‘What did you say your name was?’ asked Krause, furrowing his brow.
He noted down the name and telephone number. Chewed at his pencil. There was something about this…
‘Address?’
He wrote that down as well and stared at it.
Surely it was…?
No doubt about it. He asked, and had his suspicions confirmed. Could hear how his voice was becoming rather excited, and tried to cough it away. Said thank you for the call and promised that somebody would be there within half an hour. Replaced the receiver.
My God! he thought. What the hell can this mean?
He dialled Münster’s number. Engaged.
Moreno. No reply.
Van Eck? Surely it can’t be a coincidence, he thought as he rose to his feet.
Münster beckoned him to come in as he continued talking on the telephone. Judging by the expression on his face, it must be Hiller at the other end of the line. Krause nodded to Moreno, who was sitting on one of the visitor chairs, leafing through a sheaf of papers.
Rather listlessly, it seemed. She looked tired, Krause noted, and leaned back against the bookcase. Everybody was tired at the moment, for whatever reason.
Münster managed to get rid of the chief of police and looked up.
‘Well? What’s the problem?’
‘Hmm,’ said Krause. ‘I’ve just had a strange telephone call.’
‘Really?’ said Münster.
‘Really?’ said Moreno.
‘Arnold Van Eck. The caretaker in Kolderweg. He says his wife has disappeared.’
‘What?’ said Moreno.
‘What the hell?’ said Münster.
Krause cleared his throat.
‘Yep, that’s what he claimed,’ he said. ‘Vanished into thin air yesterday, it seems. I promised we’d be there pronto. Shall I?… Or maybe…?’
‘No,’ said Münster. ‘Moreno and I will follow it up. That’s…’
He failed to establish what it was. Collected his briefcase, scarf and overcoat and hurried out of the door. Moreno followed him, but paused for a moment in the doorway.
‘Are you sure this isn’t something Rooth has invented?’ she said, looking searchingly at Krause. ‘He doesn’t seem to be all that reliable at the moment.’
Krause shrugged.
‘Are you suggesting Rooth has kidnapped her, or something? You’d better go there and take a look, and find out. If I remember rightly she’s the size of a house… It can’t be all that easy to hide her away.’
‘Okay,’ said Moreno. ‘Stay here and we’ll keep you informed.’
‘I don’t make a habit of disappearing,’ said Krause.
Arnold Van Eck looked as if he’d sold the cream but lost the money. He must have been standing by the window, waiting for them, because he received them in the entrance hall where they also met fru Leverkuhn who was carrying bags and suitcases full of her husband’s clothes to a waiting taxi.
‘They’re going to the charity shop,’ she said. ‘I thought you lot would have been able to leave me alone for a day at least.’
‘It’s not… It’s…’ stammered Van Eck, shifting his feet nervously.
‘It’s not you we want to talk to today,’ Münster explained. ‘Herr Van Eck, perhaps we ought to go into your flat.’
The little caretaker nodded and led the way. His tiny frame looked more wretched than ever – it looked as if it could fall to pieces at any moment, so compelling were his tears and his despair. Münster wondered if he had slept a single wink that night.
‘What’s happened?’ he asked when they had sat down around the diminutive kitchen table covered by a blue-and-white checked oilcloth, with a yellow artificial flower in a vase in the middle.
Van Eck flung out his arms in a gesture intended to express his impotence.
‘She’s gone.’
‘Gone?’ said Moreno.
‘Your wife?’ asked Münster.
‘Alas, yes,’ said Van Eck. ‘That’s the way it is.’
Alas, yes? Münster thought. He must be barmy. But then he knew – through his work and in other ways – that there were people who would never have been given the role of themselves if it had been a question of a film or a play rather than life itself. Arnold Van Eck was definitely one of those.
‘Tell us about it,’ said Moreno.
Van Eck sniffed a few times and slid his thick spectacles further up his shiny nose.
‘It was yesterday,’ he said. ‘Yesterday evening… She disappeared some time during the afternoon. Or evening.’
He fell silent.
‘How can you be sure that she hasn’t just gone to visit somebody?’ Moreno asked.
‘I just know,’ said Van Eck. ‘It was Wednesday yesterday, and we always watch Gangsters’ Wives on a Wednesday. It’s a television series.’
‘Yes, we know,’ said Moreno.
‘Gangsters?’ wondered Münster.
‘She massages my legs as well,’ continued Van Eck. ‘Always on a Wednesday. It helps to prevent vascular spasms.’
He demonstrated rather awkwardly how his wife would grasp and rub his thighs and calves. Münster couldn’t believe his eyes, but he saw that Moreno was making notes without turning a hair, so he assumed for the time being at least that there was nothing to worry about. This was presumably how people behaved with each other in the autumn of their lives.
But how could Ewa Moreno know that?
‘When did you see her last?’ he asked.
‘Five past five,’ said Van Eck without hesitation. ‘She went out to do some shopping, but she hadn’t come back when I left to attend my course.’
‘What course is that?’ Moreno asked.
‘Porcelain painting. Six o’clock at Riitmeeterska, so it only takes a few minutes to get there. I left at about ten to.’
‘Porcelain painting?’ said Münster.
‘It’s more interesting than you might think,’ Van Eck assured him, sitting up a bit straighter. ‘I’m only an amateur, I’ve only been going for four terms; but then the main idea isn’t to produce masterpieces. Mind you, one day, perhaps…’
For a brief second the caretaker’s face lit up. Münster cleared his throat.
‘What time did you get home?’
‘Five past eight, as usual. Else wasn’t at home, and she hadn’t come by the time Gangsters’ Wives started either. It begins at half past nine, and that was when I became really worried.’
Moreno continued writing everything down. Münster recalled his dream from the last night but one, and pinched himself discreetly in the arm to make sure that he really was sitting here in this yellow-and-pink-painted kitchen.
He didn’t wake up, and hence assumed that he hadn’t been asleep.
‘Where do you think she’s gone?’ asked Moreno.
Van Eck’s cheek muscles twitched a couple of times, and once again he looked as if he were about to burst out crying.
‘I don’t know,’ he said. He produced a handkerchief from his trouser pocket and blew his nose. ‘It’s beyond belief, she would never simply go away without saying where she was going to… She knows I’m not all that strong.’
He folded his handkerchief meticulously, and blinked several times behind his strong glasses. Love despite everything? Münster thought. There are so many kinds…
‘A good friend, perhaps?’ he said.
