He woke up and didn’t know who he was.
It took a second, or half of one, but it had been there. The moment of complete blankness in which no past existed. No memories. No defeats.
No falseness, no inadequacies.
Not even a name.
Half a second. Merely a drop in a large ocean of humanity. Then it came back.
‘Hmmm…’ mumbled the woman by his side. Turned over and buried her head more deeply in the pillow. Pressed herself closer to him.
Ah well, he thought. It could be worse. He looked at the clock. Half past seven. He remembered the date as well. The first of January! Good Lord, they hadn’t gone to bed until after two; and as they were in bed, then…
He smiled.
Noticed that he was smiling. There was an unusual twitching in his cheek muscles, but by Jove, it was a smile. Half past seven after two or three hours’ sleep! On the first day of the year.
He adjusted the pillows and observed her. Ulrike Fremdli. With chestnut-brown hair and one breast peeping out through a gap in the covers. A large and mature woman’s breast with a nipple that had served two children, and on a New Year’s morning like this it certainly seemed to be delivering a message of peace and goodwill. Of friendship and brotherhood and love between all people on earth, among all these drops in this ocean…
Good Lord, Van Veeteren thought. I’m losing the plot. Life is a symphony.
He stayed in bed and scarcely dared to breathe. As if the slightest movement would be enough to break this fragile moment.
I want to die at a moment like this, he thought.
Then a dream took possession of him again.
Remarkable. It was as if it had been sitting round the corner, waiting as the morning spun its treacherous web of illusory happiness: waiting to stab him as soon as he had lowered his guard a few decimetres. Wasn’t that just typical? Absolutely typical.
It was a peculiar dream.
A dark and gloomy old castle. With arches and staircases and large, dimly lit halls. Empty and cold, with restless flickering shadows flitting along rough stone walls. Night, evidently; and threatening voices in the distance, and adjacent rooms… And the piercing sound of iron against iron, or as if knives were being sharpened; and he is scurrying along through all this, from room to room, hunting for something, unclear what.
He comes to a cell: very small, next to one wall a diminutive altar with a Madonna-relief, carved out of the dark stone of the wall, it seems; next to another wall a man asleep on a wooden bed. A thick horsehair blanket is pulled up over his shoulders and head, but even so he knows that it’s Erich.
His son Erich.
His wayward and accident-prone Erich. He hesitates, and as he stands there in the narrow doorway, not knowing what to do nor what is expected of him, he hears the piercing sound of the knives getting louder, then suddenly, suddenly, he sees one of those daggers hovering in the room. Hanging in mid-air above the man sleeping on the bench. A big, heavy dagger, lit up by jagged beams, glistening, rotating slowly until the tip of its razor-sharp blade is pointing straight down at the man. At Erich, his son.
He hesitates again. Then moves carefully forward and takes away the blanket from the sleeping man’s head. And it’s not Erich lying there. It’s Münster.
Intendent Münster lying asleep on his side, at peace with his hands under his head, totally unaware, and Van Veeteren doesn’t understand what is happening. He puts the blanket back where it was, just as carefully, hears voices and heavy footsteps approaching, and before he has time to leave the room and reach safety, he wakes up.
‘It was like Macbeth. The funny thing is that I was so sure it was Erich lying there, but it turned out to be Münster.’
Ulrike Fremdli yawned and rested her head on her hands. Eyed him over the kitchen table with a look that was almost cross-eyed with exhaustion. Charmingly cross-eyed, he thought.
‘You’re a remarkable person,’ she said.
‘Rubbish,’ said Van Veeteren.
‘Not at all,’ said Ulrike, stroking her hair away from her face. ‘Curiouser and curiouser. The first time you turn up in my life it’s because you are trying to find out who murdered my husband. Then you wait for over a year before getting in touch again, and now you sit here in the morning of New Year’s Day and want me to interpret your dreams. Thank you for last night, by the way. It wasn’t too bad.’
‘Thank you,’ said Van Veeteren, and realized that he was smiling again. It was evidently beginning to be a habit. ‘Anyway, women are better at dreams,’ he said. ‘Some women, at any rate.’
‘I think so,’ said Ulrike. ‘I agree with you in general, that is, but you have a gift making you just as intuitive as I am. I’d always imagined that an old detective inspector would be much more resolute, but perhaps that’s just a prejudice?’
‘Hmm, yes,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘We know so little.’
‘Really?’
He cut a slice of cheese and chewed it thoughtfully. Ulrike stuck out her naked foot under the table and stroked his calf with it.
‘Hmm,’ said Van Veeteren again. ‘Only a tiny bit of all there is to know. And if we don’t have a keen ear, it’s a damned minuscule bit.’
‘Go on,’ said Ulrike.
‘Well,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘This is one of my private hobby horses, of course, but since you seem to be too tired to contradict me, maybe I can enlarge a bit on it…’
She stretched out the other foot as well.
‘Quite a humble little theory in fact,’ he said. ‘It ought to suit a clever woman like you. A woman with humble feet… no, carry on, please do. Anyway, let’s assume that there are an infinite number of connections and correspondences and patterns in the world, and that the cleverest of us might be able – and dare! – to comprehend… let’s say a hundredth part of them. The thickest of us might comprehend a thousandth, or a ten-thousandth. Let’s not go into how much I can grasp. Most of it comes to us in ways different from what the so-called western way of thinking is prepared to accept. The deductive terror. Despite the fact that this in no way contradicts it. Or threatens it. Quite the reverse, actually, for it must surely be easier to comprehend things than to comprehend how we comprehend them. Our knowledge of the world must always be greater than our knowledge of knowledge… Well, er, something like that. As I said.’
Ulrike thought for a moment.
‘It sounds plausible,’ she said. ‘But I’m not properly awake.’
‘There are so many patterns,’ Van Veeteren continued. ‘We get so much information that we generally just let it flash over our heads. A thousand kilos of stimuli every second. We don’t have time to work on them. This is all obvious, but all I really understand is obvious, I have to admit.’
‘Dreams?’ said Ulrike.
‘For example. But hell’s bells! A dagger hovering over Intendent Münster! You’re not going to tell me that that’s a coincidence? He’s in danger, obviously, even a child can understand that.’
‘You thought it was Erich,’ Ulrike pointed out.
Van Veeteren sighed.
‘Erich has been in the danger zone for as long as I can remember,’ he said. ‘That wouldn’t be anything new.’
‘How old is he?’
Van Veeteren had to think that over.
‘Twenty-six,’ he said. ‘It’s about time I stopped worrying about him.’
Ulrike shook her head.
‘Why should you do that?’ she asked. ‘Once your child, always your child. Even if they’re aged a hundred.’
Van Veeteren observed her for a while in silence. Felt the warm soles of her feet against his legs. Good God, he thought. This woman…
It was only the fourth or fifth time they had spent a whole night together, and now, just as on all the previous occasions, he was forced to ask himself why it didn’t happen rather more often. As far as he could tell he didn’t seem to be causing her all that much suffering, so why be so damned cautious? Be as unabashed as a hermit. Not as doubtful as a donkey. As far as he was concerned… well, as far as he was concerned he wasn’t suffering in the least.
He looked out of the window at a New Year’s Day that seemed very uncertain. It had been raining during the night, and the sky and the earth seemed to be conjoined by a blue-grey light that certainly didn’t intend to keep darkness at bay for many hours. It struck him that there were grounds for thinking the sun had been extinguished at some point in November – he couldn’t recall seeing it since then, at least.
‘Lovely weather,’ he said. ‘Shall we go back to bed for a while?’
‘A good idea,’ said Ulrike Fremdli.
When they woke up the next time it was two o’clock.
‘When are your children due?’ he asked in horror.
‘This evening,’ she said. ‘They’re not dangerous.’
‘My solicitude concerns them and nothing else,’ said Van Veeteren, sitting up. ‘I don’t want to give them a shock, the first thing I do in the new year.’
Ulrike pulled him back down onto the bed.
‘You’re staying,’ she said. ‘They’re grown-up now and have flown the nest, both of them. And they’ve seen a thing or two.’
Van Veeteren pondered.
‘Why do we have weekdays when we could have exclusively Sundays?’ he asked slyly.
Ulrike furrowed her brow, then sat astride him.
‘Don’t think I’m in a hurry,’ she said. ‘But one Sunday every other month is on the thin side.’
Van Veeteren stretched out his hands and let her heavy breasts rest on them.
‘You may be right,’ he said. ‘All right, I’ll stay then. I’ll soon be sixty, so maybe it’s time to tie up a few loose ends.’
‘The year is starting off well,’ said Ulrike.
‘It could have started worse,’ said Van Veeteren.
But later, as he lay in bed waiting for her to finish in the bathroom, his thoughts reverted to last night’s dream.
Erich? he thought. Münster? Intendent Münster?
Is this a dagger I see before me?
Incomprehensible.
At least for somebody who generally only comprehends a tiny part that is obvious.
‘A Happy New Year,’ said Chief of Police Hiller, adjusting his tie. ‘Good to see you back, Reinhart. We all hope that your leave of absence did you good.’
‘Thank you, everybody,’ said Reinhart. ‘Yes, it was relatively bearable. But I don’t understand why I’m being lumbered with this case. There seem to be enough people working on it already. Don’t tell me you’ve got stuck?’
‘Hmm,’ said Hiller. ‘I think we’ll leave it to Intendent Münster to fill you in on that score.’
Münster took out his notebook and looked round the table. Reinhart was right, that couldn’t be denied. There suddenly seemed to be a lot of officers on the case. Himself. Rooth and Heinemann. Jung and Moreno. And now Reinhart as well. Not counting Hiller, of course.
‘I suggest we go through what has happened since that find out in Weyler’s Woods,’ said Münster. ‘It will do no harm for us all to get an overview, and Reinhart can also become aware of all the facts.’
Hiller nodded encouragingly, and made clicking noises with the new Ballograph pen he’d been given as a Christmas present.
‘Right, it was the 21st of December when a young girl, Vera Kretschke, found that human head, hidden in a plastic carrier bag. It was pretty clear from early on that it belonged to Else Van Eck, who had been missing since the end of October. Her husband, Arnold Van Eck, identified her straight away: it was a bit too much for him, and he’s been in hospital out at Majorna ever since…’
‘Poor bastard,’ said Reinhart.
‘Apparently he hasn’t opened his mouth for a week,’ said Moreno.
‘During the eleven days that have passed since then we’ve found three more carrier bags, but she’s still not complete, as it were. Her left leg and part of her trunk are still missing – her pelvis, to be more precise. Two more bags, presumably. Twelve officers are still searching, but it’s not an easy task, of course, even if we assume that the whole lot was dumped in Weyler’s Woods. Nothing has been buried so far: the murderer just covered the bags up as best he could, with leaves and twigs and suchlike.
‘He simply didn’t have a spade,’ said Rooth. ‘Careless type.’
‘Quite possibly,’ said Münster. ‘In any case, according to Meusse she’s been dead for up to two months, so there’s nothing to suggest that she wasn’t murdered the same night as she disappeared… the 29th or soon after. The butchery is not too badly done – I’m quoting Meusse – and could well have been done by somebody with a certain amount of professional skill, he says, although the tools used were of poorish quality. An ordinary, fairly blunt carving knife or something similar. Plus a cleaver, presumably. The actual cause of death seems to have been several powerful blows to the head with a heavy instrument. The parietal bone was well and truly smashed, and bits of bone penetrated the brain; but the killer probably also severed the carotid artery before he started cutting her up… Hrrm. As for the plastic carrier bags, they are widely available and apparently they can be bought by the roll in seven out of ten grocer’s shops or supermarkets. The only thing that might be worth noting is that they were yellow. You can buy dark green ones of the same type, and of course using them would have been preferable if you didn’t want them to be easily found.’
‘He probably didn’t have any others at home,’ said Rooth.
‘It might be as simple as that,’ Münster agreed. ‘All the body parts found so far have been naked. No clothes, no other details that could have left clues. Fingerprints are out of the question, of course, given the length of time that’s passed.’
He paused and looked round the table again.
‘It won’t help us much even if we do find the missing parts,’ said Jung.
‘No,’ said Rooth. ‘Presumably not. But it’s no fun sitting with a puzzle that has two pieces missing.’
‘It’s not exactly a fun puzzle, no matter what,’ said Moreno.
‘It seems not,’ said Reinhart. ‘What do you have in the way of suspicions?’
There was silence for a few seconds, broken only by the clicking of the chief of police’s new pen.
‘Let’s take the other stuff we know first,’ said Münster, ‘and then we can start speculating. We’ve spoken to quite a lot of people, mainly neighbours in the same building – there isn’t much in the way of relatives and friends – but to sum that up, it has to be said that we haven’t found out very much. Fru Van Eck disappeared during the evening of Wednesday, the 29th of October, while her husband was attending a course at the Riitmeeterska school. She was last seen shortly after six o’clock that evening, one of the neighbours thinks she heard her in the flat at around seven, but she wasn’t there when Arnold Van Eck got home at eight o’clock. No one has been able to tell us any more than that.’
‘Could it be one of them?’ wondered Reinhart. ‘The neighbours, I mean. And is it certain that she was the one in the flat at seven o’clock?’
‘It could have been one of the other people in the building, of course,’ said Münster. ‘Hypothetically, at least. I think it’s best to discuss that later, when we start looking at links with the other case – Waldemar Leverkuhn. But as for the person who was heard inside the flat, it could have been anybody at all.’
‘The murderer, for instance?’ said Reinhart.
‘For instance,’ said Münster.
‘These Leverkuhns?’ wondered Reinhart.
Münster sighed and turned over a page.
‘I don’t really know, to be honest,’ he said. ‘On the surface it all seems crystal clear…’
‘Some surfaces can be both crystal clear and paper thin,’ said Reinhart. ‘I’ve been following it to some extent in the newspapers, but we all know how they report things.’
‘Start from the beginning,’ said the chief of police.
