The Unlucky Lottery

22

The police spent three days with her, and then she was left more or less alone. From the second week onwards her visitors were restricted to a handful of people.

Her lawyer was called Bachmann, and came almost every day – in the beginning, at least. She had met him in connection with the first interrogation at the police station, and he hadn’t made a particularly good impression on her. A well-dressed, overweight man of about fifty with thick, wavy hair that he probably dyed. A large signet ring and strong, white teeth. He suggested from the very start that they should follow the manslaughter line, and she went along with that without really thinking about it.

She didn’t like the man, but reckoned that the more she let him have his own way, the less time she would need to spend discussing matters with him. In the middle of the month, he kept away several times for a few days on end; but in December, as the date of the trial approached, there was a lot to run through again. She didn’t really understand why, but never asked.

Get it over with quickly, she thought: and that was the only request she put to him. Don’t let it become one of those long-drawn-out affairs with special pleading and the cross-examination of witnesses and all the rest that she was used to from the telly.

And Bachmann put his hand on his heart, assuring her that he would do his best. Although there were several things that were unclear, and one simply can’t get away with anything at all in court.

Every time he pointed this out he gave her a quick smile, but she never responded with one of her own.

The chaplain was called Kolding, and was about her age. A low-key preacher who always brought with him a flask of tea and a tin of biscuits, and generally sat on the chair in her cell for half an hour or so, without saying very much. In connection with his first visit he explained that he didn’t want to harass her, but it was his intention to call in every two or three days. In case there was something she would like to take up with him.

There never was, but she had nothing against his sitting there. He was tall and thin, slightly stooping in view of his age, and he reminded her of the vicar who conducted her confirmation classes. She once asked him if they were relatives, but of course they were not.

However, he had worked for a while in the Maalwort parish in Pampas. This emerged from one of their sparse conversations, but as she had only been to church once or twice during all the years they had lived only a stone’s throw away, there was not much to say about this circumstance either.

Nevertheless, he would sit there in the corner several afternoons a week. And made himself available, as he had promised. Perhaps he was simply tired, and needed to rest for a while, she sometimes thought.

In so far as he had any effect on her at all, at least he did not annoy her.

Other people who took the trouble to come and visit her were her two children and the assiduous Emmeline von Post.

Before the trial began, when she counted up the visits, she concluded that Mauritz had been three times, and Ruth and Emmeline twice each. On her birthday, the second of December, Mauritz and Ruth turned up together with a Sachertorte and three white lilies – which for some reason she found so absurd that she had difficulty in not bursting into laughter.

Otherwise she made a big effort – during all these visits and greetings – to behave politely and courteously; but the circumstances sometimes meant that the atmosphere inside her pale yellow cell often felt tense and strained. Especially with Mauritz, there were a few occasions when heated words were exchanged about trivialities – but then she hadn’t expected anything else.

On the whole, however, her time in prison – the six weeks of waiting before the trial began – was a period of rest and recovery, so that when she went to bed the evening before the proceedings started, she felt inevitably a bit worried about what lay in store, but also calm, and quite confident that her inner strength would carry her through these difficult times.

As it had done thus far.

The trial began on a Tuesday afternoon, and her lawyer had promised her that it would be all over by the Friday evening – always assuming that no complications arose, and there was hardly any reason to expect that they would.

However, the first few hours in the courtroom were characterized by ceremonial posturing and a slow pace that made her wonder. She had been placed behind an oblong wooden table with bottles of mineral water, paper mugs and a notepad. On her right was her lawyer, smelling of his usual aftershave; on her left was a youngish woman dressed in blue, whose role was unclear to Marie-Louise Leverkuhn. But she didn’t ask about it.

This was not one of the bigger courtrooms, as far as she knew. The space for members of the public and journalists was limited to about twenty chairs behind a bar at the far end of the rectangular room. Just now, on this first afternoon, the audience was restricted to six people: two balding journalists and four women reassuringly well into pensionable age. It was a relief to find that there were so few: but she suspected that there would be rather more people sitting on the high-backed chairs later on in the performance. Once it was properly under way.

Sitting opposite her, enthroned on a dais barely a decimetre high, was Judge Hart behind a broad table covered in a green cloth hanging down to the floor on all sides – so that one didn’t need to look at his feet. Or up skirts, she fantasized, if the judge happened to be a woman. But she didn’t know. In any case, her own administrator of justice was a man of generous proportions in his sixties. He reminded her very much of a French actor whose name she couldn’t remember, no matter how hard she tried. Ended in -eaux, she seemed to recall.

On the right of the judge were two other officers of justice – young and immaculately groomed men wearing glasses and impeccable suits – and on the left was the jury.

In the early stages everything was aimed at the six members of this jury: four men and two women, and as far as she could make out it was all intended to establish the irreproachable and impartial nature of their characters when it came to the trial that was about to start.

When they had all been approved, Judge Hart declared that proceedings could begin and handed over to the prosecutor, fru Grootner, a woman in late middle age wearing a beige costume and with a mouth so wide that it sometimes seemed to continue for some distance outside the face itself. She stood in front of her table on the other side of the central aisle, leaning back with her ample bosom as a counterbalance, and pleaded her cause for over forty-five minutes. As far as Marie-Louise Leverkuhn could understand it was based on the premise that in the early hours of 26 October she had stabbed to death Waldemar Leverkuhn with malice aforethought and in full control of her senses, so that the only crime she could possibly be accused of was first degree murder. And hence this was the count that she would have to answer for.

Does she really believe what she’s saying? Leverkuhn wondered to herself: but it was hard to judge what was hiding behind the torrent of words and the streamlined spectacles which, on closer examination, proved to have precisely the Cupid’s bow form that was missing from her lips.

When the prosecutor had finished, it was the defence’s turn. Bachmann stood up with all the dignity he could muster, stroked his right hand several times over his mahogany-brown hair, and then announced that the defence would contest the charge and instead plead guilty to manslaughter.

He elaborated on this forcefully and verbosely for almost as long as the wide-mouthed prosecutor had spouted forth, and Marie-Louise felt frequently as if her eyelids were closing down.

Perhaps she hadn’t slept as well as she’d thought last night?

Perhaps she was too old for this kind of thing. Would everything be over and done with more quickly if she were to plead guilty to murder?

When proceedings were suspended for the day shortly after four o’clock, she hadn’t needed to answer a single question. Or even utter a single word. Bachmann had already explained that this was how things would go on the first day, but even so she felt somewhat confused as she was led out by the lady in blue who had remained at her side all the time.

It’s like being at the dentist’s or in hospital, she thought with a mixture of relief and disappointment. One is beyond doubt the leading character, but doesn’t have a single word to say about it.

Still, that was presumably the norm in courts of law as well.

23

‘A longer racket,’ said Van Veeteren, feeling his back. ‘That’s what’s needed, dammit. I don’t understand why they don’t invent something of the sort.’

‘Why?’ said Münster.

‘So that you don’t need to bend such a bloody long way down for drop shots, of course. My back isn’t what it used to be. Never has been.’

Münster considered these words of wisdom and switched on the shower. He had won all three sets as usual, it was true, but the chief inspector – former chief inspector – had offered stiff opposition. 15-9, 15-11, 15-6 were the scores, which suggested that Van Veeteren was in better condition now than he had been before leaving the police station, rather than the opposite.

Nevertheless he surely can’t have much further to go before passing the sixty mark? Münster thought, trying to brush aside the possibility that the fairly even outcome of the match might have something to do with his own state at the moment.

‘Adenaar’s now?’ wondered Van Veeteren as they came up to the foyer. ‘I gather you need to get something else off your chest.’

Münster coughed a little self-consciously.

‘If you have time, Chief Inspector.’

‘Stop using those words, will you?’ grunted Van Veeteren.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Münster. ‘It takes time to get used to it.’

‘I know that only too well,’ said Van Veeteren, holding the door open.

‘I suppose it’s Leverkuhn that’s worrying you, is it?’

Münster looked out in the direction of the square, and took a deep breath.

‘Yes,’ he admitted. ‘The trial started this afternoon. I just can’t get it out of my head.’

Van Veeteren took out his unwieldy cigarette machine and started filling it with tobacco.

‘Those are the worst kind,’ he said. ‘The ones that don’t allow you to sleep at night.’

‘Exactly,’ said Münster. ‘I dream about this accursed case. I can’t make head nor tail of it, whether I’m awake or asleep. Despite the fact that I’ve been through it hundreds of times, both with Jung and Moreno. It doesn’t help.’

‘Reinhart?’ Van Veeteren asked.

‘On paternity leave,’ sighed Münster. ‘Playing with his daughter.’

‘Ah, yes, of course,’ said Van Veeteren, pressing down the lid of the machine so that a rolled cigarette fell onto the table. With a contented expression on his face he placed the cigarette between his lips and lit it. Münster watched his activities in silence.

