an abyss.”
“Sometimes the bad guys win.” I added.
“I hate losing though,” she added as she put her bag on the desk and pulled out a very thick folder. “So, I sneaked out the Grau Kiefer files. I’ll have to return them to the station first thing in the morning. Let me find the papers I think are the most crucial. Yes, here they are.”
Rebecca skimmed through each page and put the selected papers in a pile in front of her. Considering the little time that was allocated for me to take a look, I had to trust her judgement.
“Right,” she started reading the files on top. “The victims are not related in any way. They lived in different corners of the country and had all been reported missing by their relatives.”
“Hm…”
“What?” Rebecca noticed my thoughtful stare over her shoulder.
“Sorry, pray continue.”
“In three of the seven reported disappearances witnesses claimed having seen a white van leaving the scene.”
“How were they snatched?” I was curious.
“As I said, only three of the kidnappings had witnesses,” she explained as she was going through her folder, looking for these accounts. “Ah, here. Emīls Dižgalvis, four years of age, snatched from a playground in Piltene. His mother lost sight of him while chatting with another mom. By the time she noticed the absence of her boy, a classic white van hastily left the car park hundred meters from her.”
“Okay, and the other two?”
“Aleksandrs Petrovs, five, from Jelgava. His mother went to pick him up after football practice, but he was gone. The coach had noticed an old, white Ford Transit van parked just outside the stadium for most of the practice.”
“And the third?”
“Una Bargā, thirteen months old, from Alūksne. She was snatched from a crib that was placed next to an open first-floor window. Her mother saw the man with her baby getting in a white Ford van. Unfortunately, he had a hood over his head and, like the other witnesses, couldn’t recall the licence plate.”
“And what’s the story of the other children?”
“Aleksis Burtnieks and Anna Burtniece, brother and sister, from Rīga, were playing outside, never returned home.”
“And the adults?” I leaned against the back of my chair and crossed my arms.
“Guntis Doperis and Ildze Dopere; live in Tukums. Supposedly, they were returning home from dinner, but never reached their destination.”
“They were lost in transit, huh?” I asked, smiling.
“Sorry?”
“Oh, never mind. A little wordplay I thought was amusing. Can I ask you something about the mothers of the missing children? Were they…?”
“… Divorced? Two of them. The rest didn’t even get that far with their men.”
“They are all single mothers, then?” I hurriedly finished my question.
“Exactly. We checked. The fathers are not the same person.”
“And their current partners?”
“None they would feel committed to. Kind of calls back to your theory of a coward, doesn’t it? Snatching helpless children from unprotected mothers?”
“I suppose it does.”
“What else is on your mind, I wonder?” She asked.
“Oh, not sure yet. Who gets to drive around the country in a van and make women reveal they are single mothers?”
“Beats me.”
“And have you asked the locals whether they’ve noticed the van?”
“See, that’s one of the problems. A white Ford Transit made in the nineties is pretty much the most popular type of van there is. There are quite a few driving through, none they would find suspicious.”
“How many are owned by the local inhabitants?”
“One, but it’s got grass growing through the engine bay.”
I growled. “Nevertheless, I still feel confident that the maniac is someone, who lives near the Grau Kiefer. The man knows the legend and the place quite well – how to get to the old bridge that leads to the hogweed field, and has obviously recently visited the place fairly often. Yet, none of the locals seem suspicious even though people in such countryside communities know and notice each other extremely well.”
“Since the land seems to be the motive, initially Grundbergs focused on anyone, who has anything to do with it, or have expressed interest. It’s a fairly short list of four households that each owns an undivided share of the Grau Kiefer land.”
“An undivided share?” I asked.