Van Eck made no reply. Put away his handkerchief.
‘A good friend or relative who’s suddenly fallen ill?’ Moreno suggested.
Van Eck shook his head.
‘She doesn’t have many friends. She would have phoned – she’s been missing for half a day now, more in fact.’
‘And no message?’ Moreno wondered.
‘No.’
‘Has she ever gone away like this before?’
‘Never.’
‘Have you rung the hospitals? Something might have happened to her – a minor accident, it doesn’t need to be anything serious.’
‘I’ve spoken to both Rumford and Gemejnte. They knew nothing – and in any case, she would have been in touch.’
‘Had you fallen out, perhaps? Quarrelled?’
‘We never quarrel.’
‘What was she wearing?’ Münster asked.
Van Eck looked confused.
‘Why do you want to know that?’
Münster sighed.
‘Haven’t you wondered about that?’ he asked. ‘Have her outer clothes vanished as well, for instance? Has she taken a suitcase with her? Anyway, if you haven’t checked that perhaps you would be so kind as to do so now.’
‘Excuse me,’ said Van Eck as he hurried out into the hall. They could hear him rummaging around among coat-hangers and shoes for a while, and then he came back.
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘both her hat and coat are missing, and her handbag.’
‘So she must have gone out,’ said Moreno. ‘Could you please check if she’s taken a bag with her – apart from her handbag, that is.’
It took several minutes for Van Eck to investigate this question, but when he returned he was in no doubt.
‘No bag,’ he said. ‘Both the suitcase and the shopping bag are in the wardrobe as usual. And she hasn’t been down into the storeroom in the basement. And what’s more, I know she came back home after doing her shopping – she has put things into the fridge and the larder. Milk and potatoes and a few tins of stuff. And other odds and ends. Diegermann’s caviar for instance – we always buy that, the unsmoked variety. With dill.’
‘It’s pretty good,’ said Münster.
‘Have you mentioned this to any of the neighbours?’ Moreno asked.
‘No,’ said Van Eck, squirming in his chair.
‘Any acquaintances?’
‘No. I don’t want this to come out, I mean, if it’s nothing important… I mean…’
He said nothing more. Münster and Moreno exchanged glances, and she was evidently on the same wavelength – she gestured with her head, then nodded. Münster cleared his throat.
‘Well, herr Van Eck,’ he said. ‘I think it would be best if you came to the police station with us. We can go through it all properly, and write a report.’
Van Eck took a deep breath.
‘I agree,’ he said, and it was obvious that he was not in complete control of his voice. ‘Can I go to the bathroom first? My stomach’s a bit upset, thanks to all this.’
‘Please do,’ said Moreno.
While they were waiting they took the opportunity of looking round the cramped two-roomed flat. It contained nothing that surprised them. A bedroom with an old-fashioned double bed with a teak headboard, and net curtains in light blue and white. Living room with television set, glass-fronted display cupboard and a drab three-piece suite in hard-wearing polyester. No books apart from a reference work in ten bright red volumes – but lots of magazines and a mass of landscape reproductions on the walls, and hand-painted porcelain vases on bureaux and tables. The kitchen where they had been sitting was barely big enough for three people: refrigerator, cooker and sink from the late fifties, by the looks of it, and the potted plants on the windowsills seemed to have grown and multiplied of their own accord. The artificial flower on the table looked much more natural. All the floors were covered in carpets of different styles, colours and qualities, and the only thing that Münster could possibly interpret as an expression of personal taste was a stuffed giraffe’s head over the hat shelf in the hall – but that was probably because he had never seen a detached giraffe’s head before.
Moreno shrugged, with a sigh of resignation, and they went back to the kitchen.
‘What about the neighbours?’ she said. ‘Should I stay here and listen to whatever they have to say? I suppose it would be helpful if we could establish when she was last seen.’
Münster nodded.
‘Yes, good thinking,’ he said. ‘Shall I send Krause or somebody to help?’
‘In an hour from now,’ said Moreno. ‘Then at least I won’t need to walk back to the station.’
She checked her watch. Van Eck’s stomach was evidently taking its time.
‘What do you think?’ she said. ‘I must say I haven’t a clue. Why on earth should this woman go and disappear?’
‘Search me,’ said Münster. ‘It must mean something, of course, and I have the feeling we need to take it seriously. Even if it all seems like a farce.’
He leaned back on his chair and looked out of the window. The melancholy weather was persisting. Heavy clouds were scudding in from the sea, and the pane was dappled in damp and fuzzy, even though it wasn’t actually raining.
Gloom, Münster thought. Who would not want to vanish in weather like this?
There was the sound of the lavatory flushing. Van Eck came out.
‘I’ve finished,’ he said, as if he were a three-year-old at a potty-training camp.
‘Okay, then let’s go,’ said Münster. ‘Inspector Moreno will stay behind and investigate a few things.’
Van Eck’s lower lip started trembling, and Moreno tapped him cautiously on the shoulder.
‘This will sort itself out, don’t worry,’ she said. ‘There’s bound to be a perfectly natural explanation.’
Presumably, Münster thought. So much seems to be natural nowadays.
Inspector Moreno checked out of Hotel Bender at about four o’clock on Thursday afternoon. The nose-ringed receptionist tried to make her pay for a second night, since she had occupied the room after twelve noon, but she refused. For the first time for ages (or maybe the first time ever? she asked herself) she chose to use her work status for her personal gain.
As it was only a matter of 140 euros, perhaps she could be excused.
‘I’m a detective inspector,’ she explained. ‘We needed the room in order to keep an eye on a certain transaction taking place in this hotel. That mission is now completed. Unless you want your name mentioned in less than flattering circumstances, I suggest you debit me for one night and no more.’
The young man, as thin as a rake, thought for a couple of seconds.
‘I understand,’ he said. ‘Let’s say just the one night, then.’
There was no Claus sitting outside her door when she got home, but she phoned him as soon as she had downed half a glass of wine.
She explained, without beating about the bush, or becoming emotional, that she had a demand to make. An ultimatum, if he liked. If there was going to be any possibility of repairing the relationship they used to have – and even as she spoke those words she understood that by doing so she was giving him false hope – she demanded two weeks without being disturbed.
No telephone calls, no greetings. No damned roses.
Two whole weeks. Fourteen days from today. Did he agree?
He did, he announced, after what seemed rather too long a silence. But only if he really could count on their meeting and discussing things properly once that time had run out. And neither of them would initiate anything else during those two weeks.
