Woman with Birthmark (12 page)

What reasoning! Van Veeteren thought as he closed the balcony door. Downright perverse! But then, there's nothing one won't do….

Out in the windswept cemetery later that day there seemed to be a distinct shortage of possible murderers. The one who behaved most oddly was without doubt a large man in a green raincoat and red rubber boots; but he had been instructed to attend by the chief inspector.

Constable Klaarentoft was known as the force's most skillful photographer, and his task on this occasion was to take as many pictures as he possibly could. Van Veeteren knew that he had stolen this idea from another movie, namely
Blow-Up
, from the mid-sixties. Antonioni, if he remembered rightly. The theory was, of course, that somewhere among all these faces, which would slowly emerge from the police photographic laboratory, would be the murderer's.

Ryszard Malik's and Rickard Maasleitner's murderer.

He recalled seeing the film—which was a pretty awful mishmash—three times, simply to observe how the face of a killer could be plucked out of the lush greenery of an English park.

Another kind of perversion, of course, and Klaarentoft had evidently not seen the film. He traipsed around between the graves, snapping away to his heart's content, totally ignoring Van Veeteren's instruction to be as unobtrusive as possible.

The fact that he managed to take no less than twelve pictures of the clergyman conducting the ceremony suggested that he might not have grasped the point of his contribution.

On the other hand, of course, the group that followed
Ryszard Malik to his final resting place was on the sparse side, so there was a shortage of motifs. Van Veeteren counted fourteen persons present—including himself and Klaarentoft—and during the course of the ceremony he was able to identify all of them, apart from two children.

He was unable to detect furtive observers keeping some distance away from the grave (there were a few persons tending other graves in the vicinity of course, but none of them behaved strangely or alerted his famous intuition in the slightest), and when the rain started to fall and he had managed to give Klaarentoft discreet instructions to go away and snap something else, he had long been aware that there was not much point in his hanging around.

And an hour or so later, when he had finally managed to drink a glass of mulled wine at the Kraus bar, he realized that the cold he had succeeded in keeping at bay over the last few days had now gotten a second wind.

The next funeral will be my own, he predicted.

“It's Saturday. Do you really have to do that today?” he had asked.

“Today or tomorrow. Don't you think it's best if I get it out of the way as soon as possible?”

“Yes, of course,” he'd replied, and turned over in his bed. “I'll see you this evening.”

It wasn't an especially unusual exchange. Nor unexpected. As she sat in the bus she felt a nagging pain at the back of her head, like a bad omen. She had been with Claus Badher for fifteen months now—maybe sixteen, it depended on what criteria you used—and it was probably the best relationship she'd ever been involved in. In fact, it certainly was. It involved love and mutual
respect, shared values and interests, and everything else one could reasonably expect.

Everything in the garden was lovely. Pure bliss. All their friends thought they ought to take things further. Move in together permanently, with all that implied. Claus thought so too.

There was just that little irritation. That tiny little snag that frightened her. That might be rooted in contempt, despite everything, and if so was destined to grow and become even more worrying. She didn't know. Contempt for her job. Needless to say he was extremely careful not to make it obvious—probably didn't even realize it himself; but sometimes she couldn't help but notice. It just crept up on her, flashed briefly on the surface, then vanished: but she knew it was there. As in the little exchange they'd just had, for instance, which wasn't really significant in itself as yet…. But she suspected it could grow into something really threatening as the years passed by.

A threat to their equal status. And to her life.

Claus Badher worked as a foreign-exchange broker in a bank, and was on his way up. She worked as a detective inspector and was on the way … where was she on the way to?

She sighed. At the moment she was on the way to a house in Dikken, where she was due to meet a fifty-two-year-old lawyer and ask him about his time as a National Serviceman.

Absurd? Yes, it was absurd. She often thought that Claus was absolutely right. Always assuming that that was what he was thinking, of course….

She got off the bus and walked the hundred meters or so to the house. Went in through the gate and was greeted by two boxer puppies, enthusiastically barking and wagging their
stumpy tails. She paused on the gravel path to stroke them. Looked up at the big two-story house in dark brown English brick with green shutters. Behind one of the gable ends she could just make out a swimming pool, and some wire netting she assumed must be surrounding a tennis court.