‘Saturday, the 25th of October,’ said Münster. ‘That’s when it all begins. Fru Leverkuhn comes home and finds her husband stabbed to death in his bed. We launch an investigation, of course, and after ten days she phones us and confesses to having done it herself. In an attack of anger. We spend a week interrogating her thoroughly, and before long both we and the prosecutor think we have enough evidence. Anyway, things then follow the usual path, the trial begins in the middle of December and it’s over after three or four days. Nothing remarkable. The prosecutor presses for murder, the defence for manslaughter. While waiting for the verdict, on Sunday the 21st, she hangs herself in her cell… She plaits a rope from strips of blanket and manages to hook it onto a jutting-out piece of pipe in a corner of her cell. Obviously, quite a lot has been said about how that could come about, so perhaps we don’t need to go into it here. She’s left a suicide note as well, in which she wrote that she had decided to take her own life in view of the circumstances.’
‘The circumstances?’ said Reinhart. ‘What bloody circumstances?’
‘That she’d killed her husband, and had nothing to look forward to apart from several years behind bars,’ said Moreno.
‘It’s not exactly difficult to understand her motive,’ said Münster. ‘But what is difficult to explain is why she waited so long. Why she allowed herself to be arrested and charged and put on show in court before putting an end to it all.’
‘Didn’t she write anything about that in the letter?’ wondered Reinhart.
Münster shook his head.
‘No. It was just a few lines, and of course you can’t expect logical reasoning. She must have been pretty exhausted mentally, and a decision like that must take a lot of time to come to, I’d have thought.’
‘You’d think so,’ said Rooth.
Heinemann cleared his throat and put his glasses on the table.
‘I’ve spoken to a woman by the name of Regine Svendsen,’ he began pensively. ‘A former colleague of fru Leverkuhn’s. We spoke about precisely these psychological aspects. She seems to have known her quite well – until a few years ago, at least. It’s obviously risky to draw conclusions in cases like this, and she was careful to stress that-’
‘Well, what did she say?’ Rooth cut in. ‘If we cut out the crap.’
‘Hmm,’ said Heinemann. ‘You could sum up the gist by saying that fru Leverkuhn was a very strong woman. Quite capable of doing all kinds of things. There was a sort of incorruptibility about her, according to fru Svendsen. Or something of the sort, at least.’
‘Really?’ said Münster. ‘Well, obviously she has displayed an ability to take action in this case, there’s no denying that.’
‘Have you found any diaries?’ Heinemann asked.
‘Diaries?’ Münster repeated.
‘Yes,’ said Heinemann. ‘I spoke to this woman only yesterday – she’d been away, so I haven’t been able to report on it until now. Anyway, she claims that Marie-Louise Leverkuhn has kept a diary all her life, and if that’s the case and we could manage to take a look at it – or them – well, maybe we could get some insight into quite a lot of things…’
There was a moment’s silence, then Hiller cleared his throat.
‘Yes indeed,’ he said. ‘I suggest you go and look for these diaries – it shouldn’t be too difficult, surely?’
Münster looked at Moreno.
‘We’ve… Obviously we’ve searched Leverkuhn’s flat,’ said Moreno. ‘But we weren’t looking for diaries.’
‘According to fru Svendsen there should be eight to ten of them,’ said Heinemann. ‘She’s seen them, but never read them, of course. Ordinary notebooks with black oilcloth covers, apparently. Each one covering three or four years. Just short notes, presumably.’
‘That would cover no more than about thirty years,’ said Reinhart. ‘I thought she was older than that?’
Heinemann shrugged.
‘Don’t ask me,’ he said. ‘But I thought it was worth mentioning, anyway.’
Münster made a note and thought about it, but hadn’t reached any conclusion before the chief of police once again took command.
‘Go there and start looking!’ he said. ‘Search the whole damned flat, and dig them out. The place is still under guard, I take it? That wouldn’t be unusual, surely?’
‘Not unusual at all,’ said Münster with a sigh. ‘Obviously. I don’t think she had a notebook with her while she was under arrest in any case – but she might have stopped keeping a diary in her old age, perhaps. How long is it since this Regine Svendsen was last in touch with her?’
‘About five years,’ said Heinemann. ‘They worked together at Lippmann’s.’
Reinhart had been filling his pipe for several minutes, under Hiller’s stern gaze. Now he put it in his mouth, leaned back on his chair and clasped his hands behind his head.
‘The link, what about that detail?’ he said. ‘And wasn’t there somebody else who came to grief?’
Münster sighed again.
‘Absolutely right,’ he said. ‘We have a certain Felix Bonger who’s disappeared as well. One of Leverkuhn’s mates. He hasn’t been seen since the night Leverkuhn was killed.’
But now Chief of Police Hiller had had enough. He stopped observing Reinhart’s tobacco activities and tapped demonstratively on the table with his Ballograph.
‘Now listen here,’ he said. ‘You must damned well make up your minds whether these cases are linked or not – I thought we’d already done that, as a matter of fact. Is there anything – anything at all! – to suggest that Leverkuhn’s and fru Van Eck’s deaths are connected in any way?’
‘Well,’ said Münster, ‘one has to say it’s not all that usual for two people living in the same building to be murdered within only a few days of each other, and-’
‘I regard the Leverkuhn case as finished and done with!’ interrupted Hiller. ‘At least as long as nothing completely new comes to light. What we have to do now is to find out who murdered Else Van Eck. Mind you, if it was fru Leverkuhn who did her in as well, that would suit me down to the ground.’
‘A neat solution,’ said Reinhart. ‘The chief of police ought to have become a police officer.’
That put Hiller off for a moment, but then he continued with undiminished authority:
‘As for this Bonger character, he’s disappeared, and I take it for granted that we shall pursue the same procedures as we would for any other similar case – routine missing person procedures, that is.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Incidentally, I have a meeting in five minutes.’
‘Perhaps we should have a smoking break,’ said Reinhart. ‘We’re about due for one.’
‘Does anybody else wish to say anything?’ asked Münster diplomatically.
‘Personally, I could do with a cup of coffee,’ said Rooth.
‘You look a bit tired,’ said Moreno, closing the door.
‘That’s probably because I am a bit tired,’ said Münster. ‘I was supposed to be off for seven days over the holidays: I was actually off for two and a half.’
‘Not much fun when you have a family, I suppose.’
Münster pulled a face,
‘Yes, having a family is great. It’s all this bloody work that isn’t so great. It makes you lose heart.’
Moreno sat down opposite him, and waited for him to continue.
‘How are things with you?’ Münster said instead.
‘Odd,’ said Moreno after a short pause.
‘Odd?’
She laughed.
‘Yes, odd. But okay, basically. Does a heartless intendent have the strength to listen? It’ll only take half a minute.’
Münster nodded.
‘Well, Claus came home from New York, despite everything,’ Moreno said, while trying to scrape a little coffee stain off her pale yellow jumper with a fingernail. ‘It struck me straight away that he had changed somehow… I think I said this, didn’t I? I couldn’t put my finger on it, but it finally came out yesterday. He’s found somebody else.’
‘What?’ said Münster. ‘What the hell…?’
‘Yes. A month ago he was ready to take his own life for my sake, but now he has a flourishing new relationship. He met her in a restaurant in Greenwich Village, they flew home on the same plane, and they’ve evidently found one another. Her name’s Brigitte, and she’s a script girl with a television company. Huh, men…’
‘Enough of that,’ said Münster. ‘Don’t tar everybody with the same brush, for Christ’s sake! I refuse to associate myself with this kind of… of boy scout behaviour.’
Moreno smiled. Stopped scraping and contemplated the stain, which was still there.
‘Okay,’ she said. ‘I know. In any case, I think it’s brilliant, even if it is a bit odd, as I said. Shall we drop the battle of the sexes?’
‘By all means,’ said Münster. ‘I’ve had more than my fair share of that as well, in fact.’
Moreno looked vaguely sympathetic, but said nothing. Münster took a drink out of the can of soda water on his desk and tried not to belch, but belched even so. In that introspective, polite way, which brought tears to his eyes.
‘The Leverkuhn case,’ he said, taking a deep breath. ‘Are you with me on it?’
‘Yes, I’m with you.’
‘Act three. Or is it act four? Anyway, the division of labour is clear, in broad outline at least. Rooth and Jung will look after the search for the diaries at the Leverkuhns’ place. Reinhart and Heinemann will take care of Van Eck. You and I have a bit more freedom. I shall ignore what Hiller said about what’s resolved and what isn’t. I’m going to have another go at Leverkuhn’s children. All three, I think.’
‘Even the daughter who’s locked away?’ asked Moreno.
‘Even her,’ said Münster.
‘Do you think it was Marie-Louise Leverkuhn who disposed of Else Van Eck as well?’
Münster made no reply at first. Leafed somewhat listlessly through the pile of paper on his desk. Drank the rest of the soda water and threw the empty can into the waste paper basket.
‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘She flatly denied it, and why should she bother to do that when she had already admitted to killing her husband? And she took her own life as well. Why would she want to kill Van Eck? What motive could she have had?’
‘Don’t ask me,’ said Moreno. ‘But you reckon they’re connected?’
‘Yes,’ said Münster. ‘I think so. I don’t know how, but I’m bloody well going to find out.’
He could hear the trace of weariness in his last sentence, and he could see that Moreno heard it as well. She looked at him for a moment or two, while the furrow in her brow remained and she was presumably searching for something consoling to say. But she found nothing.
I wish she would just walk round the desk and give me a hug, Münster thought, closing his eyes. Or we could get undressed and go to bed.
But nothing like that happened either.
‘Hello?’
‘Hello,’ said Jung. ‘My name’s Jung, Maardam police. Am I talking to Emmeline von Post?’
‘Yes, that’s me. Good morning.’
‘I have just one simple question, so maybe we can sort it out on the telephone?’
‘Good Lord, what’s it about?’
‘Marie-Louise Leverkuhn. We’re winding up the case, as it were, and we want to sort out all the final details.’
‘I understand,’ said Emmeline.
Oh no you don’t, thought Jung. But you’re not supposed to either.
‘Did fru Leverkuhn keep a diary?’ he asked.
There were a few seconds of astonished silence before Emmeline answered.
‘Yes, of course. She used to keep a diary. But why on earth do you want to know about that?’
‘Routine,’ said Jung routinely.
‘I see… Oh, it’s all so awful.’
‘Absolutely awful,’ said Jung. ‘Had she been doing it long? Keeping a diary, that is?’
‘I think so,’ said Emmeline. ‘Yes, she was doing it when we were at commercial college together. They weren’t really diaries; as I understand it she only wrote something a couple of times a month… To sort of sum up the situation, I don’t really know.’
‘Did you often talk abut it?’
‘No.’
‘Have you ever read anything she wrote?’
‘Never.’
‘But you’ve seen the diaries?’
‘Yes,’ said Emmeline. ‘On the odd occasion… Obviously we mentioned them now and then as well, but it was her private business and nothing to do with me.’
‘What do they look like?’
‘Excuse me?’
‘The diaries. How many do you think there are, and what do they look like?’
Emmeline thought for a moment.
‘I don’t know how many there are,’ she said, ‘but I think she kept them all, in any case. Ten or twelve, perhaps? They were the usual kind of exercise books with soft covers you can buy all over the place. Quite thick… black, soft covers. Or maybe blue, the ones I’ve seen at least. Perhaps she had more, in fact. I don’t think she showed them to her husband. But… but I don’t understand why you’re asking about this. Is it important?’
‘No, not at all,’ said Jung reassuringly. ‘Just a detail, as I said. By the way, do you remember if she had one of those books with her when she was staying with you for a few days? In October, that is?’
‘No… no, I don’t think so. I didn’t see one, at least.’
‘Thank you, fru von Post. That was all. I apologize for disturbing you.’
‘Not at all,’ said Emmeline. ‘No problem.’
‘Rooth, Maardam police,’ said Rooth.
‘I haven’t got time,’ said Mauritz Leverkuhn.
‘Why did you answer, then?’ said Rooth. ‘If you haven’t got time?’
Silence for a few seconds.
‘It could have been something important,’ said Mauritz.
‘It is important,’ said Rooth. ‘Did your mother keep a diary?’
Mauritz sneezed directly into the receiver.
‘Bless you,’ said Rooth, drying his ear.
‘Diary!’ snorted Mauritz. ‘What the hell has that got to do with you? And why the hell are you poking your nose into all this? We’ve had enough of you snooping around, can’t you leave people in peace? Besides, I’m ill.’
‘I’ve noticed,’ said Rooth. ‘Did she keep a diary?’
For quite a while there was no sound other than Mauritz’s heavy breathing. Rooth realized he was wondering whether to hang up or not.
‘Listen here,’ he said in the end. ‘I’ve been in bed with flu for two days now. A thirty-nine degree temperature. I’ll be fucked if I want to talk to you any more. Both my father and mother are dead, I don’t understand why the police can’t find something better to do instead of pestering us.’
‘You’re taking penicillin, I assume?’ asked Rooth in a friendly tone, but the only answer he received was a clear and dismissive click.
Rooth hung up. Bastard, he thought. I hope you’re in bed for a few more weeks at least.
‘Do you really mean that?’ asked Heinemann. ‘That the police have been treating you improperly?’
‘What?’ said Ruben Engel.
‘That we’ve been bothering you unnecessarily. If so, you should make a complaint.’
‘Yes… er?’
‘There’s a special form you can fill in,’ Heinemann explained. ‘If you like I can arrange to have one sent to you.’
‘Eh? That’s not necessary,’ said Engel. ‘But for God’s sake hurry up and get this business sorted out, so that we can get some peace and quiet.’
‘It’s a bit tricky,’ said Heinemann, looking round the cluttered kitchen with his glasses perched on the end of his nose. ‘Murder investigations like this one are often more complicated than people in general can imagine. There’s an awful lot of aspects to take into account. An awful lot. What are you drinking?’
‘Eh?’ said Engel. ‘Oh, just a drop of wine toddy – to raise my body temperature a bit. It’s so damned draughty in this flat.’
‘I see. Anyway, I mustn’t disturb you any longer. Do you know if fröken Mathisen next door is at home?’
