The Stranglers Honeymoon (20 page)

‘And you’d never seen him before?’

‘No.’

‘What did he look like?’

She thought for a moment.

‘I don’t really remember,’ she said. ‘Quite tall, quite powerfully built, I seem to recall. But pretty ordinary at the same time. There was nothing especially remarkable about him, in any case. No, I can’t really describe him.’

‘Try,’ Münster urged her.

‘Darkish – well, fairly dark. Between forty and fifty, maybe . . .’

‘Beard? Glasses?’

‘No. Er, yes, maybe a little beard . . .’

‘Would you recognize him if you saw him again?’

Vargas sucked in her lips, and said nothing for a while.

‘I suppose I might do,’ she said. ‘But I doubt it . . . He looked pretty much like everybody else.’

‘And you’d never met him before?’

‘I don’t think so, no.’

‘Were they holding on to each other? Arm-in-arm or anything like that?’

‘I don’t remember . . . No, I don’t think so.’

‘And Martina Kammerle said nothing at all about him?’

‘No, I’m sure she didn’t.’

‘Have you spoken to any of your friends about this?’

‘No. My best friend’s in Australia at the moment. She won’t be back until March. She’s an artist.’

‘I understand,’ said Münster again, wondering at the same time what there was to understand.

He leaned back on his desk chair and switched off the tape recorder he’d switched on when Vargas entered the room.

‘Okay,’ he said. ‘I think we’ll leave it at that for the time being. Many thanks for coming to help us along the way, fröken Vargas. If you remember anything else, don’t hesitate to contact us again. It’s possible we might be in touch with you again.’

‘Thank you,’ said Irene Vargas. ‘Sorry I had so little to offer.’

Yes, thought Münster after she had gone. It really wasn’t much at all.

Martina Kammerle had been out walking with a man in Maardam in the middle of August.

That was all. And to make matters worse, that was more or less the sum total of what they had discovered about the case in general so far.

Intendent Münster sighed. He got up and walked over to the window. Stood there, as he usually did when an investigation seemed to be stuck in the mud. Perhaps he was trying to create a sort of illusion of having an overview by gazing out over the town: that was a thought that had occurred to him before. In any case, it looked pretty grey out there. It was only half past three, but darkness was already on the way in. Rain was in the air, he noticed – but was doubtless waiting for the right moment to bucket down, when people were going home from work. That was what usually happened.

Reinhart nodded grimly.

‘So they admit that they’ve been behaving like donkeys, do they?’ he said. ‘That’s something to be grateful for, I suppose.’

‘They don’t put it quite like that,’ said Krause. ‘But basically, that’s what they are saying. It’ll be the welfare officer who’s made the scapegoat – she was the one who arranged the school transfer. But you have to wonder . . .’

He hesitated and leafed through his notebook.

‘What?’ said Rooth. ‘What do you have to wonder?’

Krause tried to glare at him, but seemed to realize that he was too young to glare.

‘Whether it was pure chance that she disappeared when she did,’ he said instead. ‘Or if they are connected, as it were . . . That Monica Kammerle vanished because she was changing schools. Of course it must have to do with what happened to her mother, but why did Monica leave Bunge Grammar School at exactly the same time?’

Nobody had any immediate comment to make about that. The question was presumably something nobody had thought about before – or at least, it was for Moreno. As she thought it over, she allowed her eyes to wander around the room and noted that all her colleagues who had been on the case were still there: Reinhart, Münster, Jung, Rooth, Krause and herself. The meeting was taking place in Reinhart’s office, and they had just been hearing the reports on their sallies into the world of education. Her own and Krause’s.

‘Coincidence,’ decided Reinhart, clasping his hands behind the back of his head. ‘Even if I’m sceptical about the concept, I think we are dealing with two things which just happened to take place at the same time – but for Christ’s sake correct me if I’m wrong. It’s pretty bad luck for that welfare officer as well, let’s not forget that. In normal circumstances they would surely have discovered that the girl was missing rather earlier?’

‘Yes,’ said Krause. ‘No doubt they would. I agree with the chief inspector, by the way. And I don’t think she made the most of the opportunity to vanish purely because it presented itself. She doesn’t seem to be that type. But of course, I’m only guessing.’

