Woman with Birthmark (3 page)

Malik nodded and finished off his cup of coffee. Clasped his hands behind his neck and thought about what else needed to be done today.

“I'll drive out to Schaaltze,” he decided. “Tell Wolff I'll be back after lunch.”

It was only when he was in the elevator on his way down that he remembered he didn't have a car. He recited an elaborate curse under his breath, wondering how he could be so absentminded, and considered briefly going back up. Then he recalled that it was possible to get there by bus. It was unusual for him to travel by public transportation nowadays, but he knew that Nielsen and Vermeer sometimes used to travel in on the Number 23 from Schaaltze, and if the bus goes one way, surely it must go the other way as well?

The bus stop was on the other side of the shopping center and post office, and he was about halfway there when he had the feeling that somebody was following him.

Or observing him, at the very least. He stopped dead and
looked around. The sidewalk wasn't exactly teeming with pedestrians, but nevertheless, there were enough of them to prevent him from detecting anybody behaving oddly. He thought for a second or two, then continued toward the bus stop. Perhaps he was just imagining things, and in any case, it was probably best not to make it too obvious that he suspected something. He quickly convinced himself of this, lengthening his stride and trying to keep all his senses on the alert.

He was amazed by his reaction, and how quickly and almost naturally he'd accepted the feeling and the suspicion. As if it were an everyday occurrence, almost.

Why on earth should anybody be following him? Ryszard Malik! Who the hell could be interested in such an everyday and insignificant person?

He shook his head and thrust his hands into his overcoat pockets.

What kind of stupid imagining was this? Ilse must have infected him with her silly nonsense, that must be it!

And yet … he knew it was true. Sensed it, rather. There was somebody behind him. Not far away. Somebody dogging his steps. Perhaps it was somebody who'd walked past him, he thought, and then turned around and started following him, some ten meters or so behind. You would be bound to notice such a maneuver in some vague, intuitive way…. Or had there been somebody standing in the foyer when he went out into the street? Somebody who'd been waiting for him? Good God, that would be worrying.

He came to the bus stop and paused. The bus had evidently just left, as there was nobody waiting. He backed into the little shelter and began surreptitiously watching passing pedestrians. Some were walking fast and purposefully, others more slowly.
Occasionally somebody would stop and step into the shelter beside him to wait for the bus, shielded to some extent from the wind. Stand there with that half-friendly half-distant air that strangers on the same mission usually adopt. A young man with a black-and-yellow-striped scarf that was almost brushing the ground. Two old women in threadbare coats, carrying shopping bags. A slightly younger woman in a blue beret, with a slim leather briefcase. A boy in his early teens with some kind of facial tic, scratching his groin continually without taking his hands out of his pockets.

Not especially likely candidates, he had to admit, none of them. When the bus came, everybody got on apart from the two old women. He let the others go first, paid somewhat awkwardly, and managed to find an empty seat right at the back.

So that he wouldn't have anybody behind him, he told himself.

During the journey, which took barely twenty minutes—more or less the same as by car, he noted with a degree of surprise—his mind indulged in an unequal struggle with refractory and importunate questions.

What the hell am I doing? asked his thoughts, soberly. This is utter lunacy! Madness!

But there is something, insisted his emotions. Don't try to convince yourself otherwise.

I'm going crazy, maintained his thoughts. My life is so damned monotonous that I'll clutch at anything that might introduce a bit of excitement.

You are in danger, countered his emotions. You know you are, but you daren't admit it.

He looked out the filthy window. The Richter Stadium with its pompous clock tower was just passing by.

Why do my thoughts say “I” and my emotions “you”? he asked himself, confused. No doubt it has something to do with my macho syndrome, or so Ilse would …

Then he suddenly realized that he was sitting there humming that tune again under his breath.

“The Rise and Fall of Flingel Bunt.” There was something about it. About that as well. Something quite specific. A memory of something he'd taken part in that was now drifting under the dark surface of the well of forgetfulness, without his being able to pin it down.

