Borkmann's Point (9 page)

Van Veeteren cleared his throat and rang the doorbell.
If I carry on wandering around and interviewing people hap
hazardly, he thought, I’m bound to meet him sooner or later.
Always assuming it was somebody local, that is, and Bausen
was pretty certain it was; and when he eventually came face-toface with him, he would know, not an ounce of doubt about it.
That’s the way it generally was. That was what gave him his
strength and the upper hand—his ability to know when he was
face-to-face with the criminal. His intuition was almost like a
woman’s, and he was hardly ever wrong.
Hardly ever...
He rang the bell again. Footsteps could be heard in the
newly built house, and then a figure came into view through
the frosted-glass door.
“Just a moment!”
The door opened. Dr. Mandrijn had been taking a nap, it
seemed. Or possibly involved in some midafternoon love tryst.
His black hair was ruffled, his dressing gown was gaping open,
his bare feet were highlighted by the wine-red marble floor.
About thirty-five years, was Van Veeteren’s immediate
assessment. Successful physician and head of family. Intelligent
eyes. Not especially athletic, shoulders somewhat hunched.
Nearsighted, perhaps? He flourished his ID.
“Chief Inspector Van Veeteren. Have you ten minutes to
spare?”
“What’s it about?”
He ran his hand through his hair and fastened his belt.
“Murder,” said Van Veeteren.
“What... oh, yes,” said Mandrijn, coughing. “The Axman
again? A ghastly business. Come in, by all means.”
Van Veeteren looked around the high-ceilinged, whitepainted room. A large picture window looked out onto a virgin lawn. Particles of dust danced around in the rays of
sunshine angled across the room. He could see that the garden
would eventually be pretty.
“Did you build it yourself ?”
“Well, I designed it and did all the fittings at least. It’s not
finished yet, as you can see, but it’s possible to live here. I was
up all night painting the ceilings. That’s why I was having an
afternoon nap. I’m on call at the hospital tonight. What do you
want to know? I spoke to another officer last week—”
“Yes, Chief of Police Bausen. I’d just like to ask a couple of
complementary questions.”
Mandrijn gestured toward one of the two armchairs in the
room, and Van Veeteren sat down.
“I understand that you rented the Simmels’s house while
they were away in Spain,” he began. “Let me see, that must
have been...from 1988 onward; is that right?”
“August 1988, yes. We both got jobs at the hospital at the
same time, Catrine and I; she’s my wife. Fresh out of medical
school, both of us, and of course, we didn’t know if we wanted
to stay here or not. It seemed ideal to rent a house instead of
buying one, or building a new one.”
“Do you have any children?”
“Two. They’re at the day nursery,” he said, sounding a bit
apologetic. “Catrine’s on duty today. Can I offer you anything?”
Van Veeteren shook his head.
“So you’ve decided to stay on in Kaalbringen.”
“We certainly have. We think it’s wonderful here. The only
thing is, we’d counted on staying for another six months in the
Simmels’s place.”
“So they came back sooner than expected?”
“Yes. The intention was that they wouldn’t come back at
all, but they said we could have the house for five years. I
assume he intended selling the place once they were established down there.”
“Where?”
“Where? In Spain, of course.”
“Do you have the Simmels’s address in Spain?”
“No...no, the contact man was Klingfort, the solicitor.
Why do you ask?”
Van Veeteren didn’t answer. He asked another question
instead.
“What was your impression of Mr. and Mrs. Simmel?”
Mandrijn looked out the window.
“Just between you and me?” he asked after a while.
“Yes.”
“I wasn’t impressed, I have to say. I don’t suppose they
meant any harm, but they weren’t very nice...well, a bit vulgar, I suppose you could say. Rich but cheap. No class, if you’re
allowed to say that nowadays. Especially him, of course.”
“Why did they come back?”
Mandrijn shrugged.
“I’ve no idea. They told us at the beginning of December
that they intended coming back home, and they wanted us out
of the house by February first. Pretty short notice, in fact. A
damnably bad way of going about things, to be blunt about it,
but we didn’t want to stir things up. We’d already bought a
plot, so all we needed to do was to start building.”
Van Veeteren pondered for a moment.
“Do you have any theory of your own about why Ernst
Simmel was murdered?”
If he says it was a Lunatic or No Idea, that will be the fiftieth time in a row, he thought. Mandrijn took his time, rubbing
away at one of his ear lobes.
“Yes,” he said, astonishing Van Veeteren. “I’ve thought a lot
about that. I think quite simply that it was somebody who
couldn’t bear to see him around Kaalbringen again. He was a
real bastard, Chief Inspector. A real bastard.”
You don’t say, thought Van Veeteren.
. . .