Initiate? Moreno thought. Anything else…?
She agreed to the discussion demand, and avoided the other by making no comment and hanging up.
Then she drank the remaining half-glass of wine. So there, she thought. I’ve delayed his execution by two weeks. Cowardly. But it feels good.
She curled up in a corner of the sofa with another glass of wine and the notes she had made at Kolderweg. Adjusted the cushions and switched on the reading lamp: the light it produced was so restricted that it almost felt like sitting inside a one-man tent, a tiny bright cone in the darkness where she could hide herself away, cut off from all the surroundings that she would rather forget. Men, darkness and so on.
At last, she thought. Time to concentrate on the case, and pay no attention to herself or the world around her.
Especially herself.
She had written down the tenants in Kolderweg 17 on the first page of her notebook. From the top down:
II.Ruben EngelLeonore Mathisen
I.Waldemar Leverkuhn/Tobose Menakdise/
Marie-Louise LeverkuhnFilippa de Booning
Ground.Arnold Van Eck/
Else Van EckEmpty flat
The facts were first and foremost that Waldemar Leverkuhn was dead. She crossed his name out and continued.
Marie-Louise Leverkuhn? What was there to say about the widow?
Not a lot. She had returned from the charity shop soon after noon. Moreno had a short conversation with her, but in view of what the poor woman had already been through in terms of traumatic experiences and rigorous interviews, she restricted herself to what was absolutely necessary. Fru Leverkuhn said she had drunk coffee with Else Van Eck in the latter’s flat on Tuesday afternoon, had then bumped into her on the stairs the following morning (when she was on her way to the police station to talk to Intendent Münster), but apart from that, she claimed, she had neither seen nor heard anything of the caretaker’s wife.
Moreno wrote a tick after Marie-Louise Leverkuhn. And a question mark after Else Van Eck.
Herr Van Eck had returned from the police station at about half past one in a rather pathetic state, and Moreno ticked him as well.
That left the athletic lovers Menakdise and de Booning on the first floor, and herr Engel and fröken Mathisen on the second. Viewed dispassionately these four were not yet involved in the case. Neutral observers (question mark again) and possible witnesses.
She had started with the young couple.
Or rather, with Filippa de Booning, as Tobose Menakdise was studying medicine and had lectures all day. However, fröken de Booning promised to ask him when he came home if he had seen or heard anything in connection with the caretaker’s wife that could throw some light on her disappearance. She herself had nothing to contribute. She had been at home most of Wednesday, revising for an imminent exam on cultural anthropology, but she hadn’t seen any sign of fru Van Eck at all.
‘Thank goodness,’ she added, then bit her tongue. ‘Oh, sorry about that, but she always pays us special attention. I take it you know why?’
Moreno smiled and nodded. She felt a sudden shooting pain in her inside thigh as she momentarily envisaged the red-headed and very white-skinned Filippa in her sexual wrestling match with her Tobose who – if the framed photograph in the hall was to be believed – was blacker than the blackest black.
You two are still alive, she thought. Congratulations.
Ruben Engel had had just as little to contribute – even less if you took the shooting pain into consideration. He had felt out of sorts and spent the whole of Wednesday in bed, he explained. Not least the evening. Moreno looked around, and drew the provisional conclusion that it might have been due to his taking the wrong medication. If you didn’t feel too well in the morning, it presumably didn’t help if you then proceeded to swig glass after glass of claret, beer and mulled wine for the rest of the day. Engel also seemed to be very upset about what was going on elsewhere in the building, she noted, and she had difficulty in ignoring his moaning and groaning about law and order and moral decadence. But there were obvious elements of the dirty old man in his outpourings: there was little doubt that he did his best to drag out her visit for as long as possible. She declined his offer of coffee, mulled wine and gin, and eventually managed to extricate herself by half-promising to keep him informed about how the case was developing. In person.
What an unpleasant old fart, she thought when she finally succeeded in leaving his flat.
But then, she told herself after a few seconds, it can’t be all that much fun being old, lonely and smelly.
No fun at all, presumably.
The only possible gleam of light came from fröken Mathisen, who Moreno thought seemed very reminiscent in appearance of a cream puff pastry. Big, spongy and rather delicious. What Mathisen had to say was perhaps nothing to write home about, but what she was quite clear over was that she had gone out at around seven o’clock on Wednesday evening – a few minutes past, if she remembered rightly – and that she was pretty sure that she had heard noises coming from the caretaker’s flat as she walked past the door. She couldn’t be more precise about what sort of sounds they were, apart from being sure that it seemed as if somebody was busy doing something in the hall – a somebody who must have been fru Van Eck, seeing as her husband was over at Riitmeeterska, painting designs onto porcelain ornaments.
Moreno read through her notes on this conversation as well, and ticked it off together with the remaining names – de Booning, Engel and Mathisen.
There was not much more to add. Krause had come to relieve her at about noon, and spent the afternoon interrogating the neighbours. That was not too complicated as fru Van Eck had been a well-known figure in the locality.
Sure enough, she had been to three of the shops in Kolderplejn, had left the last of them at about a quarter to six and been seen by at least two witnesses walking back home. So it was not difficult to make a timetable for what seemed to be the crucial part of Wednesday evening:
c. 18.00Fru Van Eck arrives back home
c. 19.00Fru Van Eck is still at home (in the hall)
c. 20.00Fru Van Eck has disappeared
It could possibly be added that none of Krause’s many witnesses had seen the very substantial caretaker’s wife after six p.m.
Moreno contemplated her summary. Brilliant detective work! she concluded, and closed her notebook.
Münster and Jung took it in turns with Arnold Van Eck.
Bearing in mind developments at Kolderweg, Hiller had agreed to release both Rooth and Jung and transfer them to the Leverkuhn case, in so far as Münster needed them. The serial rapist in Linzhuisen had been lying low for over two months, and that investigation had come to a standstill.
Despite persistent efforts, mainly by Jung – there was something about Arnold Van Eck’s character that made Münster reluctant to interrogate him and even made him angry (perhaps it was that image of the run-over kitten spooking him again) – they did not succeed in extracting much information over and above what had emerged during the conversation at the kitchen table. Their picture of the somewhat peculiar and childless marriage became a little clearer, but on the whole no progress was made regarding the actual disappearance of the wife. No matter how hard Jung tried to penetrate the relationship and the shared lives of the couple, Van Eck was unable to produce even a hint of an explanation as to why his wife would have left him voluntarily.
