Mind's Eye (9 page)

19

Somebody had sent him a priest.

He didn’t know who. Rüger, or the chief of police, or that senile judge: hard to say. Perhaps he’d come of his own accord; as Mitter understood the situation, there didn’t need to be an intermediary. Just God the Father.

The priest smiled a watery smile. Needed to keep wiping his eyes. Blamed the dry air and the ventilation system.

“I spend a lot of time listening to the ventilation system,” said Mitter. “I think it might be the voice of God.”

The priest nodded, and seemed interested.

“Really?”

“You are familiar with the voice of God, I take it?”

“Yes…”

“It’s quite monotonous, don’t you think?”

“I suppose the voice of God sounds different in different people’s ears.”

“What kind of bloody relativism do you call that?” wondered Mitter aloud.

“Oh…I was only…”

“Are you suggesting that the good Lord is nothing more than a phenomenological manifestation? I think I’d better take a look at your ID, if you don’t mind.”

The priest smiled wanly. But a doubtful frown made an effort to establish itself on his shiny brow.

“If you are unable to present me with an ontological proof of the existence of God, I’ll have you thrown out without more ado!”

The priest wiped his eyes.

“Perhaps I’d better come back some other time. I see that my presence annoys you.”

Mitter rang for the warder, and two minutes later he was alone again.

He was also sent a social worker.

It was a woman in her thirties, and the warder stood on guard outside the door the whole time.

“Are you Danish?” Mitter asked.

She had blond hair and a long neck, so it was a reasonable question. She shook her head.

“My name’s Diotima,” she said. “Will you allow me to talk to you for a while?”

“That’s a beautiful and unusual name,” said Mitter. “You may stay as long as you like.”

“You are going to have to undergo a mental examination,” said Diotima. “Irrespective of the verdict.”

“I’m glad to hear that,” said Mitter. “Mind you, I hadn’t intended to start teaching again right away.”

Diotima nodded. She had her hair in a ponytail, which swayed back and forth slightly whenever she moved her head. Mitter would have loved to step forward and put his hand on the back of her neck, but he didn’t feel clean enough. Diotima had an air of virginal purity that was unmistakable; he concealed his hands between his knees and tried to think about something else.

“How do you feel?” she asked.

He thought it over, but failed to come up with a good answer.

“It’s been very trying…,” she said, lowering her voice at the end, and he couldn’t decide if it had been a question or a statement. If it referred to him, or to herself.

“This isn’t exactly a place to be if you want to get healthy again,” she said.

He smiled.

“Do you know how long you’ve been in here?”

He nodded.

“What day is it today?”

“Wednesday.”

“Yes. Your verdict will be announced this afternoon. Why have you chosen not to be present?”

He shrugged.

“Would you like a cigarette?”

“Yes, please.”

She produced a pack from her briefcase. Placed it on the table between them. He released his right hand. Took a cigarette and lit it. It was a weak menthol thing, typical woman’s tobacco, but he was grateful for the opportunity to smoke it right down to the filter.

Somehow or other, smoking a cigarette like that required greater concentration than usual, and he wasn’t at all clear about what questions she asked him while he was busy with it. In any case, he made no replies.

When he stubbed out the cigarette in the washbasin, she stood up and he realized she was about to leave. He had a lump in his throat; it blended most unpleasantly with the vapid taste of cold smoke. Perhaps she noticed his discomfort, for she took two steps toward him and put her hand on his arm for a moment.

“I’ll be back, Mr. Mitter,” she said. “And no matter what happens, you won’t need to stay locked up in here.”

“Janek,” he said. “My name’s Janek. I don’t want you to call me Mr. Mitter.”

“Thank you. My name’s Diotima.”

“I know. You’ve already told me.”

She smiled. Her teeth were pure white, and immaculate. He sighed.

“Are you sure you’re not Danish?”

“My grandmother came from Copenhagen.”

“There you are, you see! I could tell!”

“Farewell, Janek.”

“Farewell, Diotima.”

Rüger turned up an hour after dinner to inform Mitter about the verdict. He seemed to be even more hunched than usual, and blew his nose twice before speaking.

