The Strangler's Honeymoon (56 page)

‘Watch out for the stones,’ thought Münster – but said it out loud.

‘What?’ said Van Veeteren. ‘These are not bad at all. What did you say?’

‘It was nothing,’ said Münster.

She saw him out of the corner of her eye – she’d been a hair’s breadth away from missing him completely.

Niko’s Rent-a-car. On the extreme northern edge of the little town, where the road started to climb up the mountain towards Argostoli. She continued a few metres past the office, then stopped.

He was standing inside. Maarten deFraan.
Him
. Her heart rose up inside her chest, and suddenly she could feel a strong taste of metal on her tongue. It was strange. For a few seconds she just stood there, in the middle of the pavement, while the ground seemed to be revolving under her feet as the cicadas sawed away at her eardrums. It was as if something – or possibly everything – was about to burst.

It soon passed. She took two deep breaths and regained control of herself. Concentration surged into her like a fast-flowing river. No, she thought. We’re nearly there. There’s not far to go . . . But what’s he doing?

He intended to hire a car. Or some kind of motorbike. That was as clear as day.

But why? What was he going to do? What was he doing on this confounded island in any case?

And what would she do?

She looked round. A white-and-green taxi was approaching slowly along the road, and she automatically raised her hand. The driver stopped and she jumped into the back seat.

At that very moment the car rental assistant – a flabby young man in a large-patterned shirt unbuttoned down to his navel – emerged from the office together with deFraan. The necessary papers had evidently been signed. All was in order. They walked over to a purple-coloured scooter that was standing by itself, slightly to the side of the other two-wheelers lined up on the pavement. She realized that deFraan must have picked out that one before entering the office. The assistant handed over a couple of keys and gave his customer some simple instructions. DeFraan nodded, and sat astride the scooter. Adjusted his rucksack and exchanged a few more words with the young man. Then he turned the ignition key and started the engine. He checked the road situation before gingerly negotiating the kerb edge and spluttering off in the direction of Argostoli.

‘Where are we going, miss?’ asked the taxi driver, looking at her enquiringly in the rear-view mirror.

She took a one thousand-drachma note out of her handbag and pointed at the scooter.

The driver hesitated for a moment, then took the note between his index and middle fingers, put it into the breast pocket of his white shirt, and set off.

‘I understand,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘He’s been located, but is still at large, is that right? Okay, we’ll wait for your next report.’

He handed the mobile to Münster.

‘You can switch it off. I don’t know where the button is.’

Münster did as he was bidden, and put the phone in his breast pocket.

‘Was it Yakos?’ he said. ‘Have they found him?’

‘Not really.’

Van Veeteren paused and looked out over the whitewashed buildings that filled the whole of the western side of the bay. They had crossed over the narrow stone bridge and were on their way back. It was half past eleven, and the sun had started to become really warm.

‘No,’ continued the
Chief Inspector
. ‘Apparently they’ve found the hotel, in Lassi as we expected, but the bird had flown the nest. He went out at about ten o’clock, they thought. Perhaps he’s lounging back in a deckchair somewhere, or maybe he has something else in his sights.’

‘What, for instance?’ wondered Münster.

Van Veeteren put his foot on the low stone balustrade and gazed out over the glittering water. Said nothing for a while.

‘God only knows,’ he said in the end, straightening his back. ‘But he must have gathered that we are at his heels – and that a certain woman is hot on his trail as well. He knows the game is almost up, but perhaps he wants to have a hand in setting up the final showdown – or what do you think?’

Münster sat down on the balustrade, and thought that one over.

‘It’s hard to figure out the logic behind his behaviour,’ he said. ‘In many respects he’s as mad as a hatter, but in other ways he seems to be acting more or less normally.’

That’s not an especially unusual phenomenon,’ said Van Veeteren, lighting a cigarette. ‘We all have a few screws loose, including you and me; but it’s a bit more complicated in the case of deFraan. He’s presumably hyper-intelligent, and if there’s anything we like to use our intelligence for it’s trying to explain away those loose screws. To find motives for our peculiar behaviour and our murky instincts . . . If we didn’t do that we would never be able to put up with ourselves.’

