Free Borkmann's Point by Håkan Nesser

able to come up with something useful.
For Christ’s sake, we’ve spent thousands of hours on this
damned Eggers!”
    “There’s no justice in this job,” said Van Veeteren with a
smile.
“Not a trace,” said Bausen. “We might as well put our faith
in the general public. They always come up with something.”
“You may be right,” said Van Veeteren.
Bausen started scraping out his pipe, looking as if he were
turning something over in his mind.
“Do you play chess?” he asked.
Van Veeteren closed his eyes in delight. The icing on the
cake, he thought.
Better make the most of everything that comes along. It
looked suspiciously as if things might get more difficult.
It wasn’t only the radio station and the local press that had
taken Chief of Police Bausen’s orders ad notam. On Sunday,
several national newspapers issued a serious exhortation to the
conscientious burghers of Kaalbringen to go to the police
without delay with any scrap of information that might possibly lead to the rapid capture of the Axman.
When Inspector Kropke and Constable Mooser compiled
the results of the general public’s first day of sleuthing, quite a
lot of things were crystal clear. It is true that Kropke had not
had time to prepare any overhead projector transparencies
before he addressed his colleagues in the conference room that
evening, but everything was neatly set out in his notebook
with detachable pages and dark-blue leather covers:
    1
) In the course of the day, forty-eight persons had
reported to the police station and testified about various
aspects of the evening of the murder. Of them, eleven had
been interrogated previously. Six of the remaining thirtyseven were considered to be irrelevant because they were
in the wrong part of town (three), or had been out at the
wrong time (two) or had got the date wrong (one—old
Mrs. Loewe, a widow, had been out to buy some cat food
on the Monday morning, and had observed and noted
down several mysterious characters with axes hidden
under their overcoats).
    2
) The remaining forty-two witnesses, of all ages, had
been without exception in the area—Langvej, Hoistraat,
Michel’s Steps, Fisherman’s Square, Harbor Esplanade,
municipal woods—at some time between 2300 and 2400
hours. Everyone’s name, address and telephone number
had been meticulously recorded, and they had also been
forbidden by Kropke to leave the town and its environs
for the coming week, in case any of them should be
required to present themselves for supplementary
questioning. (A measure that smacked very much of
abuse of power, of course, but Van Veeteren suppressed
his objections. He was not in charge of the investigation,
after all.)
    3
) All the witnesses had at some time or other and in
various locations noticed one another, in accordance with
an extremely complicated and potentially even more
involved pattern that Kropke had failed to program into
his PCB 4000, despite repeated attempts. (The fact that
this had led to a degree of annoyance and frustration
was something Constable Mooser could not have failed
to appreciate during the late afternoon, the hierarchy
and pecking order of the police force being what it is.)
    4
) The earlier evidence provided by Miss deWeutz and
Mrs. Aalger, who had been conducting a conversation in
Dooms Alley and had noticed Ernst Simmel walking
across the square, had now been confirmed by four new
witnesses. Two couples, who had crossed the square at
around about 2320, albeit in different directions, had also
noticed a lone pedestrian who, now that they came to
think about it, could be identified as the deceased
property developer.
    5
) Two teenagers on scooters (as likely as not in
circumstances that placed them somewhat to the wrong
side of the letter of the law) had ridden across the square
toward the Esplanade about a minute later, and claimed to
have passed a person who, to all appearances, seems to
have been