Then he nodded and made a note. He’d been through this kind of thing before.
“Anything else?” he asked.
“The whole of April and May ’86,” said Van Veeteren. “In Karpatz, of course. But for Christ’s sake don’t ask him out-right. If he has the slightest suspicion, he’ll wriggle out of it.”
Munster made another note.
“Is that all?”
Van Veeteren nodded. Munster put his notebook into his jacket pocket.
“Monday?”
“Monday,” said Van Veeteren.
“What are you intending to do yourself?” Munster asked as he stood in the doorway.
Van Veeteren shrugged.
“We’ll see,” he said. “Beate Lingen to begin with.”
Munster closed the door behind him.
Who the hell is Beate Lingen? he wondered. Ah well, no badminton for the next few days, at least. If he worked all day Friday, he might even have a weekend off.
When he got back to his office, the phone rang.
“Another thing,” said Van Veeteren, “while we’re at it. The thirty-first of May is also a good date-1986, that is. Saturday afternoon, somewhere among the lakes at Maarensjoarna. But it’s only a hunch, and you’ll need to be extremely careful.
Have you understood?”
“No,” said Munster.
“Good,” said Van Veeteren, and hung up.
35
He stayed at home on Friday.
Woke up at about nine and plugged the telephone in again.
Looked up the travel agents in the yellow pages, and before getting out of bed, he had booked his ticket. An Australian Airways flight on Thursday, December 5, departure time 7:30 a.m. Open return.
Then he unplugged the telephone again and got up to have breakfast.
Sat at the kitchen table. Listened to the rain. Chewed at a justifiably thick sandwich of whole-grain bread with cheese and cucumber. The morning paper was spread out in front of him, and suddenly, he had that feeling.
A feeling of well-being. He tried to suppress it, but it was there all the time, warm and persistent and totally unambigu-ous. A feeling of gratitude for the infinite riches of life.
No matter what happened, seven days from now he would be having breakfast on the balcony of his hotel room in Sydney. Thumbing absentmindedly through a guide to the Great Barrier Reef. Lighting a cigarette and turning his face up to the sun.
By then he would either have captured a murderer, or resigned his job.
It was a game with only winners. A morning dripping with freedom. No dog throwing up in front of the refrigerator. No wife thinking of moving back in with him. The door locked.
The telephone unplugged.
He recalled Farrati and the frilly knickers. Dammit all, life was a symphony.
Then he thought about Mitter. And Eva Ringmar, whom he had never met while she was still breathing. She was the one it was all about.
And he realized that the symphony was in a minor key.
He had finished reading the newspaper by eleven. He ran a bubble bath, put on a Bach cello suite at high volume, lit a candle on the lavatory seat, and slid down into the water.
After twenty minutes he hadn’t moved a fin, but a thought had floated up to the surface of his brain.
A thought had been born thanks to a mixture of the water’s warmth, the candle’s flame, and the harsh tone of the cello.
It was a terrible thought. A possibility he would prefer to dismiss. Drown. Blow out. Switch off. It was the image of a murderer.
No, he hadn’t cornered him yet. But there was a way.
An accessible path that he merely needed to follow to its end. Keep going for as long as possible, and see what lay concealed at the destination.
In the afternoon he lay down on the sofa and listened to more Bach. Slept for a while and woke up in darkness.
Got up, switched off the tape recorder, and plugged the telephone back in.
Two calls.
The first was to Beate Lingen. She remembered him-she said she did, and he could hear it in her voice. Nevertheless, he managed to get himself invited to tea on Saturday afternoon.
She had an hour, would that be enough?
That would be fine, he said. She was only an intermediate stop, after all.
The other was to Andreas Berger. Once again, he was in luck. Berger answered the call. Leila was out with the children.
He could speak uninhibitedly, and that was a requirement.
“I have a question that is very personal. I have a question that I think could be the key to this whole tragedy. You don’t need to answer if you don’t want to.”
“I understand.”
Van Veeteren paused. Searched for the right words.
“Was Eva. . a good lover?”
Silence. But the answer was audible in the silence.
“Will you. . will you use whatever I say in some way or other? I mean. .”
“No,” said Van Veeteren. “You have my word.”
Berger cleared his throat.
“She was. .” he began hesitantly. “Eva made love like no other woman in existence. I haven’t had many, but I think I can say that even so. She was. . I don’t know, words seem so inadequate. . She was angel and whore. . woman and mother. . and friend. She satisfied everything. Yes, everything.”
“Thank you. That explains a lot. I shall not use what you have said in any improper way.”
Saturday brought with it a pale blue sky and thin, scudding clouds. A sun that seemed cold and distant, and a wind from the sea. He spent the morning walking by the canals, and noticed to his surprise that he could breathe. The air weighed little; there was a whiff of winter in it.
At about two he took the tram to Leimaar. Beate Lingen lived in one of the newly built apartment houses on top of the ridge. High up, on the sixth floor, with a view over the whole town. Over the plain, and the river as it meandered its way to the coast.
She had a glazed balcony with infrared heating and tomato plants, and they sat out there all the time, drinking her Russian tea and eating thin Kremmen biscuits with jam.
“I spend most of my time out here when I’m at home,” she said. “If there was room, I think I’d move my bed out here as well.”
Van Veeteren nodded. It was a remarkable place. Like sitting in a warm glass cage, hovering untrammeled above the world. With a view of everything, yet completely divorced from everything.
I’d like to write my memoirs in a place like this, he thought.
“What do you want to know, Chief Inspector?”
He reluctantly allowed himself to be returned to reality.
“Miss Lingen, if I remember rightly, you knew Eva Ringmar at school. This time, that’s the period I’m most interested in. Let me see, it was. .”
“Muhlboden. The local high school.”
“And you were in the same class?”
“Yes. Between 1970 and 1973. We took the school-leaving exam in May.”
“Were you born in Muhlboden?”
“In a little village just outside. I was bused in.”
“And Eva Ringmar?”
“The same. She lived out at Leuwen, I don’t know if you are familiar with the place?”
“I’ve been there.”
“Yes, quite a lot of us lived outside the town: it’s a big school. Serves a very large district, I believe.”
“How well did you know her?”
“Not at all, really. We didn’t go around together. We were never in the same gang-you know how it is. You’re all in the same class, sit in the same room every day, but you know nothing at all about most of your classmates.”
“Do you know if she. . if Eva had a boyfriend around that time, somebody she was pretty steady with?”
What an awful expression, he thought.
“I’ve been thinking about that,” said Beate Lingen. “I remember there was an incident in class three-the final year, that is, in the fall-when a boy had an accident. It wasn’t a lad from our class, I think he was a year older, in fact; but I have the impression that Eva was mixed up with it somehow or other.”