“We didn’t make it,” he said.

“Really?” said Mitter. “We didn’t make it.”

“No. But they settled for manslaughter. The jury was unanimous. Six years.”

“Six years?”

“Yes. With good conduct you could be out after five.”

“I’d have nothing against that,” said Mitter.

Rüger paused.

Then he said: “You’ll have to undergo a little mental examination. Unfortunately, it’s all to do with your present state of mental health. Perhaps we should have taken another line, but nobody thinks you were not responsible for your actions at the time of the crime.”

“I see,” said Mitter. He was beginning to feel really tired now. “Please say what you have to say as briefly as possible. I think I need to catch up on some sleep.”

“If they find you competent, it will be the state prison. If not, it will be the secure institution in Greifen or Majorna.”

“Majorna?”

“Yes, in Willemsburg. Do you know the place? It’s an old lunatic asylum from the nineteenth century. Perhaps Greifen would be better.”

“Hmm. I don’t think it makes any difference to me.”

“If you recover your mental health while in the institution, you will be transferred immediately to a prison—but your time spent in the institution will count toward the length of your sentence. Anyway, that’s the way it looks. Are you tired?”

Mitter nodded.

“You’ll be moved from here tomorrow. I hope you get a good night’s sleep in any case.”

He held out his hand. Mitter shook it.

“I’m sorry we didn’t make it. Really sorry…”

“It doesn’t matter,” said Mitter. “Please leave me alone now. No doubt we’ll have an opportunity to talk some other time.”

“I’m sure we shall,” said Rüger, blowing his nose one final time. “Farewell, and good luck tomorrow, Mr. Mitter.”

“Farewell.”

The man has verbal diarrhea, he thought as the door closed behind his lawyer. I must make sure I can keep him brief and to the point another time.

20

“Well,” said Münster, “so that’s that, then.”

“Really?” said Van Veeteren.

“Where have they sent him?”

Van Veeteren snorted.

“Majorna. Hasn’t Caen answered yet?”

“No, but we have lots of other things to see to.”

“Oh yes? What, for example?”

“This, to start with,” said Münster, passing him the newspaper.

The case of the black street girl who was discovered nailed to a cross in the fashionable suburb of Dikken kept Van Veeteren and Münster busy for thirty-six hours without a break. Then a neo-Nazi organization claimed responsibility and the whole business was handed over to the national antiterrorist squad.

Münster went home and slept for sixteen hours, and Van Veeteren would have done the same had it not been for Bismarck. The dog was now in such a bad way that the only option left was to have it put down. He phoned Jess and explained the situation, whereupon his daughter was suddenly afflicted by an attack of sentimentality and begged him to keep the dog alive for two more days, so that she could be present at the end.

It was her dog, after all.

Van Veeteren spent those two days half crazy with exhaustion, shoveling gruel into one end of the bitch, and wiping her clean at the other end with a wet towel. By the time Jess finally turned up, he was so purple with anger and fatigue that she felt obliged to remind him of the fifth Commandment.

“Oh, Daddy,” she said, giving him a kiss. “Might it not be just as well to take you, too, while we’re at it?”

This induced from Van Veeteren a bellow so loud that Mrs. Loewe, a widow who lived in the apartment below, felt it incumbent upon her to ring the police. The duty officer, a young and promising constable by the name of Widmar Krause, recognized the address and had a fair idea of the circumstances. On his own authority, he canceled the police response he had promised the complainant.

Jess took over Bismarck, drove her to the vet’s, and a few hours later the dog breathed her last in Jess’s lap.

Van Veeteren took a shower, then chased down Münster on the telephone with unusual enthusiasm.

“Has Caen replied?” he roared into the receiver.

“No,” said Münster.

“Why the hell not?”

“How’s Bismarck?” enquired Münster, refreshed after his rest.

“Hold your tongue!” yelled Van Veeteren. “Answer my question!”

“I’ve no idea. What do you believe the reason might be?”

“Belief is something you have in church, and God is dead! Give me his telephone number this instant, and shove the fax up Hiller’s ass!”

