Grave Intent (20 page)

Jan started from his nightmare with a scream. His T-shirt was soaked with sweat, his head ached, and he was shivering as if in an ice bath. He had kicked the covers off the bed and was clawing at the pillow with his right hand.

He took deep breaths. He needed a moment to realize that he wasn’t in that church anymore. Betty was dead. He had survived.

He stood up wearily. He trudged over to the closet and pulled on a dry T-shirt. In the bathroom, he let warm water run through his hair until the memory began to blur. He sat on the couch with a washcloth on his forehead and turned on the TV. The third time this week. He was barely getting any sleep. He wouldn’t be able to keep this up for much longer.

Lying on the coffee table was Kerima Elmas’s business card. He always used to be able to work things out for himself. Girl problems, trouble with his boss, a grisly homicide. When things got really bad he’d go get drunk with a friend or maybe end up getting in a fistfight. At some point the bad mood would be driven out. But the last case had left him with scars that were too deep and raw to leave behind. Five beers or a brawl weren’t going to make the nightmares disappear.

It was 5:14 in the morning. Too early for a phone call. Yet Kerima had told him to try her anytime.

He picked up the phone and dialed her number.

“Hello?” The psychologist’s voice sounded sleepy.

“Frau Elmas, Jan Tommen here.” He was relieved she’d picked up. “Apologies for the time, but you did encourage me to call whenever I’m having trouble.”

“It’s all right, Herr Tommen.” It sounded like she was fighting back a yawn. “I’m used to restless nights. How can I help you?”

“I was thinking that I was making progress and getting over what happened with Betty dying, but lately it’s been getting worse.”

“My guess is, it has to do with this grave murderer. The stress you’re feeling about this case carries over to other matters.” The weariness was receding from her voice. “Perhaps we should talk a little bit about the period right after Betty’s death. What did you do after you realized your girlfriend was dead?”

“In those first few days after her death? I got rid of everything in my apartment having to do with her. Photos of us together, clothes she left here, and all those little things you give each other when you’re in a relationship. I tossed it all in a big garbage bag, got up real early, and threw it into the trash can outside right before the garbage truck came. So there’d be no way I could weaken and go fish it all back out of the trash.”

“Did that help?”

“No. You can’t forget a person for good just by throwing out their clothes and a few mementos. When that person is buried so deep in your heart, they’re a part of you. Beyond salvaging.” Jan’s voice grew softer. “Sometimes I have nightmares and relive what went down in the church, again and again—but sometimes memories of better times surface. When that happens, I don’t just see her face, I can
sense
her. I’m lying in bed, stroking her back, and feeling her soft skin under my fingertips. Her warm body touching mine makes me tremble. My fingers glide through her hair; it slides across the back of my hand like a warm breeze. I close my eyes and feel her with all my senses. Her scent surrounds us, like sunflowers, a little strong, with a hint of jasmine mixed in. These dreams are so intense,” Jan added, sounding distraught, “it’s as if she’s still right here with me. When I wake up and turn on my side, I reach to pull her close, breathe in her scent, but then I realize that she’s dead, and all the pain comes rushing back.”

“What do you do then?”

“Cry, scream, tear at the bedcovers. Sometimes I head over to my punching bag in the living room and pummel it till my arms ache. But mostly I just get up, standing there groggy and blank, drag myself to work, and try to make it through the day.” Jan’s head sank. “Time heals all wounds, they say. Every day I keep hoping it will get a little better, that the memories fade, the pain will get more bearable. But every morning when I wake alone in my bed? It just gets worse.”

“Worse in what way?”

“When Betty was still alive, the way she smelled was always with me. It was this perfume that permeated everything. She only had to sleep over for it to stay with me. A kiss or a brief hug was enough. Yet after I have a dream about her, her scent evaporates immediately and becomes only this distant memory. So one day I got up and went to one of the bigger perfume shops. I spent the whole morning there, sampled all the women’s perfumes. I ended up with thirty of those samples, but I finally found it.” Jan closed his eyes and inhaled as if he could smell the perfume just by the power of recall. “It’s from Lancôme. La Vie Est Belle.”

“Life is beautiful,”
Dr. Elmas translated.

“Yes. How ironic.”

“Did you buy it?”

“No,” Jan said. “It was too hard on me. Like actual physical pain.”

“But why not, if you associate so many fond memories with it?”

“Maybe I had a moment of clarity, became conscious that the perfume would only make things worse. Something was telling me, Betty is dead, I would never get back my time with her. She wasn’t a part of my life anymore.”

“Oh, she is definitely part of your life,” Dr. Elmas remarked.

“How so? She’s lying in a cemetery.”

“It doesn’t matter that Betty is dead. You think of her when you go to bed and when you get up. You dream of her. There’s a scent that reminds you of her. These are all things that form a strong connection to a person. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, since you can draw a certain strength from memories like that. You determine how you remember that person, whether it’s good or bad, what you will carry with you, what you’d rather forget. You narrow your memories of Betty to the best moments you had with her. Again, it isn’t a bad thing. But you also hate yourself for shooting her and ending your time on earth with her that way.”

