Black Ice Read online

  Next he opened the sail sack. He spread the sail out on the garage floor. It didn’t quite fit in; he turned up the footrope, went all round the sail once more and pulled it out smooth. Then he hosed the sail down.

  When he went to the house to rinse the bucket and add warm water to the detergent in it he stopped by the jumble of boards, tools, car tyres, strips of wood, buckets, crates and boxes that he had cleared out. Something had caught his eye as he did it; he couldn’t remember what it was.

  Oh yes, the strips of wood. Last year he had panelled the entrance hall with lengths of wooden strips; he had meant to panel the sidewall of the lavatory too, but time was short, and Wallmann had said he could do the lavatory later. He had put the remaining lengths of wood in the garage.

  There were not as many as there had been last year. That was what he’d noticed.

  Scholten wondered what Wallmann had done with the strips. Surely he hadn’t burned them as firewood? Those wooden strips hadn’t been cheap. But Wallmann was capable of anything. Perhaps he’d run out of firewood and had been too lazy to chop more.

  Scholten shook his head and went into the bathroom with his bucket and the detergent. When he came out he stopped to look at the lengths of wood again. There’d been a good ten yards left, if not fifteen. After a while he shook his head and turned away.

  It was a hard job getting the sail on the line. He had taken the ladder out to the grass in front of the house and stretched the line a good eight feet above the ground, between two trees. The sail was heavy as lead. He tied the headboard to one of the trees and then draped the sail over the line, half each side. Twice he very nearly slipped on the grass.

  When he had finished the job he fetched himself a bottle of beer from the fridge. He cast a satisfied glance at his provisions. Before leaving town he had gone to the supermarket to buy half a crate of beer, a small bottle of schnapps and a bottle of wine.

  He took his beer out of doors, put the bottle to his lips, drank half of it then looked at those wooden strips. He was going to sit down on the seat under the oak tree then turned back when he was halfway there and began counting the strips. He paused, said: “Hold on a moment, Jupp Scholten. Don’t get confused. Stop and think how many there really were.”

  He looked up at the sky, frowned. It wasn’t long before he remembered. Yes, there had been twenty-eight strips left, each seven feet long. That would have been enough for the side wall of the lavatory. The lavatory was seven feet high, just like the hall. Scholten had ordered the strips cut to size.

  There had been exactly twenty-eight strips measuring seven feet left over last year. And one remnant about twenty inches long. Scholten had had to piece bits of the wooden strips together over the doors and round the electricity meter in the hall.

  The remnant was here. Scholten counted the sevenfoot strips. There were twenty-three.

  Five strips missing.

  Abstractedly he went back into the house, stopped in the hall. He glanced into the lavatory. Then he searched the whole house for anywhere Wallmann could have fitted the strips. Nothing. Those five wooden strips had disappeared.

  He went out of the house again. He wondered whether he could allow himself a second bottle of beer before he went back to work. The area in front of the house looked a mess with all the stuff lying about there.

  Suddenly he stood very still. He stayed like that for a while, and then went into the garage. He was looking for the folding rule; he swept the spanners and pliers on the workbench carelessly aside. He found the rule, took it out of the garage and down to the steps. He kneeled on the landing and measured the two steps just above it. Then he measured the three planks of the landing itself.

  He didn’t really need to; he knew the measurements of the steps from last year when he had replaced the old, weather-worn planks. But he wanted to make sure.

  It was exactly right. Each plank was about twenty-eight inches broad and nine and a half inches deep.

  Scholten sat down on the landing of the steps and began calculating, his lips moving silently. The five planks with greased bolts had a total length along their long and short sides of ten times twenty-eight and ten times nine and a half inches. That made twenty-three feet four inches and seven feet eleven inches. In all, thirty-one feet three inches.

  The five missing strips were more than eleven yards long in all. Roughly the length of all the sides of those planks put together.

  There was a remnant left, of course. When Wallmann cut up the strips to nail them round the edges of the planks, he was bound to have pieces left over. For instance, he could cut a strip measuring seven feet into three pieces of twenty-eight inches each, but after cutting strips for the ends there would still be a small remnant that he couldn’t use.

  Scholten stared out at the lake. He was sure he was on the right track. The fresh grease on the bolts in the five planks couldn’t be coincidence. Or the fact that these were the planks where a fall could be dangerous. Or that there were nail-holes on all four sides of those planks. Or that several strips had disappeared without trace. Or that these strips amounted in all to about the same length as the sides of the five planks added together.

  But why? Why had he nailed a frame of strips round the planks? And then taken the strips away again and fitted the planks back in place? It was nonsense.

  Scholten struck his forehead with his fist. “Hell, it must make sense somehow! Think, Jupp Scholten. What’s your brain-box for?” He stared at the distant bank on the far side of the lake. Suddenly he looked at his watch. “Shit.” It was nearly one o’clock. The sun was already behind the house.

  He went up to the kitchen, chopped an onion, browned it and tipped the can of mushrooms he had brought with him into the pan. He drank two bottles of beer with his lunch. Then he went out and got down to work.