Münster nodded.

‘Yes, I’ve never understood how certain people have the strength to carry on living. Rapists and wife-beaters and child murderers . . . How the hell can they look themselves in the eye the following morning?’

‘Defence mechanisms,’ said the
Chief Inspector
in a weary voice. ‘That applies to you and me as well. We create safety nets over the abyss, and in deFraan’s case he has presumably been forced to devote the whole of his abilities to making things work . . . We’ll have to see if we ever get to the bottom of it all.’

‘We’ll also have to see if we ever catch him,’ said Münster. ‘I hope Chief Inspector Yakos can handle this.’

Van Veeteren shrugged and they started walking back to the harbour.

‘I’m sure he can,’ he said. ‘Just as well as we could, in any case.’

Chief Inspector Yakos looked tired when he came to sit at their table shortly after nine o’clock that night. He beckoned to the waiter, ordered Greek coffee, beer, ouzo and peanuts. Stubbed out a cigarette and lit another.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘but we haven’t managed to catch him.’

‘Things sometimes take time,’ said Van Veeteren.

‘He hasn’t been at the hotel since this morning. I’ve had a constable posted outside Odysseus all afternoon, and he’d have been bound to see him.’

‘What about that scooter?’ wondered Münster.

Yakos shook his head grimly.

‘He hasn’t been back to the rental people with it. He was supposed to return it by nine o’clock, according to the contract – that’s when they close. I’m afraid there’s not much else we can do today. But my man at Odysseus will remain on watch – and if he turns up, we’ll pounce on him immediately, of course.’

He placed his blood-red mobile on the table, as if to stress that the network was on red alert.

‘Excellent,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘I assume you’ve instructed your constable not to try to tackle him on his own? We’re dealing with a murderer, and he can be extremely dangerous.’

Yakos emptied his glass of ouzo.

‘No chance,’ he said. ‘Constable Maraiades is the most cowardly donkey on the whole island.’

‘Excellent,’ said Van Veeteren again. ‘And that scooter – are you following that up?’

Yakos observed his guests with a wry smile before answering.

‘My dear friends,’ he said slowly but firmly. ‘I have been a chief inspector in Argostoli for twenty years. I was born here – two days after the earthquake and a week too early, it was the tremors that sparked off my dear mother’s labour pains . . . Anyway, I can guarantee that every police officer, every bar owner and every taxi driver on this island knows that I’m looking for a purple scooter, a Honda with the registration number BLK 129. Don’t underestimate me.’

‘I apologize,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘Let’s drink a bottle of good Boutari wine and eat a lump or two of cheese while we’re waiting.’

Yakos flung out his arms.

‘Why not?’ he said.

52

‘The problem,’ her grandfather had said on his deathbed, ‘is that there isn’t a God.’

She often used to recall those words, and during the last few weeks they had kept on returning with a sort of somnambulistic persistency.
There isn’t a God.
Her grandfather on her mother’s side had died of cancer, had spent the last few months of his life in hospital, and two days before he died she had sat alone with him, by his bed. They had been taking it in turns: her, her mother and her aunt – they all knew that he didn’t have long left.

She had sat there in a blue armchair in the special part of the hospital reserved for the dying. Terminal patients. A grandfather on his last legs, drugged up to the eyeballs with morphine, and a sixteen-year-old granddaughter. The cancer was in his pancreas. A part of it, at least. She had gathered that if you had to have cancer, you wouldn’t choose to have it in your pancreas.

It was his last night but one, as it turned out, and as morning approached, shortly before half past five, he had woken up and reached for her hand. She must have fallen asleep in the chair, and woke up when he touched her. She tried to sit up.

He eyed her for a moment or two, with a serene expression on his face, and she almost had the impression that it was that notorious moment of clarity just before death – but it wasn’t the case, in fact. He had over a day left.

Then he had spoken those words, in a loud and clear voice.

The problem is that there isn’t a God
.

Then he let go of her hand, closed his eyes and went back to sleep.

He had been deeply religious all his life. At his funeral the church had been so full that she had to stand right at the back.

