Borkmann's Point

Had Ernst Simmel known he was to be the Axman’s second
victim, he would no doubt have downed a few more drinks at
The Blue Ship.

As it was, he settled for a brandy with his coffee and a
whiskey on the rocks in the bar, while trying unsuccessfully to
make eye contact with the bleached-blond woman in the far
corner; but anyway, his heart wasn’t in it. Presumably, she was
one of the new employees at the canning factory. He had never
seen her before, and he had a fair idea about the available
talent.

To his right was Herman Schalke, a reporter on
de Journaal,
trying to interest him in a cheap weekend trip to Kaliningrad or somewhere of the sort, and when they eventually got
around to pinning down his last evening, it seemed probable
that Schalke must have been the last person in this life to speak
to Simmel.

Always assuming that the Axman didn’t have some message to impart before finishing him off, that is. Which wasn’t
all that likely since the blow, as in the previous case, had come
diagonally from behind and from slightly below, so a little chat
seemed improbable.

“Ah, well!” Simmel had said after draining the last drops
from his glass. “I’d better be getting back to the old lady.”
If Schalke remembered rightly, that is. In any case, he’d
tried to talk him out of it. Pointed out that it was barely eleven
and the night was yet young. But Simmel had been adamant.
That was the right word. Adamant. Just eased himself off
his bar stool. Adjusted his glasses and stroked that pathetic
wisp of hair over his bald head like he always did—as if that
would fool anybody—muttered a few words, then left. The last
Schalke had seen of him was the white outline of his back as he
paused in the doorway and seemed to be hesitating about
which direction to take.
Looking back, that was distinctly odd. For Christ’s sake,
surely Simmel knew his way home?
But maybe he just stood there for a few seconds to fill his
lungs with the fresh night air. It had been a hot day; summer
was not over yet and the evenings had started to exude a mellowness enriched by many months of summer sun. Enriched
and refined.
As if made for drinking in deep drafts, somebody had said.
These nights.
In fact, it wasn’t a bad night for a journey to the other side,
if one might be allowed such a thought. Schalke’s section of
de
Journaal
was mainly concerned with matters sporting and a
dash of folklore, but in his capacity as the last person to have
seen Simmel alive, he had presumed to write an obituary of
the property developer who had been so suddenly plucked
from our midst...a pillar of our society, one might say, who
had just returned to his native town after a sojourn of several
years abroad (on the Costa del Sol along with other likeminded citizens with a bent for effective tax planning, but perhaps this was not the occasion to refer to that), survived by a
wife and two grown-up children, having reached the age of
fifty but still in the prime of his life, no doubt about that.