‘Do you think she didn’t do it?’ asked Van Veeteren after his first drag. ‘Or what’s the problem?’

Münster shrugged.

‘I don’t know,’ he admitted. ‘I suppose it must have been her, but that’s not the end of the case. We have fru Van Eck and that damned Bonger as well. Nobody’s seen any trace of either of them since they vanished, and that was over a month ago now.’

‘And fru Leverkuhn has nothing to do with them?’

‘Not a thing. If you can believe what she says, that is. We pressed her pretty hard once she’d confessed, but she didn’t give an inch. She owns up to stabbing her husband in a fit of anger, but she’s as innocent as a newborn babe as far as the others are concerned, she claims.’

‘Why did she kill her husband?’

‘Why indeed?’ said Münster glumly. ‘She just says it was the last straw.’

‘Hmm,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘What kind of a straw could that have been; was she more precise about it? If we assume that the camel’s back was full.’

‘That he’d won some money, but didn’t intend to give her a penny. She says she came home and found him lying in bed bragging about all the things he was going to buy, and after a while she’d had enough.’

Van Veeteren drew on his cigarette and thought for a moment.

‘I suppose it could happen like that,’ he said. ‘Is she the type?’

Münster scratched his head.

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘If we assume that she’s been leading that camel all her life – or throughout their marriage at any rate – well, I suppose it could be true; but it’s hard for an outsider to judge. That’s her story in any case – that she’s had to put up with this and that for what seemed to be for ever, and she simply couldn’t take it any more. Something snapped inside her, she says, and so she did it.’

Van Veeteren leaned back and stared up at the ceiling.

‘Theories?’ he said eventually. ‘Do you have any? What do you think? About the Van Eck woman, for instance?’

Münster suddenly looked almost unhappy.

‘I’ve no bloody idea,’ he said. ‘Not the slightest. As I said before, I find it difficult to believe that these three cases are not connected in some way. It seems pretty unlikely that Bonger, Leverkuhn and fru Van Eck would all kick the bucket in the same way purely by chance.’

‘You don’t know that Bonger and Van Eck are dead,’ Van Veeteren pointed out. ‘Or have I missed something?’

Münster sighed.

‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘But it doesn’t exactly make things any easier if they’ve simply gone missing.’

Van Veeteren said nothing for a few seconds.

‘Presumably not,’ he said eventually. ‘What have you done about it? From the point of view of the investigation, I mean. You presumably haven’t just wandered around thinking this?’

‘Not a lot,’ Münster admitted. ‘Since the prosecutor charged fru Leverkuhn, we’ve only been going through the routine motions as far as Bonger and fru Van Eck are concerned.’

‘Who’s in charge of the investigation?’ asked Van Veeteren.

‘I am,’ said Münster, taking another swig of beer. ‘But once fru Leverkuhn is sentenced Hiller is probably going to shelve the other cases. That will be next week. There are a few other things to keep us occupied.’

‘Really?’ said Van Veeteren.

He drained his glass and signalled for another. While waiting for it to be served, he sat in silence with his chin resting on his knuckles as he gazed out of the window at the traffic and the pigeons in Karlsplats. When the beer arrived he first siphoned off the froth, then almost emptied it in one enormous swig.

‘Very good!’ he announced. ‘All that exercise makes you thirsty. So why exactly did you want to speak to me?’

Münster suddenly looked embarrassed. He never learns, Van Veeteren thought. But then, perhaps it’s not a bad thing to have a few red cheeks in the police force. It makes things seem nice and peaceful.

‘Well?’

Münster cleared his throat.

‘All that stuff about intuition. I thought I’d ask the chief… ask you to do me a favour, to be frank.’

‘I’m all ears,’ said Van Veeteren.

Münster squirmed on his chair.

‘The trial,’ he said. ‘It would be good to get an idea of whether she really is as guilty and as innocent as she says. Fru Leverkuhn, that is. If somebody with an eye for such things could go and take a look at her. Whether she’s found guilty or not.’

‘Which she will be?’ said Van Veeteren.

‘I think so,’ said Münster.

Van Veeteren frowned and contemplated his cigarette machine.

‘All right,’ he said. ‘I’ll go there and take a look at her, then.’

‘Excellent,’ said Münster. ‘Many thanks. Room 4. But it’ll be all over by Friday, if I’m not much mistaken.’

‘I’ll go tomorrow,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘The eagle’s eye never sleeps.’

Huh, big chief him never wrong, Münster thought. But he said nothing.

24

‘Tell me about when you came home in the early hours of 26 October!’

Prosecutor Grootner pushed up her spectacles and waited. Marie-Louise Leverkuhn took a sip of water from the glass on the table in front of her. Cleared her throat and straightened her back.

‘I got home at about two o’clock,’ she said. ‘There had been a power cut on the railway line to Bossingen and Löhr. We were at a standstill for an hour. I’d been to visit a friend.’

She looked up at the public gallery, as if she were looking for a face. The prosecutor made no attempt to hurry her, and after a while she continued of her own accord.

‘My husband woke up as I came through the door into the bedroom, and started making abusive remarks.’

‘Abusive remarks?’ wondered the prosecutor.

‘Because I’d woken him up. He claimed I’d done it on purpose. Then he went on and on.’

‘How did he go on?’

‘He said he’d won some money, and that he was going to spend it so that he didn’t have to see me so often.’

‘Did he usually say things like that?’

‘It happened. When he’d been drinking.’

‘Was he drunk that evening?’

‘Yes.’

‘How drunk?’

‘He was pretty far gone. Slurring when he spoke.’

Short pause. The prosecutor nodded thoughtfully several times.

‘Please continue now, fru Leverkuhn.’

‘Well, I went out into the kitchen and saw the knife lying on the draining board. I’d used it when I’d been cutting up some ham that afternoon.’

‘What did you think when you saw the knife?’

‘Nothing. I think I just picked it up to wash it and put it back in the drawer.’

‘Is that what you did?’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Did you wash the knife, in fact?’

‘No.’

‘Tell us what you did instead.’

Leverkuhn brushed aside an annoying strand of hair and seemed to be hesitating about what to say next. The prosecutor eyed her without moving a muscle.

‘I was standing with the knife in my hand. And then my husband shouted something.’

‘What?’

‘I’d rather not say. It was a very rude insult.’

‘What did you do?’

‘I felt that I just couldn’t go on like this any longer. I don’t think I really understood what I was doing. I went into the bedroom, and then I stabbed him in the stomach.’

‘Did he try to defend himself?’

‘He didn’t have time.’

‘And then?’

‘I just carried on stabbing. It felt…’

‘Yes?’

‘It felt as if it wasn’t me holding the knife. As if it was someone else. It was very odd.’

Prosecutor Grootner paused again, then went for a little walk. When she returned to her starting point, a metre or so in front of the table, she first coughed into her hand, then turned her head so that she seemed to be speaking to a point somewhere diagonally above where the accused was sitting. As if she were actually talking to somebody else.

‘I find it a bit difficult to believe this,’ she said. ‘You have been married to your husband for over forty years. You have shared the same home and bed and endured the same hardships during a long life, but now you suddenly lose your head without any real reason. You said you were used to, er, exchanges of opinion like that, didn’t you?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Leverkuhn, looking down at the table. ‘It’s just that this was something extra…’

‘This wasn’t something you’d considered doing earlier?’

‘No.’

‘You’d never even given it a thought?’

‘No.’

‘Not earlier that evening, for instance?’

‘No.’

‘Are you suggesting that you didn’t know what you were doing when you murdered your husband?’

‘Objection!’ shouted Bachmann. ‘It has not been established that she murdered her husband.’

‘Sustained,’ muttered the judge without moving his mouth. The prosecutor shrugged, and her heavy bosom bobbed up and down.

‘Did you know what you were doing when you stabbed your husband?’ she said.

‘Yes, of course.’

A faint murmur ran through the gallery, and Judge Hart called for silence by raising his gaze half an inch.

‘What did you intend to do by stabbing him?’

‘To kill him, of course. To shut him up.’

The prosecutor nodded again, several times, and looked pleased.

‘Then what did you do?’

‘I rinsed the knife under the tap in the kitchen. Then I wrapped it up in a newspaper and went out.’

‘Why?’

Leverkuhn hesitated.

‘I don’t know. I suppose I wanted to make it look as if somebody else had done it.’

‘Where did you go?’

‘Towards Entwick Plejn. I threw the knife and the newspaper into a rubbish bin.’

‘Where?’

‘I can’t remember. Maybe in Entwickstraat, but I’m not sure. I was a bit confused.’

‘And then?’

‘Then I went back home and phoned the police. I pretended that I’d found my husband dead, but that wasn’t the case…’

‘Didn’t you get a lot of blood on you when you killed your husband?’

‘Only a bit. I washed it off at the same time as I rinsed the knife.’