“Yeah,” She nodded. “In late nineties, when lands were redistributed among the original owners, there was no one, who would claim the five acres, which used to belong to the Olavs family. Thus, the land became collective property, or – four undivided shares – for the four neighbouring landowners. After the Soviet Union collapsed, there was a big mess of such things, but the idea, supposedly, was that they would all eventually sell the land and get equal profit. Plus, the place would also be out of land register’s hair. However, all attempts to get rid of it have failed because all four owners have to give their consent before anything can ever happen on the land. Nowadays, there is no market for a land infested with hogweed, yet one of the owners also wasn’t interested in investing the time and money to get rid of it. The other three households had proposed that they do all the work in exchange for a larger percentage of profit, but that didn’t satisfy that owner either. This has all gone for years and the relationship between the two parties is fairly tense.”
“Who is that family?” I asked.
“Apinis. Antra Apine is a legal consultant at her father’s construction firm in Tukums. She seemed like a very proud and successful woman. And she’s enviably slim, I might add. Her husband, Māris Apinis, is currently unemployed, but used to be a bus driver. I doubt he has much say in the family. In total they own four acres of land, but more than three of them are unused. Generally, they just use their house and a symbolic garden around it, and sell hay from the remaining acres as fodder.”
“And why are they so against any effort to sell?”
“When Grundbergs and I asked, they dodged the answer, so I did a bit of research. As it turns out, they are in quite a debt and have pledged their share in a bank.”
“Oh?”
“The family had a very decent standing, plus it was during the economic boom. The bank flippantly accepted the pledge and gave out a loan. Only later did everyone realize that the family doesn’t intend to pay back. Now, the bank could have taken away that pledged share already, but the funny thing is – they didn’t really want to because its worth, together with the hassle of having three other owners, wasn’t worth the effort. Yet, right now they are five minutes from doing so because it is their only chance of getting anything from the Apinis at all. Besides, now that the property is freed from the hogweed plant, they have a much better chance of auctioning that share. On the downside, it means that other owners will also be dragged in long and exhausting legal procedures.”
“It sounds like an extremely clever way of getting money from one’s share without putting in much effort.”
“Very clever, actually.” Rebecca agreed.
“That could be a good motive to deal with that family, but it doesn’t sound like it’s got anything to do with the seven dead bodies.”
“That’s why my colleagues and I put this thread in the background roughly two weeks after we started the investigation. Nevertheless, we couldn’t exclude it completely.”
“Naturally. And what did the other parties say, when they found out?”
“Uldis Bergs and his wife Elēna, who earn their living from a twenty-five acre potato field, were largely indifferent. They said that they might be okay to add their share to the auction, if the bank decided to go through with it. In their mind, the extra territory is too insignificant to waste any more nerves on it. Meanwhile, Intars Šķēle and Oskars Dankers, each of them own a livestock farm, became considerably irritated when Grundbergs and I brought them the news. Danker
s actually lost his temper and the police had to detain him an hour later, after he forced his way in the Apinis’ premises with an airgun. My colleges said he reeked of booze and urine. At the station they ran a thorough check on him and it turned out he has had disputes with all of his neighbours, claiming that they all have robbed him a total of three meters of land by placing their fences wrong.”
“Were any of the claims true?”
“Quite the contrary, it turned out that the east fence is ten centimetres deep into the neighbour’s land. But Šķēle just laughed it off and left it as it is.”
“But the police couldn’t find a connection with the territorial adventures and the seven murders?” I sought clarification.
“That’s right. This is when Grundbergs and I had a bit of a quarrel in the station about how to proceed with the investigation. He was dead set on expanding the list of suspects with households that are further away from the hotspot, while I wanted to dig deeper into the four families and their relationship. So, from there on we continued our work independently.”
“What did you do, then?”
“See, with Grundbergs, we carried out our inquiries fairly mildly, without putting pressure on the suspects. He believes that lulling the suspects will make them lower their guard and mistakes will pop up, and since he’s in charge, I had to follow.”
“But you disagreed?”
“Mhm,” Rebecca nodded. “I prefer blasting my way with explosives. Besides, his comforting questions lead to useless answers: ‘Where were you at the time? Home and work. Who