If she had done so thirty or forty years ago, it would of course have been the most natural thing in the world – even Van Eck himself could see that. But now – why leave him now?
And so, both Münster and Jung concluded, she had not done so. There must be some other explanation. And a pretty powerful one at that: fru Van Eck was not the sort of woman you could knock over with a feather duster, as Jung put it before leaving.
When he was alone in his office Münster listened to the whole tape again, and if he were to be honest he thought it sounded, at least in part, more like a therapeutical conversation than an interrogation.
But be that as it may, the fact remained: Else Van Eck, 182 centimetres tall, weight 94 kilos, 65 years old, had disappeared. Probably wearing a bluish pepper-and-salt coat, well-fitting brown ENOC shoes (size 43), various other items and a black felt hat. She had left her home at some time between seven and eight p.m. (the precise time had been established with the aid of Constable Krause, who had informed them of fröken Mathisen’s observations) on Wednesday evening.
The Wanted message was sent out as early as two o’clock, but by five o’clock, when Münster was preparing to go home, there had still been no response from that great detective, the general public.
Perhaps it had been over-optimistic to expect otherwise. Perhaps they had a better chance of receiving a tip following the feeler Krause had sent out into the underworld regarding Leverkuhn, but they had so far drawn a blank there as well. The informant Adolf Bosch had turned up shortly after three, delivered his report and been paid his 200 euros (albeit in reverse order: Bosch was not born yesterday) – and the result of his dodgy researches had been aptly summed up by his own words:
‘Not a thing, Constable Krause, not a fucking thing!’
Before going home for the night Münster allowed himself half an hour’s introspection in his office. He locked the door. Switched off the light. Wheeled his desk chair over to the window and put his feet up on the windowsill.
Leaned back and contemplated the view. It was beautiful in a way, he couldn’t deny that. Beautiful and threatening. The sky hovered over the town like a slowly but inexorably darkening lead dome. The vain attempts to illuminate things from the buzzing streets down below seemed merely to emphasize the indomitable nature of the darkness rather than to offer it any resistance.
A bit like his own work, in fact. The chief inspector used to talk about that – the fact that it is not until we start fighting evil that we begin to understand how all-embracing it is. Only when we light a candle in the darkness do we see how vast it is.
He shook his head in an attempt to rid himself of these questionable thoughts. They were not productive – all they did was provide unnecessary nourishment to feelings of weariness and impotence, which of course had their best growing conditions at this falling, sinking time of year.
Despite Jung’s and his own talk of wet, bare tree trunks and all the rest of it. Inner landscapes?
Anyway, the case! he thought and closed his eyes. The case of Waldemar Leverkuhn.
Or was it the case of Bonger? Or Else Van Eck?
How sure was it that they were interconnected, these three strands? There was an old rule of thumb which said that if the dead bodies of two cinema caretakers were discovered, it was by no means certain that the murders were connected. But if a third one was found – well, you could reasonably assume that all the cinema caretakers in the world should be given special protection.
And now here we are with three pensioners. One murdered and two disappeared. Did that mean that all the pensioners in the world should be given special protection?
One would hope not, Münster thought. Because it was not difficult to restrict the links quite radically. Leverkuhn and Bonger had been good friends. Leverkuhn and fru Van Eck lived in the same block of flats. But on the other hand, Bonger and fru Van Eck had no known connections at all – so if there was in fact some kind of common denominator, it must be Leverkuhn.
And Leverkuhn was the only one of them who was definitely dead. Very dead.
Münster sighed and wished he were a smoker. A smoker would have lit up at this point; as it was, he had to make do with clasping his hands behind the back of his neck and leaning still further back on his chair.
What about the disappearances? he thought. There were differences between them. Big differences. As far as Bonger was concerned, he could have disappeared in a puff of smoke at any time during the night of the murder – or even later. Nobody had seen any trace of him after he had left Freddy’s, but nobody missed him until well into Sunday. At a guess he had never arrived back at his houseboat at all, but that was only a hypothesis. There were masses of alternatives and variations.
It was different in the case of Else Van Eck. Here the margins were reduced to an hour between seven and eight on Wednesday evening, and bearing in mind her size and general profile, that was not a very large space to pass through. Witnesses should – no, must – surely turn up, Münster thought. We shall have to carry out yet another door-to-door operation tomorrow!
Then he just sat there for a while with his eyes closed, and imagined the three puzzle pieces dancing around in a deep and increasingly dark space – like that logo of some film company or other did until the letters clung on to one another and formed its name, or at least its abbreviation. He couldn’t remember the name of the film company, and the puzzle pieces Leverkuhn, Bonger and Van Eck never clung on to one another. They simply continued whirling round and round in the same unfathomable and never-ending loops, receding further and further away, it seemed, deeper and deeper into ever-blacker space.
He made a big effort and opened his eyes. Noted that it was turned five o’clock, and decided to go home.
I’d bet my bloody life, he thought as he wormed his way into his jacket, I’d bet my bloody life that if all the detective officers in the world got an hour’s extra sleep per night, five hours per day would be saved. Due to the fact that our brains would have the strength to think more clearly.
Surely it must be better to cut back on wasted time rather than on sleep? Surely sleep can never be wasted?
What’s all this buzzing around in my head? he thought. Am I growing old? And I haven’t made love for two weeks either.
‘I can’t shake off this feeling,’ said Rooth.
‘What feeling?’ asked Jung.
‘That I’m sort of lost as far as this investigation is concerned. I can’t get the hang of what the hell is going on. I suppose I ought to be working on a different case.’
Jung eyed him with a cool smile.
‘Such as? I don’t have the feeling that we’ve covered ourselves with glory as far as that berk in Linzhuisen is concerned either… Perhaps you ought to pack it in altogether?’
Rooth sighed self-critically. Rummaged around in his pockets after something to pop into his mouth, but only found a lump of elderly chewing gum wrapped up in a crumpled cinema ticket. There was a knock on the door and Krause came in with an envelope.
‘Pictures of Else Van Eck,’ he announced.
‘Okay,’ said Jung, accepting them. ‘Can you tell Joensuu and Kellerman to come to my office – and whoever else it was…’
‘Klempje and Proszek.’
‘Right,’ said Rooth. ‘Let’s go for broke.’
Krause left, Jung took the photographs out of the envelope and examined them. Passed one over to Rooth, who stood up and started scratching his head demonstratively.
‘What’s the matter with you?’ asked Jung.
