The Strangler's Honeymoon (36 page)

As she stood waiting for the tram, she found herself thinking once again about the link that had occurred to her the previous evening. The thought that there could be a connection between the Kammerle case and the disappearance of Ester Peerenkaas.

Always believe in passing whims! she recalled the
Chief Inspector
saying on one occasion. Give them a chance, at least, it doesn’t cost you anything.

The tram arrived and she elbowed her way on board. She even managed to find a seat – between an overweight man reading the Bible and a woman looking like an unusually thin Barbie doll – and continued thinking about it.

She started recapitulating the grim fate of the isolated family in Moerckstraat – was ‘family’ the right word, in fact? It was just a matter of two people: a mother and her daughter. Could such constellations properly be called families?

‘My family consists of one person,’ she recalled reading somewhere. ‘Me.’

Anyway, both of them were no longer with us. Martina and Monica Kammerle. Dead.

Killed.

There’s a murderer on the loose, as the saying goes. Perhaps he had murdered several women? That woman up in Wallburg, for instance? And maybe he had – this is where the passing whim came into it – maybe he also had something to do with the disappearance of Ester Peerenkaas?

It seemed to be beyond question that the man behind it all was the wild card she had gone to meet at the restaurant. The man who called himself Amos Brugger.

Ester Peerenkaas had told her friend that he’d said that was his name.

Amos Brugger.

But there was nobody by that name in Maardam, Reinhart had announced, and he had also suggested that it must mean something.

Mean something? Moreno thought. Names don’t usually mean anything at all, surely?

She looked out of the window. The tram was just pulling up at the Ruyders Plejn stop.

She checked her watch.

A quarter to nine. She had another sudden thought, and got off.

‘The day’s starting well,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘I hadn’t expected to see such a pretty detective inspector among all these piles of paper.’

‘Come off it,’ said Moreno. ‘A hundred years from now and we’re all nothing but a pile of bones. I think it was the Chief . . . that it was you who taught me that.’

‘You’re probably right,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘On both counts. But if you have something to talk to me about, you’re lucky. I’m not usually here at work at nine in the morning . . . Would you like some coffee?’

‘If you can supply a rusk or something to go with it,’ said Moreno. ‘I didn’t have time for breakfast this morning. Perhaps I ought to phone Reinhart and tell him I’m going to be a bit late. It’s just an idea I’ve had . . . That I’d like to discuss with you.’

‘Really?’ said Van Veeteren, looking somewhat surprised. ‘I have lots of ideas I’m only too happy to discuss. Blame yourself . . . Anyway, let’s lock the door and retire to the kitchenette.’

‘Well, what’s it all about, as it says in the Koran?’ he wondered when the cups were on the table and Moreno had just taken her first bite of the ciabatta bread he had heated up in the oven. ‘I take it that you haven’t called on me simply because you’re hungry and are interested in books.’

‘No – although I’m not really sure,’ said Moreno. ‘I just wanted to hear what you think. I had an idea, as I said . . .’

‘Might one guess that it has to do with the Strangler again?’ asked Van Veeteren, starting to roll a cigarette.

‘Hmm,’ said Moreno. ‘Of course it has . . . But I suppose that wasn’t too difficult to work out.’

‘Nothing new has happened, has it? I haven’t seen a word in the press for several weeks now.’

‘It’s at a stand-still,’ said Moreno. ‘But we’ve had reported a missing woman. I got the feeling that there might be a link. That’s my idea.’

Van Veeteren finished rolling his cigarette and gave her a searching look.

‘When?’ he asked.

‘About a week ago . . . Well, a week-and-a-half.’

‘Here in Maardam?’

‘Yes.’

‘Age?’

‘Thirty-five.’

‘About the same as you, roughly speaking?’

‘More or less,’ admitted Moreno.

‘Although you look more like twenty-five.’

‘Come off it.’

Van Veeteren lit the cigarette.

‘And what makes you think there might be a connection?’

Moreno hesitated for a few seconds before replying.

‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘Just intuition.’

Van Veeteren snorted.

‘For God’s sake, woman! If you start calling intuition nothing, you’ve forfeited the right to assistance from the supernatural. Well?’

Moreno laughed.

‘All right, I take it back. But the fact is that there aren’t any tangible links . . .’

‘Have you discussed this with Reinhart or Münster?’