The prosecutor seemed to be thinking for a few seconds. Then she slowly turned her back on the accused. Pushed up her spectacles again and let her gaze wander over the members of the jury.

‘Thank you, fru Leverkuhn,’ she said, in a voice lowered by half an octave. ‘I don’t think we need to doubt that you acted with great presence of mind and purposefulness all the time. And I no longer think there is a single one of us who doubts that you murdered your husband with malice aforethought. Thank you, no more questions.’

Bachmann had stood up, but didn’t bother to protest. He had bags under his eyes, she noticed. Looked tired and somewhat resigned. She had the impression that his fee depended in some way on whether he won or lost the case, but she wasn’t sure. It wasn’t easy to know the ways of this strange world.

Not easy at all.

Nor did she know how common it was for the judge himself to ask questions, but when Bachmann had finished his rather pointless interrogation – all the time she found it difficult to understand what he was after and what he wanted her to say, and when he sat down he looked even more dispirited – the great man cleared his throat emphatically and announced that certain things needed clarifying.

But first he asked if she would like a little rest before he started questioning her.

No, she said that was not necessary.

‘Certain things need clarifying,’ Judge Hart said again, clasping his hairy hands on the Bible in front of him. A murmur ran through the public gallery and Prosecutor Grootner suddenly began scribbling away on her notepad. Bachmann stroked his hair and looked like a morose question mark.

‘What made you confess?’

He looked down on her from his slightly raised position with a sceptical frown between his bushy eyebrows.

‘My conscience,’ she said.

‘Your conscience?’

‘Yes.’

‘And what made your conscience stir after more than a week?’

Marie-Louise Leverkuhn was certainly ten years older than Judge Hart, but nevertheless there was suddenly an element of teacher and schoolgirl in the situation. A teenager caught smoking in the toilets and now summoned to the headmaster for a telling-off.

‘I don’t know,’ she said after a short pause for thought. ‘I thought about it for a few days and then decided it was wrong to carry on lying.’

‘What made you lie in the first place?’

‘Fear,’ she said without hesitation. ‘Of the consequences… court and prison and so on.’

‘Do you regret what you did?’

She examined her hands for a while.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Of course I regret it. It’s terrible, killing another human being. You have to take your punishment.’

Judge Hart leaned back.

‘Why didn’t you throw the knife into a canal instead of a dustbin?’

‘I didn’t think.’

‘Have you been asked that question before?’

‘Yes.’

‘But why bother to get rid of the knife in the first place? Wouldn’t it have been sufficient to rinse the blood off it and put it back in its place in the kitchen?’

Leverkuhn frowned briefly before answering.

‘I don’t remember what I was thinking,’ she said, ‘but I supposed people would realize that was the knife I’d used if they found it. I wasn’t thinking clearly.’

The judge nodded and looked mildly reproachful.

‘I’m sure you weren’t,’ he said. ‘But don’t you think it was rather odd that you immediately told the police that the knife was missing?’

She did not answer. Judge Hart pulled a hair out of his nostril and examined it for a moment before flicking it over his shoulder and continuing.

‘Did you meet fru Van Eck at all during the days before she disappeared?’

Bachmann started gesturing, but seemed to realize that it wasn’t appropriate to protest when it was the judge himself asking the questions. He moved his chair noisily and leaned back nonchalantly instead. Looked up at the ceiling. As if what was happening had nothing to do with him.

‘I had coffee with her and her husband one afternoon. They invited me.’

‘That was on the Tuesday, wasn’t it?’

She thought about it.

‘Yes, it must have been.’

‘And then she disappeared on the Wednesday?’

‘As far as I know, yes. Why are you asking about that?’

The judge made a vague gesture with his hands, as if to say that they might just as well chat about these events, seeing as they were all gathered together here.

‘Just one more little question,’ he said eventually. ‘It doesn’t happen to be the case that you needed this time – these seven days or however long it was – for some special purpose?’

‘I don’t understand what you mean,’ said Leverkuhn.

Judge Hart took out a large red handkerchief and blew his nose.

‘I think you do,’ he muttered. ‘But you may leave the dock now.’

Marie-Louise Leverkuhn thanked him and did as she had been told.

Judge Hart, Van Veeteren thought as he came out into the street and opened up his umbrella. What a terrific police officer the old distorter of the law would have made!

25

Moreno knocked and entered. Münster looked up from the reports he was reading.

‘Have a pew,’ he said. ‘How did it go?’

She flopped down on the chair without even unbuttoning her brown suede jacket. Shook her head a few times, and he noticed that she was on the verge of tears.

‘Not all that well,’ she said.

Münster put his pen in his breast pocket and slid the stack of files to one side. He waited for the continuation, but there wasn’t one.

‘I see,’ he said in the end. ‘Feel free to tell me about it.’

Ewa Moreno dug her hands into her pockets and took a deep breath. Münster noted that he did the opposite – held his breath.

‘I explained to him that it was all over now. Definitely over and done with. He’s off to the USA for a course tomorrow morning. He said that if I don’t change my mind, he won’t be coming back. So that’s where we’re at.’

She fell silent, and looked past his shoulder, out of the window. Münster swallowed, and for a fleeting moment acknowledged that if he had been in Claus Badher’s shoes he would probably have done the same.

‘You mean…?’ he said.

‘Yes,’ said Moreno. ‘That’s what he meant. I know it. He’s intending to take his own life.’

Five seconds passed.

‘It doesn’t have to be that serious. A lot of people say things like that.’

‘Maybe,’ said Moreno. ‘And a lot of people do it. God, I sometimes wish I could just disappear into a black hole. Everything feels so damned hopeless. I’ve tried to persuade him to at least talk to somebody… To seek some kind of help. To do anything at all that leaves me out of it – but you men are just the way you are.’

‘The macho mystery?’ said Münster.

‘Yes, of course. We’ve already talked about that.’

She shrugged apologetically.

‘Do you have somebody to talk to yourself?’ Münster asked.

A slight blush coloured her face.

‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘An old detective intendent I happen to know, among others. No, enough of this. Isn’t there any work I can immerse myself in?’

‘A whole ocean,’ said Münster. ‘Plus a stagnant backwater called the Leverkuhn case. Could that be something for you?’

‘You’re not going to shelve it?’

‘I can’t,’ said Münster. ‘I’ve tried, but I dream about it at night.’

Moreno nodded and took her hands out of her pockets.

‘Okay,’ she said. ‘What do you want me to do?’

‘I’ve been thinking about that daughter I spoke to,’ said Münster. ‘Could that be something worth following up?’

‘Odd,’ said Rooth.

‘What is?’ said Jung.

‘Can’t you see?’

‘No, I’m blind.’

Rooth snorted.

‘Look at the other houseboats. That one… And that one!’

He pointed. Jung looked, and stamped his feet in an attempt to create a bit of heat.

‘I’m freezing,’ he said. ‘Tell me what you are on about, or I’ll throw you into the canal.’

‘Spoken like a true gentleman,’ said Rooth. ‘It’s not moored next to the quay, you berk. Why the hell has he anchored a metre out into the water?’

Jung registered that this really was the case. Bonger’s canal boat – which he was now gaping at for the seventh or eighth time – was not moored with its rail next to the stone quayside. Instead it was held in place by four hawsers as thick as your arm and a couple of fenders made out of rough wooden logs with car tyres fixed to the end, wedged between the hull of the boat and the quay half a metre above the waterline. The narrow gang-plank, which he had crossed a month ago, ran for a metre and a half over open water very nearly to the bows of the boat. Come to think of it, he had to admit that this was a bit odd.

‘All right,’ said Jung. ‘But what’s the significance?’

‘How the hell should I know?’ said Rooth. ‘But it’s an unusual set-up. Anyway, shall we call in on the old witch?’

Jung bit his lip.

‘Maybe we should have brought her something.’

‘Brought her something? What the hell are you on about?’

‘She’s a bit of a one-off, I’ve explained that already. We’d be more likely to get somewhere with her if we presented her with a drop of something tasty.’

Rooth shuddered.

‘A curse on this bloody wind,’ he said. ‘Okay, there’s an off-licence on the corner over there. Nip over and buy a half bottle of gin, and I’ll wait here for you.’

Ten minutes later they were ensconced in the galley with fru Jümpers. Just as Jung had predicted, the gin was much appreciated – especially as it was the coldest day so far this winter, and the lady of the boat had a visitor.

The visitor’s name was Barga – Jung couldn’t make out whether this was her first name or her surname – a robust woman of an uncertain age. Probably somewhere between forty and seventy. Despite the fact that it was relatively warm on board, both ladies were wearing rubber boots, thick woollen jumpers and long scarves, wrapped round and round their heads and necks. Without much in the way of ceremony, four tin mugs appeared on the table and were promptly filled with two centimetres of gin and three centimetres of coffee. Then a sugar lump, and a toast was proposed.