Münster looked up the number, and half an hour later, Van Veeteren got through to Caen.

“Caen.”

“Eduard Caen?”

“Yes.”

“My name is Detective Chief Inspector Van Veeteren. I’m phoning from Maardam, in the Old World.”

“Yes?”

“I’d like to ask you a few questions. I’m sorry we’re so far apart.”

“What’s it about?”

“Eva Ringmar. I assume you are familiar with that name.”

There was silence for a few seconds.

“Well?”

“May I remind you of my oath of professional secrecy….”

“The same here. May I remind you that I have the authority to summon you to Europe for interrogation, if I want to.”

“I understand. Let’s hear it, then. What do you want to know?”

“A few minor details. In the first place, did you have an affair with her?”

“Of course not. I never had an affair with any of my clients.”

“So that’s not the reason why you immigrated to Australia?”

“Don’t be silly, Inspector! I really have no intention of answering that kind of…”

At that point the connection was lost. Van Veeteren thumped the receiver on his desk a few times, and after a short intermezzo in Japanese, Caen was back on the line.

“That kind of what?” asked Van Veeteren.

“Insinuation,” said Caen.

“I’m looking for a murderer,” said Van Veeteren, unmoved.

“A man. Can you give me any suggestions?”

There was a pause.

“No…” Caen said hesitantly. “No, I don’t think I can. To tell you the truth—can I rely on you, Inspector?”

“Of course.”

“To tell you the truth, I didn’t get anywhere with her. But she got better even so. The reason I was brought in was the problems caused by the death of her son…. But there was something…”

It sounds as if he’s weighing every single word, Van Veeteren thought. Does he have any idea of what it costs to phone halfway across the world?

“What?”

“I don’t know. There was something hidden. She didn’t bother to pretend—that there wasn’t anything, I mean. Perhaps it wasn’t possible to hide it. There was something she didn’t tell me about, and she was quite open about that fact. Are you with me? It’s not easy to explain this over the telephone.”

“She had a secret?”

“To put it simply, yes.”

“A man?”

“I have no idea, Inspector. No idea at all.”

“Give me a clue!”

“There’s nothing else I can say. I promise you!”

“What the hell did you talk about?”

“Willie. Her son. Yes, we talked almost exclusively about him. She used me as a means of remembering him. I have a son myself, about the same age as hers, and she liked to compare…. We often pretended that Willie was still alive; we talked about our sons and discussed their futures. That kind of thing.”

“I see…. And she got better?”

“Yes, she did. Those meetings in Maardam were not justified at all from a therapeutic point of view, but she was insistent. I liked her, and she paid my fee. Why should I turn her away?”

“Why indeed, Mr. Caen? What was your impression of her husband, Andreas Berger?”

“Not much at all. We never met, and she didn’t say much about him. She was the one who wanted a divorce…. It was due to the accident, no doubt about that; but don’t ask me how. I think he wanted to keep her, even when she was at her worst.”

Van Veeteren pondered that.

“I thought you had arrested a suspect?” Caen said.

“He’s been tried and sentenced,” said Van Veeteren.

“Sentenced? Has he admitted it? Then why are you still—”

“Because he didn’t do it,” interrupted Van Veeteren. “Can I ask you to do something for me?”

“Of course.”

“If anything occurs to you, no matter how insignificant it might seem, would you please get in touch with me and tell me? You have my number, I take it?”

“No, I don’t think I have.”

“Didn’t you receive our fax?”

“Your fax? I’m afraid I haven’t checked the fax machine for a week or more. I’m on holiday, you see.”

“On holiday in November?”

“Yes, it’s early summer here. Seventy-five degrees, the lemon trees are in bloom….”

“I’ll bet they are,” said Van Veeteren.

21

When Lotte Kretschmer woke up on Sunday, November 15, she decided almost immediately to put an end to her affair with her boyfriend, a twenty-one-year-old electrician from Süsslingen by the name of Weigand. The decision had been maturing inside her for several weeks, but now the time had come. As usual, Weigand was lying asleep beside her, his mouth wide open, and as she didn’t want him to stagger through the next few days in ignorance of such an important decision, she gave him a good shaking, woke him up, and explained the facts.

