Hakan Nesser - Borkmann's point

“Is it always as empty as this here?” he asked.

“Good Lord, no!” said Schalke. “It’s usually packed. I mean, it’s Friday and all that… People are just scared stiff. They daren’t go out!”

Scared stiff? thought Van Veeteren as he stood on the pave ment outside. Yes, of course they’re scared stiff.

Town terror stricken?

It took him barely ten minutes to walk from The Blue Ship to the harbor and The See Warf. Quite a few cars were around, but he saw no more than a dozen or so pedestrians, all of them in groups. The few bars and cafes that were open also seemed to be fairly empty. The Palladium cinema had started its late evening showing, but he had the impression that it was just as empty in there. Even if the Kaalbringen nightlife was nothing to write home about, the trend was clear enough.

The murderer… the executioner… the Axman left no body unaffected.

Hardly surprising. He stood for a while outside his hotel and wondered if he maybe ought to go to the municipal woods and take a look but decided to wait. No doubt it would be bet ter to do that in daylight.

There were a lot of other things to take care of tomorrow, of course, but as he settled down in bed and switched on the cassette player, it was Inspector Moerk’s words that were ring ing in his ears.

Nothing. We don’t know a damn thing.

An attractive woman, incidentally, he thought. A pity I’m not twenty-five years younger.

By the time he’d heard one and a half interviews, he was sleeping like a log.

In his dreams the old images came back to haunt him again.

The same images. The same desperate inability to act, the same sterile white-hot fury-Bitte in the corner by the sofa with her arms covered in needle marks and eyes like black, empty wells. The pimp, thin as a rake with jet-black, straggly hair, eyeing him scornfully and sneering. Hands raised, palms up, and shaking his head. And the other man-her face over the shoulders of the naked man. A sweaty, hairy back, heavy buttocks thrusting violently into her and pressing her up against the wall, her legs wide apart and her eyes reflecting his own, seeing what he sees… just for a second before he turns on his heel and leaves.

The same images… and imposed upon them, penetrating them, the image of the ten-year-old with blond plaits, roaring with laughter, running toward him along the beach. Arms out stretched, eyes gleaming. Bitte…

He woke up. In a cold sweat as usual, and it was several sec onds before he remembered, before he got the upper hand… the weapon… the intense feeling of bliss as he swung it through the air and the dull thud as it penetrated their necks. The life-less bodies and the blood bubbling out…

That blood.

If only that blood would flow over those dream images.

Cover them in stains, make them incomprehensible, unrecog nizable. Destroy them. Settle the bill once and for all, reduce all debts to zero… But even so, it was not about his torture. It wasn’t about the images, it was about what the images were based on. The reality behind them. The reality.

Her revenge, not his. That ten-year-old running toward him, whose life had come to a sudden stop. Who was blocked and obstructed in midstride, just as abruptly and inexorably as in the photograph. It was about her and nobody else.

He fumbled for his cigarettes. Didn’t want to put the light on. Darkness was what was needed; he didn’t want to see any thing now. He struck a match. Lit the cigarette and inhaled deeply, resolutely. Immediately felt that warm sensation again spreading through his body, a tidal wave flowing up into his head and making him smile. He thought about his weapon again. Could see it before him in the darkness. He was an exhil arated Macbeth suddenly, and he wondered how long he would have to wait before it was time to let it speak again…

In the clear light of morning and with a fresh breeze blowing in from the sea, Kaalbringen seemed to have forgotten that it was terror stricken. Van Veeteren had a late breakfast on his balcony and observed the teeming crowds in Fisherman’s Square down below. There were obviously more than delica cies from the depths of the sea being sold from the stalls under their colorful awnings-more like everything under the sun.

Saturday morning was market day; the sun was shining and life went on.

The clock in the low limestone church struck ten, and Van Veeteren realized that he had slept for almost eleven hours.

Eleven hours? Did that really mean, he asked himself, that what he needed in order to get a good night’s sleep was a mur der hunt? He contemplated that theory as he tapped the top of his egg. It seemed absurd. And what was that insidious feeling that had taken possession of him this peaceful morning? He’d noticed it when he was in the shower, tried to rinse it away, but out here in the salty air it had returned with renewed strength.

Spun esoteric threads of indolence around his soul and whis pered seductive words in his ears…

It was that he had no need to exert himself.

The solution to this case would come to him of its own accord. Strike him as a result of some coincidence. A gift from the heavens. A deus ex machina!

A mercy devoutly to be wished, thought Van Veeteren. Fat chance!

But the thought was there nevertheless.

Cruickshank and Muller were sitting in the foyer, waiting for him. They had been joined by a photographer, a bearded young man who brandished a flash gun at his face the moment he emerged from the lift.

“Good morning, Chief Inspector,” said Muller.

“It looks like it,” said Van Veeteren.

“Can we have a chat after the press conference?” asked Cruickshank.

“If you write what I tell you to write. One word too many and you’ll be banned for two years!”

“Of course,” said Muller with a smile. “Usual rules.”

“I’ll be at Sylvie’s between noon and half past twelve,” said Van Veeteren, handing in his room key at reception.

“Sylvie’s? What’s that?” asked the photographer, taking a new picture.

“You’ll have to work that out for yourselves,” said Van Veeteren.

Detective Chief Inspector Bausen took charge of the assem bled journalists and immediately stamped his authority on the proceedings. He started by waiting for several minutes until you could have heard a drop of sweat fall in the packed conference room. Then he started to speak, but stopped the moment anybody whispered or coughed and fixed the perpetrator with a beady eye. If anybody dared to interrupt him, he delivered the warning that a repeated offense would result in the sinner’s being ejected from the room forthwith by Kropke and Mooser.

And he himself would help out if need be.

But he answered calmly and methodically the questions that were put to him, adopting a precisely judged degree of superiority that exposed and established the limited intellec tual faculties of the questioner. Always assuming he had any.

The man must have been an actor, thought Van Veeteren.

“When do you think you will have the murderer under lock and key?” asked a red-nosed reporter from the local radio station.

“About ten minutes after we’ve found him,” said Bausen.

“Have you any theories you’re working on?” wondered Malevic, chief reporter on de Journaal.

“How else do you think we operate?” asked Bausen. “We’re not working for a newspaper.”

“Who’s actually in charge of the investigation?” asked the man sent by the Neuwe Blatt. “Is it you or DCI Van Veeteren?”

“Who do you think?” responded Van Veeteren, contemplat ing a comprehensively chewed toothpick. He didn’t answer anything else, referring all direct questions to Bausen by nod ding in his direction. If he was smiling inwardly, nobody could have told that from the expression on his face.