‘It’s remarkable,’ said Rooth.
‘What is?’
‘That so much can disappear without trace. That everything disappears into thin air and all that, I mean, but even so?’
‘Hmm,’ said Jung. ‘You have a theory, is that what you’re trying to say?’
‘Well,’ replied Rooth. ‘Theory and theory… I really daren’t make any further comment about this bloody business. No, keep your own counsel, that’s best.’
‘For Christ’s sake,’ said Jung. ‘What the hell are you on about? Even if they’ve succeeded in bugging this office, there isn’t a newspaper in the whole of Europe that would print anything you say in future. Even you ought to understand that.’
‘All right,’ Rooth continued. ‘It has to do with her bulk.’
‘Bulk?’
‘Bulk, yes. I simply don’t believe that a gigantic woman like Else Van Eck could simply disappear like this.’
‘Like this? What does that mean?’
Rooth sat down again.
‘Don’t you understand?’
‘No.’
‘And yet they’ve made you an inspector?’
Jung gathered together the pictures and put them back in the envelope.
‘High and mighty, unshaven rozzer speaks with cloven tongue,’ he said.
‘I think she’s still in the building,’ said Rooth.
‘Eh?’
‘That Van Eck woman. She’s still in Kolderweg 17.’
‘What do you mean?’
Rooth sighed again.
‘Just that it’s hardly credible that she could have left the building without anybody seeing her. So she must still be there.’
‘But where?’ asked Jung.
Rooth shrugged.
‘I’ve no bloody idea. In the attic, or down in the cellar, presumably.’
‘You’re assuming she’s dead?’
‘That’s possible,’ said Rooth. ‘She might have been butchered and embalmed as well. Or tied up and muzzled. Who cares? The point is that we ought to do a thorough search of the building instead of gadding about the neighbourhood.’
Jung said nothing for a while.
‘You have a point,’ he said. ‘Why don’t you go to Münster and talk it over with him?’
‘That’s exactly what I intend to do,’ said Rooth, standing up again. ‘I just wanted to give you a bit of insight into how a bigger brain works first.’
‘Thank you,’ said Jung. ‘It’s been both interesting and instructive.’
Two minutes later the four constables turned up. Jung inspected the quartet while thinking over the priorities.
‘I think we can manage with two of you for the time being,’ he said. ‘Klempje and Proszek. Joensuu and Kellerman can wait down in the duty officer’s room for the time being. We’ve received some new… indications.’
Constables Klempje and Proszek spent six hours on Friday showing enlarged photographs of Else Van Eck to a total of 362 persons in and close by Kolderweg. A comparatively large proportion of those people recognized the woman in the photograph immediately – but a comparatively small number had seen her later than six p.m. on Wednesday.
None at all, to be precise.
‘Why the hell don’t they just put a Wanted notice in the newspapers instead of making us work our socks off?’ Proszek wondered when they finally managed to find a sufficiently sheltered corner in the Cafe Bendix in Kolderplejn. ‘This is making me impotent.’
‘You always have been,’ said Klempje. ‘There’ll be one tomorrow.’
‘One what?’
‘A Wanted notice.’
‘For God’s sake,’ said Proszek. ‘In that case what’s the point of our farting around like this?’
Klempe shrugged.
‘Perhaps they’re in a hurry?’
‘Kiss my arse,’ said Proszek. ‘And cheers. Where the hell are Joensuu and Kellerman, by the way? Lounging about and lording it at some stake-out again, no doubt.’
Probably neither Joensuu nor Kellerman would have regarded what they were doing on Friday as lording it – always assuming they had an opportunity of commenting, which they didn’t. They spent five hours and forty-five minutes searching Kolderweg 17 from attic to boiler room. They were assisted by two black Alsatians with two red-haired minders, and, for at least half the search, Detective Inspector Rooth in his capacity of instigator of the operation.
The property was built at the end of the 1890s: there was an abundance of remarkable passages, corridors and abandoned cupboards, and nobody still alive had ever seen a plan of the building. That is if you could believe the owner – a certain herr Tibor who turned up in a Bentley with a large collection of keys at lunchtime. But when Rooth himself called off the operation two hours later, it could be stated with confidence that no woman of Else Van Eck’s dimensions – and no other woman come to that! – could have been hidden away in any of the building’s nooks or crannies.
Be they alive or dead.
But on the other hand several of the tenants were feeling distinctly upset. Joensuu’s protestations to the effect that it was just a routine investigation lost credibility as first the attic spaces were emptied, then bath tubs were turned upside down and the bottoms of sofas were cut open.
‘Bloody hooligans!’ snarled herr Engel when the Alsatian Rocky II investigated the collection of bottles under his bed. ‘Where’s that woman who came to see me the other day? At least she displayed a modicum of tact and good sense.’
What did I say! thought Inspector Rooth when it was all over. I’m going to keep this case at arm’s length.
‘Well, how did it go with your theory?’ Jung asked when Rooth returned to the police station.
‘Great,’ said Rooth. ‘I have another theory now. About how it happened.’
‘You don’t say,’ said Jung, looking up from the piles of papers.
‘Fröken Mathisen ground her down in the mincing machine and let Mussolini gobble her up.’
‘I thought Mussolini was a vegetarian?’ said Jung.
‘Wrong,’ said Rooth. ‘It was Hitler who was the vegetarian.’
‘If you say so,’ said Jung.
The run-through with Chief of Police Hiller on Friday afternoon was not a very memorable event. Two dwarf acacias had died during the week, despite having received all the care, nourishment and love of which a human being is capable.
The chief of police was not wearing mourning, although he did have black bags under his eyes.
Things were not much better on the human level. Münster summarized the situation with the assistance of Moreno and Jung (who had spent most of the day locating and interviewing various relatives and acquaintances of Else and Arnold Van Eck – and made about as much progress as a string quartet in a school for the deaf), and after an extremely uninspiring hour it was decided to keep more or less all the officers currently on the case, to send out a lengthy press communiqué, and to leave all doors wide open for the mass media and any member of the public who might be able to provide relevant information.
Help, thought Münster when he had finally returned to his office. That’s what we need. We don’t know a damned thing, and what’s required now is help.
TV, newspapers, anything at all. The general public, that great detective.
Tip-offs, that’s what they needed.
And yet, it was still only a three-piece puzzle.
Leverkuhn. Bonger. Else Van Eck.
When he tried to think about how it felt, the only conclusion he could draw was that it was not especially uplifting.