Until he got off the bus and was on his way across the street to the factory. Then it struck him, and as it did so he realized that he would do well not to dismiss suspicions and threats out of hand in the near future.

That was as far as Ryszard Malik's imagination and powers of insight stretched; but as his son would say afterward, the less he knew and suspected, the better, no doubt.

And what happened to Melisande de laCroix's presumed pregnancy and Miss deWiijs's fortieth birthday were questions that, as far as Ryszard Malik was concerned, also disappeared rapidly into the dark void of the future.

Although it was a year and a half since Ilse Malik had resigned from her job at Konger's Palace, she still hadn't managed to develop much of a social life. She played tennis with an old girlfriend once a week—on Tuesday afternoons. She went to visit her sister in Linzhuisen when her husband was away on business, which was at least once a month. She was a member of the association Save Our Rain Forests, and every spring and fall she used to sign on for one of the evening study circles but she always left after the first meeting.

And that was all—apart from the season ticket for the theater that all the hotel employees were given and which she still made use of even though she was, strictly speaking, no longer entitled to it.

But nobody wanted to be strict, and this particular Friday (they always went on the Friday after the premiere) she was going to see
A Doll's House.
She didn't know how many times she'd seen it already, but it was one of her favorites, and it would have taken a lot to keep her from going.

Perhaps there might be a glass of wine and a bite of cheese afterward, and a chat with Bernadette, the only one of her former
colleagues with whom she had had and still had any kind of close contact.

As it turned out, she had more than just one glass of wine. The part of Nora had been played exceedingly well by a young and very promising actress on loan from the Burgtheater in Aarlach, and a new managing director had taken over at the hotel less than a month before. There was much to talk about. When Ilse Malik clambered into a taxi outside Kraus a few minutes after half past eleven (Bernadette lived close by and preferred a short walk and a breath of night air), she felt unusually contented with the evening and with her existence in general, and promptly started a conversation with the cabbie about movies and plays. Unfortunately it ebbed out after a minute or so, when it transpired that he hadn't set foot inside a theater since having been forced to attend a play by an overzealous drama teacher at college more than thirty-five years before. Of all the movies he had lapped up in recent years, he hadn't come across a single one that could measure up to
The Creature from, the Black Lagoon.

In any case, shortly after twenty minutes to twelve he pulled up outside the Maliks' house in Leufwens Allé—the temperature had risen by some five degrees, thank goodness, and the roads were good. Ilse paid, and added a generous tip, rounding it up to fifteen guilders despite the cabbie's distressing lack of culture, and got out of the car.

The house was in darkness, which surprised her somewhat. Malik seldom went to bed before midnight, especially on a Friday night when he had free run of the place. There wasn't even a light on in his study upstairs; but of course, it was possible he was
sitting in the darkened TV room, which was at the back facing the garden.

But the fact that he'd switched the light off in the hall when he knew that she hadn't come home yet was sheer stupidity. She made a mental note to tell him so as she fumbled in her purse for her keys. He didn't normally lock the outside door when she was out, but something told her he'd done so this evening.

At least, that's the way she told herself she had been thinking. Later.

Afterward. When she was trying to relive what had happened, and when everything was in chaos and one big black hole.

She inserted her key into the lock. Turned it and found to her surprise that the door wasn't in fact locked. Opened it. Reached out her hand and switched on the light in the hall.

He was lying just inside the door. On his back with his feet almost on the doormat. His white shirt was dark red, as was the normally light-colored pine floor. His mouth was wide open, and his eyes were staring intently at a point somewhere on the ceiling. His left arm was propped against the little mahogany chest of drawers used to store gloves and scarves, looking as if he had put his hand up in school to answer a question. One of the legs, the right one, of his gray gabardine trousers had slid up almost as far as his knee and exposed that ugly birthmark that looked like a little crocodile—she had been so fascinated by it when they were engaged. By the side of his right hand, half-clenched, next to the shoe rack, was the
Telegraaf
, folded to reveal a half-solved crossword puzzle. A fly was buzzing around his head, evidently unaware that it was January and that instead of being there, it ought to have been hidden away in some dark crack, asleep for at least three more months.