He made a detour on the way home. He felt a distinct need to
stretch his legs, and to put some distance between himself and
the case. Maybe also to escape... perhaps it wasn’t all that surprising. Nothing to get agitated about. He explored a few roads
he’d never been on before—not difficult around here, of
course; found himself in unknown places and out-of-the-way
havens, and eventually finished up on a ridge with a bird’s-eye
view of the town down below.

This was the countryside, not the urban environment. He
followed the edge of the forest in an easterly direction, toward
the restaurant Bausen had spoken about. Wandered lonely as a
cloud up here, his hands clasped behind his back and the wind
in his face. Some of the trees had already started to shed their
leaves, thanks to the dry summer, and it suddenly struck him
that there was some kind of promise in the air, or perhaps a
portent. Pure imagination, of course, but premonitions are
like that. When he came to the ruined monastery, he sat down
with a cigarette and some unformulated questions; and it was
only when he heard a dog barking in the distance that he stood
up and started walking down the steps in the hillside—carved
directly out of the limestone, slippery and not easy to walk on.

This would be an ideal place to have an accident, Van
Veeteren thought.
When he reached the bottom, he found himself next to
the graveyard—St. Pieter’s Church, if he remembered rightly—
the graveyard that looked out over the sea. It must have been
leveled and terraced at some point in the past when they
started to use it, he thought, and he spent a little time wondering what it was really like down there in the loose, artificial
earth among all the caskets and cavities. He noticed the outline
of The See Warf on the other side of the graves, and decided
to take the most direct route.
He threaded his way through the graveyard, zigzagging
along the raked gravel paths. As he passed the gravestones, he
read a year here, a name there; but it was not until he’d passed
through them all and was about to open the gate and leave the
cemetery from the other side that he noticed him: Chief
Inspector Bausen’s burly figure, head bowed, standing by one
of the memorial stones.
What had he said? Two years ago?
He couldn’t be sure if the chief of police was actually praying. He found that hard to believe; but in any case, there was
something solemn and spiritual about his expression—serene,
even—and for a brief moment he felt a pang of envy. He
decided on the spur of the moment not to announce his presence. To leave the chief inspector in peace by his grave.
How on earth can I envy a man who is mourning the death
of his wife? he thought as he passed through the gate. Sometimes I don’t even understand myself.

Back in his hotel room he lay down on his bed with his feet on
the footboard. Lay there and stared up at the ceiling with nothing more in mind than smoking and giving free rein to his
thoughts.

He was back in the habit: smoking, as usual, when work
was getting on top of him. When an investigation was not
flowing along the channels he’d dug out, or wished he had.
When everything came up against a brick wall, when the
breakthrough never came.

Nevertheless, that’s not really how it felt.
He thought about Bausen’s two-week rule. If it was right,
they had five days left. He’d spent a week in Kaalbringen by
this time, and when he tried to sum up his input into the investigation so far, he got no further than the uncomfortably
round number of zero.

Zero, zilch.
I can’t stand hanging around here another five days, he
thought. I’m going home on Sunday! Hiller will just have to
send somebody else—Rooth or deBries or any other bastard
he feels like. Nobody gains by my hanging around here any
longer!
Living out of a suitcase in a hotel. Drinking the chief of
police’s wine, and being beaten at chess! The renowned Chief
Inspector Van Veeteren!
The only thing that could change matters, he told himself,
was the possibility Bausen had floated a few days back.
If he struck again. The Axman.
Not much chance of that, according to the experts they’d
called in. If he strikes again, we’ll get him!
But there again...At the same time, he had this remarkable feeling that all they needed to do was wait. To hang in
there. That this remarkable case would be solved, or solve
itself, in some way that thumbed a nose at all the rules,
and that neither he nor anybody else would be able to stop or
influence...

After thinking these rambling thoughts and smoking four (or
was it five?) cigarettes, Van Veeteren went to stretch out in the
bathtub. He spent an hour pondering how to develop a Russian
or Nimzo-Indian opening. Much more tangible, of course, but
he didn’t reach any conclusions on this either.
When Beatrice Linckx had parked and locked her car in Leisner
Allé, the clock in the Bunges church tower struck eleven p.m.
She’d been on the road since four in the afternoon, having
skipped the final evaluation session of the conference, and
now there were only three things she was longing for.

