The Weeping Girl (31 page)

‘I don’t know,’ said Moreno, shaking her head. ‘I’m on holiday. Perhaps one should take into account the fact that her daughter has gone missing . . .’

‘Yes, of course,’ said Baasteuwel.

They finished their main course and ordered coffee. Baasteuwel lit a cigarette, placed his elbows on the table and leaned forward. Looked inscrutable for a moment, then suddenly broke into a
smile.

‘Vrommel,’ he said. ‘Would you like to know how I intend to tackle the problem concerning the chief of police?’

‘Tell me,’ said Moreno.

‘Like this,’ said Baasteuwel, and looked almost excited at the prospect. ‘As I can’t very well punch him on the nose, and we can’t go gadding about questioning
people without him getting to know about it, I’ve turned to the press.’

‘The press?’ said Moreno.

‘Yes, the local newspaper. Aaron Wicker, editor in chief of
Westerblatt
. They are deadly enemies, he and Vrommel, if I’ve interpreted the signs correctly. And he’s old
enough to know about the Maager case. He claims he wrote ten kilometres of columns on the subject. I’m going to meet him tomorrow evening – unfortunately he’s away all day
gathering material for some article or other . . . But then, as God is my witness, light will be cast on this whole murky business.’

‘Excellent,’ said Moreno. ‘If you need any extra help, you might like to know that I happen to be staying with one of Wicker’s reporter colleagues.’

Baasteuwel’s jaw dropped for a moment.

‘I’ve got to hand it to you, you know what you’re doing. Do you spend all your holidays like this?’

‘You should see me when I’m on duty,’ said Moreno.

‘I’ve been doing a bit of thinking as well,’ Baasteuwel admitted when their coffee was served. ‘I haven’t only been faffing about and being a
conscientious police officer.’

‘You don’t say,’ said Moreno. ‘And what have you been thinking about?’

‘The murder. Of Van Rippe, that is. But I haven’t got anywhere.’

‘That happens to me sometimes as well,’ admitted Moreno. ‘Once a year or so. Let’s hear it.’

Baasteuwel displayed his uneven teeth in a grin.

‘You’re a canny cop,’ he said. ‘Are you married?’

‘What the hell has that got to do with it?’ said Moreno.

Baasteuwel leaned forward over the table.

‘I just don’t want you making advances to me,’ he said. ‘I have a wife and four kids; I see it as my duty to humanity to spread my genes.’

Moreno burst out laughing and Baasteuwel bared his teeth again.

‘But where were we?’ he said. ‘This poor Van Rippe – I can’t help wondering about how he came to die. It’s a damned unusual way of murdering people, sticking
something in his eye, isn’t it? It’s difficult to get at an eye, I mean, unless he was lying down, asleep, of course. But why would he be lying asleep on the beach?’

‘He could have been taken there,’ said Moreno.

‘Yes, I’m coming round to thinking that he must have been,’ said Baasteuwel. ‘Nobody sleeps on the beach at night, and it’s an exceptionally cold-blooded murderer
who goes and stabs to death somebody who’s lying down and sunbathing. I gather you’re not exactly on your own down on the beach during the day – even if my duties have prevented
me from going down there to check. So he must have been moved there after the murder.’

Moreno thought about that.

‘That can’t be true,’ she said.

‘I know,’ said Baasteuwel. ‘But tell me why it can’t be true.’

Moreno could see that she’d have nothing against working together with Baasteuwel on a daily basis as well. He seemed to be sharper than most, and he had a way of discussing things and
playing with words that helped to move things forward. He was creative, in fact.

‘The careless way he was buried,’ she said. ‘If somebody really had time to move the body from the place where it had been murdered, they ought also to have had time to dispose
of it more efficiently. To dig it down deeper, at least. And why choose a place that’s crawling with people every day? There must be hundreds of places where he’d never have been found.
Up among the dunes, for instance. No, I think it must have happened in great haste, despite everything. The murderer was in a hurry. Dug the body down as quickly as possible, then got the hell out
of there.’

‘So not a lot in the way of premeditation, in other words?’

‘Presumably not.’

‘And it happened at that very spot?’

‘Presumably.’

Baasteuwel lit another cigarette and sighed.

‘Maybe we’ll have to go along with Kohler’s idea after all.’

‘What was that?’

‘Call in the army and dig up the whole bleeding beach.’