Engel looked at the clock.
‘She usually comes home about five,’ he said. ‘So with a bit of luck…’
‘We shall see,’ said Heinemann. ‘Anyway, sorry to have disturbed you.’
‘No problem,’ said Ruben Engel. ‘The screwing machines are moving out, by the way.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘The couple downstairs. They must have found somewhere better. They’re moving out.’
‘Really?’ said Heinemann. ‘We didn’t know that. Thank you for telling us.’
‘You’re welcome.’
Marie-Louise Leverkuhn’s funeral took place in one of the side chapels in Keymerkyrkan. Apart from the vicar and the undertaker there were four people present, all of them women.
Closest to the coffin, a simple affair made of fibreboard and hardboard – but during the service covered by a green cloth that concealed the deficiencies – sat Ruth Leverkuhn in her capacity as next of kin. Behind her sat the other three: furthest to the left was Emmeline von Post; in the middle a pale woman of about the same age and, as far as Münster and Moreno could make out, identical with the Regine Svendsen who had supplied Heinemann with the information about the diaries; and on the right a quite tall, well-dressed woman about forty-five years of age – Münster and Moreno had no idea who she was.
They had placed themselves strategically in the nave: they were sitting in an austere, light-coloured pew, leafing furtively through their hymn books and keeping a discreet eye on the simple ritual taking place some fifteen metres away.
‘Who is the younger woman?’ whispered Münster.
Moreno shook her head.
‘I don’t know. Why isn’t the son here?’
‘He’s ill,’ said Münster. ‘Or says he is, in any case. Rooth spoke to him on the phone this morning.’
‘Hmm,’ said Moreno. ‘So you won’t be having a chat with him, then. Shall I try to grab that woman afterwards? She must have some sort of connection with the family.’
‘She could be one of those funeral hyenas, mind you,’ warned Münster. ‘It takes all sorts… But by all means, see what she has to say. I’ll try and have a word with the daughter.’
He noticed that he was enjoying sitting here, squeezed up close to Ewa Moreno in the cramped pew, whispering. Whispering so closely to her ear that he could feel her hair brushing against his skin.
Carry on talking, Mr Vicar, he thought. Make sure you spin the service out for as long as possible – it doesn’t matter if it takes all afternoon.
What the hell am I doing? he then thought. Despite the fact that he was sitting in church with a hymn book in his hand.
‘No problem,’ said the woman, whose name was Lene Bauer. ‘No problem at all – I intended to ring you several times, but never got round to it… But then, perhaps I don’t have all that much to tell you, when it comes to the nitty gritty.’
At Lene Bauer’s suggestion they had ensconced themselves in a screened booth in Rüger’s bar in Wiijsenweg, diagonally opposite the church. Moreno took an instant liking to the woman, who had apparently taken time off from her post at the library in Linzhuisen in order to attend the funeral. Her connection with Marie-Louise Leverkuhn was not especially strong: she and Lene’s mother had been cousins, but there had been no contact at all during the last twenty to twenty-five years.
However, Lene had followed what had happened in the papers and on the television: they had socialized quite a bit in the sixties.
‘Holidays by the sea,’ she explained. ‘A few weeks in Lejnice, Oosterbrügge and similar places. I assume it was cheaper if we all went together. My mother and Marie-Louise and us children. Me and Ruth, Irene and Mauritz… But I used to play mainly with Ruth, we are exactly the same age. Our fathers – my dad and Waldemar – only came to join us for an occasional evening or at the weekends… That’s about it, really.’
‘You haven’t kept in touch with the children either?’ asked Moreno.
‘No,’ said Lene, looking a bit guilty. ‘A few letters to Ruth at the beginning of the seventies, but I got married quite early and had other things to think about. My own children and so on. And for several years we lived down at Borghem as well.’
Moreno thought for a while. Sipped the wine they had ordered and tried to work out how best to continue. It certainly seemed as if this woman had something she wanted to say, but it might be something that wouldn’t be mentioned unless she was asked the right questions.
Or was it just imagination? Questionable female intuition? Hard to say.
‘Did you enjoy those summer holidays?’ she asked cautiously. ‘How many were there, incidentally?’
‘Three or four,’ said Lene. ‘I can’t remember, to be honest. Each of them several weeks. I was between ten and fifteen in any case. We used to listen to The Beatles – Ruth had a tape recorder. Yes, I enjoyed it – apart from with Mauritz.’
‘Really?’ said Moreno, and waited.
‘He was so terribly difficult to shake off,’ she said. ‘You had to feel sorry for him, of course – the only boy with three girls. And he was younger as well, but there seemed to be no limit to his determination to cling to his sisters, especially Irene. She didn’t have a second’s peace, and she never turned him away either. She mollycoddled him and built sandcastles for him, painted pictures and read him bedtime stories. For hours on end. Ruth and I kept well out of the way, as I recall it, only too glad to off-load the responsibility; but I know I found it extremely difficult to put up with Mauritz. They never said anything to him, and he never showed the slightest bit of gratitude. A cry-baby and a moaner, that’s what he was.’
‘Hmm,’ said Moreno. ‘This is what you wanted to tell me, isn’t it?’
Lene shrugged.
‘I don’t really know,’ she said. ‘I just started to think about them again when I heard about the terrible things that have happened. I simply couldn’t believe it was true.’
‘No,’ said Moreno. ‘I suppose it must have been a shock for you.’
‘Two,’ said Lene. ‘First the murder. Then the fact that she’d done it. She must have hated him.’
Moreno nodded.
‘Presumably. Did you have any idea of what their relationship was like? Then, thirty years ago, I mean.’
‘No,’ said Lene. ‘I’ve been thinking about it now, in view of what’s happened, but I was only a child in those days. I had no conception of things like that – and anyway, I hardly ever saw Waldemar. He only turned up very occasionally. No, I really don’t know.’
‘So it’s the children you remember?’
Lene sighed and fished a cigarette out of her handbag.
‘Yes. And then all that business of Irene’s illness. I’ve somehow always felt that it was connected. Her illness and her being over-protective of Mauritz. There was something wrong, but I suppose it’s easy to speculate. Darkness swallowed her up more or less all at once, if I understand it rightly. Just over twenty years ago, so it was a few years after our holidays together and I’ve no idea what it was all about. One can only guess, but it’s so easy to be clever with hindsight.’
She fell silent. Moreno watched her as she took out a lighter and lit her cigarette.
‘You know that Ruth is lesbian, I take it?’ she asked, mainly because she didn’t really know how to continue the conversation. Lene inhaled deeply, and nodded slowly several times.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘But there are so many possible reasons for being that. Don’t you think?’
Moreno didn’t know how to interpret that answer. Did this stylish woman have a similar bent? Had she had enough of men? She took another sip of wine and thought about it, then realized that she was beginning to drift a long way away from the point.
Mind you, what was the point?
That’s certainly a good question, she thought. But she could think of nothing that might approximate to an answer. Not for the moment. Just now.
It was nearly always like this. Sometimes in the middle of an investigation, it seemed impossible to see the wood for all the trees. She had thought about that lots of times, and of course the only thing that helped was to try to find a mountain or a hill that you could climb up and get some sort of overview. See things in perspective.
She could see that Lene was waiting for a continuation, but it was difficult to find the right thread.
‘What about your mother?’ she asked for no particular reason. ‘Is she still alive?’
‘No,’ said Lene. ‘She died in 1980. Cancer. But I don’t think she had any contact with the Leverkuhns either in recent years. My father died last summer. But he knew them even less well.’
Moreno nodded and drank up the remains of her wine. Then she decided that this was enough. Thanked Lene Bauer for being so helpful, and asked if they could get in touch again if anything turned up she might be able to help with.
Lene handed over her business card, and said that the police were welcome to phone her at any time.
How nice to meet somebody who at least displays a bit of willingness to cooperate in this case, Moreno thought as she left Rüger’s. That sort was distinctly thin on the ground. Not to say few and far between.
But what Lene Bauer’s contribution was actually worth in a wider context – well, she had difficulty in deciding that. For the time being, at least. They were in the middle of a thicket, and the brushwood was anything but thin on the ground.
I must improve my imagery, Moreno thought, somewhat confused.
But some other time, not now. She clambered into the car and thought that all she wanted to do for the moment was to discuss the matter with Intendent Münster. Preferably in a whisper, as they had found themselves doing in the church that morning: but perhaps that was asking too much.
Quite a lot too much, in fact. She started the car. No doubt it would be best to postpone that conversation as well until tomorrow, she decided. To be on the safe side.
After these deliberations Inspector Moreno drove back to her temporary home, and spent all evening thinking about the concept of the battle of the sexes.
With the aid of Constables Klempje and Dillinger, Rooth and Jung searched the Leverkuhns’ flat in Kolderweg for four long hours on the Tuesday after fru Leverkuhn’s funeral.
It would have been quicker, Jung decided later, had they done so without the assistance of the constables altogether. Thanks to unbridled enthusiasm, Dillinger managed to demolish a bathroom cupboard that had no doubt been fixed to the wall for many a year (but since neither inhabitant of the flat was any longer of this world, Rooth reckoned that they could lie low when it came to the question of damages), and Klempje’s bulky frame tended to get in the way – until Jung had had enough and sent him packing to the attic space instead.
‘Aye, aye, Captain,’ said Klempje. Saluted and disappeared up the stairs. When Jung went to check on how things were going not long after, it transpired that with the aid of a bolt cutter, Klempje had broken into fröken Mathisen’s jam-packed storeroom and succeeded in removing most of the contents and piling them up in the narrow corridor outside. It was a considerable amount. Jung fetched Dillinger, gave still more detailed instructions to the pair of them, and half an hour later they came downstairs to report (Klempje looked suspiciously sleepy): there were no diaries to be seen, neither in Mathisen’s nor in the Leverkuhns’ storeroom.
No doubt about it, as sure as amen in church or whores in Zwille – they hadn’t found a single bloody page, full stop.
Jung sighed and announced that unfortunately, the same applied to the flat itself. Although he expressed it differently.
‘What a lot of crap,’ said Rooth when he’d locked the door behind them. ‘I’m hungry.’
‘There’s something wrong with your metabolism,’ said Jung.
‘What does that mean?’ asked Klempje, yawning so broadly that his neck muscles creaked. ‘I’m hungry as well.’
Jung sighed again.
‘But perhaps it means something,’ he said. ‘If you look at it that way.’
‘What the hell are you on about?’ wondered Rooth.
‘Don’t you see?’
‘No,’ said Rooth. ‘Don’t keep me guessing like this. I can hardly contain myself.’
Jung snorted.
‘There are some cops you can bribe by offering them a bun,’ he said. ‘Anyway, look at it like this. If she really did keep diaries, this Leverkuhn woman, and has now destroyed them, that must mean that they contained something of importance. Something she didn’t want anybody else to read. Don’t you think?’
Rooth thought about that as they walked back to the car.
‘Crap,’ he said. ‘That’s just normal. Who the hell do you think wants to leave a load of diaries to posterity? Irrespective of what’s in them? Not me in any case. So that doesn’t mean a thing.’
Jung conceded that there was probably something in that, but didn’t think there was any reason to expand on it.
‘I didn’t know you could write,’ he said instead.
‘Of course he can,’ said Klempje, picking his nose. ‘What a lot of bloody crap!’
When they got back to the police station, Jung and Rooth went down to the prison cells for a chat with Inspector Fuller: it emerged more clearly than was desirable that Marie-Louise Leverkuhn had made no effort at all to keep a diary during the six weeks she had spent in cell number 12. Either in notebooks with black oilcloth covers or anywhere else. Fuller could stake his bloody reputation on that, he claimed.
For safety’s sake they checked with all the warders and the drowsy chaplain, and everybody agreed. Even if no more reputations were staked.
There were no diaries. It was as simple as that.
‘Okay,’ said Rooth. ‘Now we know. It seems that everybody draws a blank in this bloody lottery.’
Shortly before Münster went home for the day he had a phone call from Reinhart.
‘Have you a quarter of an hour to spare?’
‘Yes, but not much more,’ said Münster. ‘Are you coming to my office?’
‘Come to mine instead,’ said Reinhart. ‘Then I can smoke in peace and quiet. There are a few things I’m wondering about.’
‘I’ll be with you in two minutes,’ said Münster.
Reinhart was standing by the window, watching the sleet fall, when Münster arrived.
‘I seem to recall that the chief inspector thought January was the worst month of the year,’ he said. ‘I must say I agree with him. It’s only the sixth today, but it feels as if we’ve been at it for an eternity.’
‘It can’t have anything to do with the fact that you’ve only just started work again, can it?’ Münster wondered.
‘I shouldn’t think so,’ said Reinhart, lighting his pipe. ‘Anyway, I had just a few little theoretical questions.’
‘Good,’ said Münster. ‘I’m fed up with being practical all the time.’
Reinhart sat down behind his desk, turned his chair and put his feet up on the third shelf of the bookcase, where there was a space left for precisely this purpose.
‘Do you think she’s innocent?’ he asked.
Münster watched the wet snow falling for five seconds before replying.
‘Possibly,’ he said.
‘Why should she confess if she didn’t do it?’
‘There are various possibilities.’
‘Such as?’
Münster thought.
‘Well, one at any rate.’
‘One possibility?’ said Reinhart. ‘That’s what I call a multiplicity.’
‘Who cares?’ said Münster. ‘Perhaps it’s simplisticity, but it could be that she was protecting somebody… Or that she thought she was. But that’s just speculation, of course.’
‘Who might she have been protecting?’
The telephone rang, but Reinhart pressed a button and switched it off.
‘That’s obvious,’ said Münster, with irritation in his voice. ‘I’ve been wondering about that from the very start, but there’s no evidence to support it. None at all.’
Reinhart nodded and chewed at the stem of his pipe.
‘Then there’s fru Van Eck,’ Münster said. ‘And this damned Bonger. That complicates matters somewhat, don’t you think?’
