The Weeping Girl (17 page)

Emmerich:
Yes.

W
Born on 22 May 1967, here in Lejnice?

E
Yes.

W
Until 17 June you attended Voellerskolan here in Lejnice?

E
Yes.

W
You were in the same class as a girl by the name of Winnie Ludmilla Maas for six years. Is that correct?

E
Yes.

W
Would you say that you knew Winnie Maas well?

E
Yes. Although we weren’t such close friends as we used to be.

W
But you socialized now and again?

E
Yes.

W
You know what happened to Winnie, and why we want to talk to you?

E
Yes.

W
To what extent are you acquainted with Arnold Maager?

E
He was our teacher in Social Studies and History.

W
At Voellerskolan?

E
Yes.

W
How long did you have him as your teacher?

E
Two years. In class eight and nine.

W
How did you rate him as a teacher?

E
Not bad. Quite good, I think.

W
Can you describe him in a bit more detail?

E
/No answer/

W
Was he liked by the other pupils in your class?

E
Yes. He was good. Handsome.

W
Handsome?

E
For a teacher.

W
I see. Do you know if Winnie Maas thought the same about him as you did? That Arnold Maager was a good teacher. And handsome?

E
Yes, she did.

W
Are you sure? I’m talking about the time before the disco.

E
She liked him.

W
Did you talk about that?

E
Maybe. I can’t remember.

W
But she never said that she was in love with him, for instance?

E
No. Not to me, at any rate.

W
Were there any other pupils in your class who knew Winnie better than you did?

E
I don’t think so. No.

W
So if Winnie had wanted to confide in anybody, she would have chosen you?

E
Yes. Although she was a bit more private recently.

W
What do you mean?

E
She didn’t talk so much, sort of.

W
I see. Do you know if she had a boyfriend?

E
Not now. Not then, in May-June, I mean. I don’t think so at least.

W
But she had had boyfriends previously?

E
Of course.

W
Lots of them?

E
Quite a few, but not at the end of class nine.

W
Can you tell us what happened at the disco on 10 June?

E
What do you want to know?

W
What it was like. Who you were with. If you know what Winnie was up to.

E
It was the same as usual.

W
The same as usual?

E
We had a few drinks on the beach first.

W
Who’s ‘we’?

E
A few pupils from our class. And other classes.

W
How many?

E
Fifteen or so.

W
Was Winnie Maas there?

E
Yes.

W
And then?

E
We went on to the disco at about half past nine or thereabouts.

W
And then?

E
We danced and chatted and so on.

W
Were you aware of what Winnie Maas was doing during the evening?

E
Yes.

W
Let’s hear it.

E
She was a bit drunk. She danced quite a lot, like she usually did. She danced cheek-to-cheek with Maager.

W
Are you telling me that Winnie Maas danced cheek-to-cheek with Arnold Maager, her teacher in Social Studies and History?

E
Yes. I thought it was a bit of a joke. Some of the other girls danced with other teachers as well.

W
How many dances?

E
Winnie or the others?

W
Winnie.

E
I don’t know. Quite a lot.

W
With other teachers as well?

E
I don’t know. I think it was just with him.

W
Did you talk about it? You and your friends?

E
I don’t really remember. Yes, probably.

W
Didn’t you all think it was odd that Winnie danced such a lot with just one teacher?

E
I don’t remember.

W
Why don’t you remember?

E
I don’t know. I suppose I was a bit drunk. It was a bit of a blur.

W
Let’s move on to what happened later on in the evening. Can you tell us a bit about that?

E
We went down to the beach again, after the disco was over.

W
We?

E
A group of us. Eight or ten.

W
Was Winnie Maas with you?

E
Yes.

W
What did you do?

E
Nothing special.

W
Nothing special?

E
No.

W
But you must have done something?

E
I suppose so.

W
What, for instance.

E
What the hell do you want me to say? That we drank, smoked, did some necking?

W
Is that what you did in fact?

E
I suppose so. Chatted as well. One of the lads did some skinny-dipping.

W
Really? Did you talk to Winnie at all?

E
I don’t think so. Not especially. For Christ’s sake, we were all together.

W
You didn’t talk about her dancing so much with Arnold Maager?

E
I suppose we did.

W
Do you recall anything she said?

E
Yes, one thing.

W
What?

E
She said Maager really turned her on.

W
Maager really turned her on? You’re sure about that? That Winnie Maas said that?

E
Yes.

W
Did you believe her?

E
Why shouldn’t I? Why shouldn’t she get turned on by whoever she wanted?

W
All right. What did you do after you’d been on the beach?

E
We went back up to town again.

W
Winnie Maas as well?

E
Of course. For God’s sake . . .