A glass of red wine, a hot bath, and Maurice.
She glanced up at their apartment on the third floor, saw
that the light was on in the kitchen, and concluded that he was
waiting up for her. It was true that she hadn’t been able to get
through to him when she’d tried to phone on the way home,
but he knew she was due back tonight. No doubt he’d opened
a bottle of something, and maybe he’d have some toasted
sandwiches up his sleeve as well. Onion rings, mushrooms,
fresh basil and cheese... She took her bags out of the trunk
and crossed the street, stiff after the long journey but looking
forward to what lay ahead... keen to get into the apartment.
To come home.

What Beatrice Linckx hadn’t the slightest inkling of was that
the kitchen light had been on for more than twenty-four hours
and that although Maurice was in fact up there, he was by no
means in the state she’d expected. Nor were there any toasted
sandwiches, and nobody had opened a bottle of wine to
breathe—and she wouldn’t be able to snuggle down into that
hot bath for many hours yet. When she eventually did so, it
would be in a neighbor’s bathtub, and in a state that she would
never have been able to foresee.

Afterward, a lot of people wondered about her behavior. She
did as well. Given the circumstances, pretty well anything might
be regarded as normal; but even so, you had to ask questions.

She switched on the light in the hall. Stared at Maurice for a
few seconds, then picked up her bag again and backed out
through the door. Closed it and went back downstairs. Hesitated for a moment when she emerged onto the sidewalk, then
crossed the road and sat in her car again.

Sat there hugging the steering wheel and trying to heave
the heavy stone of forgetfulness over the opening to her consciousness. Trying to rewind time, just a few hours... back to
when she was happy and unaware... the hours before, the
unsullied normality... the road, the cars, the oncoming headlights, the Waldstein Sonata over her loudspeakers, the rain on
the windshield, the mint pastilles in the bag on the empty seat
beside her... looking forward to coming home.

She hadn’t seen anything. Still hadn’t gone up to the apartment. She sat in the car and rested for a while before going up
to see Maurice...to the sandwiches and the wine; her warm
red dressing gown; the sofa and the plaid throws; Heyman’s
String Quintet; candles in the designer candlestick... sitting
here waiting...
borkmann’s point

Nearly two hours later she wound down the window. The
evening air and a veil of drizzle crept in and brought her back
to reality. For the second time, she picked up her bags and
crossed the street. Didn’t look up at the apartment now. Knew
that all she could expect to find in store for her was Maurice,
and at ten minutes past one she had calmed down sufficiently
to phone the police and inform them that the Axman had dispatched another victim.

“It’s the bishop that’s in the wrong place,” said Bausen.
“I can see that,” said Van Veeteren.
“F6 would have been better. As it is now, you’ll never manage to get it out. Why didn’t you use the Nimzo-Indian
defense, as I suggested?”

“I’ve never mastered it properly,” muttered Van Veeteren.
“There’s more oomph in the Russian—”
“Oomph, yes,” said Bausen. “So much oomph it whips up a
damn gale and blows big holes through your own lines. Do
you give up?”
“No,” said Van Veeteren. “I’m not dead yet.” He checked
his watch. “Good Lord! It’s nearly a quarter past one!”
“No problem. Night is the mother of day.”
“You have no more pieces than I have, after all—”
“Not necessary by this stage. My h-pawn will become a
queen in another three or four moves at most.”
The telephone rang, and Bausen went indoors to answer it.
“What the hell?” he muttered. “At this time in the morning...”
Van Veeteren leaned forward and studied the situation. No
doubt about it. Bausen was right. It was hopeless. Black could
force the exchange of both castles and central pawns, and then
the h-file would be wide open. His remaining bishop was stuck
behind his own pawns on the king’s side. Bad play, really shitty
play—he could have accepted a loss if he’d been black, but
when he had the white pieces and was able to use the Russian
opening, there was no excuse. No excuse at all.
Bausen came rushing out.
“Call it a draw, for God’s sake!” he yelled. “He’s done it
again!”
Van Veeteren leaped to his feet.
“When?”
“I don’t know. They phoned in five minutes ago. Come on
for Christ’s sake! This is an emergency!”
He plowed his way through the undergrowth with Van
Veeteren after him, but stopped at the gate.
“Oh, shit! The car keys...”
“Are you really thinking of driving?” said Van Veeteren.
“You’ve drunk at least three pints!”
Bausen hesitated.
“We’ll walk,” he said. “It’s only a few hundred yards.”
“Let’s go!” said Van Veeteren.