‘Of course,’ said Reinhart. ‘Of course. I tried to talk to the poor widower at Majorna today. But there’s not much of a spark left in him, it seems… Ah well, what are you going to do now? In the way of positive action, I mean.’
Münster leaned back on his chair.
‘Follow up that simplistic thought,’ he said after consulting himself for a few seconds. ‘See if it holds water, at least. I need to get about a bit and chase things up. Only one of the siblings attended the funeral, so we didn’t get very far then. And it wasn’t exactly fun either, interrogating the mourners as soon as they left the church.’
‘No, it wouldn’t be,’ said Reinhart. ‘When are you setting off?’
‘Tomorrow,’ said Münster. ‘They live quite a long way up north, so it might well be a two-day job.’
Reinhart thought for a while. Then he removed his feet from the book shelf and put down his pipe.
‘It certainly is a bloody strange business, don’t you think?’ he said. ‘And unpleasant.’
‘Yes, indeed,’ said Münster. ‘I suppose they could be coincidences. It’s over two months now since it all started, but it’s only now that I’m beginning to sniff the possibility of a motive.’
‘Hmm,’ said Reinhart. ‘Does it include Else Van Eck?’
‘I’m not really sure. It’s only a very faint whiff at the moment.’
Reinhart’s face suddenly lit up.
‘Well, I’ll be damned!’ he said. ‘You’re beginning to sound like the chief inspector. Are you starting to get old?’
‘Ancient,’ said Münster. ‘My kids will start thinking I’m their grandad if I don’t get a week off soon.’
‘Time off, oh yes…’ said Reinhart with a sigh, and his eyes began to look dreamy. ‘No, sod this for a lark, it’s time to go home. I’ll see you in a few days’ time, then. Keep us informed.’
‘Of course,’ said Münster, opening the door for Intendent Reinhart.
He allowed himself an extra hour the next morning. Made the beds, did the washing up, took Marieke to nursery school and left Maardam by ten o’clock. Driving rain came lashing in from the sea, and he was relieved to be sitting in a car with a roof over his head.
His main travelling companion was oppressive exhaustion, and it was not until he had drunk two cups of black coffee at a service station by the motorway that he began to feel anything like awake and clear in the head. Van Veeteren used to say that there was nothing to compare with a long car journey – in solitary majesty – when it came to unravelling muddled thoughts, and when Münster set off he had cherished a vague hope that the same would apply to him as well.
For there was certainly quite a lot to get to grips with. And a lot of tangles to unravel.
First of all, Synn. His lovely Synn. He had hoped that they would have been able to have a heart-to-heart talk the previous evening after the children had gone to sleep, but that’s not how it had turned out. Quite the reverse, in fact. Synn had settled down on her side and turned out the light before he had even got ready for bed, and when he made tentative moves to try and make contact with her, she had already fallen asleep.
Or pretended to, he wasn’t sure which. He lay awake until turned two, and felt awful. When he finally dropped off, he dreamed instead of Ewa Moreno. Nothing seemed to be going right.
Is the relationship coming to an end? Münster wondered as he came to the hills around Wissbork. Is that what happened when two people started drifting away from each other? As they say.
He didn’t know. How the hell could he know?
All you can do is look after your own life, he thought. That is the only consideration. All comparisons are gratuitous and would-be-wise. Synn is unique, he is unique, and so are their family and their relationship. There are no guidelines, no pattern to follow. All you can do is rely on your feelings and intuition. Dammit all.
I don’t want to know, he suddenly realized. I don’t want to know how it’s going to turn out. It’s better to be blind, and to hope.
But Synn was right in one respect in any case, even a worn-out detective-intendent could understand that. Things couldn’t go on like this – no way. Not their lives, or other people’s for that matter. If they couldn’t succeed in changing the conditions, making some radical changes to the way things were at present, well… It was like sitting in a train that was slowly but inexorably approaching a terminus where there was no alternative but to get off and go their separate ways. Whether they wanted to or not.
Has she as bad a conscience as I have? he wondered in a sudden flash of insight.
Or was that aspect also infected by the sex roles? Perhaps that was another shield against a nagging conscience, he wondered now that he was looking more closely at the situation – that calm, female sense of certainty, which could evidently survive no matter what the circumstances, but which he could never understand.
But which he loved.
Hell’s bells, Münster thought. The more I think about it, the less I understand.
He had driven more than a hundred kilometres before he was able to concentrate his thoughts on his work and the investigation.
The Leverkuhn case.
Leverkuhn-Bonger-Van Eck.
He worked out that it was now over ten weeks since the whole thing began. And they had been standing still for most of that time, if he were to be honest: November and half of December while fru Leverkuhn had been on remand and they failed to find the slightest trace of Else Van Eck.
But then the investigation had exploded into action the week before Christmas. Marie-Louise Leverkuhn’s suicide and the discovery in Weyler’s Woods.
It was as if everything had conspired to ruin his Christmas break, he told himself glumly. To take away from him the opportunity to stop that train heading for ruin. And new incidents kept on cropping up after that as well – tin after tin of red herrings, as Rooth had put it.
The information about the diaries, for instance. Did any diaries still exist? They had existed, that was clear; but if he would ever be able to read what was in them (assuming there was something of importance) – well, that was probably a vain hope.
And that woman’s report to Moreno, to take another example. About family relationships by the seaside over a few summers in the sixties. What was the significance of that?
Or yesterday’s discussion with Reinhart. Although he didn’t know all that much about the investigation, Reinhart seemed to be thinking along the same lines as Münster himself. But perhaps that wasn’t too surprising – Reinhart was generally more perceptive than most.
Then there was that conversation with Ruth Leverkuhn after the funeral. A woman difficult to warm to. It hadn’t yielded much, either. A pity he didn’t know about what Lene Bauer had said at the time. It would have been interesting to ask her to comment, if nothing else.
Yes, there were a few openings, no doubt about that.
Or pitfalls, if one preferred to adopt Rooth’s pessimism.
Speaking of openings, he couldn’t help wondering about the conversation with Van Veeteren yesterday evening. The chief inspector had rung shortly before nine to ask about the latest developments. Münster had failed to discover exactly what he wanted to know, or what he had in mind. He had hummed and hawed and spoken in riddles, almost as he used to do when something special was brewing. Münster had met him halfway and told him about his plans, and Van Veeteren had urged him to be careful. Warned him to watch his step, in fact; but it was impossible to get him to be more precise or to give any positive advice.
This was quite remarkable, surely? Was he on his way back? Had he grown tired of life as an antiquarian bookseller?
Impossible to say, Münster decided. As so often where Van Veeteren was concerned.
And in Kolderweg the de Booning-Menakdise couple were busy moving out. The screwing machines! Or la Rouge et le Noir, as Moreno had christened them, rather more romantically. Why? Why move out just now? It sometimes seemed as if everything depended on getting out of that building. The Leverkuhns had gone. The caretaker and his wife as well. And now this young couple. Only fröken Mathisen and old Engel were left.
Very strange, Münster thought. What’s going on?
At one o’clock he still had an hour’s drive ahead of him, and decided it was time for lunch. Turned off the main road just north of Saaren and entered yet another of those postmodern rest bunkers for post-modern drivers. As he sat at his window table – with a view of the rain and the car park and four stunted larch trees – he made up his mind to inject his thoughts with a little more systematics. He turned to a new page in his notebook, which he had taken in with him, and started writing down all the things he had been thinking about during the last hour in the car. Telegram style. Then, as he sat chewing his healthy schnitzel, he had the list in front of him, and tried to extract from it some new, bold conclusions. Or at any rate a few cautious old ones: there were five centimetres of blank page left at the bottom where he could note down these thoughts.
When he had finished eating, the centimetres were still blank; but nevertheless, for some abstruse reason, he felt sure of one thing. Just the one.
He was on the right track.
Fairly sure. The blind tortoise was approaching the snowball.
It was blowing at least half a gale in Frigge. When Münster had struggled out of his car in the circular open plaza in front of the railway station, he was forced to lean into the wind in order to make any progress at all. Inside the station he was given a map and a route description by an unusually helpful young woman in the ticket office. He thanked her for her efforts, and she explained with a smile that her husband was also a police officer, so she knew what it was usually like.
There you are, Münster thought. The world is full of understanding policemen’s wives.
Then he went out into the storm again, this time leaning backwards. Clambered back into his car and studied the information he’d been given. It seemed that Mauritz Leverkuhn lived in a suburb. Detached houses and modern terraced houses, no doubt, and only an occasional block of flats, anything but a skyscraper. It looked like it. He checked his watch. It was only half past three, but as Mauritz Leverkuhn was supposed to be suffering from influenza, there was no reason to worry that he might not be at home.
He had no intention of ringing in advance to arrange a meeting. Certainly not, Münster thought. If you’re going to take the bull by the horns, there’s not a lot of point in asking for permission first.
The suburb was called Gochtshuuis. It was on the western outskirts of the town. He started the car and drove off.
It took him a little more than fifteen minutes to find the place. A rather dull 1970s development with two-storey terraced houses alongside a canal, and a somewhat sparse strip of trees pointing at the low marshland and the sea. A windbreak, presumably. All the trees were leaning eastwards at the same angle. Mauritz Leverkuhn’s house was furthest away, where the road petered out with a postbox, a refuse recycling station and a turning area for buses.
Concrete grey. Two low storeys high, ten metres wide and with a pathetic swamp of a garden at the front. Probably a similar one at the back, facing the trees. Dusk was already in the air, and Münster noted that lights were on in two of the windows.
Here we go, he thought as he got out of his car.
If Intendent Münster had bothered to take his mobile with him when he’d had lunch, he would certainly have had an opportunity to fill in the last empty lines of the page in his notebook.
Not with any conclusions, that’s for sure, but with another point in the list of new developments in the case.
Shortly after half past one Inspector Rooth had tried to contact him – in vain, of course – in order to report the latest find in Weyler’s Woods. The fact that nobody remembered to ring again later in the day can be ascribed partly to the fact that it was overlooked in the general excitement caused by the find, and partly to the fact that – despite everything – it was still not clear how great a significance the discovery would acquire.
If any at all. But in any case, what happened when the usual search party a dozen or so strong was out in the woods, by now well trampled by large numbers of feet, was that they found the remains of Else Van Eck’s so-called intimate parts – surrounded by a section of pelvis, a length of spine, and two appropriately large buttocks in comparatively good condition. As usual it was all carelessly stuffed into a pale yellow plastic carrier bag, and equally carelessly concealed in an overgrown ditch. Inner organs, such as intestines, liver and kidneys had been removed, but what made this find more interesting than all the others was that when it was all tipped out onto a workbench at the Forensic Medicine Centre, they discovered a scrap of paper sticking out of one of the many folds that must inevitably be formed in the body of a woman the size of fru Van Eck.
It wasn’t large, but still… Dr Meusse himself carefully lifted up a section of the rotting flesh and removed the strip of paper without tearing it.
Nothing to write home about, Meusse insisted, but quite a feat even so. A flimsy scrap of paper about the size and shape of a two-dimensional banana, more or less. Stained by blood and other substances, but nevertheless, there was no doubt that it was from a newspaper or magazine.
Naturally, Meusse appreciated the importance of the find and had it transported by courier to the Laboratory for Forensic Chemistry in the same block. Rooth and Reinhart were informed more or less immediately about the development, and spent most of the afternoon at the Forensic Chemistry Lab – if not to accelerate the results of the analysis then at least to keep themselves informed about them. Needless to say they could just as well have waited for information via the telephone, but neither Rooth nor Reinhart were of that bent. Not today, at least.
In the event the results emerged bit by bit, reported with a degree of scientific pomp and ceremony by the boss himself, Intendent Mulder – the least jovial of all the people Rooth had ever met.
After an hour, for instance, it was obvious that the object really was part of a page from a newspaper or magazine. We know that already, you boss-eyed berk, thought Rooth: but he didn’t say so.
Forty-five minutes later it was established that the quality of the paper was quite high – not in the weekly magazine class, but nevertheless not from an ordinary daily newspaper such as Neuwe Blatt or Gazett.
Mulder pronounced the names of the two newspapers in such a way that it was obvious to Rooth that only in a state of dire emergency would he condescend to wipe his arse with either of them.
‘Thank God for that,’ said Reinhart. ‘If it had been from the Blatt, we might just as well have thrown it in the stove without more ado.’
At about the same time they received a photocopy of the strip of paper. Reinhart and Rooth – and Moreno, who had just arrived – crowded round it and established that the banana shape was unfortunately in a vertical plane, as it were, and that it was not possible to extract anything meaningful from the fragments of text. Not at the moment, at least – despite the fact that the technicians had managed to define individual letters with unexpected clarity. Nine-tenths of the reverse side seemed to be covered by a very murky black-and-white picture that was at least as impossible to interpret. Rooth maintained that it was a cross-section of a liver in an advanced state of cirrhosis, but his opinion was not shared by his colleagues.
By shortly after three o’clock they had also started to draw cautious conclusions about the typeface – even if that was not something within the range of competence of the forensic chemistry technicians, as Mulder was careful to point out. It was not one of the three or four usual faces in any case – so not Times or Geneva – which obviously enhanced the long-term possibilities of eventually establishing the origins of the scrap of paper.
At five o’clock Inspector Mulder shut up shop for the day, but nevertheless expressed a degree of optimism – scientifically restrained – with regard to the continued analysis the following day.
‘I’m sure you’re right,’ said Reinhart. ‘But what are the odds?’
‘The odds?’ wondered Mulder, slowly raising one well-trimmed eyebrow.
‘The probability of whether or not you will be able to tell me exactly what rag the bit of paper comes from before you go home tomorrow.’
Mulder lowered his eyebrow.
‘Eighty-six out of a hundred,’ he said.
‘Eighty-six?’ said Reinhart.
‘I rounded it off,’ said Mulder.
‘Wrapping paper,’ commented Reinhart later in the car, as he gave Moreno a lift home. ‘Just like at the butcher’s.’
‘But surely they don’t wrap meat up in newspaper?’ said Moreno. ‘I’ve never come across that.’
