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double murderer who wasn’t in fact a double murderer. An innocent man who had been in prison for twenty-four years – oh yes, he certainly remembered Sister Marianne.
    And he also recalled the final act in the Verhaven case. No matter how much he would have preferred to forget it.
    I knew it would come back to haunt me, he thought. I knew it would turn up again one of these days.
    But in this way? Was he really going to have to pay his debts via this worried young priest?
    That’s absurd, he thought. Preposterous. I’m pulling on too many strings. There’s such a thing as coincidence as well, it’s not only a matter of these confounded patterns all the time.
    ‘Do you remember her?’ Gassel wondered.
    Van Veeteren sighed and looked at the clock.
    ‘Oh yes, of course I do. I remember your aunt very well. An impressive lady, no doubt about that. But I’m afraid that time is running out. And I’m far from convinced that I can be of any help to you. For many years my capacity has been somewhat overestimated.’
    ‘I don’t believe that,’ said Gassel.
    ‘Huh,’ muttered Van Veeteren. ‘Be that as it may. But in any case, I simply don’t have the time today, and tomorrow I’m off to Rome for three weeks. But if you are prepared to wait that long, of course I can listen to what you have to say when I get back to Maardam. But don’t be under the illusion that I shall be able to help you.’
    Gassel contemplated the bookshelves while he seemed to be thinking that over. Then he shrugged and looked unhappy.
    ‘All right,’ he said. ‘I can’t see any alternative. When exactly will you be back?’
    ‘On the seventh of October,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘That’s a Saturday.’
    Gassel took a little notebook out of his inside pocket and wrote that down.
    ‘Thank you for listening to what I had to say, in any case,’ he said. ‘I just hope nothing awful happens between now and then.’
    Then he shook hands once more and left the shop. Van Veeteren watched the tall, stooping man walk past the window and out into the alley.
    A young priest in a quandary, he thought. Seeking help from an agnostic ex-detective chief inspector. God moves in a mysterious way.
    Then he went out, locked the shop door and hurried off to the dentist’s in Meijkstraat.

5
    Monica Kammerle sat waiting outside the school welfare officer’s office.
    While she was waiting, she wondered why she was in fact sitting there. To be honest there were two reasons, but they weren’t really connected. Not directly, at least.
    In the first place she had promised that priest to go to the school welfare officer and talk to her about her situation. He had both nagged at her and appealed to her, and in the end she had agreed to go along with it. Not that she was going to tell the welfare officer everything – that was what Pastor Gassel had intended, of course, but she was not going to go quite that far. If she had really wanted to do that, there would have been no need to call in at the church – he ought to have realized that. And there was professional secrecy and there was professional secrecy, that was something she had gathered long ago.
    The whole business had disturbed him deeply, that was obvious. She had tried to explain that quite a lot might look worse from the outside than it did from the inside, but he had dismissed any such thought.
    ‘Look here, my girl! You simply cannot go on like this, you must surely see that!’ he had said when she met him for the second time. ‘What you have confided in me goes against all ethical and moral values, and will end in disaster. You are too young to escape unscathed from anything like that. You won’t be able to cope with it!’
    And you are too inexperienced to understand, she had thought.
    Anyway, in the end she had promised to talk to the welfare officer: but before making an appointment she made sure she had thought up a rather more seemly reason. It hadn’t been all that difficult: her