‘The worst thing is that we still don’t have a clue what’s happened to her,’ said Münster. ‘Where the hell is the girl?’

‘You mean you believe she’s still alive?’ said Moreno in surprise.

‘Not believe,’ he said. ‘Hope.’

Reinhart dug a document out of the pile of papers on his desk.

‘Let me just inform you about this,’ he said, ‘before we hear what Rooth and Jung have to say. We’re busy sifting through old cases that are a bit like the one we’re wrestling with just now. I’ve had some help from Intendent Klemmerer from Missing Persons – both solved and unsolved cases. Out-and-out stranglers aren’t all that common, after all. We’ve only had fifteen of them in the whole country during the last ten years – I thought that was a sufficient time span. Twelve are solved, three as yet unsolved, and I’ve just received a hundred-and-twenty pages of data about all those cases from Klemmerer. I’ll try to glance through them before tomorrow. A fundamental thought is that we can’t be sure that Martina Kammerle is the murderer’s first victim – she could be number two or number five or number any-bloody-thing. Please make any comments you might have now, by all means: but we shall be coming back to this topic tomorrow when I’ve done a bit of weeding out.’

‘Did you say twelve–three?’ asked Rooth.

‘Yes,’ said Reinhart. ‘It’s possible that several of those cases are nothing like ours, so those numbers are likely to shrink a bit. This is a shot in the dark, of course, but when we have so few damned facts to go on, it seems well worth a try. Don’t you think?’

‘No doubt about that,’ said Rooth. ‘The solved cases must be quite easy to check on, in any case. It’s just a matter of hauling in the stranglers and squeezing an alibi out of them.’

‘It might not be all that easy,’ said Jung. ‘We don’t know exactly when she died.’

‘That’s true,’ said Reinhart. ‘But if they’ve been found guilty of murder we can cross our fingers and hope they are still under lock and key. But in any case, Rooth’s probably right: the unsolved cases are the most interesting ones. But as I said, we shall go into that tomorrow. Tell us what you’ve been doing all day in Moerckstraat instead!’

‘With pleasure,’ said Rooth, opening his briefcase. ‘Let’s see. Comrade Jung and yours truly have been sweating away and going through the flat where the murder took place with a fine-tooth comb, searching for names. As you can imagine that involved both patience and cunning – but to cut a long story short, here are the results!’

He produced a bundle of photocopies, and handed them round.

‘Forty-six names, all of them originally handwritten by either mother or daughter Kammerle. We’ve listed them in alphabetical order. The letters in brackets after individual names indicate where they were found. K equals kitchen. M means mother’s bedroom – or the murder room, if you prefer that. D is the daughter’s room, and L the living room. We’ve edited out several names from inside schoolbooks or of public figures such as Winston Churchill, Socrates and Whitney Houston. Maybe I should mention that more than half the names come from a little address book in the victim’s bedside table. So, any questions?’

‘This verges on the impressive,’ said Moreno, looking at the sheet of paper she had just been handed. ‘If we’re lucky, the murderer’s name will be one of these. But of course, we have no idea which.’

‘Exactly,’ said Rooth. ‘One out of forty-six. We’ve had worse odds than that, I suspect.’

‘We certainly have,’ said Reinhart. ‘Anyway, take the lists home and work your way through them. Obviously we shall have to investigate every single name in due course, but we’re not going to start this evening. Is there anything else we need to discuss before we draw the curtains?’

‘Just one thing, perhaps,’ said Jung. ‘Shouldn’t we put the girl’s picture in the newspapers as well? And on the telly? Surely there’s no need to keep quiet about her disappearance any more.’

‘That’s already been taken care of,’ said Reinhart. ‘She’ll be in tomorrow’s papers – and maybe even on the late news this evening.’

‘I have the feeling we’ll have this bastard cornered any time now,’ said Rooth. ‘Today we’ve been as efficient as an earthquake.’

‘Does anybody else have an intelligent thought?’ asked Reinhart, looking round the room. ‘If not, you’re welcome to clear off. We’ll meet under a cold star tomorrow morning – and never fear, we’ll solve this case sooner or later.’

Later, Münster thought. I’ll put money on that.

18

After the brief run-through in Reinhart’s office on Tuesday afternoon, Inspector Rooth paid a visit to the gym in the basement of the police station.