‘You do realize it’s Saturday, do you?’ said Synn.
‘I rang him yesterday,’ said Münster. ‘The only time he had available was a couple of hours this morning. Do you think he’s found himself a woman?’
Synn raised an eyebrow.
‘You’re not suggesting that he would give her preference rather than work, are you? He must be bloody unique in the world of men if he does, I must say.’
Münster tried to respond, but found that there was some kind of spiritual eructation in the way, and no words came out.
‘Synn, for goodness’ sake…’ he managed to utter in the end, but she had already turned her back on him.
He drank up his coffee and left the kitchen. As he crouched in the hall fastening his shoelaces, he could hear her messing about with the children upstairs.
She loves me even so, he thought hopefully. When all’s said and done, she still does.
‘I’ll be home by one at the latest!’ he shouted up the stairs. ‘I’ll do some shopping on the way back.’
‘Buy something!’
Marieke came sliding down the stairs.
‘Buy something! I want something! Wrapped up in paper!’
He lifted her up. Gave her a hug, buried his nose in her newly washed hair and decided he would buy no less than three presents. Something for Marieke, something for Bartje, something for Synn.
A hundred roses for Synn.
I must put a stop to this deterioration in our relationship, he thought. I really must.
But would roses be the right thing to fill the cracks? Well, that was something he would have to think long and hard about.
He put Marieke down and hurried out into the rain.
‘You’re looking well, Chief Inspector,’ said Münster.
Van Veeteren slurped the froth off his beer.
‘Kindly refrain from using those words, Münster,’ he said. ‘I’ve known you for long enough and said many times that we don’t need to use titles.’
‘Thank you,’ said Münster. ‘But in any case, you are looking well. That’s what I was trying to convey.’
Van Veeteren took a deep swig, and smacked his lips with pleasure.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I’ve had a word with the Good Lord, and we’ve agreed on seven good years after the wandering through the darkness. And I’ll be buggered if that isn’t what I deserve – when I’m sixty-five He can do whatever He likes with me.’
‘Really?’ said Münster. ‘I must say I’ve started feeling a bit on the old side… And Reinhart is off work just now, so things get a bit difficult at times.’
‘Don’t they have a new chief inspector up their sleeves?’
Münster shook his head.
‘I think they’re waiting for two things. To see if you come back…’
‘I’m not coming back,’ said Van Veeteren.
‘… and if you don’t, I reckon Heinemann has to retire first. Nobody can envisage him in that role, and he’s next in line, as it were.’
‘But Hiller became chief of police,’ Van Veeteren reminded him.
He picked up his tobacco pouch, placed a little cigarette machine on the table and started rolling.
‘I’ve given up toothpicks,’ he explained. ‘I was becoming addicted. And this rolling almost makes it a craft… Well, what the hell is it you want? We don’t need to sit around all day being as polite as a couple of Chinamen.’
Münster took a swig of his beer and looked out over the rainy square, where people were bustling from one stall to another. He wondered vaguely how many times he’d sat here at Adenaar’s with the chief inspector. Listening to his bad-tempered expositions and gloomy observations… and noting the absolutely clear and incorruptible spirit that was always present under the surface. No, it wasn’t difficult to understand why he had jumped off the bandwagon, Münster thought. He’d been on it for thirty-five years, after all.
And it was not surprising that the Good Lord had granted him seven good years. Münster would have done the same.
‘Well?’ Van Veeteren asked again.
‘Yes, there was something I wanted to ask you about, in fact.’
‘Leverkuhn?’
Münster nodded.
‘How could the chief… How did you know that?’
Van Veeteren lit his roll-up and inhaled as if he had just invented the first cigarette.
‘Five a day,’ he said. ‘This is number one. What did you say?’
‘You knew that I wanted to talk to you about Leverkuhn. How?’
‘I guessed,’ said Van Veeteren modestly. ‘It’s not the first time, after all. And I still read the newspapers.’
Münster nodded, somewhat embarrassed. It was true, in fact. On two previous occasions since Van Veeteren had left the stage, Münster had plucked up courage and discussed on-going investigations with him. The first time, nearly a year ago, he had been most reluctant to get him involved again, but he had soon realized that the old bloodhound instinct had not died out altogether. And that the chief inspector even derived a certain grim satisfaction from being consulted in this fashion.
But the fact that he would never admit as much for even a second was another matter, of course.
‘I understand,’ said Münster. ‘Thank you for being willing to help. And listen. Anyway, of course it’s about Leverkuhn, no point in denying it.’
Van Veeteren emptied his glass.
‘I’ve read about it, as I said. It seems a bit special. If you buy me another beer it would no doubt improve my sense of hearing.’
There was a slight twitch in the muscles of one cheek. Münster drained his own glass, and went to the bar.
Two beers and forty-five minutes later, they had finished. Van Veeteren leaned back in his chair and nodded thoughtfully.
‘No, this certainly doesn’t seem to be a straightforward case,’ he said. ‘Things seem to be pulling in different directions. The threads seem to be unwinding instead of coming together.’
‘Exactly,’ said Münster. ‘Leverkuhn, Bonger and fru Van Eck. I’ve been thinking about it, and there seems to be just enough that links them together to suggest that their fates were connected – but yet not enough to suggest a motive.’
‘That could well be, yes,’ said Van Veeteren mysteriously. ‘But I think you should be careful not to take that jigsaw puzzle analogy too far. It can be so damned annoying to have a piece too many.’
‘Eh?’ said Münster. ‘What do you mean by that?’
Van Veeteren didn’t answer. Sat up in his chair, and began playing with his cigarette machine instead. Münster looked out of the window again. Another of those meaningless comments, he thought, and felt a little pang of irritation that was as familiar to him as a favourite jacket.
A piece too many? No, he decided that it was just an example of the chief inspector’s weakness for smokescreens and mystification, nothing more. But what was the point of that in a situation like this?
‘What about the wife?’ said Van Veeteren. ‘What do you make of her?’
Münster thought for a moment.
‘Introverted,’ he said eventually. ‘She seems to have a lot buttoned up inside her that she’s reluctant to let come out. Although I don’t really know – there’s no such thing as normal reactions when you come home and find your husband murdered like that. Why do you ask?’
Van Veeteren ignored that question as well. Sat squeezing his newly rolled cigarette, seemingly lost in thought.
‘Anyway,’ said Münster. ‘I just wanted to talk it through. Thank you for listening.’
