Mind's Eye Read Online Free

what?”
    “That your behavior was highly suspicious, dammit. Surely you can understand how it will be interpreted. For God’s sake! Washing up glasses, washing clothes! Talk about removing evidence…!”
    “You are assuming that I killed her, I gather.”
    Rüger blew his nose.
    “No, I’m assuming nothing. And thank God your behavior was so idiotic that it will probably earn you more pluses than minuses.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “You drown your wife in the bathtub. Manage to lock the door from the outside. You get undressed and go to bed and forget all about it. The next morning you wake up, break into the bathroom and find her…. You swallow a couple of pills to ease your headache, phone the police, and start washing clothes…”
    Mitter stood up and walked to his bed. He was suddenly overcome by exhaustion. He wanted nothing more than for Rüger to go away and leave him in peace.
    “I didn’t kill her….”
    He stretched out on the bed.
    “No; or at least, you don’t think you did. You know, I think it’s not impossible that the authorities might want to have you examined in order to assess your mental state. What would you have to say about that?”
    “Are you saying they can’t force me to do it?”
    “Not unless there is sufficient reason.”
    “And isn’t there?”
    Rüger had stood up and was putting on his overcoat.
    “Hard to say…. Hard to say. What do you think?”
    “I have no idea.”
    He closed his eyes and curled up facing the wall. He could hear Rüger saying something in the far distance, but his exhaustion was now a deep, swirling abyss and he allowed himself to sink down into it, offering no resistance.

5
    Detective Chief Inspector Van Veeteren did not have a cold.
    On the other hand, he did have a tendency to be depressed when the weather was poor, and as it had now been raining more or less nonstop for ten days, melancholy had made the most of the opportunity to sink deep roots into his mind.
    He closed the door and started the car. Switched on the cassette player. A Vivaldi mandolin concerto. As usual there was a gremlin in one of the speakers. The sound came and went.
    It wasn’t just the rain. There were other things as well.
    His wife, for instance. For the fourth or fifth time—he had lost count—she seemed to be on her way back to him. Eight months ago they had separated once and for all, but now she had started phoning again.
    The point of return had not yet been reached, but it was clear which way the wind was blowing. He was pretty sure he could count on sharing household and bed by the run-up to Christmas, or thereabouts.
    Again.
    The only thing that could prevent it was for him to say no, but needless to say, there was nothing to suggest such a development on this occasion either.

    He turned in to Kloisterlaan and fished up a toothpick from his breast pocket. The rain was pounding down and the windshield misting over again. As usual. He wiped it with the sleeve of his jacket, but for a few moments he could see nothing at all.
    Death, here I come, he thought. But nothing happened. He jabbed at the air-conditioning buttons and adjusted the controls. The flow of hot air over his feet became more intense.
    I ought to get a better car, he thought.
    Not for the first time.
             
    Bismarck was also ill.
    Ever since his daughter Jess’s twelfth birthday he had been saddled with the slow-witted Newfoundland bitch, but now all she did was to lie in front of the refrigerator, sicking up foul-smelling yellowish-green lumps, and he was forced to drive home several times a day in order to clean them up.
    The dog, that is. Not his daughter.
    He hoped that Jess was in much better shape. She was twenty-four now, or possibly twenty-three; lived a long way away in Borges with new dogs, a husband who repaired teeth, and a pair of twins who were busy learning to walk and to swear in a foreign language. He had last seen them at the beginning of the summer holidays,