scrap of paper and scribbled down something, then slid it over
to Van Veeteren.
“But I can assure you that this has nothing at all to do with
the murder.” He wiped a bead of sweat from his brow. “Absolutely nothing.”
I didn’t think for a moment it had, thought Van Veeteren
when he emerged into the street. But a shit needs to be
reminded that he’s a shit now and then.