‘I suppose you don’t happen to know about an incident that took place while they were here?’
She shook her head.
‘No. What are you referring to?’
‘Were you not working here then? In 1995?’
‘Oh no, I didn’t come here until spring last year. Agnieszka as well.’
The presumptive twin looked up from her newspaper and smiled.
‘I’ve just extracted the information from the computer.’
‘I see,’ said Münster. ‘Am I right in thinking there are quite a lot of hotels out there?’
‘Of course. We use about ten, but there must be twenty-five to thirty in all. Most of them haven’t opened yet, of course. The usual season is Easter to the end of September.’
‘I see,’ said Münster again, and contemplated the slowly rotating fan on the ceiling for a few seconds. ‘But you haven’t had a booking from Maarten deFraan this week, have you?’
‘No. There’s very little to do at this time of year, to be honest. It’s mainly planning for the season ahead — checking that the hotels are up to standard, booking buses for the excursions, that sort of stuff. But we are open for a few hours every afternoon, as you have noticed.’
Münster nodded.
‘What’s the situation regarding the police authorities?’ he asked. ‘Argostoli is the main town on the island, is that right?’
‘Yes. The police station is down by the harbour. We don’t have much to do with them — it’s pretty quiet around here, thank goodness. But they have three departments: traffic police, tourist police and criminal police — well, I suppose the criminal police isn’t really a department. His name is Yakos. Dimitrios Yakos.’
‘He’s gone home for the day,’ said Van Veeteren an hour later when they sat down with a beer each under a green parasol outside the Ionean Plaza. ‘Chief Inspector Yakos. I rang the station, but the secretary wasn’t even sure if he’d been in at all today — she hadn’t seen him, if I understood her rightly. You haven’t considered moving yet, have you?’
‘I’m sitting here,’ said Münster.
‘Hmm, so you are,’ said Van Veeteren, taking out his cigarette machine. ‘Anyway, she was going to tell him that I want to meet him tomorrow morning, no matter what. I wonder where the hell our friend has got to. . He’s got a few days’ start on us, of course.’
Friend? Münster thought. He’s taken the lives of five people, or however many it is by now. Whatever he is, he’s certainly not a friend.
‘Was it Chief Inspector Yakos who was in charge of the investigation in 1995?’ he asked.
‘In so far as you can call it an investigation,’ said Van Veeteren, suddenly looking much grimmer. ‘I hope he speaks better English than his secretary in any case. But perhaps it’s intentional that the local population should look after criminal activities on the island, and not the tourists.’
Münster said nothing for a while, gazing out over the square, where a blue Mediterranean twilight had begun to descend and make outlines more blurred. It made everything look even more attractive, like a large living room under an open sky. The temperature was still around twenty degrees, he estimated, and there were rather more people out and about now. Elderly gentlemen sitting and reading newspapers, or chatting over tiny cups of coffee. Women with or without string bags, with or without widows’ veils. Young people sitting on the little podium, smoking. A few motorcyclists standing around, preening themselves. . Young girls laughing and shouting and chasing one another, and small boys playing football. Dogs and cats. Not many tourists, as far as he could judge: perhaps twenty or so in the cafes and tavernas he could see from their table.
How the hell are we going to find him? he thought. We don’t even know for sure if he’s on this island.
Has he really got a plan, this bookseller by the name of Van Veeteren?
He didn’t bother to ask as he knew he wouldn’t get a sensible answer. Was content to keep a discreet eye on his former boss from the side — just now he looked as inscrutable as a newly dug-up antique statue as he sat there sipping his beer with a newly rolled and newly lit cigarette between the index and long fingers of his right hand. But I suppose statues didn’t normally smoke and drink beer, Münster thought. I suppose I’m an astronaut after all, at bottom.
He relies on his intuitive ideas no matter what, always has done. But sooner or later surely even he must step on a land mine? Or was that not the case? Wasn’t the fact of the matter that Van Veeteren was always more sure about things than the impression he tried to give? Always knew more than he pretended to know? That could well be the case now, although on the other hand. .
‘Oh hell!’ exclaimed Van Veeteren, interrupting his chain of thought. ‘That wouldn’t be an impossibility, of course!’
‘What wouldn’t?’ said Münster.
‘That Muslim woman.’
‘What about her?’
‘It doesn’t have to be the case that. .’
Münster waited.
‘It could equally well be. .’
Münster sighed.
‘What are you on about?’
‘Shut up,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘Don’t ask so many damned questions, I’m trying to think. Have you got your mobile with you?’
The leader of the investigation sighed and handed over his mobile.
50
As they sat waiting in Inspector Sammelmerk’s office, Ewa Moreno thought about the problem of time and space.
Or to be more precise, things that happen and when they happen. About the peculiar fact that events appear to have the ability to attract other events. Like a sort of magnetism, almost. She recalled having discussed this phenomenon with Münster at some point: how long periods of time can pass — in one’s private life but more especially in police work — unbearable periods when nothing at all happens. Boring investigations when days and weeks and months pile up when nothing at all happens and zero progress is made: and then suddenly, without warning, two or three or even four crucial events occur more or less simultaneously.
Like now. Like this day in March with warm breezes and the promise of spring in the air. She had been sitting in her office with the windows wide open all afternoon. The phone call from the Greek archipelago had come at exactly ten minutes past five: a week’s accumulated paperwork had just been completed, and she was the only person left in the much reduced CID. That was why she was the one to receive the call from the Chief Inspector.
She had spoken to him for barely five minutes: no longer was needed. Then she had hung up and sat staring out of the window for a while, thinking about what action needed to be taken.
And about what the hell he was up to out there.
And then the next phone call had come. Anna Kristeva. Passed on to her via the switchboard, like the previous one. When she had been listening for long enough — a few minutes at most — to be clear that a face-to-face meeting was necessary, she had agreed a time, hung up and looked at the clock. It was still short of half past five.
A quarter of an hour, then. No longer than that had passed between the calls from Van Veeteren and Anna Kristeva. Surely that was remarkable. What peculiar waves in the passage of time had caused this sudden concentration in the flow of events? And brought matters to a head more or less simultaneously.
Bookseller Van Veeteren and lawyer Anna Kristeva? Two people completely unknown to each other, several thousand miles apart.
Well, as far as the Chief Inspector was concerned, it hadn’t been a question of making a decision, of course. It was more of an insight. Several thoughts that had suddenly rung a bell, and several observations that put matters into perspective. Intuition, as it is called.
But Anna Kristeva had made a decision, something she had been thinking about for days, even weeks. Something that had stretched her nerves to their limits, and reduced her night’s sleep to several hours below the minimum necessary.