‘Surely we’ve sorted the immediate vicinity already,’ said Moreno. ‘Have they found anything? The scene-of-crime gentlemen, I mean,’

‘A shoe,’ said Baasteuwel. ‘The right size, could be Van Rippe’s, but it’s not certain. It was lying about ten metres away.’

‘An excellent clue.’

‘Brilliant. Vrommel has it on his desk, and is supposed to be studying it. I must remember to keep an eye on it and make sure he doesn’t spirit it away. It ought to have been sent to
the Pathology Laboratory, of course, but that hasn’t happened. Ah well . . .’

He suddenly yawned, and Moreno had an immediate urge to follow suit.

‘Make sure you do that, then,’ she said, looking at the clock. ‘Send off the shoe and keep an eye on Vrommel. Shall we ask for the bill? Or have you anything else to say? You
have to be at work tomorrow morning, if I’m not much mistaken.’

‘Huh,’ grunted Baasteuwel. ‘You’re right, of course. Not that I have anything against a hard day’s work. It’s sitting around and twiddling my thumbs that goes
against the grain for me.’

Moreno recalled his initial question.

‘So that’s why you became a police officer, is it, if I might respond with a question? To avoid sitting around and twiddling your thumbs.’

Baasteuwel looked pensive for a moment.

‘Not really,’ he said. ‘I became a police officer because I enjoy putting crooked bastards behind bars. I’ll never catch up with all of them, of course –
there’s too many of ’em: but I feel a bit better every time I manage to nail another of the swine. My wife thinks I’m perverted.’

He smiled without showing his teeth.

‘There are worse reasons for becoming a cop,’ said Moreno.

‘There certainly are,’ said Baasteuwel. ‘Anyway, I’ll be in touch tomorrow. Assuming you’ll still be around, that is?’

Moreno nodded.

‘I’ll be around until Saturday at least. I have an appointment with a young lady tomorrow.’

The young lady in question had gone to bed by the time she returned to Zinderslaan, but her mother was sitting in the kitchen, checking proofs.

‘I feel like a gypsy,’ Moreno said. ‘Wandering around and changing my address several times a week.’

‘Gypsies are nice people,’ said Perhovens. ‘Would you like some tea?’

Moreno said she would love some. It was turned half past eleven, but if they were going to exchange a few words and experiences, it could well be best to seize the opportunity while Drusilla was
out of the way.

‘Tim Van Rippe,’ Perhovens said. ‘We’re going to reveal his name tomorrow. I hope you’ve nothing against that?’

‘Not at all,’ said Moreno. ‘His next of kin know about it.’

‘Good. I’d be quite interested in talking our way through this Maager business, in fact. I reckon it’s about time I wrote something about that as well. If it turned out to be
appropriate. A few little adjustments might be in order, perhaps? In the next week or so . . . What kind of tea would you like? I have sixty-two different sorts.’

‘Strong,’ said Moreno.

23 July 1999

The ridge of high pressure returned on Friday. The rain from the south-west had moved on, and it became rapidly warmer. As early as seven in the morning the big
thermometer on the side of the Xerxes IT company building in Lejnice was showing 25 degrees in the shade, and it would get even hotter.

Detective Inspector Ewa Moreno was not one of those who got up to check the weather at seven o’clock that morning. Instead she was woken up at nine by Drusilla Perhovens, who immediately
put her in the picture.

‘The sky is as blue as flax flowers, and the sun’s shining like hell.’

‘Don’t swear, Drusilla,’ said her mother, who was standing in the doorway, brushing her hair.

‘You’ve got to let yourself go now and then,’ said Drusilla. ‘You’ve taught me that.’

Then she turned to Moreno.

‘You can come with me to the beach if you like,’ she said. ‘We’ll be picking up a boy who’s a friend of mine, so you won’t need to entertain me all the
time.’

Moreno thought about that for a couple of seconds, then accepted.

But as it turned out, merely lying around on the beach and making the most of the high pressure wasn’t entirely without its problems. Drusilla kept her promise and spent
most of the time with a young man by the name of Helmer – swimming, building sandcastles, swimming, playing football, swimming, eating ice cream, swimming and reading comics. Moreno rang the
changes by first lying on her back, then on her stomach; but irrespective of her position she found it hard not to think about what was hiding away in this warm, soft sand less than a week ago.