“I killed her. That’s the truth.”

“That’s not the problem. You refuse to see that you
had
to shoot Betty. Consider what you did objectively, as if you never knew her. Then judge it from that angle.”

“What if I arrive at the same conclusion?”

“Then you will never be free of it.”

Bergman entered police headquarters with a stack of Sunday papers under his arm. Although the rest of the city was enjoying a typically slow Sunday morning, things were as busy as any normal workday in the Kripo. No one was taking time off until the grave murderer was caught. If Robin Cordes’s notebook provided that decisive clue, then he’d be happy to push through all vacation requests.

On the way to his office, he ran into Kerima Elmas. He put on a smile that was rather friendly—by his standards, anyway. “Good morning, Dr. Elmas.” He was in no mood for a conversation about managing the staff, so he hoped she was there for some other reason.

“Morning,” she replied, yawning, a hand over her mouth.

“At least someone’s had fun on a Saturday night,” Bergman muttered as he headed into his office. He set down his papers, turned on the computer, and made his way to the coffee machine.

Out in the hallway, Bergman waved at a few colleagues. Jan was coming out of the break room, yawning, his cup half-full. He looked both exhausted and feebleminded. He seemed to have fallen asleep on his feet.

“Morning, boss,” he said, shuffling by Bergman. When Jan saw Kerima in the hallway, he lifted his head and waved at her. His weariness vanished for a moment. He smiled at her.

The psychologist’s face lit up at the sight of Jan. She waved back and then disappeared into an office. As soon as Kerima left his sight, Jan’s head sank down again, his eyes nearly closed. He yawned again.

“Oh, man,” Bergman muttered to himself. He really did not need the headache of those two getting together at a time like this.

Patrick stood up on the table and clapped his hands. The conversations silenced, all heads turning to him.

“Good morning,” he greeted all present in a loud voice. “We have two critical things to get done today. We’re going to split up into two teams. One team needs to track down a name for every telephone number in Robin’s notebook. The prosecutor’s office has promised us full support, meaning we can requisition phone providers’ databases. Only abbreviations or first names were written down—I want to see a list with full names attached to each number. These can then be compared to our database so that we can see who’s carrying any offenses. Get Max Kornecker on board for the computer search.

“The second team will deal with the six players at Robin’s poker game. One of them might be the murderer. Thanks to an informant, we’ve been able to identify one player as coming from the red-light district. For all others, at present we only have the restaurant owner’s descriptions and our initial sketches. They’ll have to be matched against any relevant criminal records. It’s likely all the poker players are in Robin’s notebook, but we can’t count on that.” Patrick looked at his watch. “It’s a little after eight. We’ll regroup every two hours and compare notes, beginning at ten. I’m inviting Detective Tommen, so that he can know the latest.”

He clapped his hands again. “Get cracking.”

It had been one hard Sunday. Jan felt swamped by Patrick’s reams of information, but that was an improvement over groping around in the dark like before. His once-despised colleague’s teams were fast and precise. They were inching closer to the murderer by the hour. The only thing missing to round out such a perfect day was a good meal—and Chandu would see to that. He took his role as host quite seriously.

Seductive aromas wafted through his friend’s apartment, and even Zoe’s thick cigarette smoke couldn’t dispel them. Jan waved at her as he headed for Chandu in the kitchen. He gave the big guy a heartfelt slap on the shoulder and dared to peek in the oven.

“Alsatian tart again?” Jan grabbed a beer. “Don’t get me wrong. I like it, but normally that chef’s pride of yours doesn’t let you serve the same thing twice.”

Chandu moved so close to Jan that their heads were almost touching. “Zoe called me this afternoon,” he whispered. “She asked me to make the tart again. Because she liked it so much.”

“Wait. You mean Zoe gave you a compliment?”

“Kind of creepy, isn’t it?”

“Makes you worry. Are you sure you weren’t dreaming it?”

“I wouldn’t rule that out.”

“We should tread carefully here.”

“I was going to get my gun. Just to be safe.”

The beep of a timer interrupted their talk.

“Food’s ready,” Chandu shouted out into the room. “Sit yourselves down. I’ll slice it up and bring it out in a sec.”

No one said a word over the next ten minutes as they turned their attention to the food. Jan didn’t want to disturb the meal with the investigation’s latest findings. They had the whole evening for that. Only when Chandu was pulling the first espresso from his machine did Max turn on the projector. A list of names appeared.

“These are our suspects,” Jan began. “Thanks to Robin Cordes’s notebook, we not only have the names of the poker players but also found phone numbers and e-mail addresses.”

Jan wiped his fingers on a napkin. “Let’s go through them. Number one is Hermann Wierend.”