The fourth victim
The fourth victim (Swedish title: Borkmanns Punkt ) is a crime novel by the Swedish writer Håkan Nesser . It was published in 1994 and is the second novel in the Van Veeteren series. In the same year Håkan Nesser won the Swedish detective award for this novel .
The original edition was published under the title Borkmannspunkt in Stockholm by Verlag Bonnier, the German edition for the first time in 1999 by Munich publisher btb (Random House) in a translation by Christel Hildebrandt. ( ISBN 3-442-75030-X ). The audio book of the same name was distributed in Cologne by Random House Audio 2002. ( ISBN 3898303586 ).
Summary
A man named Ernst Simmel was murdered by the "hangman" on the night of August 31, 1998 in the coastal town of Kaalbringen. It is the second murder the executioner committed. The first was Heinz Eggers more than a month earlier. The Kaalhaben police can only say with certainty that the executioner was responsible for both murders because both victims' heads were almost severed with an ax. Police chief Bausen asks for help from Chief Inspector Van Veeteren, who is on vacation nearby. But Van Veeteren finds no connection between Heinz Eggers, a drug addict, and Ernst Simmel, a seemingly successful real estate agent, except that they both moved to Kaalhaben at the beginning of the year, and in the Simmels case even withdrew. With the help of the press, the media and the citizens of Kaalbringen and after extensive evaluation of the witness statements, it is possible to determine the exact course and time of the incident. But only one witness, who was also drunk, may have seen the perpetrator at all.
On September 24th, the body of the third victim was found: Maurice Rühme, doctor and son of Kaalhaben's most popular doctor. This further victim confirms that victims who were not chosen randomly were murdered, as Maurice Rühme also returned to Kaalhaben at the beginning of the same year. However, the only obvious connection to Heinz Eggers is his past drug addiction. Three days after Rühme's body was found, the Kaalbringen police received the 35-page report on Rühme's time in Aarlach. Inspector Beate Moerk discovers something “bizarre” in the report from Aarlach and tries to contact Inspector Münster, who was also sent to Kaalhaben to help out, but cannot find him and therefore leaves him a message. Then she goes jogging and is kidnapped by the hangman.
When Münster and Van Veeteren discover that Moerk has disappeared, they are sure that Moerk saw something in the report with which they could solve the case. But thanks to renewed help from the citizens of Kaalbringen and from police trainee Bang, Munster learns that Moerk could not possibly have read the report before she left him the message.
Meanwhile, Inspector Moerk wakes up in a dark cellar. She knows that Bausen is the executioner and he tells her that all three victims were responsible for the death of his daughter Brigitte and that he only caught Moerk so that he could tell his story to someone. He leaves Moerk, which is shortly afterwards liberated by Münster and Van Veeteren. Van Veeteren goes to the cemetery where Bausen is standing at the grave of his wife and daughter Brigitte and is waiting for a "sign". Bausen is amazed that it took Van Veeteren so long and is arrested.
background
The fourth victim, after whom the novel is named, is Brigitte Bausen, although she died before the others and was not a victim of the executioner, but rather a victim of the other three victims, Eggers, Simmel and Rühme. After graduating from high school in 1981, she moved to Aarlach to study, where she also met Maurice Rühme. He had "introduced" Brigitte to various drugs and showed her how to make money with prostitution. He left her shortly afterwards. Brigitte was brought back home by her parents. They supported her for a while by, among other things, finding her an apartment. She apparently got work from the social welfare office, but this turned out to be untrue when one day Bausen drove to her and caught her red-handed with Ernst Simmel. He immediately realized how Brigitte was earning her money, an image that would haunt him for the rest of his life.
Brigitte suddenly disappeared in the early 1990s. Bausen kept looking for her until he finally found her in 1993 in Heinz Eggers' “stable”. After Bausen had beaten Eggers, he took Brigitte to a hospital. She committed suicide on September 30th that year.