‘Aah!’ exclaimed Barga. ‘God is not as dead as they say.’

‘But He’s on His last legs,’ said fru Jümpers. ‘Believe you me!’

‘Hmm,’ said Jung. ‘In that connection, do you happen to have seen herr Bonger lately? That’s why we’ve called on you, of course.’

‘Bonger?’ said Barga, unwinding her headscarf slightly. ‘No, that’s a mystery. Makes you wonder what the bloody police do in this town.’

‘These gentlemen are from the police,’ said the hostess, with a wry smile.

‘Well, I’ll be buggered,’ said Barga. ‘Still, I suppose somebody has to do it, as the arse-licker said.’

‘Exactly,’ said Rooth. ‘So you also knew herr Bonger?’

‘You can bet your bleeding bollocks I did, Constable,’ said Barga. ‘Better than anybody else, I reckon…’ She glanced at her friend. ‘With the possible exception of this old cow.’

‘Do you also live on the canal?’ Jung asked.

‘No fear,’ said Barga. ‘On the contrary… Up under the roof beams in Kleinstraat, that’s where I have my abode. But I do descend down here now and then.’

‘Descend down here, kiss my arse!’ snorted fru Jümpers, unscrewing the top of the bottle again. ‘Can I offer anybody a drop more?’

‘Just a little one,’ said Jung.

‘A fairly big one,’ said Rooth.

Fru Jümpers poured out the gin and Barga laughed so expansively that the fillings in her teeth glittered.

‘A fairly big one!’ she repeated in delight. ‘Are you really a police officer, my dear?’

‘I wasn’t good enough to do anything else,’ said Rooth. ‘But this Bonger character – if you knew him so well, perhaps you have some idea of where he might be?’

A few seconds passed while the large woman’s facial expression turned serious. She peered between swollen eyelids at fru Jümpers, who was meticulously blending the coffee and gin. Then she cleared her throat.

‘Either he’s been murdered…’ she said.

She lifted her mug. Three seconds passed.

‘Or?’ said Jung.

‘Or he’s done a runner.’

‘Don’t talk crap,’ said fru Jümpers.

‘Why would he do a runner?’ asked Rooth.

‘Business,’ said Berga secretively. ‘He had no choice.’

Jung stared sceptically at her and Rooth shook his head.

‘What kind of business?’

‘Debts,’ said Berga, tapping the table three times with her fist. ‘He owed a lot of money. They were after him – I spoke to him just a few days before he disappeared. He’s gone underground, that’s all there is to it. You don’t mess about with the characters in that branch.’

‘What branch?’ wondered Rooth.

‘It could have something to do with his sister as well,’ said Berga, gazing down into her mug as if her friend had got the proportions wrong.

‘I didn’t know he had a sister,’ said Jung. ‘Where does she live?’

‘Nobody knows,’ interjected fru Jümpers. ‘She also vanished in mysterious circumstances… when would it be now? Fifteen years ago? About that. Took leave of her senses and turned up later in Limburg, or so they say.’

‘What branch were you talking about?’ Rooth insisted.

‘I’m not saying, so I haven’t said anything,’ said Berga, fishing out a crumpled cigarette. ‘It’s not good to give your tongue its head.’

‘For Christ’s sake,’ sighed Jung.

‘Cheers!’ said fru Jümpers. ‘Pay no attention to her. She always rambles on like that when she doesn’t know what she’s talking about. She’s been senile for the last thirty years.’

‘Bah,’ said Berga, lighting the cigarette. ‘Bonger had problems, there’s no doubt about that. My tip is that he’s in Hamburg or maybe South America, and that he’ll make bloody sure he doesn’t come back here.’

There was silence for a few seconds while the mugs were emptied. Then Rooth thought it was time to change tack.

‘Why is his boat moored as it is?’ he asked. ‘It seems a bit odd.’

‘Burp,’ belched fru Jümpers. ‘It’s been moored like that for twenty years. The former owner did it – he was a Muslim of some kind or other and wanted open water on all sides of his boat, said it was good for his karma or something.’

Jung suspected she had mixed up the religions, but let it pass. He glanced at Rooth, who was looking increasingly tormented. Best leave it at that, he thought.

‘Anyway, we’d better be making a move,’ he said, draining the last drops from his mug.

‘You may be right,’ said Rooth. ‘Thank you very much. It’s been most interesting.’

‘Bye bye,’ said Barga, waving her cigarette around. ‘Make sure you clean up a bit among the riff-raff so that it’s safe for a respectable lady to walk home.’

‘Huh, kiss my arse,’ said fru Jümpers.

‘What the hell did we come here for?’ wondered Rooth when they were back on the frosty quay.

Jung shrugged.

‘Search me. Münster just wanted us to check up on the situation. He seems to have trouble in letting this case go.’

Rooth nodded glumly.

‘He certainly does,’ he said. ‘As far as I’m concerned I’d like to forget all about this visit. I’ve come across fairer maidens in my time.’

‘I should hope so,’ said Jung. ‘But what d’you think about that Barga?’

Rooth shuddered.

‘Away with the fairies,’ he said. ‘Nothing of what she said made sense. First it was a mystery, then she knew all about it… But if that Bonger really did owe money, surely this was an ideal situation for him to pay it back, now that they’d won the lottery.’

‘Exactly what I was thinking,’ said Jung.

‘I doubt it,’ said Rooth. ‘Shall we move on now?’

‘By all means,’ said Jung.

Moreno drove up to Wernice. She doubted if she would be well received by Ruth Leverkuhn, and while she sat waiting for the bascule bridge over the Maar to go up and down, she also wondered about the point of the visit. Always assuming there was one. Ruth Leverkuhn had sounded quite off-putting on the telephone, finding it hard to understand why the police needed to stick their noses still further into this personal tragedy than they had done already.

Her father had been murdered in his bed.

Her mother had confessed to doing it.

Wasn’t that quite enough?

Was it really necessary to pester the survivors still more, and didn’t the police have more important things to do?

Moreno had to admit that she could understand Leverkuhn’s point of view.

And the visit didn’t turn out to be especially successful either.

Ruth Leverkuhn received her in a loose-fitting wine-red tracksuit with the text PUP FOR THE CUP in flaking yellow over her chest. She had a wet towel wound around her head, dripping water on her bosom and shoulders, and on her feet were wrinkled, thick skiing socks. On the whole she was not a pretty sight.

‘Migraine,’ she explained. ‘I’m in the middle of an attack. Can we keep this as short as possible?’

‘I realize this must be very traumatic for you,’ Moreno began, ‘but there are a few things we’d like to throw some light on.’

‘Really?’ said Leverkuhn. ‘What exactly?’

She led the way into a living room with low, soft sofas, oriental fans and a mass of brightly coloured fluffy cushions. The flat was on the fifth floor, and the picture window gave a splendid view over the flat landscape with scattered clumps of bare deciduous trees, church towers and arrow-straight canals. The sky was covered in rain clouds, and mist was starting to roll in from the sea like a discreet shroud. Moreno stood for a few moments taking in the scenery before sinking down among the fluff.

‘What a lovely view you have!’ she said. ‘It must be very pleasant to sit here, watching dusk fall.’

But Leverkuhn was not particularly interested in beauty today. She muttered something and sat down opposite Moreno on the other side of the low cane table.

‘What do you want to know?’ she asked after a few seconds of silence.

Moreno took a deep breath.

‘Were you surprised?’ she said.

‘What?’ said Leverkuhn.

‘When you heard she had confessed. Did you get another shock, or had you suspected that it was your mother who was guilty?’

Leverkuhn adjusted the wet towel over her forehead.

‘I don’t see the point of this,’ she said. ‘The fact is that my mother has killed my father. Isn’t that enough? Why do you want details? Why do you want to drag us even further down into the dirt? Can’t you understand how it feels?’

Her voice sounded unsteady: Moreno guessed that it was to do with the migraine medicine, and began wondering once again why she was sitting there. Using her job as cover for her own therapy was not especially attractive, now she came to think about it.

‘So you weren’t surprised?’ she said even so.

No reply.

‘And then we have the other two strange occurrences,’ Moreno continued. ‘Herr Bonger and fru Van Eck. Did you know them?’

Leverkuhn shook her head.

‘But you have met them?’

‘I suppose I must have seen the Van Ecks once or twice, both him and her. But I’ve no idea who Bonger is.’

‘One of your father’s friends,’ said Moreno.

‘Did he have any friends?’

It slipped out before she could stop it. Moreno could see clearly that she wanted to bite her tongue off.

‘What do you mean by that?’

Leverkuhn shrugged.

‘Nothing.’

‘Was your father a solitary person?’

No reply.

‘You don’t know much about his habits in recent years, then? Friends and suchlike?’

‘No.’

‘Do you know if they socialized with the Van Ecks occasionally? Your father and mother, that is? Either of them?’

‘I’ve no idea.’