‘No. They might be thinking along the same lines, I don’t know. I didn’t think about it until yesterday.’

Van Veeteren inhaled and thought.

‘Tell me,’ he said. ‘Tell me about this new woman.’

‘Amos Brugger?’ exclaimed Van Veeteren ten minutes later.

‘Reinhart said the name rang a bell – that’s what he said yesterday, at least. But he couldn’t think of what the connection was.’

She looked up and met Van Veeteren’s gaze. And stiffened.

Before he spoke she knew that he knew. There was no doubt about it.

His face seemed to have frozen in a strange way. Coagulated, perhaps. His mouth was half open, and a thin stream of smoke oozed slowly out of one corner and crawled up his cheek. His eyes seemed to be switched off. Or pointing inwards.

The expression only lasted for less than a second, but Moreno knew that this was how she would remember him. Always remember him. The
Chief Inspector
.

Like Rodin’s famous Thinker, when the thought finally occurs to him and he raises his head from out of his hand.

‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘You can bet your life you’re right. Shall I tell you who Amos Brugger is?’

‘Please do . . .’ said Moreno, swallowing. ‘Are you saying . . . ?’

Van Veeteren stood up and went into the bookshop. Returned half a minute later with three books that he placed on the table between them.

‘Musil,’ he explained. ‘Robert Musil.
Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften
– The Man Without Qualities. One of the greatest works of the twentieth century. On a par with Kafka and Joyce, some people maintain. I’m inclined to agree with them.’

‘Really?’ said Moreno, picking up the first of the volumes.

‘Unfinished, alas. He spent over twenty years writing it, if I remember rightly, but was never happy with the ending. Anyway, there is a murderer in the book. A murderer of women, to be more precise. A brilliant psychological portrait, in fact. Do you know what he’s called?’

Moreno shook her head.

‘He’s called Moosbrugger,’ said Van Veeteren, taking a swig of coffee.

‘Moosbrugger? . . . Amos Brugger?’

‘Exactly, said Van Veeteren. ‘Or why not A. Moosbrugger . . .
I am A Moosbrugger
. . . I don’t think it can get much clearer than that.’

‘Oh my God . . .’ said Moreno.

‘Didn’t he borrow a name out of a book the previous occasion as well?’

‘Yes,’ said Moreno. ‘Benjamin Karren. We’re not certain but we think he might have got it from an English crime novel from the thirties. You’re right. So you think . . . ?’

‘What do you think yourself ?’ asked Van Veeteren. ‘Anyway, I suggest you hurry along to the police station and urge your colleagues to commit all available resources to this business.’

‘I’m on my way already,’ said Moreno, getting to her feet. ‘Thank you . . . Thank you for your help. And for breakfast.’

‘You’re welcome,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘But make damned sure that I’m kept in the picture. Don’t forget that I have a finger in the pie myself . . . If I hadn’t sent that blasted priest packing, things would have been rather different now.’

‘I promise,’ said Moreno, hurrying out of the shop.

The perfect morning? she thought. For Christ’s sake . . .

33

‘So it’s one hundred per cent clear,’ growled Reinhart. ‘Hands up all those who’ve read Musil.’

He stared at his colleagues and allowed five seconds of silence to flow past before slowly raising his right hand, then lowering it again.

‘One,’ he ascertained. ‘What a bloody scandal! In this brains trust there is just one worn-out chief inspector who has ploughed his way through
The Man Without Qualities
, and he didn’t have the nous to see the connection. What a shower, what a useless shower!’

‘We’ll let you off this once,’ said Rooth. ‘Is it any good?’

‘A brilliant book,’ Reinhart maintained. ‘Absolutely brilliant. But it’s a quarter of a century since I worked my way through it, so I’m also prepared to go easy on myself. Anyway, Van Veeteren’s explanation means we know where we stand now. I’ll offer odds of ten to one on fröken Peerenkaas having come up against the same lunatic as our victims last autumn. Does anybody disagree?’

‘Maybe we should be careful of being too hasty,’ said Münster cautiously. ‘But I agree that it’s a major breakthrough . . . Amos Brugger must be a reference to Moosbrugger. We seem to be dealing with a pretty unusual character.’

‘Unusual?’ said Jung. ‘You can say that again. What’s his point, using these strange names? If he really feels he must introduce himself to his victims, why couldn’t he just use any name that came into his head? Rooth, for instance.’