And what might still be lying hidden there.

Perhaps I’m lying on a corpse, she thought as she shut her eyes to keep out the glare of the sun. Before long Drusilla and Helmer will come running up to tell me that they’ve dug up
a head.

She had the feeling that it was beginning to be high time she put all this behind her. Time to leave Lejnice and life on the beach, and go back home to Maardam at last. The Mikaela Lijphart case
wasn’t her case any longer. Nor was the Arnold Maager case, nor the Tim Van Rippe case. They never had been her concern, strictly speaking; but now at least she had left them in competent
hands: Kohler’s and Baasteuwel’s, and – if that weren’t enough – those of the collective of local journalists: Selma Perhovens and, as far as she understood, Aaron
Wicker. There was no reason why she should be involved any longer. None at all. She had done more than anybody could reasonably have asked; and if her aim was to return to work in August with
anything like recharged batteries, it was high time that she allowed herself some real holiday. Cycling and camping in the wild Sorbinowo region, for instance. Warm evenings round the campfire with
barbecued fish, good wine and existential conversation. Nocturnal swims in dark waters.

And if they really were considering digging up the whole of this beach, teeming with holidaymakers, that was something she had no great desire to be involved in. No desire at all.

Even so, needless to say that was precisely what she started dreaming about when she fell asleep. Hordes of sweaty soldiers, dressed in green, under the command of a bald senior officer (looking
remarkably like Vrommel, in fact, but with a Hitler moustache rather than a thin conventional one), hacking away with pickaxes and spades and digging up corpse after corpse, which were piled up
according to age and sex under the supervision of herself and Constable Vegesack. Baasteuwel was wandering round with a brush, removing the sand from their faces and bodies, and they appeared one
by one before her horrified eyes. Mikaela Lijphart, Winnie Maas, Arnold Maager (whom she had only seen in a bad photograph but who nevertheless was more recognizable than any of the others for some
incomprehensible reason), Sigrid Lijphart, Vera Sauger, Mikael Bau, Franz Lampe-Leermann . . . She had some difficulty in understanding how the last two were relevant in this context, but accepted
it as an example of life’s inherent lunacy. It wasn’t until Drusilla came up hand in hand with Maud, Moreno’s sister – not as she had turned out, but as she remembered her
as a teenager – that she’d had enough of the show and woke up.

Her head was bursting. Never lie down and fall asleep in the sun! She remembered that as an instruction her mother – for whatever reason – had tried to ram into her brain when she
was a child, and even if she didn’t feel she’d derived all that much wisdom from that source, she felt she had to concede that today of all days her mother was right on that score at
least. She struggled to her feet, and went for a swim.

‘Baasteuwel, detective inspector,’ said Baasteuwel.

Silence at the other end.

‘Am I speaking to Dr deHaavelaar?’

‘What do you want?’

‘Just a few questions. I’m involved in the Van Rippe case – you’ve doubtless read about it in the newspapers. There seems to be a connection with another case from a few
years ago – the murder of Winnie Maas. Can you remember that?’

‘If I want to,’ said deHaavelaar.

‘I think you carried out the post-mortem, is that right?’

‘I have nothing to add in that connection.’

‘I’m only looking for some clarification.’

‘No clarification is needed. Has the chief of police sanctioned this phone call? He’s in charge of the investigation, isn’t he?’

Baasteuwel paused before answering.

‘May I ask why you are unwilling to talk about this?’

An irritated snort was audible at the other end of the line.

‘I have more important things to be getting on with,’ said deHaavelaar. ‘I was pestered the other day by another police officer as well. A woman.’

‘Inspector Moreno?’

‘Yes. I ought to have reported her to Vrommel, but I erred on the side of mercy.’

‘I see,’ said Baasteuwel. ‘But the fact is now that either you answer my questions over the telephone, or I shall send a police car round to collect you. It’s up to
you.’

Silence. Baasteuwel lit a cigarette and waited.

‘What the hell is it you want to know?’

‘Just a few details. I’m sitting here with the trial transcripts in front of me. The trial of Arnold Maager. And there’s something about it that perplexes me.’

‘Really.’

‘You didn’t appear to give evidence.’

‘No.’

‘Why not? You were the medicolegal officer after all.’

‘It wasn’t necessary. It’s usual but not compulsory. It was an open-and-shut case, and I no doubt had other things to do.’