‘They used to,’ said Reinhart. ‘You’re too young, you’re just a little girl.’
I’m glad there are some people who still think that, Moreno thought as she thanked him for the lift.
He had to ring the bell three times before Mauritz Leverkuhn opened the door.
‘Good afternoon,’ said Münster. ‘It’s me again.’
Presumably it took Mauritz a few seconds to remember who the visitor was, and perhaps it was that short space of time that put him out of step somewhat from the very start.
Or perhaps it was his illness. In any case, when it had registered with him that it was the police again he didn’t react with his usual aggression. He simply stared at Münster with vacant, feverish eyes, shrugged his coat-hanger shoulders and beckoned him in.
Münster hung up his jacket on a hook in the hall and followed him into the living room. Noted that it looked bare. It seemed temporary. A sofa and two easy chairs round a low pine table. A teak-veneered bookcase with a total of four books, half a metre of videotapes and a collection of various ornaments. A television set and a music centre in black plastic. On the table was a girlie magazine and a few advertising leaflets, and the two-metre-long windowsill was livened up by a cactus five centimetres high, and a porcelain money-box in the shape of a naked woman.
‘Do you live here alone?’ Münster asked.
Mauritz had flopped down into one of the easy chairs. Despite the fact that he was obviously still unwell, he was fully dressed. White shirt and neatly pressed blue trousers. Well-worn slippers. He hesitated before answering, as if he still hadn’t made up his mind what attitude to adopt.
‘I’ve only been living here for six months,’ he said in the end. ‘We split up.’
‘Were you married?’
Mauritz shook his head with some difficulty and took a drink from the glass in front of him on the table. Something white and fizzy: Münster assumed it was some kind of vitamin drink, or something to reduce his temperature.
‘No, we just lived together. But it didn’t last.’
‘It’s not easy,’ said Münster. ‘So you’re on your own now?’
‘Yes,’ said Mauritz. ‘But I’m used to that. What do you want?’
Münster took his notebook out of his briefcase. It wasn’t necessary to sit taking notes in a situation like this, of course, but it was a habit, and he knew that it gave a sort of stability. And above all: an opportunity to think things over while he pretended to be reading or writing something.
‘We have a bit of new evidence,’ he said.
‘Really?’ said Mauritz.
‘It could well be that your mother is innocent, in fact.’
‘Innocent?’
There was nothing forced about the way he pronounced that one word. Nothing, at least, that Münster could detect. Just the natural degree of surprise and doubt that one might have expected.
‘Yes, we think she might have confessed in order to protect somebody.’
‘Protect somebody?’ said Mauritz. ‘Who?’
‘We don’t know,’ said Münster. ‘Have you any suggestions?’
Mauritz wiped his brow with his shirt sleeve.
‘No,’ he said. ‘Why should she do anything like that? I don’t understand this.’
‘If this really is the case,’ said Münster, ‘she must have known who actually killed your father, and that must have been somebody close to her, in one way or another.’
‘You don’t say?’ said Mauritz.
‘Can you think of anybody who would fit the bill?’
Mauritz coughed for a few seconds, his flabby body making the chair shake.
‘No,’ he said eventually. ‘I don’t understand what you’re getting at. She didn’t have much of a social life, as you know… No, I can’t believe this. Why should she do that?’
‘We’re far from sure,’ said Münster.
‘What’s the new evidence you referred to? That would suggest this interpretation?’
Münster studied his notebook for a few seconds before replying.
‘I can’t go into that, I’m afraid,’ he said. ‘But there are a few other things I’d like to talk to you about.’
Excessively phlegmatic, he thought. Is it the flu, or is that his normal state? Or is he putting on a show?
‘What other things?’
‘Your sister, for instance,’ said Münster. ‘Irene.’
Mauritz put down his glass with an unintentional clang.
‘What do you mean?’ he said – and now, at last, there was a trace of irritation in his voice.
‘They’ve sent us a letter from the home where she lives.’
That was a bare-faced lie, but it was the line he’d decided to take. Sometimes it was necessary to take a shortcut. He was reminded of a wise Persian saying he’d picked up somewhere: A good lie travels from Baghdad to Damascus while the truth is looking for its sandals.
Not a bad truth to bear in mind, Münster thought. With regard to short-term decisions, at least.
‘You have no right to drag her into this business,’ said Mauritz.
‘Does she know what’s happened?’ Münster asked.
Mauritz shrugged, and his aggression crumbled away.
‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘But you must leave her in peace.’
‘We’ve received a letter,’ Münster repeated.
‘I don’t understand why they should want to write to you. What do they say?’
Münster ignored the question.
‘Do you have much contact with her?’ he asked instead.
‘You can’t come into contact with Irene,’ said Mauritz. ‘She’s ill. Very ill.’
‘We’ve gathered that,’ said Münster. ‘But that wouldn’t prevent you from visiting her now and again, surely.’
Mauritz hesitated for a few seconds, and took a drink from his glass.
‘I don’t want to see her. Not the way she’s become.’
‘Wasn’t she your favourite sister in the old days?’
‘That’s nothing to do with you,’ he said, and the irritation was returning. Münster decided to back off.
‘I apologize,’ he said. ‘I realize that this must be difficult for you. It’s not a lot of fun having to sit here and ask you such questions either. But that’s my job.’
No answer.
‘When did you last visit her?’
Mauritz seemed to be considering whether or not to refuse to make any comment. He wiped his brow again and looked wearily at Münster.
‘I’m running a temperature,’ he said.
‘I know,’ said Münster.
‘I haven’t been there for a year.’
Münster made a note and thought that over.
‘Not for a year?’
‘No.’
‘Did your parents use to visit her?’
‘My mother did, I think.’
‘Your other sister, Ruth?’
‘I don’t know.’
Münster paused and studied the pale grey walls.
‘When did you split up from that woman?’ he asked eventually.
‘What?’ said Mauritz.
‘That woman you used to live with. When did she move out?’
‘I don’t understand what that has to do with it.’
‘But would you kindly answer the question even so,’ said Münster.
Mauritz closed his eyes and breathed heavily.
‘Joanna,’ he said, and opened his eyes. ‘She left me in October. She’d only been living here for a couple of weeks. We fell out, as I said.’
October, Münster thought. Everything happens in October.
‘These things happen,’ he said.
‘Yes, they do,’ said Mauritz. ‘I’m tired. I must take a pill and go to bed.’
He sneezed twice, as if to stress the point. Fished out a crumpled handkerchief and blew his nose. Münster waited.
‘I understand that you’re not in good shape,’ he said. ‘I’ll soon be leaving you in peace. But do you remember the de Grooit family or Lene Bauer?’
‘Who?’
‘Lene. She was called Gruijtsen in those days. You sometimes went on holiday together. In the sixties.’
‘Ah, Lene! Good Lord, I was only a kid then. She spent most of the time with Ruth.’
‘And that episode in the shed – no doubt you remember that?’
‘What bloody shed?’ asked Mauritz Leverkuhn.
‘When you hid there instead of going to school.’
Mauritz took two deep, wheezing breaths.
‘I haven’t a clue what you’re on about,’ he said. ‘Not a bloody clue.’
Münster checked into a hotel down by the harbour which seemed about as run-down as he felt. Showered, then dined in the restaurant in the company of two decrepit old ladies and a few members of a handball team from Oslo. Then he returned to his room and made two phone calls.
The first was to Synn and Marieke (Bart was not at home, as it was a Wednesday and hence film club at school). Marieke was being visited by a girlfriend who would be sleeping over, and hence only had time to ask him what time he’d be coming home. He spoke to his wife for one and a half minutes.
Then Moreno. It lasted nearly half an hour, and of course that said quite a lot in itself. She informed him about the new plastic carrier bag in Weyler’s Woods, and the ongoing investigation into the scrap of newspaper; but most of the time they talked about other things.
Afterwards he couldn’t really remember what. He spent an hour watching three different films on the television, then showered again and went to bed. It was only eleven o’clock, but he was still awake when the clocks struck two.
Thursday, 8 January was a comparatively fine day in Maardam. No sun, certainly, but on the other hand no rain – apart from a couple of hesitant drops just before dawn. And a good five degrees above freezing.
Quite bearable, in other words; and there was also a feeling of cautious optimism and a belief in the future about continued efforts to throw light on the Leverkuhn case.
The Leverkuhn-Van Eck-Bonger case.
Reports from the Forensic Chemistry Lab were arriving in quick succession, but today both Reinhart and Rooth were content to follow developments by telephone. They didn’t want to suck up too much to Intendent Mulder after all, and they did have other business to attend to…
The first message arrived at ten o’clock. New analyses of the typeface and paper showed that in all probability the Van Eck strip of paper had come from one of two publications.
Finanzpoost or Breuwerblatt.
It took Ewa Moreno five seconds to hit upon the possible link with the Leverkuhns.
Pixner’s. Waldemar Leverkuhn had worked – for how long was it? Ten years? – at the Pixner Brewery, and the Breuwerblatt must surely be a magazine for people connected with the beer industry. There was no reason to assume that a subscription would cease when a worker retired.
‘Leverkuhn,’ said Moreno when she, Reinhart, Rooth and Jung gathered for a run-through in Reinhart’s office. ‘It comes from the Leverkuhns, I’d bet my reputation on it!’
‘Steady on,’ said Reinhart, enveloping her in a cloud of tobacco smoke. ‘We mustn’t jump to conclusions, as they say in Hollywood.’
‘Your reputation?’ said Jung.
‘Metaphorically speaking,’ said Moreno.
After a few productive telephone calls they had discovered all they needed to know about both magazines. Finanzpoost was very much a business publication with financial analyses, stock exchange reports, tax advice and speculation tips. Circulation 125,000. Came out once a week, and was sold to subscribers and also over the counter. Number of subscribers in Maardam: over 10,000.
‘Bloody bourgeois rag,’ said Reinhart.
‘For the bastards who decide the fate of the world,’ said Rooth.
Breuwerblatt was rather a different kettle of fish. It was published only four times a year, and was a sort of trade journal for brewery workers in the whole country. Print run last year: 16,500. No over-the-counter sales. Distribution in Maardam: 1,260. One of the subscribers was Waldemar Leverkuhn.
‘One thousand two hundred and sixty!’ exclaimed Rooth. ‘How the hell can there be so many brewery workers in Maardam?’
‘How many beers do you drink a week?’ wondered Jung.
‘Ah, well, yes, if you look at it like that, of course,’ said Rooth.
It was agreed unanimously to put the bankers on the shelf for now, and concentrate instead on the much more respectable producers of beer; but before they could even start there was a knock on the door and an overweight linguist by the name of Winckelhübe – a specialist in semiotics and text analysis – entered the room. Reinhart recalled contacting Maardam University the previous evening, and welcomed Winckelhübe somewhat reluctantly. He explained the situation in broad outline, gave him a photocopy of the magazine extract, a room to himself, and a request to deliver a report as soon as he thought he had anything useful to say.
While Reinhart was busy doing this, Moreno contacted the editorial office of Breuwerblatt, which luckily was located in nearby Löhr, and after a typically efficient visit by young Krause, half an hour later they had two copies of each of the last three years’ issues lying on the table.
‘Good God!’ said Rooth. ‘This is going like clockwork. We’ve barely got time to eat.’
And it was Rooth who found the right page.
‘Here we are!’ he yelled. ‘Three bloody cheers!’
‘Altho’ a poor blind boy…’ said Reinhart. He went over to Rooth to check.
No doubt about it. The little strip of paper sticking out of Else Van Eck’s bottom in Weyler’s Woods came from the September issue of the previous year’s Breuwerblatt. Pages eleven and twelve. At the top on the left – a two-column announcement about a working environment conference in Oostwerdingen. The picture on the reverse side was part of a table and a suit belonging to the county governor who was officially opening a new brewery in Aarlach.
‘This is pretty clear,’ said Reinhart.
‘Crystal clear,’ said Moreno.
‘It’s obvious he has cirrhosis of the liver,’ said Rooth, examining the governor close up.
There followed a few seconds of silence.
‘Did you say there were twelve hundred and sixty subscribers?’ asked Jung. ‘So it doesn’t necessarily-’
‘Don’t be such a bloody prophet of doom!’ said Rooth. ‘Of course it’s from the Leverkuhns. So she’s done in the old lady Van Eck as well, I’d stake my damned… house on it.’
‘Metaphorically speaking?’ asked Moreno.
‘Literally,’ said Rooth.
Reinhart cleared his throat.
‘The evidence seems to suggest it might be from the Leverkuhns,’ he said. ‘In any case, shouldn’t we order some coffee and discuss the matter in somewhat more formal circumstances?’
‘I’m with you there,’ said Rooth.
During the coffee session another report arrived from the Forensic Chemistry Lab, and Reinhart had the pleasant task of informing Intendent Mulder that they were already dealing with the matter.
Since it was rather urgent. In the unlikely event of there being other things to attend to at the lab, there was nothing now to prevent them from getting on with them.
‘I understand,’ said Mulder, and hung up.
Reinhart did the same, lit his pipe and smiled grimly.
‘So, where were we?’ he said, looking round the table.
‘Oh, bugger!’ said Inspector Moreno.
‘There speaks a real lady,’ said Rooth.
But Moreno made no attempt to comment.
‘It’s just dawned on me,’ she said instead.
‘What has?’ said Jung.
‘I think I know how it happened,’ said Moreno.
Thursday, 8 January was a comparatively fine day in Frigge too. Before setting off Münster noted that the gale had died down during the night, and that the morning presented a pale blue non-threatening sky, and a temperature probably a few degrees above freezing.
He set out shortly after nine, weighed down by the same tiredness he had been feeling for the past few months. Like an old friend, almost. At least I have a faithful stalker, he thought cynically.
According to the directions he had been given, the Gellner Home was situated just outside the town of Kielno, only a couple of miles from Kaalbringen where he had spent a few weeks some years ago in connection with a notorious axe murder. As he sat driving through the flat countryside, he recalled those weeks in September. The idyllic little coastal town, and all the bizarre circumstances that eventually led to the capture of the killer.