Why not? she thought. If I really had to, I suppose I might manage to cope with living like this.

“Ewa Moreno, detective inspector. I'm sorry to trouble you. I just have a few questions I'd like to ask you.”

“No problem. I'm at your disposal.”

Jan Tomaszewski was wearing something she assumed must be a smoking jacket—and indeed, the rest of him seemed to belong to another age. Or in a movie. His dark hair was powdered and immaculately combed, and his slim body gave the distinct impression of being aristocratic. Leslie Howard? she wondered. He reached out over the smoke-gray glass table and served her tea from a charmingly sculpted silver pot.

Another world, she thought. I'd better get going before I swoon.

“Thank you,” she said. “As I mentioned, I need to ask you about the time you spent during your National Service at the Staff College in Löhr. I think that was 1964 to 1965—is that right?”

He nodded.

“That's correct. Why on earth should you be interested in that?”

“I'm afraid I can't tell you that. And I'd appreciate it if you would be discreet about our conversation as well. Perhaps we can meet again at a later stage if you want to know more.”

That was a formulation she had thought out in advance, and she could see that it had fallen on fruitful ground.

“I understand.”

“Anyway, we are mainly interested in a couple of your fellow students at the college. Ryszard Malik and Rickard Maasleitner.”

She took the photograph out of her briefcase and handed it to him.

“Can you point them out?”

He smiled and took a pair of glasses from his breast pocket. Scrutinized the photograph for some thirty seconds.

“Maasleitner isn't a problem,” he said. “We were in the same barrack room nearly all the time. I'm not so sure about Malik, but I think that's him.”

He pointed and Moreno nodded.

“Correct. Can you tell me what you remember about them?”

Tomaszewski took off his glasses and leaned back in his chair.

“I can hardly remember Malik at all,” he said after a while. “We were never in the same group and we didn't mix when we were off duty He was a bit introspective and pretty anonymous, I think. I should mention that I'm not completely unaware of what has happened….”

Moreno nodded.

“Do I take it that you think this is the link? The connection between the two of them, I mean?”

“We're following up several different lines of inquiry,” Moreno explained. “This is just one of them. Obviously, we need to follow up every possibility.”

“Of course. Anyway, I recall Maasleitner in a bit more detail. We were frequently in the same class during training—
telegraphy, general staff work, and so on. I have to say I didn't much like him. He was a bit dominant, if you see what I mean.”

“How do you mean, dominant?” Moreno asked.

“Well …” Tomaszewski flung out his arms. “Bigmouthed. Young and arrogant. A bit unbalanced—but he probably wasn't all that bad.”

“Was he generally disliked?”

Tomaszewski thought that one over.

“I think so. Not that it was a real problem. It was just that he had something about him that could be a bit trying. But, of course, there's bound to be one or two like that in such a big group.”

“Did you mix at all when you were off duty?”

Tomaszewski shook his head.

“Never.”

“Do you know if Malik and Maasleitner did?”

“I've no idea. I wouldn't have thought so, but, of course, I can't swear to it.”

“Do you know if any of the others were close to them? To either one of them, that is?”

Tomaszewski studied the photograph again. Moreno produced a list of names and handed it to him. Drank a little tea and took a chocolate biscuit while he was thinking about it. Looked around the whitewashed walls, crammed full with rows of colorful, nonfigurative paintings, almost edge to edge. Her host was evidently something of a collector. She wondered how much money was hanging here.

Probably quite a lot.

“Hmm,” he said eventually. “I'm afraid I can't be of much help to you. I can't think of any link between them. I can't associate
Malik with anybody else at all. I think Maasleitner occasionally hung around with them.”

He pointed to two faces in the back row.

“Van der Heukken and Biedersen?” Moreno read the names from her list.

Tomaszewski nodded.

“As far as I can recall. You realize that it's over thirty years ago?”

Moreno smiled.