She registered all this while standing with her keys dangling between her thumb and index finger. Then she closed the door behind her. She suddenly felt dizzy and automatically opened her mouth to gasp for more air, but it wasn't enough. It was too late. Without a sound she fell headfirst, diagonally over her husband, hitting her eyebrow against the sharp edge of the shoe rack. Her own warm, light-colored blood started trickling down to mingle with his, cold and congealed.

Sometime later she came around. Tried in vain to shake some life into her husband, and eventually managed to crawl five more meters into the house, staining the floor, carpets, and walls with blood, and phoned for an ambulance.

It was only after it had arrived and the crew established what had happened that the police were called. By then it was six minutes past one, and it was half an hour after that before the real police work got under way, when Detective Inspector Reinhart and his assistant Jung arrived at the crime scene with forensic technicians and a police doctor. By then Ilse Malik had lost consciousness again, this time as the result of an injection administered by the older and more experienced of the two ambulance men, with a modicum of necessary force.

By this time Ryszard Malik had been dead for more than five hours, and when Inspector Reinhart announced in some irritation that “we're not going to solve this shitty mess before dawn, gentlemen,” nobody even raised an eyebrow in protest.

He could have sworn that he'd disconnected the phone before going to bed, but what was the point of swearing? The telephone—the devil's own invention—was ensconced on his bedside table and was intent on etching its blood-soaked sound waves onto his cerebral cortex.

Or however you might prefer to express it.

He opened one reluctant eye and glared at the confounded contraption in a vain attempt to shut it up. It kept on ringing even so. Ring after ring carved its way through his dawn-gray bedroom.

He opened another eye. The clock on the aforementioned table indicated 7:55. Who in hell's name had the nerve to wake him up on a Saturday morning when he wasn't on duty he wondered. Who?

In January.

If there was a month he hated, it was January—it went on forever with rain or snow all day long, and a grand total of half an hour's sunshine.

There was only one sane way of occupying oneself at this lugubrious time of year: sleeping. Period.

He stretched out his left hand and lifted the receiver.

“Van Veeteren.”

“Good morning, Chief Inspector.”

It was Reinhart.

“Why the flaming hell are you ringing to wake me up at half past five on a Saturday morning? Are you out of your mind?”

But Reinhart sounded as incorruptible as a traffic warden.

“It's eight o'clock. If you don't want to be contacted, and refuse to buy an answering machine, you can always pull out the plug. If you'd like to listen, Chief Inspector, I can explain how you—”

“Shut up, Inspector! Get to the point!”

“By all means,” said Reinhart. “Dead body in Leufwens Allé. Stinks of murder. One Ryszard Malik. The briefing's at three o'clock.”

“Three?”

“Yes, three o'clock. What do you mean?”

“I can get from here to the police station in twenty minutes. You could have phoned me at twelve.”

Reinhart yawned.

“I was thinking of going to bed for a bit. I've just left there. Been at it since half past one…. I thought you might like to go there and have a look for yourself.”

Van Veeteren leaned on his elbow and raised himself to a half-sitting position. Tried to see out through the window.

“What's the weather like?”

“Pouring down, and windy. Fifteen meters a second, or thereabouts.”

“Excellent. I'll stay at home. I suppose I might turn up at three, unless my horoscope advises me not to…. Who's in charge now?”

“Heinemann and Jung. But Jung hasn't slept for two nights, so he'll probably need some rest soon.”

“Any clues?”

“No.”

“How did it happen?”

“Shot. But the briefing is at three o'clock, not now. I think it's a pretty peculiar setup. That's why I rang. The address is Leufwens Allé 14, in case you change your mind.”

“Fat chance,” said Van Veeteren, and hung up.