Van Veeteren lit the cigarette and blew smoke over a begonia that was probably just as dead as the chief of police’s acacias.
‘Tuesday afternoon,’ he said. ‘Give me a few days to think a few things over, and then maybe we can have a game of badminton. I need to get a bit of exercise. But don’t expect too much – regarding your case, that is,’ he added, tapping his brow with his knuckles. ‘I’m rather more focused on beauty and pleasure nowadays.’
‘Tuesday, then,’ said Münster, writing it down in his notebook. ‘Yes, I’d heard rumours about that – a new woman, is that right?’
Van Veeteren put the cigarette machine into his jacket pocket, and looked inscrutable.
The presents added up to nearly 500 euros, topped by a red dress for Synn costing 295. But what the hell? Münster thought. You only live once.
What had she said the other day?
What if we die soon?
He shuddered, and got into his car. However you looked at it, life was no more than the total of all these days, and at some point, of course, you start being more interested in the days that have passed rather than those yet to come.
But there are moments in life – let’s hope so in any case – when you have an opportunity to devote yourself to the here and now.
Such as a Saturday and Sunday in November like these.
Damn and blast, Intendent Münster thought. I wish to God I had one of those copper’s brains that you can switch on and off in accordance with working hours.
If there is such a thing, of course. He remembered an old conversation with the chief inspector – presumably at Adenaar’s as usual – about the concept of intuition.
The brain functions best when you leave it in peace, Van Veeteren had argued. Keep tucked away the questions and information you have, and think about something else. If there’s an answer, it will come tumbling out sooner or later.
Like hell it will! Münster thought pessimistically. I suppose there are brains and brains…
Whatever, after the conversation with the chief inspector and the shopping at the height of the Saturday rush hour, there was no doubt that he felt switched off – so he could let his brain work away undisturbed in the background, and see if anything came tumbling out.
He looked at his watch. Ten past one. It was a Saturday in November, it was raining, and he had nothing to do except devote himself to his family.
During the night between Friday and Saturday Inspector Moreno slept for over twelve hours, and when she woke up at about half past ten on the Saturday morning, it was quite a while before she realized where she was.
And that she was alone.
That the five years with Claus Badher were at an end, and that from now on she only had herself to worry about. It felt strange. Not least the fact that a month had passed since she left him, but only now had the penny dropped that her fate was in her own hands.
As if to check whether those hands were strong enough to carry it, she took them out from under the warm bedcovers and examined them for a while. Didn’t think they looked up to much – but that’s the way it is with women’s hands. Underdeveloped and a bit childlike. There was an enormous difference between them and the large, sinewy equipment with which men were blessed. Usable and good to look at. Now that she came to think about it, she couldn’t recall ever having seen a woman with attractive hands. They were like a chicken’s wings, it struck her – dysfunctional and pathetic. Perhaps there was food for thought in this striking difference – the extent to which it typified something basic when it came to the difference between men and women?
An expression of essential differences? Their hands?
And never the twain shall meet, she thought: but then she suddenly saw in her mind’s eye a black man’s hand on a white woman’s breast, and she concluded that the twain can in fact meet.
By the time she entered the shower she had decided that the hand and the breast in the image she had conjured up were not in any way Claus’s and hers, but Tobose Menakdise’s and Filippa de Booning’s, and she was suddenly back in the middle of the investigation.
You talk about what fills the mind, she seemed to remember somebody saying. But so what? The more thoughts she devoted to the Leverkuhn case and the fewer to Claus, the better, no doubt.
And the healthier it would be for her maltreated spiritual life.
There was always the hope that there might be other alternatives with which to rack her brains. In that spirit she set out after breakfast on a long walk along Willemsgraacht – towards the Lauern lakes and Lohr. Strolled through the light rain and thought about all sorts of things, but mostly about her parents – and her brother in Rome, whom she hadn’t seen for over two years. Her parents lived not quite so far away, down in Groenstadt, but that contact was not everything it might have been either. It was easy to form opinions about the Leverkuhns’ family relationships, but to be honest, her own were not much better.
And then she had a sister, Maud. She had no idea where Maud was – in Hamburg at a guess – nor what state she was in.
Perhaps the anthropologists were right, she thought, and that when the northern European nuclear family had exhausted its role as an economic and social entity, it had also lost its emotional significance.
Emotions were no more than superstructure and empty show. Men and women met, had children, then wandered off in different directions. Heading for wherever it was they were going before they happened to meet, for their various goals. Yes, perhaps that was how you ought to look at it. In any case, there were plenty of examples of this in the animal world, and a human being is basically a biological being, after all.
This last point reminded her that she was also a female, and that this week she was in the middle of her monthly cycle and was going to find it difficult to do without a man. In the long run, at least. What a pity, she thought, what a pity that a human being should be so badly constructed that there was such a long way between brain, heart and sex at times. Or rather, usually.
Always?
The cafe at Czerpinski’s mill was open, and she decided to indulge herself in a cup of tea before returning home. But she would have to be quite quick about it: it was already a quarter to three, and no way did she want to be wandering around in the dark.
She had barely entered the premises before noticing that sitting at one of the tables in the circular room were Benjamin Wauters and Jan Palinski – they didn’t recognize her, or at least showed no indication of having done so, but she realized that it was a sign.
A sign to the effect that there was no point in trying to keep her work at a distance any more.
Nevertheless, she hung on for a bit longer. On Saturday evening she phoned both her brother and her parents, watched a French film from the sixties on the television, and hand-washed two jumpers. But when Sunday morning announced itself with a high, clear blue sky, she saw that it was all in vain. It was simply too urgent. The case. Her work. A few hours of private investigation without any great expectations. It was in the nature of things, and there was no point in pretending otherwise.
There is something deep down inside me, she thought, that makes me do this. A drive, an urge that I never acknowledge, but it actually steers my life. Or at least my professional life. I like poking my nose into things! I enjoy putting other people under a magnifying glass. Their motivation and their actions.
Besides, I’m in the middle of the month, she added. I’d better look after the sublimation myself.
She smiled at that last thought as she stood waiting for the bus to Kolderweg. Working instead of making love? How totally absurd! If Claus could follow her thoughts for five minutes he would probably never dare to meet her again.
But perhaps that’s the situation in all relationships?
With all women and their men with the beautiful hands?
The bus was approaching.
The door was opened by a woman she had never seen before, and just for a moment Moreno sensed the possibility of a breakthrough. But then the woman introduced herself as Helena Winther, the younger sister of Arnold Van Eck, and the hope was lost.