And Inspector Moerk. Beate Moerk. Another female colleague he had got to know rather too well. Perhaps he ought to ask himself if this was a flaw in his character – being unable to keep certain female colleagues at the necessary professional distance?
He wondered what she was doing nowadays. Was she still in Kaalbringen? Was she still single?
And Bausen! What the devil was Chief Inspector Bausen doing now? He made up his mind to ask Van Veeteren the next time he saw him. If anybody knew, he would.
The drive took less than an hour. For some reason the Gellner Home was signposted from the motorway, and he had no trouble in finding it. He parked in a car park with space for a hundred or so cars, but there was only a handful of vehicles there at the moment. He followed a series of discreet signs and entered the reception in a low, oblong building on top of a ridge. The whole complex seemed to be spread out over a considerable area. Yellow and pale green buildings two or three storeys high. Lawns and plenty of flowerbeds and trees. Small copses, and a strip of larches and mixed deciduous trees encircling the grounds. Irregular paths, paved with stone, and frequent groups of benches round small tables. The whole place seemed attractively peaceful, but he didn’t see a single person in the open air.
I expect it’s very different in the summer, he thought.
As agreed, he first met the woman he had spoken to twice on the telephone – the same confidence-inspiring welfare officer who had informed him about Irene Leverkuhn’s illness during the first stages of the investigation back in October.
Her name was Hedda deBuuijs, and she looked about fifty-five. A short, powerfully built woman with dyed iron-grey hair and a warm smile which seemed unable to keep away from her face for more than a few seconds at a time. It was clear to Münster that the respect for her he had felt during the telephone calls was in no way precipitate or unfounded.
She gave him no new information in connection with his impending meeting with Irene Leverkuhn, merely explained that he should not expect too much, and that she would have time for a brief chat with him afterwards, if he felt that would help.
Then she rang for a nurse, and Münster was led along several of the stone paths to one of the yellow buildings at the far end of the grounds.
He didn’t really know what to expect from his meeting with Irene Leverkuhn – or indeed if he expected anything at all. In appearance she was nothing at all like her overweight brother and sister. More like her mother: slim and wiry, it seemed, under her loose-fitting pale blue hospital jacket. Slightly hunch-backed, with long, thin arms and a bird-like face. Narrow nose and pale eyes noticeably close together.
She was sitting at a table in quite a large room, painting in watercolours on a pad. Two other women were sitting at different tables busy with some kind of batik prints, as far as Münster could tell. The nurse left, and he sat down opposite Irene Leverkuhn. She glanced at him, then returned to her painting. Münster introduced himself.
‘I don’t know you,’ Irene said.
‘No,’ said Münster. ‘But perhaps you’d like to have a little chat with me even so?’
‘I don’t know you,’ she repeated.
‘Do you mind if I sit here for a while, and watch while you’re painting?’
‘I don’t know you. I know everybody here.’
Münster looked at the painting. Blue and red in big, wavy shapes: she was using too much water and the paper was buckling. It looked more or less like it did when his little daughter occupied herself with the same pastime. He noticed that the used pages in the pad looked roughly the same.
‘Do you like living here at the Gellner Home?’ he asked.
‘I live in number twelve,’ Irene said. ‘Number twelve.’
Her voice was low and totally without expression. As if she were speaking a language she didn’t understand, it struck him.
‘Number twelve?’
‘Number twelve. The other girl is called Rebecka. I’m also a girl.’
‘Do you often have visitors?’ Münster asked.
‘Liesen and Veronica live in number thirteen,’ said Irene. ‘Liesen and Veronica. Number thirteen. I live in number twelve. Rebecka also lives in number twelve. Twelve.’
Münster swallowed.
‘Do you often have visits from your family? Your mother and father, your brother and sister?’
‘I’m painting,’ said Irene. ‘Only girls live here.’
‘Ruth?’ said Münster. ‘Does she often come here?’
‘I don’t know you.’
‘Do you know who Mauritz is?’
Irene didn’t reply.
‘Mauritz Leverkuhn. Your brother.’
‘I know everybody here,’ said Irene.
‘How long is it since you came here?’ Münster asked.
‘I live in number twelve,’ said Irene.
‘Do you like sitting here, talking to me?’
‘I don’t know you.’
‘Can you tell me what your mother and father are called?’
‘We get up at eight o’clock,’ said Irene. ‘But we can lie in until nine if we want. Rebecka always stays in bed until nine.’
‘What are you called?’ Münster asked.
‘I’m called Irene. Irene’s my name.’
‘Have you any brothers and sisters?’
‘I’m painting,’ said Irene. ‘I do that every day.’
‘Your painting is beautiful,’ said Münster.
‘I paint in red and blue,’ said Irene.
Münster stayed for a while until she finished the picture. She didn’t even look at it, but simply turned to another page in the pad and started again. She never looked up to glance at him, and when he stood up to leave, she seemed unaware of his presence or his going.
Or even that he had ever been there.
‘One of the problems,’ said deBuuijs when Münster returned to her office, ‘is that she is physically well. She might even be happy. She is forty-six years old, and frankly, I can’t see her surviving in society, functioning as a normal citizen. Can you?’
‘I don’t really know…’ said Münster.
Fröken deBuuijs eyed him for a few seconds, smiling as usual.
‘I know what you’re thinking,’ she said eventually. ‘Cows and hens and pigs are also happy. Or contented, at least… until we slaughter them. But we demand a little bit more of what is called human life. Don’t we?’
‘Yes,’ said Münster. ‘I suppose we do.’
‘Irene hasn’t always been like this,’ said deBuuijs. ‘Ever since she fell ill she has retired into her own little, familiar world: but further back she didn’t feel secure there either. But in recent years, as long as she’s been here in the Gellner Home, she’s behaved as I assume she did when you spoke to her.’
‘Inside herself?’ said Münster.
‘You could put it like that. Never anywhere distant from her immediate surroundings, in any case. Neither in time nor space. But contented, as I said.’
Münster thought for a moment.
‘Is she on medication?’
DeBuuijs shook her head.
‘Not any more. Or nothing to speak of, in any case.’
‘Any kind of… treatment?’
She smiled again.
‘I thought we’d get round to this eventually,’ she said. ‘We are expected to do something, after all – right? The least we can do is to try to restore some kind of dignity… Yes, of course Irene undergoes therapy – if she didn’t, she would presumably come to a full stop one of these days. As it were.’
Münster waited.
‘We work partly on a traditional basis,’ explained deBuuijs, ‘but we also experiment to some extent. We don’t take any risks, of course, but in Irene’s case it has worked surprisingly well – or at least, that’s what our therapist says.’
‘Really?’ said Münster.
‘We have a sort of conversational therapy every day. In small groups. We do that with all our patients. And then we have a few therapists who come here and work on an individual basis. Various schools of thought and methods – we don’t want to exclude anything. Irene has been meeting a young woman by the name of Clara Vermieten for nearly a year now, and it seems to have gone well.’
‘In what way?’ Münster asked.
‘I don’t really know,’ said Hedda deBuuijs. ‘They’re having a break at the moment because Clara has just had a baby, but she intends to continue the therapy in spring.’
Münster began to wonder if she had something hidden up her sleeve, or if she was just making conversation out of pure politeness.
‘If you would like to partake, I can fix that,’ said deBuuijs after a short pause. ‘Seeing as you have come all this way.’
‘“Partake”?’
‘All the conversations are recorded on tape. I haven’t heard them, but I phoned Clara when I heard that you were coming. She has nothing against your listening to the tapes. Assuming that you don’t abuse them in any way, of course.’
‘Abuse them?’ said Münster. ‘How would I be able to abuse them?’
DeBuuijs shrugged.
‘I might have to switch off certain comments now and then,’ she said. ‘That’s part of my job. Is that okay with you?’
‘Yes,’ said Münster. ‘These things happen.’
DeBuuijs stood up.
‘I think we are on the same wavelength,’ she said. ‘Come with me, I’ll take you to her room. You can sit there for as long as you like. If you’d like a cup of coffee while you’re listening, I’ll bring you one.’
‘Yes, please,’ said Intendent Münster. ‘I could do with one.’
‘What do you mean?’ said Jung. ‘How it happened?’
‘It’s an idea that struck me,’ said Moreno. She bit her lip and hesitated for a few seconds. ‘Do you remember that day – a Thursday, I think it was – when Arnold Van Eck reported that his wife had disappeared? We drove there… Come to think of it, it was just Münster and me. Anyway, we arrived at Kolderweg to talk to Van Eck. We met fru Leverkuhn in the entrance hall. She was clearing away stuff that had belonged to Waldemar, carrying out suitcases and sacks with his old clothes. She was going to take them to the charity shop in Windemeerstraat. She was busy doing that for most of the time we were there. But of course… of course, it wasn’t just clothes she was carrying out.’
Rooth froze, with his coffee cup halfway to his mouth.
‘What the hell are you saying?’ he exclaimed. ‘Are you suggesting… are you suggesting that she was carrying out the Van Eck woman before your very eyes? Butchered and packaged? That’s the most… Who was it who said something about a blind boy a few minutes ago?’
‘It’s not possible,’ said Reinhart. ‘Or maybe that’s exactly what it is,’ he added after a few seconds. ‘Do you really believe this?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Moreno. ‘What do you all believe?’
‘Believing is something you do in church,’ said Rooth. ‘You were the one there, watching. How the hell could we know what she had in the bags?’
‘It’s a bit steep,’ said Jung. ‘It sounds incredible.’
Nobody spoke. Moreno stood up and started walking back and forth in front of the window. Reinhart watched her as he scraped out his pipe and waited. Rooth swallowed his Danish pastry and looked round for another. When he failed to find one, he sighed and shrugged.
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘As you all seem to have been struck dumb, I’ll take over the baton. Shall we go there again? For the seventy-fourth time? In any case we need to check if there’s anything left of that magazine. And see if we can find any blood-stained suitcases. Although we ought to have found those already if they exist. If it is as Moreno says, it would be the most… Christ Almighty, the most…’
He couldn’t think of what it would be. Reinhart put down his pipe and cleared his throat demonstratively.
‘Jung and Moreno,’ he said. ‘You know the way?’
‘Haven’t you left yet?’ said Rooth.
‘There’s just one thing I don’t understand,’ said Moreno after they had established that there wasn’t so much as a quarter of a square centimetre left of the Breuwerblatt’s September issue – or any sign of blood-stained suitcases – in the Leverkuhns’ flat in Kolderweg. ‘If it really was her who did it, that is.’
‘What?’ said Jung.
‘Why?’ said Moreno.
‘Why what?’
‘Yes. Why on earth would she want to kill Else Van Eck as well?’
Jung thought for three seconds.
‘Where do you think she did it?’ he said. ‘The butchery, I mean. If we ignore why for the moment.’
Moreno shook her head.
‘How should I know? The bathtub, perhaps. Yes, she hit and killed her with a frying pan, then butchered her in the bathroom – that sounds about right, don’t you think? That’s what I’d do. Afterwards you only need to rinse everything down, maybe a bit of soap or scrubbing powder. But why? Tell me why! We can’t just ignore the cause, there must be a reason.’
‘I don’t know,’ said Jung. ‘I’m just one of the blind boys.’
At a quarter to two – that same rain-free January day – there was a discreet knock on the door of Intendent Reinhart’s room.
‘Come in,’ said Reinhart.
The door opened slowly, and Winckelhübe the linguist popped his head round it.
‘Ah, yes,’ said Reinhart, looking up from his pile of papers.
‘Well, I’ve made a little analysis,’ said Winckelhübe, scratching his stomach. ‘I’m not a hundred per cent certain, but I’m prepared to bet on it being about seals. The text, that is.’
‘Seals?’ said Reinhart.
‘Yes, seals,’ said Winckelhübe.
‘Hmm,’ said Reinhart. ‘Bang on. That’s exactly what we suspected. Thank you very much. Send your invoice to the police authorities.’
Winckelhübe remained standing there, looking slightly confused.
‘Would you like a lollipop as well?’ asked Reinhart. ‘I’m afraid we’ve run out.’
It was obvious that the therapist Clara Vermieten treated several of the patients at the Gellner Home. In the bookcase of the cramped office deBuuijs showed Münster into, four of the shelves were marked with initials. It said I.L. on the top shelf, where there were several cassettes, neatly sorted into stacks of ten. Münster counted sixty-five of them. The shelves lower down contained significantly fewer.
On the tiny desk was a portrait of a dark-haired man of about thirty, a telephone and a cassette recorder.
Aha, Münster thought. I’d better get going, then.
He lifted down one of the stacks. He noted that there was a date on the spine of each cassette. 4/3, 8/3, 11/3… and so on. He took one out at random and inserted it into the cassette player. It seemed to have been rewound to the beginning, as it started with a voice he assumed was Clara Vermieten’s, stating the date on which the recording was made.
Conversation with Irene Leverkuhn, the fifteenth of April, nineteen ninety-seven.
Then a short pause.
– Irene, it’s Clara. How are you today?
– I’m well today, said Irene in the same monotonous tone of voice that he had been listening to not long ago.
– It’s good to see you again, said the therapist. I thought we could have a little chat, as we usually do.
– As we usually do, said Irene.
– Has it been raining here today?
– I don’t know, said Irene. I haven’t been out.
– It was raining when I drove here. I like rain.
– I don’t like rain, said Irene. It can make you wet.
– Would you like to lie down, as usual? Clara asked. Or would you prefer to sit?
– I’d like to lie down. I usually lie down when we talk.
– You can lie down now, then, said Clara. Do you need a blanket? Perhaps it’s a bit cold?
– It’s not cold, said Irene.
Münster pressed fast forward, then pressed play again.
– Who is that? he heard the therapist ask.
– I can’t really remember, said Irene.
– But you know his name, do you?
– I know his name, Irene confirmed.
– What’s he called? asked Clara.
– He’s called Willie.
– And who’s Willie?
– Willie is a boy in my class.
– How old are you now, Irene?
– I’m ten. I’ve got a blue dress, but it has a stain on it.