W
Go on.

E
Somebody had heard that they were all at Gollum’s house, having a party.

W
Who’s Gollum?

E
Our handicrafts teacher. His real name is Gollumsen.

W
Who exactly were partying at his house?

E
All the ones who’d been supervising the disco.

W
The teachers.

E
Yes.

W
Including Maager?

E
Yes, including Maager.

W
And you knew that those teachers were going to be at Gollumsen’s house?

E
Yes.

W
How?

E
I don’t know. Somebody had heard about it.

W
Somebody?

E
I don’t know who, for God’s sake.

W
Was it Winnie Maas who knew?

E
Could have been.

W
But it could have been somebody else?

E
/No answer/

W
Okay, tell us what happened when you got to Gollumsen’s place.

E
They were sitting around and singing. They were all pretty drunk. Songs from the sixties. We rang the doorbell and they let us in.

W
How many teachers were they?

E
Four.

W
Four?

E
Yes. Gollum and Maager, and two others.

W
Which two others?

E
One is called Nielsen. And the other was Cruickshank.

W
And how many pupils were you?

E
Seven. But two left quite soon.

W
But you and Winnie stayed on?

E
Yes.

W
Who were the other three?

E
Tim Van Rippe and Christopher Duijkert and Vera Sauger.

W
So, five pupils and four teachers. What time was it when you got there, roughly?

E
Two o’clock, half past, somewhere around then.

W
And what did you do at Gollumsen’s house?

E
We had a few drinks, and sang songs – Nielsen played the guitar.

W
Go on. What happened between Arnold Maager and Winnie Maas?

E
They sat necking for a while. Then they disappeared into the bedroom.

W
And what did the rest of you do?

E
The rest of us?

W
Yes. What did the rest of you do after Winnie Maas and Arnold Maager had disappeared into the bedroom?

E
We sat around and sang and chatted.

W
For how long?

E
I don’t know. An hour, maybe.

W
And then you left the flat?

E
Yes.

W
Were Winnie Maas and Arnold Maager still in the bedroom when you left?

E
Yes. Unless they’d jumped out through the window – but I don’t think so.

W
Why don’t you think so?

E
Because it’s on the second floor.

W
I see. Anyway, did you discover what they were doing in the bedroom?

E
Yes.

W
How? And when?

E
We could hear what they were doing.

W
Really?

E
They were screwing so frantically that the whole house was shaking.

Moreno put the papers on one side. Checked the clock. A quarter to one. This was the third interrogation transcript she’d read, and the picture was becoming clear.

Depressingly clear, she thought.

. . . the whole house was shaking!

What a creep, she thought. No wonder he went and hid himself away in a loony bin. No wonder he went mad.

A wife and a two-year-old daughter.

Was this what Mikaela discovered when she visited the Sidonis home?

Was this what his wife suspected had happened?

No, it wasn’t difficult to understand why he had gone out of his mind. Most certainly not. Screwing a sixteen-year-old girl in front of five witnesses, more or less. And the whole house
was shaking . . . For Christ’s sake!

And then killing her when she had the nerve to get pregnant.

Detective Inspector Moreno leaned her head on her hands and gazed out at the Sunday-deserted square. The cold front was still persisting, but the rain had stopped as yesterday turned into
today.

Basic instincts? she thought.

Sex backed up by a certain amount of heart. The brain adrift in a dinghy with no oars. And drunk, to be on the safe side.

The parallel between the Maager incident and her own deflowering had been nagging at her for several days, and now she could see the incident in her mind’s eye more clearly than for many
years.

That cramped hotel room in the Piazza di Popolo in Rome. The eternal city. Eternal love.

Moreno. A seventeen-year-old schoolgirl. Only one year older than Winnie Maas – and only a year later chronologically, it now struck her, to her horror. 1984. A school trip for those
studying languages. Early summer. Good to be alive.

Him. A thirty-six-year-old Latin teacher.

Strong. Learned. Sophisticated.

A man of the world with a hairy chest and warm hands. They hadn’t made love so frantically that the whole hotel shook, but they’d had quite a lot of sex even so, and had managed it
without being observed. He promised to leave his wife for her sake, and she believed him.

So much so that she eventually telephoned his wife to discuss the situation with her.

Afterwards: his cowardice. His monumentally pitiful performance.

It was the first time she had come across anything so humiliatingly weak-kneed, and when she met his wife several years later they had a very fruitful woman-to-woman conversation. She had left
her Latin teacher, and as far as she knew he was still busy seducing schoolgirls in charmingly cramped rooms in Rome.

With warm hands, a hairy chest and a ready wit.

But he wasn’t the prat at the centre of the current emergency. Nor was Ewa Moreno one of the players.