“Yes,” she said. “I realize that. But I understood that time spent on National Service had an ineradicable effect on all young men who underwent it.”

Tomaszewski smiled.

“No doubt it did on some. But most of us try to forget all about it, as far as possible.”

“Charming” was the word that stuck in her mind after the visit to Tomaszewski. The discreet charm of the middle classes, she recalled, and she had to admit that on the whole, there were worse ways of spending an hour on a Saturday morning.

She had not expected her trip to Dikken to produce anything substantial for the investigation, and the same applied to the next name on her list: Pierre Borsens.

When she got off the bus in Maardam, she had succeeded in thrusting aside the morning's gloomy thoughts and made up her mind to call in at the covered market and buy a couple of decent cheeses for the evening meal. Pierre Borsens lived only a block away from the market, and it wasn't yet quite half past twelve.

·  ·  ·

The man who sat down at the table brought with him an aroma that Jung had some difficulty in identifying. It had the same crudely acidic quality as cat piss, but it also had an unmistakable tang of the sea. Rotten seaweed scorched by the sun, or something of the sort. Most probably it was a combination of both these ingredients.

And more besides. Jung hastily moved his chair back a couple of feet, and lit a cigarette.

“I take it you are Calvin Lange?” he asked.

“I certainly am,” said the man, reaching out a grubby hand over the table. Jung leaned forward and shook it.

“My place is a bit of a mess at the moment,” the man explained. “That's why I thought it would be better to meet here.”

He smiled, and revealed two rows of brown, decayed teeth. Jung was grateful to hear what the man said. He would prefer not to have been confronted by the mess.

“Would you like a beer?” The question was rhetorical.

Lange nodded and coughed. Jung gestured toward the bar.

“And a cigarette, perhaps?”

Lange took one. Jung sighed discreetly and decided it was necessary to get this over with as quickly as possible. It was always problematic to arrange reimbursement for beer and cigarettes; that was something he'd discovered a long time ago.

“Do you recognize this?”

Lange took the photograph and studied it while drawing deeply on his cigarette.

“That's me,” he said, placing a filthy index finger on the face of a young, innocent-looking man in the front row.

“We know that,” said Jung. “Do you remember what those two are called?”

He pointed with his pen.

“One at a time,” said Lange.

The waitress arrived with two glasses of beer.

“Cheers,” said Lange, emptying his in one gulp.

“Cheers,” said Jung, pointing at Malik in the photograph.

“Let's see,” said Lange, peering awkwardly. “No, no fucking idea. Who else?”

Jung pointed at Maasleitner with his pen.

“Seems familiar,” said Lange, scratching his armpit. “Yes, I recognize that bugger, but I've no idea what he's called.”

He belched and looked gloomily at his empty glass.

“Do you remember the names Malik and Maasleitner?”

“Malik and … ?”

“Maasleitner.”

“Maasleitner?”

“Yes.”

“No, is that him?”

He plonked his finger on Malik.

“No, that's Malik.”

“Oh, shit. What have they done?”

Jung stubbed out his cigarette. This was going brilliantly.

“Do you remember anything at all from your year as a National Serviceman?”

“National Service? Why are you asking about that?”

“I'm afraid I can't go into that. But we're interested in these two people. Staff College 1965—that's right, isn't it?”

He pointed again.

“Oh, shit,” said Lange, and had a coughing fit. “You mean this picture is from the Staff College? Fuck me, I thought it was the handball team. But there were too many of 'em.”

Jung thought about this for three seconds. Then he returned the photograph to his briefcase and stood up.

“Many thanks,” he said. “You're welcome to my beer as well.” “If you twist my arm,” said Lange.

Mahler advanced a pawn and Van Veeteren sneezed.

“How are things? Under the weather again?”

“Just a bit, yes. I was out in the rain at the cemetery for too long yesterday afternoon.”

“Stupid,” said Mahler.

“I know,” sighed Van Veeteren. “But I couldn't just walk away. I'm rather sensitive about that kind of thing.”

“Yes, I know how you feel,” said Mahler. “It was that Malik, I gather. How's the case going? They're writing quite a lot about it in the newspapers.”