There was no doubt about the cause of death. Elizabeth Hennan had been strangled, probably at a different location from the place where the body was found. There was no sign of the victim’s having offered any resistance to her attacker, which could be explained by her having apparently first been rendered unconscious by a blow to the temple with a blunt instrument.
Among the details omitted from Reinhart’s summary was the fact that the body had been subjected to a degree of sexual violence, probably before as well as after the moment of death.
Chief of Police Edmund Hiller was informed of the murder at about ten o’clock that same morning, while partaking of a cup of coffee at home, and he immediately ordered Detective Inspector Reinhart to take charge of the investigation. He also withdrew Inspectors Rooth and Heinemann from the so-called teacher murder, and put them at Reinhart’s disposal.
At this point neither Hiller nor anybody else had reason to suspect a connection between the two cases.
When Chief Inspector Van Veeteren collected his red Toyota from the police pool that same morning, he was totally unaware of the night’s events; but of course, there is no reason to think that his knowing about what had happened would have altered the subsequent course of events in any significant way.
III
37
The town of Friesen seemed not to have bothered to get out of bed this gray, misty November Sunday. On the stroke of half past two he parked outside the railway station, and it only took him a couple of minutes to find the restaurant Poseidon, which was in a basement on the north side of the market square.
The premises were barren and deserted, but even so he was careful to choose an enclosed booth in a far corner. Sat down and ordered a beer. The waiter was chubby and completely bald, and reminded Van Veeteren of a film gangster he had seen many years ago.
In a whole series of movies, no doubt; but his name escaped him. Both the name of the character and of the actor.
And as he sat there, waiting for Ulrike deMaas, a new feeling started to creep up on him: that this was the right place, the very place.
That this is where he ought to have come a long time ago, for a conversation with this old friend of Eva’s. He could feel it in the atmosphere, in the damp emptiness. As if this restaurant and this Sunday afternoon had been waiting for him. If this had been a movie, what was lying in store for him would have been the inevitable key scene; the one that could have been edited and used over and over again. Showing short flash-backs, each one lasting only a second or two, from the whole story so far. . It was all very clear now, the whole thing; but this was also the kind of knowledge that he usually would prefer not to be aware of. This intuition that seemed to affect only himself, and could almost persuade him to imagine that he was some kind of a vehicle for a higher level of justice; a tool that was never wrong, not even in the twenty-first case. .
However, it was nothing to brag about. He recalled how he had once found a rapist by locking himself up in his office and playing patience for half an hour. That wasn’t something to include in lectures addressed to new recruits.
He sipped his beer slowly, and waited. Sat like an imper-turbable godfather in the dirty yellow light shining down onto the table. Baldy had been to light a candle in order to indicate that this booth had been claimed, but apart from that it remained in the shadows, waiting, like Van Veeteren, for Ulrike deMaas.
She arrived shortly after three, exactly as she had promised. A slim, dark woman in a duffel coat and a rust-red shawl. She had finished work at the museum at three o’clock; it was located on the other side of the square, and it didn’t take long to turn off the lights and lock up. Van Veeteren assumed that the number of visitors was similar to that at Poseidon; it was Sunday, and the first Sunday in Advent, at that: people no doubt had better things to do than visiting local museums and restaurants.
“Chief Inspector Veeteren?”
“Van Veeteren. Please sit down. You are Ulrike deMaas, I take it?”
She nodded, took off her duffel coat, and hung it over her chair.
“Please excuse me for suggesting that we should meet here rather than in my home, but things are a bit hectic just at the moment, and you said you wanted to talk in peace and quiet. . ”
She smiled timidly.
“I couldn’t imagine a better place than this,” said Van Veeteren. “What would you like?”
Baldy had slunk out from the shadows.
“To eat?” she wondered.
“Of course,” said Van Veeteren. “I’ve been driving for two hours, and will have to spend another two hours driving back home. A stew in the autumnal darkness is the very least I require. Choose whatever you like. The state is paying.”
She smiled again, a little more sure of herself now.
Removed a band from her hair and released a shower of chest-nut. Van Veeteren reminded himself that he was an ancient cop with only ten years left before retirement.
She lit a cigarette.
“You know, Chief Inspector, when I read about her death, it was as if. . well, not quite as if I’d expected it, but I wasn’t shocked or dismayed, or whatever it is one ought to have been.
Isn’t that strange?”
“Perhaps. Could you explain in more detail?”
She hesitated.
“Eva was. . she was that sort of person, in a way-she lived a high-risk life. Well, maybe that’s overstating it, but there was something. . something dramatic about her.”
“Did you know her well?”
“As well as anybody, I think. In those days, I mean. We never met later. We were in the same class for six years-the last three years at our junior school in Leuwen, and three years at high school in Muhlboden. We saw quite a lot of each other at high school; there were four or five of us in the same group. We used to call it our gang.”
“Girls?”
“Yes, a gang of girls. There was generally only two or three of us when we did something together. The others would be preoccupied with boys at the time, but who was doing what kept changing.”
“I’m with you. Did Eva have many boyfriends in those days?”
“No, she was probably the most careful of all of us. Yes, I’d say that was beyond doubt, but. .”
“But what?”
“In some strange way she had more reason than the rest of us to be careful. That sounds odd, but she always used to jump into things with both feet, as it were, and she had to keep herself on a tight rein to make sure she wasn’t injured. . or hurt, perhaps I should say. She was strong and fragile at the same time, if you see what I mean.”
“Not really, no,” Van Veeteren admitted.
“She changed quite a lot when we were at high school as well. I barely knew her when we were at school in Leuwen.
She and her brother Rolf-they were twins-were more or less inseparable. Their father died at some point around that time. I think that was good from her point of view. He was a heavy drinker. I wouldn’t be surprised if he beat them-her mother as well, I suspect.”
“How did Eva change at high school?”
“She became more open, sort of. Made some good friends.
Started to live, you might say.”
“Thanks to her father’s death?”
“Yes, I think so. The close link with Rolf seemed to become looser as well. I think they’d probably needed each other mostly as a sort of protection against their father.”
“Rolf moved away later on, is that right?”
“Yes, he also went to high school, in a parallel class, but he soon left. Went to sea instead. . Eventually settled down in America, I seem to recall.”
Van Veeteren nodded.
“Do you remember the names of any boys Eva went with?”