Hour of the Wolf (11 page)

‘I need to summarize a few things. I didn’t get hold of fröken Frey until quite late. How are things going for you?’

‘Not all that well,’ said Moreno with a sigh. ‘To tell you the truth, I don’t think the strategy we’re following is exactly top-notch.’

‘I know,’ said Reinhart. ‘But if you have a better one you should have come out with it before you crossed the threshold. Correct me if I’m wrong.’

‘Yep,’ said Moreno. ‘No doubt I should have done. But whatever: it’s pretty hard going. We’ve chatted to sixteen friends of Erich Van Veeteren so far . . . In accordance with the list of priorities his fiancée gave us. All of them here in Maardam – we’ve sent Bollmert out into the sticks, and he’s due back on Friday. Nobody has come up with anything of interest yet, and nobody seems to be hiding anything. Nothing to do with the case, that is.’

‘Alibis?’ said Reinhart.

‘How nice of you to ask,’ said Moreno. ‘You don’t exactly make yourself popular when you ask people to provide alibis – but then, maybe it isn’t our job to make ourselves popular, as
The Chief Inspector
used to say. Anyway, everything seems above board so far. We haven’t had a chance to check anything yet, of course – but I suppose that’s not the point?’

‘Not so long as we don’t suspect there’s something nasty hiding in the woodwork,’ said Reinhart. ‘I take it there are a few dodgy characters among these names?’

‘There are all sorts,’ said Moreno. ‘No doubt some of them are not exactly pleased at the fact that Marlene Frey handed the address book over to the enemy without further ado. But we are ignoring everything that has nothing to do with the case. As instructed.’

‘As instructed,’ agreed Reinhart. He leaned back in his desk chair and thought for a while with his hands clasped behind the back of his neck. ‘If you’d like to have a session with Marlene Frey instead, that’s fine by me,’ he said. ‘There are two things that have wounded her in life: police officers and men. At least you’re only half of that.’

Moreno nodded and said nothing for a while.

‘What do you think?’ she said eventually. ‘What do you think happened to Erich?’

Reinhart bit the stem of his pipe and scratched his temples.

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I haven’t the slightest idea, that’s the worrying bit. We usually have some kind of suspicion of what’s going on . . . An indication, at least.’

‘But you haven’t a clue?’

‘No,’ said Reinhart. ‘Do you?’

Moreno shook her head.

‘Does Marlene Frey know something that she’s holding back?’ she asked.

Reinhart pondered again. Tried to replay the afternoon’s conversation for his inner ear.

‘No,’ he said. ‘I don’t think so. Mind you, you might have a different impression – who knows what to make of female intuition?’

‘I know all about that,’ said Moreno. ‘Have you spoken to
The Chief Inspector
again?’

‘Not since yesterday,’ said Reinhart. ‘I might ring him this evening. It feels really uncomfortable, poking our noses into his son’s dealings. I mean, he hasn’t exactly been your blue-eyed innocent. It’s not nice, sifting through that dirty linen, and it can’t be much fun for him sitting at home mourning, and knowing what we’re up to. Holy shit, what a mess!’

‘Is it really all that dirty nowadays?’ Moreno asked. ‘His linen, I mean.’

‘Maybe not,’ said Reinhart, standing up. ‘It was a bit dirtier a few years ago at any rate. It’s possible that it’s exactly how she says it is, fröken Frey – that they are following the straight and narrow nowadays. It’s just a pity that he didn’t get a bit further along that path. But then, you have to agree with Strindberg and feel sorry for the human race.’

He went over to the window. Prised apart a couple of the slats in the Venetian blind and looked out over the town and the dark sky.

‘How many of the people he met last week – who we
know
he met last week – have you been in contact with?’

‘Seven,’ said Moreno without hesitation. ‘And as many again tomorrow, if all goes to plan.’

‘All right,’ said Reinhart, letting go of the slats. ‘What we’re looking for is just the end of a thread that we can follow up. We’ll find one sooner or later, it’s just a question of being patient . . . That’s not exactly unusual, is it?’

