‘Nothing?’
‘Not until Monday morning. Then Sister Madeleine told us that she’d gone home.’
‘Hang on a minute. Can you remember the last time you saw Clarissa?’
Marieke Bergson thought that one over. Looked him in the eye for the first time, without averting her gaze, as she bit her lip and seemed to be thinking about it.
‘It was last Sunday,’ she said. ‘In the afternoon. We had a free period, four o’clock I think it was, and I know that she and some of the others went down to the road. Yes, that would be about half past four, I think.’
‘You had a free period?’ Van Veeteren asked. ‘So you should really have been doing something else?’
‘Yes, we were supposed to be having role play.’
‘Role play?’
‘Yes. About the Ten Commandments.’
Van Veeteren nodded. A timetable change, he thought. Why? That was less than two hours after he’d got into his car and driven away from there.
‘And you’re quite sure that you didn’t see her again after that.’
She thought that over again.
‘Yes. I didn’t see her after that.’
‘Do you know who was with her?’
‘Yes, I think so.’
‘We’ll come back to that,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘So you knew that Clarissa was no longer at the camp on Sunday evening – or at least, not on Monday morning. When did you discover that she hadn’t in fact gone home, but was dead?’
‘That was, er… when you came and woke us up and told us. And we saw her. Although we…’
‘You what?’
‘We didn’t believe you. That was the fact of the matter.’
‘But you saw her, didn’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘I don’t understand. Do you think you could explain it a bit better?’
‘We’d expected you to come from the Other World and say terrible things. That was the test, I suppose you could say.’
‘But even so you understood that Clarissa really was dead?’
Marieke Bergson gave a sob.
‘Yes, when I saw her I understood that, of course.’
The chief inspector nodded. He was the one who had insisted they should see the dead body, and although he’d had his doubts about it afterwards, he now conceded that it had been the right thing to do.
The situation had required firm action.
But for Christ’s sake! It was incomprehensible that none of the young girls had broken down when confronted with what had happened. Five o’clock in the morning, summoned out of their warm beds in order to be faced with the sight of a murdered friend. Only the face, admittedly, but still?
On the other hand he’d gone no further than making the girls file past the ambulance and look in through the doors. And he hadn’t started cross-questioning them immediately. He’d allowed them an hour for breakfast first. Deep down he was well aware that the whole set-up was a sort of revenge on the tight-lipped sisters – but maybe he could have saved a day if he’d put the boot in a bit harder?
Put the boot in a bit harder? he thought. What on earth am I going on about?
‘Was there anything else?’ asked the psychologist, and he realized that he must have been lost in thought for quite some time.
‘Yes, of course,’ he said. ‘There’s a lot more.’
‘Is there a toilet?’ asked Marieke Bergson. ‘I need to…’
‘Just outside, over there,’ said Van Veeteren, and switched off the tape recorder.
When she came back, she took the initiative straight away.
‘There’s the Katarina thing as well,’ she said.
‘Katarina?’
‘Yes, she was also at the camp to start with, but then one morning they said she’d gone home. She’d done something silly. We’ve been friends since last spring…’
‘What was her second name?’
‘Schwartz. Katarina Schwartz. She had the bed next to me.’
‘Katarina Schwartz,’ repeated the chief inspector, noting it down. ‘Is she also from Stamberg?’
‘Yes.’
‘How old?’
‘Thirteen, nearly fourteen. She moved to Stamberg last spring. She used to live in Willby before.’
‘I don’t suppose you remember her address and telephone number?’
‘Yes, I do.’
‘Can you write it down for me?’
He slid a notepad and pencil over the table. Marieke Bergson wrote down the details, her tongue in the corner of her mouth. When she’d finished she slid the pad back again. The chief inspector examined her round, school-girlish handwriting for a few seconds before continuing.
‘So, she’d done something silly, you said. Can you tell me any more about that?’
Marieke Bergson hesitated and bit her lip.
‘She swore at Yellinek She had the devil in her body… I thought it was a bit odd, although I knew her; the others thought so as well. We were supposed to pretend she’d never been there.’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know, but I suppose it was right. She’d been silly, she had the devil inside her, and it was best to forget her. I could hardly remember that she’d ever been at the camp until yesterday, when
…’
Her voice died away. The chief inspector waited, but she said nothing more.
‘Can you remember when exactly Katarina Schwartz disappeared?’
Marieke seemed to be working it out.
‘Two weeks ago, I think. Maybe a bit less. You lose track – time doesn’t pass in the usual way when you’re at Waldingen.’
Van Veeteren suddenly had the feeling that he’d like to continue cross-questioning this teenaged girl for several hours, but he realized he would have to resist the temptation to put her under too much pressure. He needed to prioritize, to take the most important matters first; then he could probably try to penetrate the shadowy side of the Pure Life later on, when there was time and opportunity.
‘Yellinek,’ he said instead. ‘Do you know where Oscar Yellinek is?’
The girl shook her head.
‘You don’t know?’
‘No.’
‘When did he disappear?’
‘The day before yesterday.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes. He wasn’t there on Monday morning. He’d been called away.’
‘Called away?’
‘Yes.’
‘What do you mean by that?’
‘The Lord had called him, and he needed to be away from the camp for a few days.’
She took a few more sips of Coca-Cola, and the chief inspector closed his eyes for a couple of seconds.
‘When on Monday?’
‘In the morning. He wasn’t there for morning prayers. Sister Ulriche took them instead. Then she told us that God had appeared to him during the night and given him a task. It was important that we should be firm in our faith, and remain pure and worthy in his absence.’
‘Pure and worthy?’
‘Yes.’
‘I see…’ Van Veeteren searched for the right words. ‘And what exactly does that mean?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Marieke Bergson.
‘Nor do I,’ said the chief inspector. ‘What do you do in order to show that you are pure and worthy?’
The psychologist raised a warning finger, and Marieke suddenly looked to be on the verge of tears. She wrung her hands and stared down at her shoes again. Van Veeteren hastily changed track.
‘When did you last see Yellinek?’
‘Sunday… Yes, Sunday evening.’
‘What were you doing then?’
‘It was evening prayers. Before we went to bed.’
‘And he didn’t say anything then, about having to go away?’
Marieke looked up, then averted her gaze again.
‘No, it was late at night when he met God, as I’ve said already. But Clarissa wasn’t around. We wondered a bit, but he didn’t say anything about her. He just said that the final struggle was here, and that we should be strong and pure.’
‘The final struggle?’
‘Yes.’
‘What did he mean by that?’
‘I… I don’t know.’
‘So, it was on Monday morning you found out about Clarissa Heerenmacht and also about Yellinek’s task?’
‘Yes – although we knew about Clarissa already. That she was no longer around.’