  He had already moved some of the junk from outside the house back into the garage when he stopped. “You’re crazy!” he told himself. “This is where you must look, Jupp Scholten, here. And if you don’t find anything here then you can always look in the house.”

  He began with the workbench. He cleared it and the shelves. He looked at everything he picked up.

  After a quarter of an hour he had found a tin containing bolts. They were the same size as the bolts fixing the planks of the steps in place. When he replaced the six planks last autumn he hadn’t used new bolts for them all. There were a few left over.

  But there were more here than those he had left. And most of them were quite new and freshly greased. He counted ten bolts with traces of that fresh grease.

  Scholten looked at the bolts for a while. He turned them this way and that. He thought hard. And light suddenly dawned.

  He went out and looked for the old planks, the ones he had replaced. Last autumn he had left them in a corner of the garage, and when he cleared it out this morning he had put them aside. He examined them one by one. It was very difficult to make out, but finally he was more or less sure that there were traces of fresh grease in some of the holes in the planks through which the bolts had passed.

  It seemed to him perfectly clear why those traces were there: Wallmann had thought the chance that someone might notice the hole in the flight of steps too much of a risk. So he had replaced the five planks he had taken out with five of the old planks, just until he could refit the others. And he had greased the bolts so that the whole process could be carried out quickly and easily.

  Scholten thought for a while, but the point of this operation still eluded him. “Just take it easy,” he whispered to himself. “We’ll find out!”

  He went on clearing the stuff up, taking the rest of the things back into the garage, inspecting everything. It was over an hour before he made another find. But then he had a strong feeling that he was getting very close to the solution of the puzzle.

  Among the last items he put away in the garage were a couple of cardboard cartons, and in one of them Scholten found two rolls of the thick insulating tape he had used in
the autumn to draught-proof the windows and door of the house. He had started one roll, but the other had still been complete.

  Scholten was about to put the rolls away when he realized that both had been broken into. This time he didn’t have to think for very long. He picked up the folding rule and measured the rolls. Four and a half yards were gone from one. That must be the one he had used himself.

  A good ten yards were missing from the other.

  Scholten smiled grimly and nodded.

  Yes, of course, if you were going to put insulating tape round all the sides of those five planks then you’d need about ten yards.

  But the triumph he felt did not last very long. This idea fitted too. It all fitted: the length of the planks, the length of the wooden strips and the insulating tape, the nail-marks. However, basically this was getting more and more complicated.

  Everything indicated that Wallmann had taken the planks, put insulating tape round them, nailed the strips on them and then removed the strips and the insulating tape again, and refitted the planks in the flight of steps. But why do all this?

  The whole thing was looking more and more nonsensical.

  Just a moment, Jupp Scholten! Let’s begin again at the beginning!

  Hardly noticing what he was doing, he put his car in the garage, closed the garage door, went into the house, took a bottle of beer out of the fridge, went out again and sat down on the seat outside the house. He looked at the bottle, but he did not drink.

  Take it easy, Jupp Scholten! What is your brain-box for? Go on, use it. Take it very easy.

  Why had Wallmann worked on the steps?

  Obvious: he had done something to make Erika fall. He had fixed things so that she’d be bound to think she could catch him down on the landing stage with his bit of fluff. And then he had set a trap on the steps and driven off to make sure of his alibi.

  Right. What kind of a trap?

  It had to have been a trap that no one could notice next morning, or the risk would have been too great. He had gone to the bowling club on Friday evening and got so drunk, probably on purpose, that he couldn’t drive back to the house until the following afternoon. Yes, of course he did it on purpose, because that gave him his bomb-proof alibi.

  But it could have been very dangerous if the trap were something visible. He could have removed all traces after his return to the house, of course. He’d have had enough time, even if the local cop came at once. But before his return, before late Saturday afternoon, anyone could have passed the house or gone up the steps and might have seen the trap.

  It had to be a trap that would leave no traces of itself. But did such a thing exist?

  Just a moment! Let’s take this one thing at a time.

  The idea of the stretched cords. It would have worked. He’d thought it out. Didn’t make sense all the same. Much too risky. Anyone could have found the cords.

  The idea of the soft soap. That had sounded good too at first. How had he thought it up? That’s right: he was wondering how Wallmann could have made the steps slippery. But again, the risk would have been far too great. Wallmann couldn’t have scrubbed the soft soap off the steps until Saturday evening. And a lot could happen by then. No, that was no good either.

  Scholten rubbed his forehead. Yes, and after the soft soap he’d had the idea about the ice. Again it wouldn’t work. Or so Frings said anyway. And he was probably right. Impossible. How would you make ice form on the steps up to the cathedral? Rubbish, couldn’t be done.

  Suddenly Scholten held his breath. He raised a hand to his mouth very slowly and laid it on his lips.

  A memory had suddenly intruded into his attempts to think logically and check everything off point by point. It hit him like a blow, heat ran through him, he felt his heart beating hard and fast.

  He saw himself standing in the phone box, listening to the voice of the journalist Frings. “You’d need, as it were, to build a huge fridge over the road or round the cathedral steps. But that would surely be rather expensive, don’t you think, Herr Höffner?”