‘I arrived yesterday,’ she explained. ‘I thought I needed to – he’s not very strong.’
She was a slim woman in her mid-fifties, with the same anaemic appearance as her brother but with a handshake that suggested a certain strength of character.
‘You don’t live here in Maardam, then?’
‘No, in Aarlach. My husband has a business there.’
She led the way into the living room where Van Eck was sitting hunched up in front of the television. He looked as if he had only stopped crying a short while ago.
‘Good morning,’ said Moreno. ‘How are you feeling?’
‘Awful,’ said Van Eck with a cough. ‘There’s such a big gap.’
Moreno nodded.
‘I can well imagine,’ she said. ‘I thought I’d just call in and see if anything had occurred to you. These things usually come out of the blue, as I said before’
‘It’s a mystery!’ Van Eck exclaimed. ‘A complete mystery!’
I wonder if he thinks the same way as he talks, Moreno wondered. Whatever, he must surely be a special case even in that male sector she had been thinking about?
‘You can’t remember if your wife acted in an unusual way during the days before she disappeared?’ she asked. ‘Said or did something she didn’t usually say or do?’
Van Eck sighed from the very depths of his martyred soul.
‘No,’ he said. ‘Nothing like that. I’ve been lying awake at night, thinking and thinking, but everything is a complete mystery. It’s like a nightmare even though I’m awake.’
‘And you don’t remember noticing anything unusual when you came back home after your course last Wednesday? That first impression you had the moment you crossed the threshold, if you follow me.’
Van Eck shook his head.
‘Do you think your wife had any male friends you didn’t know about?’
‘Eh?’
For a second Van Eck looked cross-eyed behind the thick lenses of his spectacles, and Moreno realized that the question – like any possible answer to it – was way beyond his imagination.
She also realized that she wasn’t going to get anything more out of him, but before moving on to the people who lived upstairs she had a few words with his sister in the kitchen.
‘Do you have much contact with your brother and your sister-in-law?’ she asked.
Helena Winther shrugged.
‘Not a lot,’ she said. ‘There’s the age difference, of course, but we do meet now and then. My husband and Arnold are very different, though.’
‘And Else?’
Winther looked out of the window and hesitated before answering.
‘She’s a bit unusual,’ she said. ‘But you’ll have gathered that. They are not the most normal couple in the world, but in a way they make a real pair. You’ve seen what he’s like without her.’
‘Is he taking any tranquillizers?’
She shook her head.
‘He never takes medicine. He’s never even taken an aspirin for as long as he’s lived.’
‘Why not?’
Winther said nothing, just looked at Moreno with her eyebrows slightly raised, and for a few seconds it was as if the whole masculine mystique was weighed up and fathomed out between those four female eyes.
And found to be unfathomable. Moreno noticed that she was smiling inwardly.
‘You have no idea about what might have happened?’
‘None at all. As he says, it’s a complete mystery. She’s not the type who disappears. On the contrary, if you see what I mean.’
With a slight nod Moreno indicated that she did. Then she shook hands with both her and her brother, and promised to do her utmost to throw light on these sad circumstances.
Fritz Engel wasn’t exactly smelling of violets today either, but he seemed to be sober and there was a half-finished crossword lying on the kitchen table.
‘For the little grey cells,’ he explained, standing up and pointing a dirty index finger at his forehead. ‘Welcome – and that’s a greeting I don’t extend to all police officers.’
Moreno took the compliment with a practised smile.
‘There are just a few things I’ve been thinking about,’ she said. ‘If you have time, that is.’
‘Of course.’
Engel hitched up his trousers, which had a tendency to fall floorwards, and indicated the vacant chair. She sat down and waited for a couple of seconds.
‘What is the link between Leverkuhn and fru Van Eck?’
‘Sorry?’ said Engel, sitting down.
She leaned forward over the table and braced herself.
‘Listen,’ she said. ‘What I mean is that there must be some sort of crucial link between these two events in the same building, some vital little factor which explains why it’s these two people who have been… been moved out of the way. It could be anything at all, but it’s almost impossible for an outsider to catch on. You have been living close to both of them for twenty years, herr Engel, so you ought to be just the person to come up with something. Can you recall anything at all where both Waldemar Leverkuhn and Else Van Eck had their fingers in the same pie, as it were?’
‘Are you suggesting they were having an affair?’
Moreno choked back a sigh.
‘Not at all. It doesn’t need to be anything as big as that, but it’s hard to be more precise when you don’t really know what you’re looking for.’
‘Yes,’ said Engel, ‘it is.’
He clamped his jaws together with a loud click, and she gathered that just now he was thinking of her in terms of a copper rather than a woman.
‘Are you worried at all that something might happen to you, herr Engel?’
Memories of his masculinity naturally got in the way of his giving her an honest answer to that question. He cleared his throat, straightened his back until it creaked, but she could see nevertheless that fear was coursing through his whole body.
Lay there ominously like dark water under one-night-old ice.
‘I’m not especially frightened, young lady,’ he claimed, trying to keep his gaze steady. ‘One learns to get by in the world we live in.’
‘Is there one of the neighbours you feel slightly less confident about?’ she insisted. ‘When you bump into them on the stairs, for instance?’
‘The neighbours? No, no, of course not!’
He burst out coughing, and as the attack slowly ebbed away Moreno sat there motionless, weighing up his final comment.
Was it really as clear a dismissal of any such thought as he tried to make it sound? Or?
Two hours later, as she slid down into a bubble-bath smelling of eucalyptus, she still hadn’t made up her mind about that.
Inspector Ewa Moreno also slept soundly on Sunday night without waking up at all, and as she sat in the tram in the cold light of dawn the next morning, on her way to the police station, she felt that she had finally caught up with herself. The lack of sleep that had been building up had now been satisfied, and for the first time in weeks she felt eager to start work.
Ready to get to grips with whatever lay in store for her.
But she could hardly have been prepared for what Intendent Münster had to tell her when she entered his office.
‘Anything new?’ she asked.
‘You can say that again,’ said Münster, looking up from the pile of papers he was leafing through. ‘She’s confessed.’
‘What?’ said Moreno.
‘Fru Leverkuhn. She rang at a quarter past seven this morning and confessed that she had murdered her husband.’
Moreno sat down on a chair.
‘Well I’ll be damned!’ she said. ‘So it was her after all?’
‘That’s what she claims,’ said Münster.