‘Not unusual at all,’ agreed Moreno. ‘Although it would help if things started moving pretty soon. So that we get an indication, as we’ve said.’

‘Some hopes,’ said Reinhart. ‘Anyway, that’ll do for today. I seem to remember that I have a family. At least, I had one this morning. How are things with you nowadays?’

‘I’m married to my work,’ said Moreno.

Reinhart looked at her with raised eyebrows.

‘You must file for a divorce,’ he said in all seriousness. ‘Can’t you see that he’s just exploiting you?’

On Thursday evening they made the first rather more formal attempt to sum up the state of the investigation. Five-and-a-half days had passed since Erich Van Veeteren’s body had been found in the bushes at the car park out at Dikken. Nine days since it had been put there – unless they were much mistaken. So it was high time. Even if they hadn’t discovered very much so far.

They started with the victim’s fiancée.

Marlene Frey had been pinned down several times by both Reinhart and Moreno – and been shown the greatest possible amount of consideration and respect, of course – and as far as both of them could judge, she had done everything in her power to supply them with information and assist the police in every way. There were no grounds at all for complaining about her willingness to cooperate. Especially if one took the circumstances into consideration, and they did just that.

The number of interviews with friends and acquaintances of the deceased had risen to the considerable total of seventy-two – a rather motley collection of interviews if one were to be honest, as one should, but with two constants common to all of them: nobody had been able to suggest anybody who might want to remove Erich Van Veeteren from the face of the earth, and nobody had the slightest idea about why he might have gone to Dikken that fateful Tuesday evening.

As for the evidence gathered from the Trattoria Commedia itself, Inspectors Jung and Rooth were able to report that it had increased – very slightly – in volume, and eventually it had been possible to suggest a lead: only one, but the first and only one so far in the investigation as a whole. The male person with long, dark hair and a beard who had been noticed by Lisen Berke in the bar shortly before six p.m. on the Tuesday evening in question had had his existence confirmed by two further witnesses: the barman Alois Kummer and the chef Lars Nielsen – both of them were a hundred per cent certain (two hundred per cent in toto, Rooth pointed out optimistically) that a person of that description had been seated at the bar in front of a beer for a few minutes at about the time stated.

As certain as amen in church and the whores in Zwille, as they generally say in Maardam.

The description was about all that could be wished for – at least, as far as agreement among the witnesses was concerned. Dark hair, dark beard, dark clothes and dark glasses. The chef also thought he recalled seeing a plastic carrier bag standing alongside the bar stool, but questions on that score produced only neutral shrugs from Kummer and Berke. So no confirmation, but then again, no denial either.

When Jung and Rooth had finished reporting on these vital facts – the only ray of hope after five days of arduous investigation in fact – Rooth felt the urge to stick his neck out.

‘It was the murderer sitting there, I’ll bet my bloody life on that. Remember that I was the one who recognized the fact first!’

Nobody was willing to express support for this prognosis as yet, but nevertheless it was decided to send out a description of the man and issue a Wanted notice.

In order to establish the facts, if nothing else.

And to be able to say they had made at least one decision during the day’s run-through.

12

He woke up shortly before dawn – in the hour of the wolf.

He did that occasionally. Nowadays.

Never when he had Vera Miller with him, or when she had just left or was soon due. Never then. As things had turned out, they met once a week and spent Saturday and Sunday together. It was in the intervening period when he missed her most that it usually happened. That he woke up in a cold sweat. In the hour of the wolf.

And it was while he was lying awake, between three and four in the morning, during those merciless, never-ending minutes while the rest of the world was asleep, that he peered through the protective membrane that surrounded him. Saw the horrific things he was guilty of having done in the cold light of retrospection, and became fully aware of how the delicate membrane could give way at any moment. At any moment. He wasn’t aware if he had dreams as well. Or at least was unable to recall any images from them. Didn’t even try, naturally enough, neither this night nor any other night. Got up in the darkness instead, tiptoed over to his desk and switched on the lamp. Flopped down on the chair and started counting the days in his diary: found that twenty-five had passed since he killed the boy. Ten since he killed the blackmailer. It would soon be a new month. Everything would soon be forgotten.