She was sixteen years old, and had never told anybody about what he had said.

No, she thought as she sat there in the taxi, her hands clasped tightly in her lap. There isn’t a God: that’s why we have to make sure justice is done ourselves.

The journey lasted barely a quarter of an hour. He had stopped at a hairpin bend at the top of a ravine. There was still some distance left to the pass over to the north side of the island, if she understood it rightly. When she looked back she could still see a bit of the old, narrow stone bridge over the sound leading into Argostoli’s harbour. She asked the driver to continue past the next rocky outcrop, and then stop.

She thanked him and got out of the car. The taxi continued up the side of the steep hill – she assumed it was too difficult to turn round on the narrow strip of asphalt, and perhaps there were other roads leading down to the capital. When the car had left her field of vision, she went back round the bend and saw him again. He was standing next to the purple scooter with his back towards her, staring down into the ravine. The sides were steep, rocky and devoid of vegetation, but down at the bottom, some thirty metres deep, there was a mass of dry, straggly bushes and rubbish which unscrupulous motorists had thrown down. Paper and plastic carrier bags and empty cans. And something that looked like a refrigerator.

He was standing there motionless, with a small greyish-green rucksack at his feet and a revolver in his right hand.

She ran her fingers over the mangled, ravaged skin on her face, then put her hand into her shoulder bag. She took hold of the wrapped-up iron rod. As far as she could tell he hadn’t noticed her presence. Good, she thought. The distance to him was no more than twenty metres: she gave no thought to why he was standing there, why he had a revolver in his hand or what he was intending to do. It was sufficient that she had her own plan clear and at the ready.

More than sufficient.

There isn’t a God, she thought as she approached him cautiously.

He didn’t notice her – or took no notice of her – until she was almost next to him. He seemed to be concentrating hard: but when he finally heard her footsteps and sensed her presence, he gave a start and turned to look at her.

‘Excuse me,’ she said in English, tightening her hold on the iron rod in her bag. ‘Do you happen to know what time it is?’

‘The time?’

It was a bizarre question to ask up here in this barren mountainous landscape, and he looked at her in surprise.

‘Yes, please.’

He raised his hand, the one not holding the revolver, and checked his wristwatch.

‘Twelve,’ he said. ‘It’s one minute to twelve.’

She thanked him and adjusted the scarf over her face. He doesn’t recognize me, she thought. He has no idea who I am.

‘It’s beautiful here,’ she said, and took a step closer, as if she was about to pass him. He looked out over the ravine again. Didn’t respond. The arm with the revolver was hanging down motionless by his side. She saw a bird of prey soaring up over the mountain ridge: it circled around then hovered high up in the air, almost directly above them. She took the rod out of her bag.

God
. . . she thought as she raised it in the air.

He turned his head and stared at her for a fraction of a second with his mouth half open. Raised his gun so that it was pointing at his own head, his right temple.

. . .
doesn’t exist
, she thought, and swung the rod.

53

Chief Inspector Yakos didn’t look much more cheerful.

‘He’d been asleep in bed with his mistress, that confounded taxi driver,’ he said. ‘That’s why we haven’t heard from him until this morning.’

He leaned forward, supporting himself with his hands on his knees, and breathed heavily. Münster looked around. The view was stunningly beautiful, and it was hard to shake off the feeling of unreality that hovered in the clear morning light . . . The feeling that he was in bed, dreaming, or perhaps taking part in some surrealistic film. To make things worse he had slept badly, unlike the taxi driver, all alone in his austere hotel room. It had been three o’clock before he finally dozed off.

Now it was half past ten. They were a few kilometres outside the town. The sun had risen a hand’s breadth over the top of the mountain ridge, casting light onto the lower, barren slopes, and the olive groves down by the coast, and the scattered whitewashed dwellings on the other side of the sound. The bluish silhouettes of little islands faded away in the west towards the horizon, which was as sharp as a drypoint engraving, despite the fact that the sea and the sky were very nearly the same blue colour. Closer to them, a few hundred metres further along the road, were the equally sharply outlined ruins of a building – some sort of mill, Münster guessed – flanked by two olive trees.