“I thought he was a murderer,” he said. “When there are no clear indications, you have to make up your mind. That goes with the job. I still think Verhaven was guilty. Of both murders. But to say I was certain would be to tell a lie. Such a long time has gone by, and I’m so close to death that I dare to tell it as it is. I don’t know. I don’t know if it really was Leopold Verhaven who killed Beatrice Holden and Marlene Nietsch. But I think it was him.”
He paused and took the cigarillo butt from the porphyry ashtray. Looked up and gazed out of the open French doors again.
“And I hope it was him. Because if it wasn’t, he’s been an innocent man in jail for a quarter of a century. And a double murderer has gone free.”
The last words were laden with exhaustion, but even so, Münster dared to ask one more question.
“You are assuming that no matter what else, both murders were committed by the same person?”
“Yes,” said Heidelbluum. “I’m quite certain of that.”
“In that case,” said Münster, “I would suggest that we are in fact dealing with a triple murderer, not just a double one.”
But Heidelbluum no longer appeared to be interested, and Münster realized that it was time to leave him in peace.
When the children were in bed at last, and Münster and his wife were drinking tea in the kitchen, he took out two photographs of Verhaven—one taken at some athletics meeting before the drugs scandal, the other taken a few years later, the afternoon at the end of April 1962 when he was arrested by two plainclothes police officers.
In both pictures the sun was shining into Verhaven’s face from the side, and in both he looked guileless, squinting straight at the camera. And there was a slight trace of a smile on his lips. An air of mischievous seriousness.
“What’s your impression of this man?” he asked his wife. “You’re usually good at reading faces.”
Synn put the two pictures side by side on the table and pondered them for a moment.
“Who is it?” she asked. “He seems familiar, somehow. He’s an actor, isn’t he?”
“Well, I don’t know about that,” said Münster. “But there again, yes, I think you’re right. Maybe that’s exactly what he was—an actor.”
V
August 24, 1993
23
It took some time to get the stove going, but once he’d shifted a few large chunks of soot from the flue, it took hold. Some smoke belched into the room to start with, but it soon cleared. He tried the faucets, but no water appeared: he had to fetch some buckets from the spring in the woods instead. He put a large cauldron on the burner, and a smaller pot next to it, for the coffee. The refrigerator merely needed switching on. The electricity was on, as he had requested. She had taken care of that.
When the water was sufficiently hot, he filled a bowl, carried it out to the rickety table at the gable end and had a good wash. The sun hadn’t yet sunk below the trees, and it made him feel pleasantly warm as he stood there in nothing but his underpants. Late-summer bumblebees buzzed around in the mignonette standing three feet tall against the house wall; there was a smell of ripe apples, which had already started falling, and he had the feeling that everything was beginning again.
Life. The world.
Once he’d done what he had to do, he would be able to start living up here again; he’d had his doubts, but this afternoon and evening filled with gentle movement and a spirit of welcome could hardly be mere coincidence.
It was a sign. One of those signs.
He poured the last of the water over his head. Didn’t bother about his underpants getting wet, took them off and went back into the house naked.
He put on a completely new set of clothes. The stuff he’d left in his study and in the wardrobe were pristine; maybe they smelled a little bit odd—a trace of jute or horsehair, perhaps—but what the hell? They’d been untouched for twelve years, after all.
Just like him. The same period of waiting, of being shut in.
He made his evening meal at about seven. Sausage and egg, bread, onion and beer. He ate it on the steps outside the front door, with the plate on his knee and the bottle on the rail, just like he always did. He washed up, lit a fire in the living room and tried to make the television work. There was a loud buzzing noise to accompany silent pictures from some foreign channel. He switched it off and tried the radio instead. That was better. He sat in the basket chair in front of the fire and listened to the eight o’clock news while drinking another beer and smoking a cigarette. He found it difficult to grasp that so much time had passed since he last sat here; it felt like just a few weeks, a couple of months at most, but he knew of course that this was how life stuttered along. No regular progression, nothing continuous. Ups and downs, to-ing and froing. But all the same, the passage of time was inscribed in one’s body: in the weariness one felt, all those increasingly sluggish movements.
And the anger in the soul. The flame refusing to die down. He understood that he needed to do what he had to do as quickly as possible. Within the next few days, preferably. He knew what he needed to know, after all. There was no reason to put it off any longer.
He waited until there was only the faintest of glows from the fire. Darkness had set in. It was time for bed, but he needed to pay a visit to the henhouse before going to sleep, just to see what it looked like. He had no intention of starting it all up again, certainly not, but he wouldn’t be able to sleep a wink if he didn’t take a quick look at least.
He took the lantern and went outside. He shivered a little when the cold evening air crept up on him, wondered whether to fetch a pullover, but couldn’t be bothered. It was only forty yards at most and he’d soon be back by the warm fire again.
He was only halfway there when it struck him that he wasn’t alone in the darkness.
VI
May 11–15, 1994
24
“What’s this thing for?” asked deBries, pointing at the tape recorder.
“It’s the chief inspector,” sighed Münster.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, he claims he’s leading the investigation and he doesn’t want to miss a word of this run-through. I tried to stop him, but you know what he’s like….”
“How is he?” asked Moreno.
“He’s on the mend, much better,” said Münster. “But he’ll have to stay in hospital for another three or four days at least. According to the doctors, that is. I expect the nurses on the ward would throw him out today if it was up to them.”
“Oh dear,” said Rooth, scratching at his beard. “He ought to keep his thoughts to himself, is that it?”
“Probably,” said Münster, switching on the tape recorder. “General update, Wednesday, May eleventh. Present: Münster, Rooth, deBries, Jung and Moreno…”
There was a knock and Reinhart stuck his head round the door.
“Is there room for one more?”
“…and Reinhart,” said Münster.
“What are you doing here?” asked Rooth. “Have all the racists gone away?”
Reinhart shook his head.
“I’m afraid not,” he said. “It’s just that I’m a bit interested in Leopold Verhaven. I’ve read a bit about him. So if you don’t mind…?”
“No problem,” said deBries. “Sit next to the chief inspector.”
“The chief inspector?” wondered Rooth.
“That’s him, whirring round and round.”
“I see,” said Reinhart, sitting down. “Absent but with us all the same.”