  Scholten began to smile. He looked at the house without really seeing it. His smile grew broader and broader.

  He said: “Oh yes? You really think so, Herr Frings? Impossible, you say, Herr Frings? Well, you listen to me, clever Herr Frings. Who says you’d have to build a fridge over the steps? What about just putting the steps in the fridge? How about that, Herr Frings?”

  He suddenly stood up. He realized that he was still holding the full beer bottle. He put the bottle carefully down on the seat, went to the garage, pushed the door up and went to the freezer. He opened the lid and looked in.

  It was a chest freezer, only half full. He looked at the shelf above it. There were the two big coolbags that Wallmann took out in the boat with him in summer. The food in the freezer would easily fit into the two bags.

  And the freezer was big enough to take more than five planks.

  Scholten closed the lid of the freezer and leaned both arms on it. He nodded. He gave a grim smile. He had found the answer. He was on the bastard’s trail. Wallmann, you’ve overplayed your hand.

  He closed the garage door, went back to the seat. He sat down beside the beer bottle, but still he did not drink. He kept on nodding.

  Yes, it was perfectly simple. He had the answer.

  15

  That was how it had been. That was how it must have been. Wallmann had come back to the house earlier. Indeed, on Thursday night. He had moored the boat near the fisherman’s hut on Thursday evening to spend the night there. Laudenberg had seen him: that was evidence. Wallmann had gone into the fisherman’s hut in the evening, maybe had something to eat, had something to drink anyway. And he hadn’t taken anyone there, no, not that evening. He’d been alone on his boat, apparently to sleep the night in it.

  But during the night he had secretly left the boat. He had gone to the house on foot, through the woods. He could do it in just under an hour.

  He had taken out the five planks and fitted five of the old ones instead. He had taken the planks he’d removed into the garage, along with their bolts. He had cut the strips to size.

  And then he had stuck the thick insulating tape on the edges of the planks. And he had nailed the boards over it. He’d nailed them so that they came about an inch and a half above the top surface of the planks. And yes, he had plenty of material available: he had cut the strips for the narrow sides a little longer, making them overlap on both sides so that the structure would hold and the frame he had made around the plank was firmly closed.

  The result would be a set of small basins, rectangular wooden bowls. Each plank had a frame round it, waterproofed with insulating tape and coming about an inch and a half above the plank itself. He had filled those wooden bowls with water to a depth of an inch or so. And he had put them in the freezer. Yes, and he’d left the bolts in the planks, or he wouldn’t have been able to screw them in again later when the water on top of the planks had frozen to ice.

  He also needed the bolts to block up the holes bored in the planks. He had screwed the nuts on so tightly that the heads of the bolts closed the holes.

  The shanks of the bolts stood out underneath the planks, but that was no problem. He had stood the first plank – the first bowl he placed in the freezer – on two blocks of wood, or maybe a shallow box. And then he had put the next bowls on top of the first one, each crossing the one below at an angle to leave room for the shanks of the bolts.

  Perhaps a little water had trickled through the places where two strips of insulating tape met or through the holes made for the bolts, but if he had turned the freezer to fast-freeze the water would be frozen before it ran out.

  In the end each plank was covered with a sheet of ice. The sheet had to be smooth as glass.

  Black ice

  Black ice made in the freezer.

  Scholten ran one hand through his hair and pinched his cheeks with the other.

  And Wallmann could even have made his sheets of black
ice slope. If he tilted the bowls slightly in the freezer, with a piece of wood placed under them, they would have stood at a slight angle. And the water would have come a little higher one side of the plank than the other. So when the water froze to ice it would have sloped.

  He could have fixed it, with those bowls, so that the black ice on the landing and the two steps above it sloped down. How could Erika have kept her footing then? She had no chance when she started down the steps, suspecting nothing.

  Scholten gritted his teeth and clenched his fists.

  Slowly. Take it easy. One thing after another. Think it out right to the end.

  That bloody bastard. He’d put his bowls, his little rectangular basins of water in the freezer, and then he’d set it to fast-freeze. It would take a lot of electricity, but that didn’t matter. He’d cleared everything away, and then he’d gone back through the wood to the fisherman’s hut. He had gone to sleep in his bunk in the boat. Everything was ready, in perfect order.

  And next day he had probably damaged the tackle of the mainsheet himself. A couple of blows with a hammer would make it stick. He had gone into the yachting basin and then played his little game with the phone at three o’clock and five o’clock on Friday afternoon. He wanted Erika to think something was up. Something wrong. And at five he was back at the house, he’d just wanted to make sure Erika was still in town and he had enough time in hand.

  He had waited until the sun set and it was getting cold again. He had lit a fire on the hearth. Erika liked a fire on the hearth.

  And then he had gone down to the steps and removed the old planks again. He had put them away in the garage and taken his black ice planks out of the freezer. He’d knocked away the wooden strips, torn off the insulating tape, that wouldn’t take long. He had carried the icy planks down and fitted them on the steps.