‘What?’ said Rooth.

‘You could think that,’ said Reinhart. ‘But this name fixation must tell us quite a bit about him, surely?’

He looked around again, with a question mark engraved on his forehead.

‘I volunteer to take a week’s leave and read Musil’s book,’ said Jung. ‘It must be pretty thick?’

‘My edition has about twelve hundred pages,’ said Reinhart. ‘No, I reckon it was enough that you were already allowed to read a crime novel in working hours. But what can we say about our contemporary Moosbrugger? What do we know about him?’

Nobody spoke for a few seconds.

‘He has strong hands,’ said Moreno. ‘But we’ve said that before.’

‘He likes playing games,’ said Sammelmerk.

Reinhart nodded.

‘Yes, it seems so. We can take it for granted that he’s mad – but there’s method in his madness, to quote another great writer.’

‘
Hamlet
,’ said Rooth. ‘Even I know that. Shall I tell you who wrote it as well?’

‘That won’t be necessary,’ said Reinhart with a smile. ‘You can have a brownie point even so. Tell us something more about our strangler instead.’

‘He’s well educated,’ said Krause.

‘He reads books, at least,’ said Moreno.

‘He’s bold,’ said Münster. ‘If he did in fact kill Ester Peerenkaas, it was pretty cold-blooded of him to take her to a restaurant first. A place where anybody at all could have seen them together.’

‘He might have chosen a table hidden away in a corner,’ said Sammelmerk. ‘Rooth and I checked up on that when we were at Keefer’s: there are several tables that are more or less out of sight. But of course, he couldn’t have been totally invisible – not to the staff, at least.’

‘Hang on a minute,’ said Jung. ‘Hadn’t he ordered a table, using a name? In which case he might have called himself Amos Brugger when he did that as well. That might tell us a bit more about how he—’

‘Unfortunately not,’ said Reinhart. ‘Isn’t that so, Rooth?’

‘Yes,’ said Rooth. ‘We checked at Keefer’s this morning. They still had the lists of table orders, but there was nobody by that name that evening . . . Or the evening before, come to that. But they had quite a lot of bookings for two customers round about eight o’clock on the eighth of December: that’s the time we should be aiming at, so it must presumably have been one of those couples.’

‘I assume that we might eventually discover what name he used then,’ said Münster. ‘Assuming we can trace all the others. But I don’t quite see what good that would do us.’

‘Probably no good at all,’ said Reinhart. ‘He probably won’t have used his real name in any case. But are there any conclusions we can draw about herr Kerran-Brugger? Even if we’re only repeating what we’ve concluded already.’

‘Handsome and well-built,’ said Moreno. ‘Ester Peerenkaas fell for him, and she wasn’t in the habit of falling for anybody who happened to come along, according to what her friend said about her.’

‘Between thirty-five and forty-five, presumably,’ said Sammelmerk.

‘He doesn’t kill them straight away,’ said Jung. ‘He starts a relationship first – that’s rather unusual in this line of business, as I understand it.’

‘Line of business?’ said Krause.

‘Like a cat that plays with its prey before devouring it,’ suggested Rooth.

‘Ugh,’ said Moreno.

Reinhart pointed at Krause with the stem of his pipe.

‘Krause,’ he said. ‘Would you mind noting down all these points. I’m not exactly a fan of perpetrator profiling, but this particular bastard seems to lend himself to the practice unusually well.’

Krause looked up.

‘I’ve done that already,’ he said, tapping at his notebook with his pen.

‘Well done,’ said Reinhart. ‘I should have realized that. Anyway, our main line of attack now is that Ester Peerenkaas has been murdered, and we shall devote all our resources into following that up. But officially, she’s just a missing person – don’t forget that. We’ll soft-pedal the link with Musil as far as the press is concerned – those halfwitted berks won’t have a clue who Musil is anyway. Go easy on the link with previous cases as well, even if we need all the help we can get from the media. It’s the same unholy alliance as usual, no special tricks. Anything else?’

There was nothing else, it seemed.

Not as far as the murderer was concerned, that is. But there was plenty of speculation with regard to what might have happened to Ester Peerenkaas. Rather grim speculation: even if they tried to bear in mind Intendent Münster’s warning about jumping over-hastily to conclusions, it was difficult to imagine any optimistic possibilities.

It was also possible to speculate about the timing, and they duly did.