– A stain? How did that happen?
– I got a stain when I had ice cream, said Irene.
– Was that today? Clara asked.
– It was this afternoon. Not long ago.
– Is it summer?
– It’s been summer. It’s autumn now, school has started.
– What class are you in?
– I have started class four.
– What’s your class mistress called?
– I don’t have a class mistress. We have a man. He’s strict.
– What’s he called?
– He’s called Töffel.
– And where are you just now?
– Just now I’m in our room, of course. I’ve come home from school.
– What are you doing?
– Nothing.
– What are you going to do?
– I’ve got a stain on my dress, I’m going to the kitchen to wash it off.
Münster switched off again. Looked at the stacks of cassettes on the shelf and rested his head on his right hand. What on earth am I doing? he thought.
He wound fast forward, and listened for another minute. Irene was talking about the kind of paper she used to make covers for her school books, and what they’d had for school dinners.
He rewound the cassette and put it back into the case. Leaned back on the chair and looked out of the window. He suddenly shuddered as it dawned on him that what he had just listened to was a conversation taking place – when exactly? At the very beginning of the 1960s, he guessed. It was recorded less than a year ago, but in fact Irene Leverkuhn had been a long way back in her childhood – somewhere in that drab little house in Pampas that he had been looking at only a few weeks ago. That was pretty remarkable, for goodness’ sake.
He began to respect this therapist and what she was doing. He hadn’t managed to get a word of sense out of the woman who had sat at a desk painting, but here she was telling Clara Vermieten all kinds of things.
I must reassess psychoanalysis, Münster thought. It’s high time.
He looked at the clock and wondered how best to continue. Just listening to cassettes at random, one after the other, didn’t seem especially efficient, no matter how fascinating it might be. He stood up and examined the dates written on the cassette cases.
The first one was recorded just over a year ago, it seemed. On 23/11 1996. He took down the stack furthest to the right, comprising only four cassettes. The bottom one was dated 16/10, the top one 30/10.
He went back to the desk, picked up the telephone and after various complications had Hedda deBuuijs on the other end of the line.
‘Just a quick question,’ he said. ‘When did Clara Vermieten take maternity leave?’
‘Just a moment,’ said deBuuijs, and he could hear her leafing through some ledger or other.
‘The end of October,’ she said. ‘Yes, that’s when it was. She had a little girl about a week later.’
‘Thank you,’ said Münster, and hung up.
He removed the top cassette from the stack and took out the one dated 25/10. Saturday, the 25th of October. Went back to the desk chair, sat down and started listening.
It took barely ten minutes before he got there, and while he was waiting he recalled something Van Veeteren had once said. At Adenaar’s, as usual: probably one Friday afternoon, when he usually liked to speculate a bit more than usual.
‘You’ve got to get to the right person,’ the chief inspector had asserted. ‘In every case there’s one person who knows the truth – and the frustrating thing is, Intendent, that they usually don’t realize it themselves. So we have to hunt them down. Search high and low for them, and keep persevering until we find them. That’s our job, Münster!’
He recalled what Van Veeteren had said word for word. And now here he was, having found one of those people. One of those truths. If he had interpreted the evidence correctly, that is.
– Where are you now? asked Clara.
– I’m at home, said Irene.
– Whereabouts at home?
– I’m in my bed, said Irene.
– You’re in your bed. In your room? Is it night?
– It’s evening.
– Are you alone?
– Ruth is in her bed. It’s evening, but it’s late.
– But you’re not asleep?
– I’m not asleep, I’m waiting.
– What are you waiting for?
– I want it to go quickly.
– What do you want to go quickly?
– It must go quickly. Sometimes it goes quickly. It’s best then.
– You’re waiting, you say?
– It’s my turn tonight.
– Is there someone special you’re waiting for?
– His cock is so big. It’s enormous.
– His cock?
– It’s stiff and big. I can’t get it into my mouth.
– Who are you waiting for?
– It hurts, but I have to be quiet.
– How old are you, Irene?
– Ruth couldn’t keep quiet yesterday. He prefers me. He comes to me more often. It’s my turn this evening, he’ll be here soon.
– Who’s coming?
– I’ve rubbed that ointment into myself, so that it won’t hurt so much. I hope it will go quickly.
– Where are you, Irene? How old are you?
– I’m in bed. I’m trying to make my hole bigger so that there’s room for his cock. It’s so big, his cock. He’s so heavy, and his cock is so big. I have to keep quiet.
– Why do you have to keep quiet?
– I have to be quiet so that Mauritz doesn’t wake up. He’s coming now, I can hear him. I have to try to be bigger still.
– Who’s coming? Who are you waiting for?
– I can only get two fingers inside, I hope it goes quickly. His cock is terrible.
– Who’s coming?
– …
– Irene, who are you waiting for?
– …
– Who is it that has such a big cock?
– …
– Irene, tell me who’s coming.
– It’s Dad. He’s here now.
Jung was standing by Bertrandgraacht, staring at Bonger’s boat for the hundred-and-nineteenth time.
It lay there, dark and inscrutable – but all of a sudden he had the impression that it was smiling at him. A friendly and confidential smile, of the kind that even an old canal boat can summon up in gratitude for unexpected and undeserved attention being paid to it.
What? You old boat bastard, Jung thought. Are you telling me it was as simple as that? Was that really what happened?
But Bonger’s boat didn’t reply. Its telepathic powers evidently didn’t run to more than a discreet smile, so Jung turned his back on it and left. He pulled down his cap and dug his hands deeper into his coat pockets; a biting wind had blown up from the north-west, putting an end to the fraternization.
‘I’ve had an idea,’ he said when he bumped into Rooth in the canteen not long afterwards.
‘I’ve had a thousand,’ said Rooth. ‘But none of them work.’
‘I know,’ said Jung. ‘Red-headed dwarfs and all that.’
‘I’ve dropped that one,’ said Rooth. ‘Nine hundred and ninety-nine, then. What are you trying to say.’
‘Bonger,’ said Jung. ‘I think I know where he is.’
Münster remained in the room with the cassette player for a quarter of an hour after switching it off. Stared out of the window at the deserted grounds again while the jigsaw pieces inside his mind joined together, one after another. Before he stood up he tried to ring Synn, but she wasn’t at home. Of course not. He let it ring ten or so times, hoping that the answering machine would kick in, but evidently she had switched it off.
‘I love you, Synn,’ he whispered even so into the dead receiver; then he went back to Hedda deBuuijs’s office.
She was dealing with a visitor, and he had to wait for another ten minutes.
‘How did it go?’ she asked when Münster eventually sat down on her visitor chair.
For one confused second he didn’t know what to say. How had it gone?
Well? Exceedingly well? A disaster?
‘Not bad,’ he said. ‘I discovered quite a bit. But there are a few things I need some help with.’
‘I’m at your service,’ said Hedda deBuuijs.
‘Clara Vermieten,’ said Münster. ‘I need to speak to her. A telephone call would do.’
‘Let’s see,’ said deBuuijs, leafing through a couple of lists. ‘Yes, here we are. There’s something I need to follow up, so you can talk undisturbed. I’ll be back in fifteen minutes.’
She left the room. Münster dialled the number, and as he waited he worried that Clara Vermieten might have gone away on an open-ended visit. To Tahiti or Bangkok. Or the north of Norway. That would be typical.
But when she answered he immediately recognized her silky voice and her slight Nordic accent from the tape. It took a few moments for her to realize who he was, but then she recalled having given him permission to listen to the cassette recordings, via Hedda deBuuijs.
‘Forgive me,’ she said. ‘I’m being pestered by a couple of little kids. They tend to wear you down.’
‘I know how it is,’ said Münster.
He only had two questions in fact, and as he could hear the whining and whimpering quite clearly in the background, he came straight to the point.
‘Do you know about the murders of Waldemar Leverkuhn and Else Van Eck down in Maardam?’ he asked.
‘What?’ said Clara. ‘No, I don’t think so… Maardam, did you say? There are so many… What was the name again?’
‘Leverkuhn,’ said Münster.
‘Good Lord!’ said Clara. ‘Is it…?
‘Her father,’ said Münster.
Silence.
‘I didn’t know,’ said Clara after a while. ‘I don’t know… When did it happen?’
‘October,’ said Münster. ‘The same week as you had your last conversation with Irene, in fact.’
‘I was in the maternity ward from the second of November,’ said Clara. ‘Gave birth on the fifth. Good Lord, does she know about it? No, of course she doesn’t. Have you met her?’
‘Yes,’ said Münster. ‘And I’ve listened to the tapes. Several of them. Towards the end.’
Clara said nothing for a while again.
‘I understand,’ she said eventually. ‘What you must have heard. But I don’t really understand why it should be of any interest to you. Surely you don’t mean it could have something to do with what happened? With the goings-on in Maardam? Did you say murder?’
‘I’m afraid so,’ said Münster. ‘It’s all very complicated. We won’t go into that now, but I’d like to ask you something that’s very important for our investigation. I hope you can make a correct judgement – but I’m sure you can,’ he added. ‘I must say I have the deepest respect for what you have managed to achieve with Irene Leverkuhn.’
‘Thank you,’ said Clara.
‘Anyway,’ said Münster. ‘What I’m wondering is whether she – Irene, that is – can remain in that state… in those childhood experiences… even after you’ve concluded your conversation. Or do you have to return her to the present every time, as it were?’
A few seconds passed.
‘Do you understand what I’m getting at?’ Münster asked.
‘Of course,’ said Clara. ‘I was just thinking… Yes, she could well recall it, what we were talking about. For a while, at least… If somebody were to strike the right chord, so to speak.’
‘You’re sure about that?’
‘As sure as one can be. The soul isn’t a machine.’
‘Thank you,’ said Münster. ‘I now know what I need to know. But I’d like to talk to you again at some point, if that’s possible.’
He could hear her smiling as she replied.
‘You’ve got my number, Inspector. I have a brother in Maardam, incidentally.’
‘There’s just one detail left now,’ said Münster when deBuuijs returned. ‘You said that you keep a record of all visits received by the patients in this home. Could you please give me access to that information? I know I’m being a nuisance, but I promise to leave you in peace after this.’
‘No problem,’ said Hedda deBuuijs with her usual enthusiasm. ‘Would you like to follow me?’
They went into the reception area, where deBuuijs knocked on a little glass window. Before long she was handed two red ring binders which she passed on to the inspector.
‘Last year,’ she said. ‘If you need to go further back than that just knock on the glass window and tell one of the girls. There’s something I must see to now, if you’ll excuse me.’
‘Thank you,’ said Münster ‘These two will be fine. You have been very hospitable and of great help.’
‘No problem,’ said Hedda deBuuijs, leaving him again.
Münster sat down at a table and started thumbing through them.
Now, he thought. Now we shall see if everything falls into place. Or if it falls apart.
Five minutes later he knocked on the window and returned the files.
If somebody were to strike the right chord? he thought as he drove out of the car park. That’s what Clara Vermieten had said. It couldn’t be put any better.
‘What the hell do you mean?’ said Reinhart.
‘Don’t bother trying to comprehend what you don’t understand anyway,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘Tell me the situation instead!’
‘We’re nearly there,’ said Reinhart.
‘There?’
‘Listen carefully, my dear ex-chief inspector,’ said Reinhart. ‘Münster is up north, and things are going according to plan, if not better. I spoke to him on the phone half an hour ago, and he’d unearthed evidence that points clearly in a certain direction.’
‘Go on,’ said Van Veeteren.
Reinhart sighed and explained patiently what had happened for another two or three minutes until Van Veeteren interrupted him.
‘All right, that’s enough,’ he said. ‘We’ll drive there. You can tell me the rest in the car.’
‘Drive there? What the hell…?’ exclaimed Reinhart, but as he did so a warning light started blinking somewhere at the back of his mind. He thought for a moment. If there was a rule he had discovered that was worth following during the chief inspector’s time – just one single rule – it was this one.
Never ask questions when Van Veeteren makes a sudden and apparently incomprehensible decision.
Reinhart had done that a few times. At first. Queried the decision. He had always been proved wrong.
‘You can pick me up outside Adenaar’s five minutes from now,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘No, four minutes. Are you with me?’
‘Yes.’ Reinhart sighed. ‘I’m with you.’
When Münster had finished his dinner at a Chinese restaurant, he sensed once again how tired he was. He drank his usual two cups of strong black coffee as an antidote, and wondered how many years it would be before he had stomach ulcers. Five? Two?
Then he settled up, and tried to concentrate on work again.
On the case. The last act was looming now. About time too: he made a mental note to the effect that he would go to Hiller and demand a week off as soon as it was all over. Or on Monday. Two weeks, come to that.
Then he phoned Maardam from the car, to put them in the picture. He spent ten minutes relating the latest developments to Heinemann, the only person available. Heinemann concluded by urging him to be extremely careful, in his usual long-winded style.
When he had finished with Heinemann, Münster informed the local police authorities. Spoke to Inspector Malinowski, who had some difficulty in catching on at first: but he eventually seemed to have grasped the situation. He promised that everything would be on stand-by by the time he heard again from Intendent Müssner.
‘Münster,’ said Münster. ‘Not Müssner.’
‘Okay,’ said Malinowski. ‘I’ve made a note.’
He started the engine and set off. It was almost six o’clock, and darkness was beginning to settle over the deserted town. A strong wind had blown up again, but there still hadn’t been a drop of rain this long Thursday.
He parked a few minutes later. Remained seated for a while, composing himself. Then he checked he had both his gun and his mobile with him, and got out of the car.
‘There’s a film by Tarkovsky,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘His last one. The Sacrifice. That is what this is all about.’
Reinhart nodded. Then he shook his head.
‘Enlighten me,’ he said. ‘I’ve seen it, but it was several years ago.’
‘You should see Tarkovsky’s films several times, if you have the opportunity,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘There are so many layers of meaning. You don’t remember this one?’
‘Not off the top of my head.’
‘He poses a fundamental question in that film. We could put it like this: if you meet God in a dream and make him a promise, what do you do when you wake up?’