Out of mind and out of this world. The newspapers weren’t writing about it any longer. They had done so at the beginning of the week. The police had found the body of the young man last Saturday, but by now the media had already lost interest. There had been nothing on either Thursday or Friday.

That’s the way it was. People in the twenty-first century would be ephemeral – here today and gone tomorrow, he thought. Draw a line, work out a sum of money if there is any. Forget and carry on as usual. That would be the order of the day. Actually, that was what he was like himself, he realized. A good representative of the future, yes indeed. It was only these sleepless hours that anchored him in the past and provided continuity. In fact.

Nevertheless, nothing was the same as it had been. It was paradoxical how that evening with the light thud and the boy in the muddy ditch could change everything. Could change the perspective to that degree. Open the door. Cut through the moorings. Let Vera Miller in, let his new life in. Yes indeed, the word is paradoxical, and chaos is the neighbour of God, as the poet said.

The murder out at Dikken did not weigh in as heavily. Not at all, that was merely a consequence. Something he had been forced to carry out, an inexorable consequence of having been accidentally observed that first evening. Billiard balls that had been set in motion and had no alternative but to roll in a given direction – he had read about theories of that kind in scientific journals not so long ago. A sort of neo-mechanical conception of the world, if he had understood it correctly . . . Or psychology. But at the same time a retribution applied to his own life, of course. After only a day or so the Dikken event had ceased to trouble him. The man he had killed out there had tried to line his own pocket at the expense of the bad luck of others, his own and the boy’s . . . You could even argue that he had deserved to die. Tit for tat, as they say. A simple blackmailer who had grown into a terrible threat in the space of a week, but whom he had met on his own ground and liquidated. Simply and painlessly. The path to further development was open again.

The development with Vera Miller. He no longer had any doubt at all that this would be how things would go. Not for a fraction of a second, not even while he was awake again and again during the hour of the wolf. She hadn’t yet told her husband that she had found another man and that they must divorce, but that was only a matter of time. A question of a few weeks and a bit of consideration. Andreas Miller was not a strong person, she didn’t want to crush him. Not yet. But soon.

While they were waiting for this to happen they refrained from making any plans. But they were there all the same, they were in the air all the time they were together. While they were making love, while he was inside her, while he was sucking her nipples and making them hard and stiff and tender. While they were sitting opposite each other, eating and drinking wine, or simply lying together in his big bed, breathing and listening to music in the darkness. All the time. Plans – hitherto unexpressed hopes for the future and a new life. Somewhere else. Him and Vera Miller. He loved her. She loved him. They were both mature adults, and nothing could be simpler. They would live together. Half a year from now. A month. Soon.

He tried to imagine it in secret. Strong images, warm and satisfying. Images of a future in which he would never need to lie awake in the hour of the wolf.

Never need to peer through that membrane that was on the point of splitting.

Never need to wipe foul-smelling cold sweat from his body.

Vera, he thought. For your sake I could kill again.

He featured in a police Wanted notice printed in Saturday’s
Neuwe Blatt
. He read it at the breakfast table, and after an initial moment of apprehension he burst out laughing. It was not a threat. On the contrary. He had been expecting it, in fact. After all, it would have been unreasonable to think that nobody had noticed him during the few minutes he had spent in the bar, totally unreasonable – and he soon realized that the information given in the newspaper, far from putting him in danger in some way or other, was more of an assurance. An assurance that the police investigation had come up against a brick wall, and he had no reason to fear anything that they might come up with. No reason at all.

Why else would they come up with such laughable information?

A man of an uncertain age. Dressed in dark, probably black clothes. Long, dark, probably black hair. Beard and glasses. Possibly disguised.

Possibly? He smiled. Did they expect him to put it all on again and go out to be seen in public? Return to the scene of the crime and call in at the Trattoria Commedia once again? Or what? He had never entertained an especially high regard for the competence of the police, and it became no higher that Saturday morning.