They had been together for eight months, it’s true; but even so, she hadn’t reckoned with the argument, the tears, and the accusations taking up the whole day.

When she eventually set off for work at about seven o’clock that evening, she felt that what she needed more than anything else was twelve hours of sound sleep. Instead, she was faced with twelve hours of night duty.

This is mentioned as an explanation, not as an excuse.

However, when the evening round of medication took place at nine o’clock, Janek Mitter—along with several other patients—was not given the usual mild sedative antidepressants, but instead was required to swallow two multivitamin tablets enhanced with ten vital minerals plus selenium.

Both types of pill were pale yellow in color, round in shape and coated with sugar, and were stored in the same cupboard.

This is not mentioned as an excuse either.

There was no lack of repercussions. Instead of falling into a deep and dreamless sleep, Mitter was surprised to find himself lying wide awake in his tubular-steel bed, gazing out through the window at a starry sky almost as dense as the one that night in Levkes. He remembered that November was the ideal month for astronomers, and that his birthday must have come and gone—because it was on the occasion of his fourteenth birthday that he had been given the telescope by his father.

Where was it now?

It took a while to work that one out. But he managed it. It was with Jürg, of course. Jürg had kept it in his room when he was staying with Mitter, but he’d taken it with him when he moved to Chadow.

So, he could still remember some things.

Various other details cropped up then faded away again as he lay there; some from long ago…memories of his childhood, and his youth; some more recent…Irene and the children, goings-on at school and trips with Bendiksen; but it was well into the early hours before that night cropped up in his mind’s eye….

He was sitting on the corner sofa. He had got dressed and there were candles burning here and there. Eva was wandering around in her kimono and singing something; he had some difficulty in keeping his eyes on her. He had a glass in his hand, and remembered that it was absolutely essential…absolutely vital that he not drink another single drop. He turned his head, the room was swaying to and fro…. Not another single drop.

He took a swig. It was a good wine, he could taste that despite all the cigarettes: dry and full-bodied. And the doorbell rang. Who the hell…?

Eva shouted something and disappeared. He realized that she had gone to open the door for the visitor, but he couldn’t see the hall from where he was sitting. He grinned.

Yes, he remembered grinning at the fact that he was so drunk, he daren’t even try to look back over his shoulder. Then Eva came back into the room with the visitor, the visitor first. He couldn’t see the man’s face, it was too high up; a move like the one required to see it was impossible. The visitor remained standing for quite some time before sitting down, and Eva was somewhere else, she’d shouted something, but now the man was sitting there in any case; Mitter could see his torso and his arms, only the lower part of his arms, his rolled-up shirtsleeves…. He was smoking, and Mitter also took a cigarette and the nicotine made him feel dizzy. The smoke was hot and nauseating in his throat, and it wasn’t long before they started talking. And then the visitor leaned forward and flicked the ash off his cigarette, and Mitter saw who it was.

He opened his eyes and myriad stars came meandering into his consciousness, making him feel dizzy.

I shall forget this again, he thought. It came to me for just a moment, but tomorrow it will have gone.

He fumbled for the pencil lying on the bedside table. Heard it fall on the floor. Leaned tentatively over the side of the bed and groped around in the dark over the cold flagstones, and eventually found it.

Where? he thought. Where?

Then he took the Bible out of the drawer in the bedside table. Thumbed through as far as Mark or thereabouts, and wrote down the visitor’s name.

Closed the Bible. Put it back in its place and closed the drawer. Fell back exhausted on his pillows, and felt…felt something starting to tremble inside him.

It was a flame. A pitifully small candle flame that somebody had lit, and that was no doubt well worth looking after. Keeping alight.

He was mad, but at least he understood the implications of this memory.

And thanks to the power of that pale candlelight, he gave himself the task of coming to terms with it all when dawn came.

Writing a letter to the visitor.

Just a line.

He fell asleep. But woke up again.

Perhaps he should also make a phone call.

To that unpleasant person…whose name escaped him for the moment.

As long as the flame doesn’t go out.