‘How often did you visit your parents?’

‘Hardly ever. You know that already. We did not have a good relationship.’

‘So you didn’t like your father?’

But now Ruth Leverkuhn had had enough.

‘I… I’m not going to answer any more questions,’ she said. ‘You have no right to come poking around into my private life. Don’t you think we’ve suffered enough from all this?’

‘Yes,’ said Moreno. ‘Of course I do. But no matter how awful it might seem, we have to try to find our way to the truth. That’s our job.’

That sounded a bit pompous, no doubt – find our way to the truth! – and she wondered where that formulation could have come from. A few moments passed before Leverkuhn answered.

‘The truth?’ she said, slowly and thoughtfully, turning her head and apparently directing her attention at the sky and the landscape. ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about. Why should anybody go digging after something which is ugly and repulsive? If the truth were a beautiful pearl, then yes, I could understand why anybody should want to go hunting after it; but as it is… well, why not let it lie hidden, if somebody is managing to hide it so well?’

Those were momentous words coming from such a sloppy woman, Moreno realized that, and as she drove back home she wondered what they could mean.

The ugly snout of the truth?

Was it merely a general reflection about a family with bad internal relationships, and the feeling of hopelessness after the final catastrophe? Or was it something more than that?

Something more tangible and concrete?

As dusk was falling and she drove into Maardam over the Fourth Of November Bridge and along Zwille, she still hadn’t found an answer to these questions.

Apart from an irritating feeling that she was absolutely sure about.

There was more to this story than had yet come to light. A lot more. And hence good reason to continue with these tentative efforts to penetrate the darkness.

Even if the pearls were black and crackled.

26

The trial of Marie-Louise Leverkuhn dragged on over three long-drawn-out afternoons in the presence of dwindling audiences in the public gallery. The only person who seemed to have any doubts about her guilt – to go by the grim expression on his face – was Judge Hart, who occasionally intervened with questions that neither the prosecutor nor defence counsel seemed to have bothered about.

Nor had she, come to that.

Otherwise, it seemed that the line of truth was going to be drawn somewhere in the grey area between murder and manslaughter. In accordance with a series of points difficult to pin down, such as: reasonable doubt, temporary state of unsound mind, degree of legal competency, time for reflection in prevailing circumstances – and so on.

She found these questions pretty pointless. Instead of listening while they were being argued about, she often sat observing members of the jury. These unimpeachable men and women holding her fate in their hands – or imagining that they did so, at least. For some reason it was one of the two females who captured her interest. A dark-haired woman aged sixty-something – not much younger than she was. Slim and wiry, but with a certain stature that was noticeable mainly in the way she held her head: she hardly ever looked at the person who happened to be speaking – usually the prosecutor or the tiresome Bachmann – but seemed to be concentrating on something else. Something inside herself.

Or more elevated. I could entrust myself to a woman like that, thought Marie-Louise Leverkuhn.

The prosecution had called three witnesses in all, the defence one. She was never quite sure precisely what role the prosecutor’s henchmen were supposed to be playing: if she understood it correctly, they comprised a doctor, a pathologist and some kind of police officer. Their evidence merely confirmed what was claimed to be known already. Perhaps that was the point in fact: Judge Hart asked a few questions that could have opened up new avenues of thought, but nobody seemed to be particularly interested. Nothing was really at stake, and the ventilation in the rather chilly room left a lot to be desired – best to get it all over with as painlessly as possible, everybody seemed to be agreed on that. Nevertheless, interrogation of the witnesses for the prosecution took almost two hours.

Emmeline von Post, the defence’s so-called character witness, took up considerably less time (probably about a quarter of an hour, she didn’t check). All in all it was a rather painful episode. But nothing else could reasonably have been expected. Bachmann hadn’t told her that he intended to put Emmeline in the witness box – if he had, she would have prevented him. No doubt about that.

After Emmeline von Post had come to the stand, confirmed who she was and sworn the oath, barely half a minute passed before she burst out crying. Judge Hart adjourned proceedings while a female usher hurried up to administer a carafe of water, some paper tissues and a dose of humane sympathy.

Bachmann then managed to continue for a few minutes before she collapsed in tears again. Another pause ensued, with snuffling and more paper handkerchiefs, and when the poor woman finally seemed to be more or less composed, Bachmann took his courage in both hands and asked her the crucial question with no more beating about the bush.

‘You have known the accused almost all your life, fru von Post. Given your familiarity with her character, do you consider it credible that she would murder her husband with malice aforethought in the way that the prosecution has tried to suggest?’

Emmeline von Post – who naturally had no idea of what the prosecution had tried to suggest, as she had not had the right to be present in court until it was her turn – sobbed several times. Then she replied in a comparatively steady voice:

‘She would never hurt a fly. I can swear to that.’

Bachmann had no more questions.

Nor did Prosecutor Grootner.

Not even Judge Hart.

The final pleas were made on Friday, a performance confusingly similar to the opening session on Tuesday. When it was over Hart declared the proceedings closed. Sentence would be passed the following Thursday: until then Marie-Louise Leverkuhn would be remanded as had been the case since her arrest thirty-nine days ago – in cell number 12 in the women’s section of the jail in Maardam police station.

As she sat in the car taking her back to that cell she felt more relieved than anything else. To the best of her knowledge nothing had gone wrong during the trial (apart from the Emmeline von Post farce, but that had nothing to do with the main business), and all that remained now was a few days of waiting.

No more decisions. No questions. No lies.

It rained almost all weekend. Somewhere below her little window was a corrugated iron roof, on which the variations in the rain were just as clear as the notes from a musical instrument. She liked it: lying stretched out on the bed with the green blanket pulled up to her chin and the window slightly open… Yes, there was something deeply soothing about it. Something inside her was finally able to rest.

Something had come home after a long, long journey.

It was remarkable.

The chaplain came to see her as usual. A short visit on both Saturday and Sunday. He sat there in his corner half-asleep, as if keeping watch at a deathbed. She liked the idea of that as well.

Bachmann had threatened to put in an appearance and talk her through the situation, but she knew that it was no more than an empty promise typical of his profession. He had looked very depressed during the final days of the trial, and she had not encouraged him to come and visit her. And so he didn’t.

Ruth phoned on Friday evening and Mauritz did the same quite early on Saturday morning, but it was Sunday afternoon before Ruth’s large body flopped down on the chair.

‘Mum,’ she said after the initial silence.

‘Yes, what do you want?’ said Marie-Louise Leverkuhn.

That was a question her daughter was unable to answer, and not much more was said. After twenty minutes she gave vent to a deep sigh, and left her mother to her own devices.

It felt almost like a sort of victory when the door was locked behind her, Marie-Louise thought. It was strange that she should think that, of course, but that’s the way it was.

Things had turned out the way they had, and that’s the way it was. Only a few minutes after Ruth had left her, she fell asleep and had a dream.

She was on a train. It was racing through flat, monotonous countryside, at such a high speed that it was almost impossible to make out anything that flashed past the dirty and rather scratched window.

Even so, she knew that what was out there was life. Her own life. Flashing past at high speed. She was sitting with her back to the engine, and it soon became obvious that she was getting younger, the further they travelled. The same applied to her fellow passengers. The young woman sitting opposite her was suddenly no more than a little girl, and the elderly man in the corner with the shaking hands and bewildered eyes was soon transformed into a smart blue-eyed young man in uniform.

A journey backwards through life. On and on it went until everyone was only a small child, and when anybody in the carriage became so small that he or she looked like a new-born baby, the train stopped at a station. A few people in long, white coats with stethoscopes round their necks came on board and picked up the pink little lumps from the dirty seats. Made them all belch and cry a little, collected the blue ticket that they were all holding in their tiny hands, and left the train with the little creatures over their shoulders.

When it was her turn – it was an unusually big and fat doctor with wings on his back who lifted her up – it turned out that she didn’t have a ticket.

‘Haven’t you got a ticket?’ asked the angel sternly – she could now see that it was an angel. ‘In that case you can’t be born.’

‘Thank you, oh, thank you!’ She smiled up into his florid face. ‘If I can’t be born, I suppose that means I don’t need to live?’

‘Ho ho,’ said the angel cryptically and put her back down on the seat.

And so she continued the train journey into eternity, through the night of the unborn.

And she was happy. When she woke up she had butterflies in her stomach.

I don’t need to live.

Moritz also came on Sunday. At about half past six, just after the warder had been in to collect the dinner tray.

He had spent five hours in the car driving there, and seemed stressed and irritated. Although perhaps it was just his customary insecurity that lay behind it. He rang for coffee, said that he wanted some, but when it was actually standing on the shaky plastic table, he never touched it.

He also had difficulty in finding anything to say, just as Ruth had done. All they talked about was such things as prison routines and the situation on the candle-ring front in the run-up to Christmas. Mainly red and green this year, it seemed. She wished he would leave, and after half an hour said as much.