Would it be a good idea to take a stroll over to Fisherman’s
Square and down by the harbor?
What was the point of going home as early as this? The
sweetish smell of the bedroom and Grete’s overweight body
shot through his mind, and he decided to take a little walk.
Only a short one. Even if there was nothing to pick up, the
warm night air would make it worth the effort.
He crossed over Langvej and turned off toward Bungeskirke. At the same time, the murderer emerged from the shadows under the lime trees in Leisner Park and started following
him. Quietly and carefully, a safe distance behind, not a sound
from his rubber soles. Tonight was his third attempt, but even
so, there was no trace of impatience. He knew what he had to
do, and the last thing on his mind was to rush things.
Simmel continued along Hoistraat and took the steps down
toward the harbor. He slowed down when he came to Fisherman’s Square and sauntered across the deserted cobbles to the
covered market. Two women were busy talking at the corner
of Dooms Alley, but he didn’t appear to pay them any attention. Perhaps he wasn’t sure about their status, or perhaps he
had something else in mind.
Or maybe he just didn’t feel like it. When he came to the
quay he paused for a few minutes to smoke a cigarette, watching the boats bobbing in the marina. The murderer took the
opportunity of enjoying a cigarette himself in the shadow of
the warehouse on the other side of the Esplanade. Held it well
hidden inside his cupped hand so that the glow wouldn’t give
him away, and didn’t take his eyes off his victim for a single
second.
When Simmel flicked his cigarette end into the water and
set off in the direction of the municipal woods, the murderer
knew that tonight was the night.
True, there were only about three hundred yards of trees
here between the Esplanade and Rikken, the yuppie part of the
town where Simmel lived, and there were plenty of lights
along the paths; but not all were working and three hundred
yards could prove to be rather a long way. In any case, when
Simmel heard a faint footstep behind him, he was barely fifty
yards into the woods and the darkness was dense on all sides.
Warm and full of promise, as already noted, but dense.
He probably didn’t have time to feel scared. If so, it could
only have been in the last fraction of a second. The razor-sharp
edge entered from behind, between the second and fourth vertebrae, slicing diagonally through the third, straight through
the spinal column, the esophagus and the carotid artery. Half
an inch deeper and in all probability his head would have been
separated completely from his body.
Which would have been spectacular, but was of minor significance for the outcome.
In accordance with all imaginable criteria, Ernst Simmel
must have been dead even before he hit the ground. His face
landed on the well-trodden gravel path with full force, smashing his glasses and causing any number of secondary injuries.
Blood was pouring out of his throat, from above and below,
and when the murderer carefully dragged him into the bushes,
he could still hear a faint bubbling sound. He squatted there in
silence while a group of four or five youths passed by, then
wiped his weapon clean in the grass and set off back in the
direction of the harbor.
Twenty minutes later he was sitting at his kitchen table
with a steaming cup of tea, listening to the bath slowly filling
up. If his wife had still been with him, she would doubtless
have asked if he’d had a hard day, and if he was very tired.
Not especially, he might have replied. It’s taking a bit of
time, but everything is going according to plan.
Glad to hear it, darling, she might have said, putting a hand
on his shoulder. Glad to hear it...
He nodded, and raised his cup to his mouth.
The sands went on forever.
Went on forever, the same as ever. A calm, gray sea under a
pale sky. A strip of firm, damp sand next to the water where he
could maintain a reasonable pace. Alongside a drier, grayishwhite expanse where beach grass and windswept bushes took
over. Deep inside the salt marshes birds were wheeling in
broad, lazy circles, filling the air with their melancholy cries.
Van Veeteren checked his watch and paused. Hesitated for
a moment. In the hazy distance he could just make out the
church steeple in s’Greijvin, but it was a long way away. If
he kept on walking, it would certainly be another hour before
he could sit down with a beer in the café on the square.
It might have been worth the effort, but now that he had
paused, it was hard to convince himself of that. It was three
o’clock. He had set out after lunch—or brunch, depending on
how you looked at it. In any case, at about one o’clock, after
yet another night when he had gone to bed early but failed to
drop off to sleep until well into the small hours. It was hard
to tell what was the root cause of his worries and restlessness
as he lay there, tossing and turning in the sagging double bed,
as the gray light of dawn crept ever closer...hard to tell.
He had been on vacation for three weeks now, quite a long
time by his standards, but not exceptional, and as the days
passed, during the last week at least, his daily routine had been
delayed just a little. Four more days and it would be time for
him to return to his office, and he had the distinct impression
that when he did so, there would not be much of a spring in his
stride. Even though he hadn’t really done much apart from
resting. Lain back on the beach, reading. Sat in the café at
s’Greijvin, or nearer at hand in Hellensraut. Strolled up and
down these never-ending sands.
The first week out here with Erich had been a mistake.
They had both realized that after the first day, but the arrangement couldn’t easily be changed. Erich had been allowed out
on parole on condition that he stay with his father on this
remote stretch of coast. He still had ten months of his sentence left to serve, and the last time he had been out on parole
the outcome had left much to be desired.
He gazed out to sea. It was just as calm and unfathomable
as it had been for the whole of this last week. As if nothing
could really make an impression, not even the wind. The waves
dying a natural death on the beach seemed to have traveled
vast distances bearing neither life nor hope.
This is not my sea, Van Veeteren thought to himself.
In July, as his vacation had approached, he had been looking forward to these days with Erich. When they finally
arrived, he could hardly wait for them to end, so that he could
be left in peace; and now, after a dozen days and nights of solitude, he wanted nothing more than to get back to work again.
Or was it quite as straightforward as that? Was that perhaps
just a convenient way of describing what it was really all
about—did there come a point, he had started to wonder, beyond which we no longer look forward to something coming,
but only to getting away from what has passed? Getting away.
Closing down and moving on, but not looking forward to
starting again. Like a journey whose delights decrease in direct
proportion to the distance traveled from the starting point,
whose sweetness becomes more and more bitter as the goal
comes closer...
Get away, he thought. Put an end to it. Bury it.
This is what they call going downhill. There’s always
another sea ahead.
He sighed and removed his sweater. Tied it around his
shoulders and started retracing his steps. He was walking into
the wind now, and he realized that it would take him longer to
get back home... just as well to have a few extra hours this
evening, come to that. The house needed tidying up, the fridge
emptying, the telephone unplugging. He wanted to set off
early tomorrow. No point in hanging around unnecessarily.
He kicked an abandoned plastic bottle over the sands.
It will be fall tomorrow, he thought.

He could hear the telephone ringing when he came to the
gate. Automatically he started moving more slowly, shortening
his strides, fiddling with his keys, in the hope that it would stop
ringing by the time he entered the house. In vain. The sound
was still carving stubbornly through the gloomy silence. He
picked up the receiver.