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philanderer?”
Schalke hesitated, but only for a second.
“Well, not quite that, I don’t think. I didn’t know him all
that well, and he’d been away for several years...kicked over
the traces now and then, I suppose, but nothing serious.”
“His marriage wasn’t all that serious either then, I assume,”
said Van Veeteren.
“No...You could put it like that, I suppose.”
“And he left here at about eleven?”
“A few minutes past.”
“Which way did he go?”
“That way.” Schalke pointed again. “Down toward the
square and the harbor.”
“Didn’t he live in the other direction?”
“You can go either way, in fact. It’s just that it’s a bit longer
via the harbor.”
“You didn’t see anybody follow him?”
“No.”
“Why do you think he took the longer route?”
“I don’t know. Women, perhaps.”
“Whores?”
“Yes...we have one or two. They usually hang about
down there.”
“Did you notice anybody else leave the bar after Simmel?”
“No...I’ve been thinking about that, but I don’t think anybody did.”
Van Veeteren sighed.
“What questions would you ask if you were in my place?”
Schalke considered.
“God knows! I haven’t a clue, to be honest.”
“You don’t have any theories about what happened?”
Schalke considered again. It was obvious that he would
have loved to come up with a bold hypothesis, but he gave up
after a while.
“No, none at all, to be honest,” he said. “It must be a madman, I reckon...Somebody who’s escaped from a funny
farm, maybe?”
Funny farm? thought Van Veeteren. A well-chosen expression for a scribbler to use, I must say.
“Bausen’s been following that up,” he said. “The only person who’s escaped is a confused old lady in her nineties. Has
Alzheimer’s and goes around in a wheelchair...”
“I don’t suppose it’s her then,” said Schalke.
Van Veeteren drained his beer and decided it was time to go
home. He hopped off his bar stool and thanked Schalke for his
assistance.
“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 pavement 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 cafés that were open also seemed
to be fairly empty. The Palladium cinema had started its lateevening 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 nobody 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 better 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 ringing 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