Perhaps he had assumed there would be this kind of difficulty, because he had written a letter. He stood up and produced it from an inside pocket in his ugly blazer with the firm’s emblem on the breast pocket. He handed it over without a word, then rang the bell and was let out.

It was only one and a half pages long. She read it three times. Then she tore it up into tiny pieces and flushed it down the toilet in the scruffy little booth in the corner of the cell.

It took a while. The pieces kept floating back up to the surface, and as she stood there pressing the flush button over and over again, she made up her mind what to do next.

She called the warder again, asked for pencil and paper, and shortly afterwards sat down at the little table to search for the right words.

The only surprise she felt at her decision was how easy it had been to make. Half an hour later she drank tea and ate a couple of sandwiches with an eager appetite, as if life was still something relevant to her.

27

Moreno had got in touch with Krystyna Gravenstein via the secretary at Doggers grammar school, where she had worked until she retired three years ago.

Gravenstein welcomed the detective into her little two-roomed flat in Palitzerstraat, at the top of the building with a view over the river and Megsje Bois. When she entered the flat Moreno wondered if everybody had such splendid views from their homes nowadays, and recalled Ruth Leverkuhn’s picture window. It seemed to be the case, at least for home-owners on the distaff side. Fröken Gravenstein was a slim little woman with a haycock of chalk-white hair and owl-eyes behind thick spectacles. Tweed suit and crocheted shawl over her shoulders. She moved a pile of books from a tubular steel armchair and urged the inspector to sit down, sat down herself on a swivel chair in front of a desk, and spun round. Of the two rooms, one evidently served as a bedroom and the other as a study. Moreno guessed that nothing else was required. The desk, with a view of rooftops and open sky, was covered in papers, books, dictionaries and a computer. Bookshelves covered the walls from floor to ceiling, and were chock-a-block with books.

‘I’ve started to do a bit of translating since I finished at the school,’ Gravenstein explained, with a faint suggestion of a smile. ‘You have to find something to do. Italian and French. It helps to make the pension go a bit further as well.’

Moreno nodded in agreement.

‘Literature, I assume?’ she asked.

‘Yes,’ said Gravenstein. ‘Mostly poetry, but I’ve done the occasional novel as well.’

‘So you used to teach at Doggers, right? Romance languages?’

‘For thirty-seven years… Thirty-seven…’

She shrugged and looked somewhat apologetic. Moreno gathered that she didn’t exactly long to be back in the classroom again. And that it was time to come to the point.

‘You were a colleague of Else Van Eck’s, I understand,’ she began. ‘That’s why I want to talk to you. Are you aware of what has happened?’

‘She’s vanished,’ said Gravenstein, adjusting her spectacles.

‘Exactly,’ said Moreno. ‘She’s been missing for nearly seven weeks now, and we still haven’t a clue where she is. There are good reasons for suspecting she is no longer with us. Were you close to her as a colleague?’

Her hostess shook her head and looked worried.

‘No,’ she said. ‘Certainly not. Nobody was – I’m sorry to have to say that, but it’s the way it was. We never met in our free time – apart from the odd occasion when the French Society had something interesting in its programme.’

‘How long did you work together?’

Gravenstein worked it out.

‘Nearly twenty years,’ she said. ‘Else Van Eck is a… a remarkable woman. Or was.’

‘In what way?’ wondered Moreno.

Fröken Gravenstein adjusted her shawl while she thought that over.

‘Unsociable,’ she said in the end. ‘She had no desire to associate with or even to talk to the rest of us teachers. She wasn’t unpleasant, but she didn’t bother about other people. She was self-sufficient, if you see what I mean.’

‘What was she like as a teacher?’

Gravenstein gave a hint of a smile.

‘Excellent,’ she said. ‘That might sound unlikely, but it’s a fact. Once the pupils had got to grips with her, they liked her. Maybe young people find it easier to get on with weirdos – I think so. And she loved French. She never taught any other subject, and – well, she was a walking dictionary. And grammar book as well, come to that. Obviously she would never have been able to stay on as a member of staff if she hadn’t had those qualities. Not in view of the way she was.’

Moreno thought for a moment.

‘And why was she the way she was?’

‘I haven’t the slightest idea. I never got to know her, and know nothing about her private life.’

‘What about her professional life?’ Moreno asked. ‘Do you know why she became a French teacher?’

Gravenstein hesitated.

‘There is a story,’ she said.

‘A story?’ Moreno repeated.

Fröken Gravenstein bit her lip and contemplated her hands. Seemed to be discussing something with herself.

‘One of those myths,’ she said. ‘The kind that circulate among pupils about almost every teacher. Sometimes there’s a grain of truth in them, sometimes there isn’t. But you can’t put too much faith in them.’

‘And what was the mythology surrounding Else Van Eck?’ Moreno asked.

‘A love story.’

Moreno nodded encouragingly.

‘Young and unhappy love,’ explained Gravenstein. ‘A Frenchman. They were engaged and were going to get married, but then he left her for someone else.’

Moreno said nothing, waited for a while.

‘Not especially imaginative,’ she said eventually.

‘There’s more to come,’ said fröken Gravenstein. ‘According to legend, she started reading French for his sake, and she continued doing so for his sake. His name is said to be Albert, and after a while he regretted what he’d done. Tried to win her back. But Else refused to forgive him. When it finally got through to him what he’d done, he hurled himself in front of a train and died. Gare du Nord. Hmm…’

‘Hmm,’ Moreno agreed. ‘And when was this supposed to have happened?’

Gravenstein threw her arms out wide.

‘I don’t know. When she was young, of course. Shortly after the war, I assume.’

Moreno sighed. Krystyna Gravenstein suddenly smiled broadly.

‘Everybody must have a story,’ she said. ‘For those who don’t, we need to invent one.’

She glanced up at the rows of books as she said that, and Moreno realized that it was a quotation. And that the words had a certain relevance to Gravenstein’s life as well.

What’s my story? she thought in the lift on the way down. Claus? My police work? Or do I have to invent one?

She shuddered when she remembered that there were less than seven days to go to Christmas, and she had no idea how she was going to spend the holiday.

Perhaps I might as well volunteer to work over the whole time, she thought. If I could make things easier for a colleague, why not?

Then she thought for a while about Albert.

A Frenchman who had taken his own life fifty years ago or more? For the sake of Else Van Eck. Would it still be possible to identify him?

And could it have anything at all to do with this case that Intendent Münster insisted on persevering with and poking about in?

No, nothing at all, she decided. Could anything possibly be more far-fetched? Nevertheless she decided to report the matter. To tell the story. The myth. If nothing else it would be nice to sit and talk about it for a while with Münster. Surely she could grant herself that much?

That apart, Krystyna Gravenstein seemed to have sorted out quite a pleasant way of spending her old age, Moreno thought. Sitting up under the roof beams among lots of books high above the town, and doing nothing but read and write… Not a bad existence.

But before you got that far, of course, you had a life to find your way through.

She sighed and started walking back to the police station.

Münster checked his watch. Then counted the Christmas presents on the back seat.

Twelve in an hour and a half. Not bad. That gave him plenty of time for his visit to Pampas, and he gathered that the widowed fru de Grooit didn’t like being rushed. Peace and quiet, and there’s a time for everything – that’s what it had sounded like on the telephone.

He parked in the street outside the low, drab, brown house. Sat there for a minute, composing himself and wondering what exactly it was that prevented him from letting go of this business.

In his infinite wisdom, Chief of Police Hiller had declared that in the name of all that’s holy there was no rational reason for wasting any more resources on this case. Waldemar Leverkuhn had been murdered. His wife had confessed to doing it, and on Thursday she would be found guilty of either murder or manslaughter. He didn’t give a toss which. A certain Felix Bonger had gone missing and a certain Else Van Eck had gone missing.

‘So what?’ Hiller had asked, and Münster knew that he was right, in fact. The average number of people who went missing in their district was 15-18 per year, and the fact that two of them happened to disappear at about the same time as the Leverkuhn business was obviously pure coincidence.

Naturally the police continued to look for the two missing persons – just as they did for all the others who had gone up in smoke – but it wasn’t a job for highly paid (overpaid!) detective officers.

Bugger that for a lark. Full stop. Exit Hiller.

It’s a damned nuisance, having to work on the sly, Münster thought as he got out of the car.

But if you are an uncompromising seeker of the truth, you must grin and bear it.

‘Really, I couldn’t believe my eyes when I read about it in the paper,’ said fru de Grooit. ‘Take a biscuit. They used to live over there, and we called on one another almost every day.’

She pointed out of the cluttered window at the house on the other side of the hedge.

‘Over there,’ she repeated. ‘Between 1952 and 1976. We moved in when the house was new in 1948, and since my husband died I’ve often thought I ought to move out, but I’ve never got round to it. Don’t be afraid to dunk if you want to. It’s terrible. We are normal people here in Pampas. Honest working people, not murderers. I talk too much, do interrupt me if you need to. My husband always used to say you have to interrupt me in order to shut me up.’

