Hakan Nesser - Borkmann's point

Shit! she thought. Just the job for Kropke. If that’s how it’s going to turn out, we might as well acknowledge defeat in advance.

But surely there must be some shortcuts? Cribs? Some way of cutting through the mass of irrelevant data? There must be.

So what was the question she could write on the next page with quadruple underscoring?

It was already there.

“Connection???” it said. She stared at it for a while. Then she drew a triangle. Wrote the names Eggers and Simmel in two of the corners. Hesitated for a moment before putting Axman in the third. Contemplated her handiwork.

What on earth am I doing? she thought. What kind of rub bish is this? What childish drivel!

Nevertheless, the drawing certainly looked plausible. If only I had a computer, she thought, I’d simply feed Simmel into one end and Eggers into the other. The patterns that came up on the screen would sooner or later highlight a point, or produce a bundle of lines that indicated something that made sense. A single name would emerge from the chaos or what ever the mathematical term was, and it would be the name of the Axman. It would be as easy as that!

Oh, come on, thought Beate Moerk. I’m losing my grip! If there’s one thing in this world that I don’t understand, it’s com puters.

She closed her notebooks and saw from the clock that it was too late for that Italian film on the TV that she hadn’t really intended watching anyway. No, she was not one for the quantitative approach. Not for her the tedious search through haystack after haystack; Kropke could get on with that, with the help of Mooser and Bang. She had better things to do.

She looked up again, just in time to see the moon glide into the rectangle formed by her window. Full and round… Juno!

It was a sign, no doubt about it. There were other criteria to be applied to this case. Different assumptions. Intuition! Woman!

None of this confounded left side of the brain! Yin, not yang!

She sat smiling at the moon. I’m an idiot, she thought. A damn fool! Time to go to bed. Yes, no doubt about it. Lucky that nobody else knows how I’m using my brain. Or rather, abus ing it!

She stood up and went into the hall. She slid out of her dressing gown and examined herself in the mirror. Hmm, not too bad, she thought. Could easily be twenty-five, twenty six, or thereabouts. A pity there isn’t a man waiting for me in my bed.

But she certainly didn’t want him there tomorrow morning as well!

And when she started to doze off a quarter of an hour later, all that drifted into her subconscious through the darkness were the imaginary images of the murderer. Insofar as there are any imaginary images…

The Axman?

Could they even be sure that it was a man?

That question registered just as she abandoned her final foothold and submitted to the boundless embrace of slumber.

There was no time to consider whether or not Wundermaas would have assigned her to one of the potentially fruitful haystacks.

“I sometimes get the feeling there is a guiding hand, despite everything,” said Bausen, handing Van Veeteren a glass.

“God’s finger?”

“Or the other one’s. Cheers! This is not strong; I didn’t want to kill off your taste buds. I thought we could sample a few decent things later.”

They drank and the wicker chairs creaked in sympathy. Van Veeteren lit a cigarette. He’d succumbed to temptation and bought a pack at the newsstand outside his hotel. It was the first one since Erich had left him, so he felt entitled to it.

“Anyway,” said Bausen, producing a shabby tobacco pouch vaguely reminiscent of something Van Veeteren had seen in

Ernst Simmel’s throat. “We lead a fairly quiet life here. Lock up a few drunks, clear up the occasional case of assault and bat tery, confiscate a few bottles of the hard stuff from the boats coming in from the east, and suddenly we’re landed with this.

Just when I’m about to call it a day. Don’t try to tell me that’s not a pointer!”

“There are certain patterns,” said Van Veeteren.

Bausen sucked fire into his pipe.

“I’ve even given the racists a rap on the knuckles.”

“Ah, yes. You have a refugee camp out at Taublitz, if I remember rightly,” said Van Veeteren.

“We certainly do. These characters started stirring up trouble a few years ago, and in November last year there was a gang going around setting fire to things. They burned two huts down to the ground. I arrested eight of them.”

“Excellent,” said Van Veeteren.

“Four of them are busy rebuilding the cabins; can you imag ine that? They’re working alongside the asylum seekers! They were allowed to choose between two years in jail or commu nity service. Damned fine judge. Heinrich Heine his name was, the same as the poet. And now they’ve learned their lesson.”

“Impressive,” said Van Veeteren.

“I agree. Maybe it is possible to make human beings out of anybody at all, providing you go for it hook, line and sinker.

Mind you, four of them preferred jail, of course.”

“Are you intending to go on October first anyway, no matter what happens?” asked Van Veeteren. “They haven’t approached you about staying on, or anything?”

Bausen snorted.

“No idea. I’ve not heard any hints yet, in any case. I expect they hope you’ll sort this out in a couple of ticks so that they can send me packing in the usual manner when the day comes.

I hope so as well, come to that.”

Same here, thought Van Veeteren. He picked up his glass and looked around. Bausen had cleared the table and put a cloth on it, but apart from that, the patio looked the same as the previous time-books and newspapers and junk every where. The serpentine rambling roses and the overgrown gar den sucked up every noise and impression but their own; you could easily imagine having been transported to some Greene esque or Conradian outpost. A mangrove swamp at the mouth of some river in the as yet unexplored continent. The heart of darkness, perhaps. A couple of topis, a jar of quinine tablets and a few mosquito nets would not have disturbed the image.

But nevertheless, he was in the middle of Europe. A little toy jungle by a European sea. Van Veeteren took a sip of his drink, which smelled slightly of cinnamon, and felt a brief pang of satisfaction.

“Your wife…?” he said. Sooner or later he’d have to ask that question, after all.

“Died two years ago. Cancer.”

“Any children?”

Bausen shook his head.

“What about you?” he asked.

“Divorced. Also two years ago, or thereabouts.”

“Ah, well,” said Bausen. “Are you ready?”

“For what?”

Bausen smiled.

“A little trip into the underworld. I thought I’d show you my treasure trove.”

They emptied their glasses, and Bausen led the way down into the cellar. Down the stairs, through the boiler room and a couple of storage rooms full of still more junk-bicycles, fur niture, worn-out domestic appliances, rusty old garden tools, newspapers (some in bundles and some not), bottles, old shoes and boots…

“I find it hard to let anything go,” said Bausen. “Mind your head! It’s a bit low down here.”

Down a few more steps and along a narrow passage smelling of soil, and they came to a solid-looking door with double bolts and a padlock.

“Here we are!” said Bausen. He unlocked the door and switched on a light. “Stand by to have your breath taken away!” He opened the door and allowed Van Veeteren to go in first.

Wine. A cellar full of it.

In the dim light he could just make out the dull reflections from the bottles stacked up in racks around the walls. In neat rows from floor to ceiling. Thousands of bottles, without doubt. He sucked the heavy air into his nostrils.