It was a woman, no doubt about it. Her silhouette was outlined clearly against the window, but her face was in darkness.
“Diotima?” he whispered out of the blue, he didn’t know why. It was just a name that floated up to the surface of the well of forgetfulness. Somebody he missed.
But no, surely it wasn’t her?
She came closer. Walked slowly around the head of the bed, came around to his right side. Raised her arm, and something glinted in her hand. .
Mitter. . Janek Mattias Mitter. . He remembered just as the pain cut him in two.
And before the scream had time to leave his mouth, a pillow had been pressed down over his face. He groped around with his hands, tried in vain to grasp his visitor’s wrists. . But he lacked the strength, and pain pumped white-hot glowing waves out of his chest and stomach.
I am nobody, he thought. Nothing but a colossal pain.
The last thing to come to him was an image.
An old picture, something he might have drawn himself once. Or taken from a book.
It was an image of death, and it was a very personal truth.
An ox.
And a swamp.
This was his life. An ox that had fallen into a swamp.
Sinking slowly down into the mud. Sinking slowly into death.
When night came, a calm and starry night, only his head was still above ground, and the last thing. . the very last thing to disappear, was the ox’s surprised eye, staring up at the myriad stars.
That was the final image.
And when night closed in over the eye, everything became nothing.
II
25
“Rooth, would you mind asking Miss Katz to bring us a few bottles of soda water, please!”
Hiller removed a strand of hair from his jacket collar and eyed the assembled police officers.
“Where’s Van Veeteren? Didn’t I say that everybody was to be here at five o’clock? It’s three minutes past. The press conference is at six on the dot, and we need to know exactly where we are by then. This is a shitty situation if ever I saw one!”
Reinhart stood up.
“I’ll go and fetch him. He’s busy scaring the life out of a psychiatrist.”
Munster leaned back and tried to see out the window.
The chief of police’s office was on the fifth floor, and was generally called either the Fifth Column or the Greenhouse.
The former referred to the enemy in our midst, the latter to the occupier’s partiality for potted plants. The picture window looking out over the southern part of the town allowed in such a generous intake of warm light that a wide array of azaleas, bougainvillea, and all manner of palms were able to flourish. So successfully that the intended panoramic view had long since been replaced by an almost impenetrable wall of greenery.
Munster sighed and observed the chief of police instead.
He was rotating back and forth on his swivel chair. Moving papers, adjusting his tie, brushing dust from his midnight-blue suit. . These were all telltale signs: press conference! And it wouldn’t be just newspaper reporters and photographers eager for details, but radio and television newshounds as well.
Munster had seen a broadcast van park in the courtyard down below half an hour or so earlier. Presumably they were busy with cables and light meters in the conference room. Hiller was no doubt right.
This really was a shitty situation.
“Van Veeteren, can you fill us in on the current situation,” said Hiller when everybody had finally turned up. “I have to meet the press in forty-five minutes. . ”
“No,” said Van Veeteren. “I have a headache. Munster can do it.”
“Oh, okay,” said Munster, taking out his notebook. “From the beginning?”
The chief of police nodded. Munster cleared his throat.
“Well, it was 7:10 a.m. when we received an emergency call from Majorna, the psychiatric hospital out at Willemsburg.”
“We know that,” said Hiller.
“Reinhart and I arrived there at seven-thirty-five, together with Jung and deBries. The victim was lying in his bed in Ward 26B. We cordoned it off, of course. The other patient had already been moved to another room.”
“Very sensible,” muttered Van Veeteren.
“Anyway, the dead man was Janek Mitter-we both recognized him, and it was obvious what had happened. The whole bed was full of blood, and there was a lot on the floor as well.”
He leafed through his notebook.
“According to Meusse, who arrived ten minutes later, the cause of death was internal injuries and loss of blood caused by three deep stab wounds, one of which had sliced right through the aorta. Death appeared to have been more or less instantaneous, a few seconds at most, and Meusse estimated the time of death at somewhere between three and half past three.”
“The hour of the wolf,” said Van Veeteren. “The time of nightmares and death.”
“How come the press got to the scene before we did?”
Hiller asked. “Yet again,” he added.
“Tip-off from the staff,” said Reinhart. “One of the nurses had a girl staying the night with him-a hack with Neuwe Blatt.
They’d spent the night screwing in his apartment in the staff quarters, so she was only a three-minute walk away. Pretty, incidentally. . ”
“Hmm,” said Hiller. “Go on!”
“Rooth and Van Veeteren arrived half an hour later,” said Munster. “Along with the forensic team. They ran a fine-tooth comb over the place, of course, but there wasn’t much to find.”
“Really?”
“Apart from what was obvious, that is. The murderer had entered the room, killed the victim-a scary sort of knife, apparently, double-edged, some kind of hunting knife; there are so many variations of that type of thing nowadays. Anyway, the murderer left through the window and down the drainpipe. . ”
“I thought all the patients were locked up,” said Hiller.
“Not necessary,” said Rooth. “Not with the sophisticated drugs they have nowadays-although they have bars on the first- and second-floor windows. The drainpipe held on this occasion, but the next one to try it will probably fall to his death: three of the anchor brackets have come loose.”
“We’d better inform the murderer,” said Reinhart. “We can’t have him falling and hurting himself.”
“Any fingerprints?” Hiller asked.
“Not a trace, and no marks where he landed, either. There was a paved path at that particular point.”
“Are we allowed to smoke?” Reinhart wondered.
“Sit next to the window,” said Hiller.
Reinhart and Rooth changed places. Reinhart scraped out the spent contents of his pipe into a flower pot. Van Veeteren gave him an approving nod.
“Carry on!” said Hiller.
Munster closed his notebook again.
“There were four people on night duty-on Ward 26, that is. Four rooms make up that ward. It’s the same on the first and second floors.”
“Wards 24, 25, and 26, each on a different floor,” explained Rooth. “A, B, C, and D in each of them. Twelve rooms in all in that building. Two beds per room, eight in each ward; but some were empty. That happens occasionally, every other year or so-somebody is cured, or dies, and so there’s a vacancy.”
“But there are plenty of loonies waiting in the queue,” said Reinhart, finally getting his pipe to burn.
“So twelve staff on night duty?” Hiller wondered.
“Yes,” said Munster. “Two awake and two asleep on every ward. We’ve interrogated all twelve, especially the ones on Ward 26, of course. And. . well, it seems pretty clear what happened.”
“Really?” said Hiller, and stopped rotating his watch around his wrist at last.
“It was some time before we realized, of course. We had to check with the day staff as well, but everybody seems to agree.
There was a visitor who stayed behind.”