‘Did you know the Leverkuhns well?’ Münster asked.

‘Well… no, not really,’ said fru de Grooit, blinking a little nervously. ‘We always had more to do with the Van Klusters and the Bolmeks on the other side and opposite, not so much with the Leverkuhns, no… It wasn’t that…’

She fell silent and looked thoughtful.

‘Wasn’t what?’ Münster wondered.

‘It wasn’t that they weren’t good neighbours and good people, but they tended to keep their distance. They were like that, especially him.’

‘Waldemar Leverkuhn?’

‘Herr Leverkuhn, yes. A reserved chap, not easy to talk to; but an honest worker, nobody could possibly suggest anything else… It’s awful. Do you think she really murdered him in that terrible way? I don’t know what to think any more. How was the coffee?’

‘Good,’ said Münster.

It looked for a moment as if fru de Grooit was going to start crying. Münster coughed to distract her while he thought of something apposite to say, but he couldn’t think of anything that might console her.

‘Did you know fru Leverkuhn a little better, then?’ was the best he could do. ‘Better than him, that is. Woman to woman, as it were.’

But fru de Grooit merely shook her head.

‘No,’ she said. ‘She wasn’t the type to get pally with, and if you ever needed to borrow some sugar or flour, it was natural to go to one of the other neighbours – the Van Klusters or Bolmeks. On the other side and opposite. Has she really killed him?’

‘It looks like it,’ said Münster. ‘What were the children like?’

Fru de Grooit fiddled with her coffee cup and didn’t reply immediately.

‘They were also reserved,’ she said after a while. ‘They didn’t have any real friends, none of them. Mauritz was exactly the same age as our Bertrand, we had him late on, but they never became good friends. We tried ten, twenty times, but he always preferred to be at home on his own, playing with his electric train set, Mauritz did – and don’t think that Bertrand was allowed to join in. There was something… something mean, something off-putting about the boy. I think he had a rough time at school as well. And with girls – no, it wasn’t exactly a home with open doors, certainly not.’

‘Have you had any contact with them in recent years?’ Münster asked. ‘Since they left here?’

‘None at all,’ said fru de Grooit. ‘They moved out and disappeared. From one day to the next. The children had already flown the nest, of course, so it was easier for them with a flat – they were never very interested in the garden. They didn’t even leave an address. We heard later that things had gone badly for Irene…’

‘Really?’ said Münster, pretending to be surprised.

‘Nerves,’ said fru de Grooit. ‘She just couldn’t cope, that’s all there was to it. Some people just can’t cope, that’s the way it’s always been. They put her in a home, I don’t know if she’s come out again. They were introverted as well, the sisters – you never saw them with boys. Always kept themselves to themselves. No, it wasn’t a happy family, if you can put it like that. But one knows so little about it.’

She fell silent again, sighed and stirred her coffee. Münster wondered what he had hoped to get out of this conversation, but realized that it was just a matter of blind chance. Yet again.

Maybe something will crop up, maybe not.

That’s not a bad motto for police work overall, he thought. A vain and arbitrary search for a needle in a haystack, that’s exactly what it always seemed to be like.

Or, as Reinhart preferred to put it: a copper is a blind tortoise looking for a snowball in the desert.

There were plenty of appropriate images.

‘I remember one incident,’ said fru de Grooit after a few moments of silence. ‘That Mauritz didn’t have an easy time of it at school, as I said. He was in the same class as our Bertrand, and on one occasion he’d been beaten up by some older boys. I don’t know how serious it was, or what lay behind it, but in any case, he didn’t dare go back to school… And he didn’t dare to stay at home either, scared of what his parents would say or do – fru Leverkuhn was out of work when it happened. So he would pretend to go off to school in the morning, but instead of being in school he was hiding away in the shed at the back of their house all day. He can’t have been more than about eleven or twelve at the time: his sisters knew about it and looked after him… One of them was also without a job and so was at home all day and she used to smuggle sandwiches out to him. He sat there for day after day, for about a fortnight at least…’

‘Didn’t the school ask about where he was?’ Münster asked.

She shrugged. Brushed some imaginary crumbs off the tablecloth.

‘Eventually, yes. I think he got a good hiding from his dad then. For being such a coward.’

‘Not a very good way of making him any braver,’ said Münster.

‘No,’ said fru de Grooit. ‘But that’s the way he was, Waldemar.’

‘How was he?’ asked Münster.

‘Hard, sort of.’

‘You didn’t like him, I gather?’

Fru de Grooit looked a little embarrassed.

‘I don’t really know,’ she said. ‘It was a long time ago. We didn’t have a lot to do with them, and you have to leave people in peace if that’s what they want. It takes all sorts… Everybody is happy in his own way.’

‘You’re absolutely right,’ said Münster.

He went for a walk among the little detached houses in Pampas when he had taken his leave of fru de Grooit. He was pretty fed up of the little houses, but the weather was pleasant enough for walking.

This Pampas was a rather special part of the town, it couldn’t be denied. And he hadn’t been here for ages. The low-lying, almost swampy area next to the river had not been built on until shortly after the war, when all at once these rows of tiny houses sprang up, all of them with only three or four rooms, on plots barely large enough to accommodate them. A local council project to provide owner-occupied houses for hard-working labourers and junior office workers, if he understood it rightly. A sort of clumsy attempt to boost the lower classes in the direction of equality, and all of them – more than six hundred houses – were still standing in more or less unchanged condition after nearly fifty years. Repaired and modernized and extended here and there, of course, but nevertheless remarkably intact.

Post-war optimism, Münster thought. A monument to an age.

And to a generation that was disappearing into the grave.

Like fru de Grooit and the Leverkuhns.

I’ll never get any further with this damned case, he thought as he settled behind the wheel of his car. It’s going to stand as still as Pampas. Nothing more is going to happen.

But that is where Intendent Münster was wrong.

In spades.

28

If her boyfriend hadn’t given her the boot the previous evening – on 20 December – Vera Kretschke would presumably have slept a bit better.

If she had slept a bit better, she would obviously have been able to run all the way round her jogging route without any problems. She usually did.

If she had managed to run all the way, she certainly wouldn’t have stopped after fifteen hundred metres and started walking instead of running.

And if she hadn’t started walking as slowly as she did, well, she would never have noticed that yellow bit of plastic sticking up from the undergrowth in among the trees a few metres from the path.

Probably not, in any case.

And then… then that awful image would not be filling her head like a lump of hot goo, preventing her from having much in the way of rational thoughts.

That’s what she was thinking as she lay in bed that same evening in her old, secure, childhood room, waiting for Reuben to ring despite everything – if not to apologize and take back what he’d said, then at least so that she could tell him what had happened while she was out jogging that morning.

Jogging and walking.

What an ugly sight, she thought, and stopped. Why couldn’t people dispose of things in the right place instead of out here in the forest?

Weyler’s Woods nature park was not large, but it was popular and well looked-after. There were waste paper bins and rubbish bins alongside all the paths for walkers and joggers that criss-crossed the forest in all directions, and she didn’t usually need to stop and pick up rubbish that had been dumped like this.

Occasionally an ice-lolly stick or an empty cigarette packet, perhaps, but not a big plastic carrier bag.

Vera Kretschke was the chairman of her school’s environmental society – had been for the last three terms – and she felt a certain responsibility.

She stepped out resolutely into the undergrowth. Shook the raindrops off the young birch sapling before ducking down underneath it and pulling out the plastic carrier bag. Most of it had been hidden under leaves and twigs, and she had to pull quite hard to get it loose.

Dirty bastards, she thought. Filthy pigs.

Then she looked inside the bag.

It contained a head. A woman’s head.

She started vomiting without being able to stop it. It simply came spurting out of her, just as it had done that time a few years ago when she’d eaten something very dodgy at the Indian restaurant in the centre of town.

Some of it went into the bag as well. Which naturally didn’t make matters any better.

And Reuben didn’t phone, so there was another sleepless night in store for poor Vera Kretschke.

‘Fucking hell!’ roared Inspector Fuller. ‘This sort of thing simply shouldn’t happen.’

Warder Schmidt shook his large head and looked unhappy.

‘But it has happened…’

‘How the hell did she do it?’ said Fuller.

Schmidt sighed.

‘Ripped up the blanket to make a rope, I think. And then used that little bit of pipe high up in the corner – we’ve talked about that before.’

‘I take it you’ve cut her down?’

‘No…’ Schmidt shuffled and squirmed uneasily. ‘No, we thought you might like to take a look at her first.’

‘Hell’s bells,’ muttered Fuller, getting to his feet.

‘We only found her a couple of minutes ago,’ said Schmidt apologetically. ‘Wacker is there now, but she’s dead, there’s no doubt about that. And there’s a letter on the table as well.’