He pumped iron and pedalled away for almost twenty minutes, then showered and loitered in the sauna for forty. Sweated himself dry, rested and got dressed – almost another hour’s effort.

When he emerged into Wejmarstraat it was still only half past seven, and he had plenty of time. His table at Kraus was reserved for half past eight, and since for some incomprehensible reason it wasn’t raining, he went for a long and invigorating walk along Wejmargraacht and back – as far as the allotments next to the Richter Stadium.

Why not, now that the fitness gremlin had sneaked its way into his being?

As he was walking, he tried to imagine how the evening would turn out. He had no difficulty in conjuring up the face of Jasmina Teuwers in his mind’s eye. No difficulty at all. Her high cheekbones. Her long neck and blonde hair. Her blue-green eyes that were so bright, he had been tongue-tied the first time he gazed into them. Her smile, that was like sunrise over the sea.

Che bella donna!
Rooth thought – they had first met when they both attended a course in Italian. That was no coincidence, of course: last summer he had phoned his good friend Maarten Hoeght, whose job involved organizing evening courses, and asked which beginners’ courses attracted the most eligible young ladies. French and Italian, Hoeght had declared without a moment’s hesitation: and since Rooth had studied French at grammar school and achieved less than satisfactory grades, he had chosen Italian.

Italiano!
The language of Dante and Boccaccio. And Corleone. One evening a week. Thursdays, between eight and ten o’clock. At the very first class it had struck him that choosing this course was a stroke of genius. Twenty-two women, three men: one of the other men was a Greek Orthodox priest in his sixties; the other was a cripple, but had nevertheless done a runner after only two sessions.

Easy meat, polyglot Rooth had thought: and he still thought so two months later.

Like the experienced if somewhat wounded courtesan he was, he had proceeded with caution. He had restricted himself to non-alcoholic drinks, and chatted urbanely with three different women on three different Thursday evenings: but in the end nature and fate had asserted themselves, and he had selected Jasmina Teuwers.

It was after the latest class the previous week that he had eventually plucked up enough courage to ask – without any beating about the bush – if she might be prepared to have dinner with him: nothing special. When, after an exceedingly brief hesitation (which wasn’t really a hesitation at all, Rooth decided, but merely a perfectly understandable palpitation), she said yes, he had felt once again like the awkwardly blushing fifteen-year-old he had been at school dances.

Incredible, Rooth thought. The wings of love will transport you through fire and water. He wondered what such thoughts might be in Italian. Perhaps that was a question they could discuss while eating their dessert?

Amore
. . .
acqua
. . .
fue
. . . ?

He arrived at Kraus a quarter of an hour early, but the table was free and so he sat down and waited.

As he sat there he recalled the little distinction he and Jung had discussed that morning. Facing up to facts of life and death, or waving two fingers at them.

What was his own approach, in fact? Did he want to face up to the facts of his own life? Did he dare to?

He ordered a beer, and thought about it.

Forty-two is old. Unmarried, not engaged. Detective inspector with prospects of promotion to intendent in three or four years’ time.

What difference did it make, for God’s sake? Inspector or intendent?

A few hundred a month more. What would he do with the extra money? Buy a bigger aquarium?

Not much more is going to happen in my life, he thought in a moment of grim insight. Unless I’m shot in the course of duty, that is. That’s always a possibility.

And nothing much has really happened thus far either, he added. Nothing to speak of, that is. Why don’t I have a wife and children and a context, like Münster and Reinhart?

Even Jung seemed to have solid ground under his feet, since he moved in with Maureen. Why was it only Inspector Rooth who chased after women without success, year after year?

But then again, he thought philosophically and took a swig of beer, then again it’s not a hundred per cent clear that such aspirations are worth bothering about. Just look at my poor sisters!

Rooth had four sisters. They were younger than he was, and had all been in such a rush to find a man and a house and children that you could be forgiven for thinking it was some sort of competition. At the last Christmas dinner at his seventy-odd-year-old parents’ place out at Penderdixte, if he remembered and had counted correctly, the number of nephews and nieces amounted to nine. And at least two of the sisters had been pregnant. His father had commented that the situation was very Icelandic – with a meaningful look at Rooth’s mother, who had come over from Rejkjavik shortly after the war. Or maybe he had gone there to fetch her: there were several uncertainties in the family history.