But Inspector Fuller had already elbowed his way past and was charging down the corridor towards cell number 12.

Damn and blast, thought Schmidt. And it’s my birthday today.

When Fuller had established that fru Leverkuhn really was in the state that had been reported, he arranged for a dozen photographs to be taken and had her cut down. Then he sent for a doctor, took a couple of tablets to calm his upset stomach, and phoned Intendent Münster.

Münster took the lift down and eyed the dead woman on the bed in her cell for ten seconds. Asked Fuller how the hell something like this could happen, then took the lift back up to his office.

When he had read the letter twice, he rang Moreno and explained the situation.

‘Quite unambiguous,’ said Moreno after reading Marie-Louise Leverkuhn’s final message to the world.

‘Yes, very clear,’ said Münster. ‘She’s done her husband in, and now it was her turn. She was a woman of action, nobody can take that from her.’

He stood up and looked out at the rain.

‘But it’s a bugger that she’s committed suicide in her cell,’ he muttered. ‘They’ll have to revise their procedures. Hiller looked like a plum about to explode when he heard about it.’

‘I can well imagine,’ said Moreno. ‘But she did it well. Did you see the rope she’d made? Plaited four strands thick, it must have taken her several hours. A man would never have been able to do it.’

Münster said nothing. A few seconds of silence passed.

‘Why did she do it?’ asked Moreno. ‘I mean, you can understand that she didn’t particularly fancy spending the last years of her life in prison, but… Was it only that?’

‘What else could it be?’ said Münster. ‘I reckon that’s a good enough reason. If there’s anything to wonder about, it’s why she waited until now. It’s not exactly straightforward to commit suicide in a prison cell. Even if you are skilled, and the routines are bad. Or was it something else, d’you think? Why now?’

Moreno shrugged.

‘I don’t know. But there doesn’t seem much point in speculating now. We’ve got the key, after all.’

Münster sighed, and turned round.

‘What a pointless life,’ he said.

‘Marie-Louise Leverkuhn’s?’

‘Yes. Can you see any point in it? She had murdered her husband, then killed herself. One of her children is in a psychiatric hospital, and the other two are not exactly the life and soul of any party. No grandchildren. Well, you tell me if there’s some point that I’ve missed.’

Moreno glanced at the letter again. Folded it up and put it back in the envelope.

‘No,’ she said. ‘But that’s the way it is. It’s hardly likely to be a story with a happy end if we’re involved in it.’

‘I suppose so,’ said Münster. ‘But there ought to be limits nevertheless… The occasional little diamond among all the shit. What are you doing for Christmas?’

Moreno pulled a face.

‘The main thing is that I don’t have to see Claus,’ she said. ‘He’s due back tomorrow. At first I intended working over the holidays, but then I bumped into an old friend who had just been dumped. We’re taking six bottles of wine with us to her house by the sea.’

Münster smiled. Didn’t dare ask about details of the Claus situation. Or what state she was in now. There were certain things that were nothing to do with him, and the less he asked, the better. It was safer that way.

‘Good for you,’ he said. ‘Make sure you don’t swim out too far.’

‘I promise,’ she said.

‘I’m working tomorrow,’ said Münster as he shuffled the cards for Marieke. ‘Then I’m off for six days.’

‘About time,’ said Synn. ‘I don’t want this autumn back again. We need to find a strategy to overcome this, we really do.’

‘A strategy?’ asked Münster.

‘Star-tea-gee,’ said Marieke. ‘Jack of clubs.’

‘I’m serious,’ Synn continued. ‘It’s better to throttle the depression before it makes a mess of everything. We have to make time to live. Remember that my mother went to the wall at the age of forty-five. She lived to be seventy, but she didn’t smile once during the last twenty-five years.’

‘I know,’ said Münster. ‘But you’re only thirty-eight. And you look like twenty-two.’

‘Seven of hearts,’ said Marieke. ‘Your turn! How old are you, Daddy?’

‘A hundred and three,’ replied Münster. ‘But I feel older. All right, I agree with you. We need to do something.’

For a second he tried to compare his life with that of the Leverkuhn family, tried to see where they stood in relation to one another – but the thought was so absurd that it collapsed immediately.

‘We’ll start the day after tomorrow,’ he said. ‘Was there any post today?’

‘Only bills and this,’ said Synn, handing him a white envelope. He opened it, and took out a sheet of paper folded twice.

It was a brief message. Only three words. Dated two days ago.

It’s not her.

V.V.

‘Queen of spades,’ said Marieke. ‘Your turn!’

‘Oh hell…’ said Intendent Münster.

29

Judgment in the Marie-Louise Leverkuhn case was announced on the morning of Monday, 22 December, in the Maardam court house.

Unanimously, the jury had found fru Leverkuhn guilty of the first degree murder of her husband, Waldemar Severin Leverkuhn, in accordance with paragraphs forty-three and forty-four of the penal code. She was sentenced to six years in prison, the shortest time allowed by the law: Judge Hart announced in all seriousness that this reflected the fact that the guilty person was already dead and hence was not expected to serve the sentence.

He then explained that an appeal against the verdict could be lodged in accordance with usual procedures within ninety days, slammed his enormous hammer down on the desk, and declared the case closed.

Pathologist Meusse dried his hands on his coat and looked up.

‘Yes, what is it?’

Rooth cleared his throat.

‘It’s about a skull…’

‘That skull,’ added Jung.

Meusse glared at them over the edge of his misted-up glasses and beckoned them to follow him. He led the way through a series of chilly rooms before finally coming to a stop in front of a large refrigerator.

‘It’s in here,’ he said, opening the door. ‘Unless I’m mistaken.’

He took out a white plastic sack and lifted up a decapitated woman’s head by her hair. It was swollen and discoloured, with blotches and pustules of every hue from ochre to deep lilac. The eyes were closed, but a few centimetres of dark brown tongue were sticking out of the mouth. The nose looked like a lump of excrement. Jung could feel his stomach turning over, and hoped he wouldn’t be forced to leave the room.

‘Bloody hell!’ said Rooth.

‘Yes, it’s not going to win a beauty contest,’ said Meusse. ‘She could have been lying there for a couple of months, I would think. The plastic carrier bag was high quality, otherwise rather more might have been nibbled away.’

Rooth swallowed and averted his gaze. For want of anything else he found himself looking at Jung, who was standing about thirty centimetres away. Jung felt another spasm in his stomach, and closed his eyes.

‘Do you recognize her?’ asked Rooth, his voice shaking.

Jung opened his eyes and nodded vaguely.

‘I think so,’ he said. ‘Can you say anything about the cause of death?’

Meusse put the head back into the bag.

‘Not yet,’ he said. ‘She’s had a few hefty blows with something heavy on the crown of her head, but God only knows if that’s what killed her. But she must have flaked out in any case – it’s one hell of a contusion. You reckon you know who she is?’

‘We think so,’ said Rooth. ‘Two months, is that what you said?’

‘Plus or minus a few weeks,’ said Meusse. ‘You’ll get more accurate data the day after tomorrow.’

‘That’ll be Christmas Eve,’ said Rooth.

‘You don’t say?’ said Meusse.

‘How did the decapitation take place?’ asked Jung.

Meusse stroked over his own bald head a few times as if to check that it was still in place.

‘A knife,’ he said. ‘And a butcher’s cleaver, I think. Not the instruments I would have chosen myself for that kind of operation, but it evidently worked okay.’

‘Evidently,’ said Rooth.

‘How old?’ asked Jung.

Meusse snorted.

‘If you know who it is, you ought to know how old she is,’ he muttered, and started walking back to his office.

‘Just double-checking,’ Rooth explained. ‘Our lady was closer to seventy than anything else. Does that fit in?’

‘Not too bad,’ said Meusse. ‘This head seems to be between sixty-five and seventy-five, according to my preliminary calculations. But I didn’t receive her until yesterday afternoon, so I don’t want to be more precise than that yet.’

Jung nodded. He had never heard Meusse being prepared to give an exact estimation, but on the other hand, he had never heard of Meusse ever guessing wrongly. If Meusse said that the head they had just been gaping at had belonged to a woman of about seventy who had been beaten to death with a blunt instrument hitting the crown of her head about two months ago, there were doubtless good reasons for believing that this was in fact the case.

And that the woman in question was Else Van Eck, and nobody else.

‘Hmm,’ said Rooth when they emerged from the Forensic Medicine Department and turned up their collars to keep out the driving drizzle. ‘That was a turn-up for the bloody books. Changes things quite a bit, I suspect.’

‘Maybe we ought to give Münster a ring,’ said Jung.

‘No doubt we should,’ said Rooth. ‘But I reckon we ought to get a bite to eat first. This is going to cause masses of work and trouble, I can feel it coming.’

‘I’m sure you’re right,’ said Jung. ‘It’s in the air.’