Reinhart put his pipe into his mouth.
‘I do recall that,’ he said. ‘He’s going to sacrifice his son in order to make the reality that is threatening everybody merely an illusion, isn’t that right? A world war becomes only a nightmare if he carries out that deed.’
‘Something like that,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘The question, of course, is whether we really do receive signs like that. And what happens if we ignore them. Break the agreement.’
Reinhart sat in silence for a while.
‘I never stood on the lid of a well during the whole of my childhood,’ he said.
‘That’s presumably why you’re still alive,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘How long to go?’
‘An hour,’ said Reinhart. ‘I have to say I’m still not at all sure what the devil Tarkovsky has to do with this trip. But I suspect you’re not going to tell me?’
‘You suspect correctly,’ said Van Veeteren, lighting a newly rolled cigarette. ‘That’s also part of the agreement.’
The taxi driver’s name was Paul Holt. It was Krause who had tracked him down, and Moreno met him in his yellow cab outside the Hotel Kraus. A slim man in his thirties. White shirt, tie and a neat pony-tail. Moreno sat down in the front passenger seat, and when he shook her hand and introduced himself she discerned a distinct smell of marijuana in his breath.
Ah well, she thought. He’s not going to be driving me anywhere.
‘It’s about that fare of yours a few months ago,’ she said. ‘Fru Leverkuhn in Kolderweg. How well do you remember it?’
‘Quite well,’ said Holt.
‘It wasn’t exactly yesterday,’ said Moreno.
‘No,’ said Holt.
‘You must have had hundreds of fares since then, surely?’
‘Thousands,’ said Holt. ‘But you remember the special ones. I can tell you in detail about an old man in spotted trousers I drove eight years ago, if you want me to. In detail.’
‘I understand,’ said Moreno. ‘And that trip with fru Leverkuhn – that was special, was it?’
Holt nodded.
‘In what way?’
Holt adjusted his hair ribbon and clasped his hands over the steering wheel.
‘You know that as well as I do,’ he said. ‘I mean, there were articles in all the newspapers about them. Mind you, I’d have remembered that trip in any case.’
‘Really?’
‘It was a bit unusual, and that’s the kind of thing you remember.’
‘So I gather,’ said Moreno. ‘Can you tell me where you drove to, and what she did?’
Holt wound down the side window a decimetre and lit an ordinary cigarette.
‘Well, it was more of a goods delivery than anything else. Both the back seat and the boot were full of suitcases and bags. I think I pointed out to her that there were delivery firms for jobs like that, but I’m not sure. I took it on, anyway. You do what you have to do.’
‘Where did you go?’
‘First to the charity shop in Windemeer,’ said Holt. ‘Dropped off quite a few of the bags. I waited outside while she sorted things out in the shop. Then we continued to the Central Station.’
‘The railway station?’
‘Yes, the Central Station. We carried in the rest of the stuff, I think there was a suitcase and two other bags – those big, soft-sided bags, you know the kind of thing. Yes, there were three of them. Heavy they were, as well. She locked them away in left-luggage lockers, and then we drove back to Kolderweg. She got out at the shopping centre. It was pissing down.’
Moreno thought for a while.
‘You have a good memory for details,’ she said.
He nodded, and drew on his cigarette.
‘I suppose so,’ he said. ‘But as I said, it’s not the first time I’ve thought about that trip. Once you’ve recalled something, it’s there. Sort of like a photo album. Don’t you find that as well?’
Yes, Ewa Moreno thought, after she had left the yellow taxi. He was right about that, surely? Surely there were things you never forgot, no matter how much you wished you could? That early morning four years ago, for instance, when she and Jung broke into a flat in Rozerplejn, and found a twenty-four-year-old immigrant woman with two small children in a large pool of blood on the kitchen floor. The letter informing her that she would be deported was lying on the table. She recalled that all right…
That remained in the photo album of her memory. And other scenes as well.
She checked her watch, and wondered if there was any point in driving back to the police station. Or in ringing and informing them about what Paul Holt had said. In the end she decided that it could wait until tomorrow. After all, everything seemed to confirm what they had guessed must be the facts. Marie-Louise Leverkuhn had used the Central Station as a storage depot for a few days, or a day or so at least, before finally disposing of the butchered caretaker’s wife in Weyler’s Woods. Simple and painless. A neat solution, as somebody had said.
Nevertheless, on the way home she stopped to check the buses leaving the Central Station. It fitted in. There was such a bus. Number sixteen. It ran every twenty minutes during working hours. Once an hour if you preferred to work under the cover of darkness. Nothing could have been simpler.
But she would wait until tomorrow before reporting this. Unless Intendent Münster got in touch during the evening: that would obviously present an opportunity to report then.
It could well be an advantage to have something concrete to talk about. She had begun to feel more and more clearly that she was standing with at least one foot on the wrong side of the border. That border you had to stake everything on not crossing – not least because all the roads over it were so definitely one way only. Once over it, there was no going back.
In the next life I’m going to be a lioness, Moreno thought, and made up her mind to sublimate all her desires and indeed the whole of the world by jumping into the bath and having a long soak in jujuba oil and lavender.
‘You again?’ said Mauritz Leverkuhn.
‘Me again,’ said Münster.
‘I don’t get the point of this,’ said Mauritz. ‘I’ve nothing more to talk to you about.’
‘But I have quite a lot to talk to you about,’ said Münster. ‘Are you going to let me in?’
Mauritz hesitated for a moment, then shrugged and went into the living room. Münster closed the door behind him and followed. It looked the same as it had done on his first visit. The same advertising leaflets were lying in the same place on the table, and the same glass was standing beside the easy chair in which Mauritz was now sitting.
But the television was on. A programme in which four colourfully dressed women were sitting on two sofas, laughing. Mauritz pressed a button on the remote control, and switched them off.
‘Yes, indeed,’ said Münster, ‘I have quite a lot to talk to you about. I’ve been talking to your sister this afternoon.’
‘Ruth?’
‘No, Irene.’
Mauritz made no reply, didn’t react.
‘I spent several hours at the Gellner Home, in fact,’ said Münster. ‘You’ve been lying to me.’
‘Lying?’ said Mauritz.
‘Did you not say yesterday that you hadn’t been to see her for over a year?’
Mauritz emptied his glass.
‘I forgot about that,’ he said. ‘I went to see her last autumn, I’m not sure when.’
‘Forgot?’ said Münster. ‘You were there on Saturday the 25th of October, the same day as your father was murdered.’
‘What the hell has that got to do with it?’
He still didn’t seem to have made up his mind what attitude to adopt, and Münster reckoned that his head must be spinning now. But surely he must have been expecting another visit? He must have known that Münster would return sooner or later. Or had the flu and the fever stopped his mind from working?
‘Can you tell me what you and Irene talked about last October?’
Mauritz snorted.
‘It’s not possible to talk to Irene about anything sensible. You must surely have noticed that if you’ve been visiting her?’
‘Maybe not in normal circumstances,’ said Münster. ‘But I don’t think she was in her normal state that Saturday.’
‘What the devil d’you mean by that?’
‘Do you want me to spell out what she told you?’
Mauritz shrugged.
‘Prattle on,’ he said. ‘You seem to have a screw loose. Have had all the time, come to that.’
Münster cleared his throat.
‘When you arrived at the home, she had just finished a therapy session, isn’t that right? With a certain Clara Vermieten. You saw her immediately afterwards, and then… then she began talking about things from your childhood, and that you had no idea about. Concerning your father.’
Mauritz didn’t move a muscle.
‘Is it not the case,’ said Münster, ‘that on that Saturday afternoon you discovered circumstances you knew nothing about? Circumstances which, to some extent at least, explain the occurrence of Irene’s illness? Why she became the way she is now?’
‘You’re out of your mind,’ said Mauritz.
‘And isn’t it a fact that this news affected you so deeply that to a large extent you took leave of your senses?’
‘What the hell are you sitting there babbling on about?’ said Mauritz.
Münster paused.
‘What I’m talking about,’ he said eventually, as slowly and emphatically as he could, ‘is that you discovered that your father had been sexually abusing both your sisters throughout the whole of their childhood, and that as a result you got into your car, drove down to Maardam and killed him. That’s what I’m talking about.’
Mauritz was still sitting there motionless, with his hands clasped in his lap.
‘I can understand your reaction,’ Münster added. ‘I might well have done the same if I’d been in your shoes.’
It’s possible that those were the words that made Mauritz change his tune. Or at least, to give way slightly. He sighed deeply, wiped the sweat off his brow and seemed to relax.
‘You can never prove this,’ he said. ‘You’re being ridiculous. My mother has admitted doing it. If it’s true what you say about my father, she had just as good a reason for doing it as I had. Don’t you think?’
‘Could be,’ said Münster. ‘But it wasn’t her that did it. It was you.’
‘It was her,’ said Mauritz.
Münster shook his head.
‘Incidentally, why did you visit your sister on that particular Saturday?’ he asked. ‘Was it because your girlfriend had just left you? The timescale seems to fit, at least.’
Mauritz didn’t reply, but Münster could see from his reaction that the guess was probably spot on. It was the same old story. Just as when a game of patience is about to be resolved, and the cards seem to turn up in a predictable order.
‘Shall I tell you what happened next?’ he asked.
Mauritz stood up with difficulty.
‘No, thank you,’ he said. ‘I want you to leave immediately. You are coming out with a mass of sick fantasies, and I have no intention of listening to you any longer.’
‘I thought you had just agreed that Irene really did tell you this?’ Münster said.
Mauritz stood there for a few seconds, swaying back and forth indecisively.
‘Your mother caught you in the act, didn’t she?’
He didn’t answer.
‘Did she come home while you were stabbing him, or did you meet her on the way out?’
I’d give a fortune for his thoughts just now, Münster thought. Surely he’ll give up now?
‘I suspect there are a few other things you don’t know about,’ said Münster. ‘About what happened next, that is.’
Mauritz stared at him for a few blank seconds again. Then he sat down.
‘Such as what?’ he said.
‘Fru Van Eck, for instance,’ said Münster. ‘Did you see her that night, or was it just she who saw you?’
Mauritz said nothing.
‘Have you any explanation for the murder of Else Van Eck? Did your mother tell you what happened? I’m asking because I don’t know.’
‘You know nothing,’ said Mauritz.
‘Then I’ll have to speculate,’ said Münster. ‘But it’s only of academic interest. Fru Van Eck saw you when you came to Kolderweg to kill your father. She told your mother she’d seen you a few days later: I’m not certain, but I assume she tried to use that knowledge to her own advantage. To earn money, in fact. Your mother reacted in a way she had never expected. She killed fru Van Eck.’
He paused for a few seconds, but Mauritz had no comment to make. He knew about it, Münster thought.
‘She killed the caretaker’s wife. Then she needed a few days to butcher the body and get rid of it. Then, when all that was done, she confessed to the murder of your father, so that we would stop investigating and you would go free. A cold-blooded woman, your mother. Very cold-blooded.’
‘You’re out of your mind,’ said Mauritz for the second time.
‘Obviously she couldn’t confess to the murder of Else Van Eck as well because she wouldn’t have been able to give a motive. It all fits together, you see – I think you have to admit that. She commits one murder, but confesses to another one: perhaps there is some kind of moral balance there. I think that’s the way she thought about it.’
Mauritz muttered something and scrutinized his hands. Münster watched him for a while without saying anything. Surely he’ll crack any minute now, he thought. I don’t have the strength to sit through all this again at the police station. I simply don’t have the strength.
‘I’m not sure either why she committed suicide in her cell,’ he said. ‘But it’s not difficult to sympathize with her. Perhaps it’s not difficult to understand anything of what she did. She was protecting you from being discovered as the murderer of your father, and she murdered another person in order to continue protecting you. She did a lot for your sake, herr Leverkuhn.’
‘She owed a debt.’
Münster waited, but there was no continuation.
‘A debt for what your father did to your sisters, d’you mean? For allowing it to happen?’
Mauritz suddenly clenched his fists and thumped them down on the arms of the chair.
‘Hell and damnation!’ he said. ‘He made Irene ill and she didn’t do anything to stop him! Can’t you understand that he wasn’t worth having a natural death? The bastard! I’d do it again if I could. I was prepared to accept responsibility for it as well. I was going to do so, and that’s why…’
He fell silent.
‘Why she committed suicide?’ asked Münster. ‘Because you were thinking of confessing?’
Mauritz stiffened, then seemed to crumple, and nodded weakly. Münster took a deep breath and closed his eyes. Opened them again and looked at the hunched-up figure slumped in the chair opposite him: he tried to decide what he really felt about him.
One of those losers, he thought. Yet another one.
He must have been damaged by his childhood, he as well, even if it didn’t make itself felt as dreadfully as in his beloved sister.
Those accursed, inescapable birth marks which could never be operated away. Which could never be glossed over or come to terms with.
And that accursed, pointless evil, Münster thought. Which kept on asserting itself, over and over again. Yes, he felt sorry for him. He would never have believed it even an hour ago, but he did now.
‘Are you going to arrest me now?’ said Mauritz.
‘They’re waiting for us at the police station,’ said Münster.
‘I don’t regret a thing. I’d do it again, can you understand that?’
Münster nodded. He wanted comfort and understanding now. Mün-ster recognized the situation. Very often it wasn’t confirmation of a justified crime that would provide the release the perpetrator was longing for, but words. Being able to talk about it afterwards. The ability to explain his actions face to face with another person. A person who understood, and a face that could tolerate the reflection of his desperation.
Oh yes, it had happened before.
‘It would be wrong for a bastard like him to complete his life without being punished… To get away with something like that.’
‘Let’s go now,’ said Münster. ‘We’ll take the rest down at the station.’
Mauritz stood up. Wiped the sweat off his brow again, and breathed deeply.
‘Can I just go to the kitchen and take another pill?’
Münster nodded.
He left the room, and Münster heard him dropping a tablet into a glass and then filling it with water. Thank God, he thought. It’s all over now. I can wash my hands of this awful business.
It was too late when Münster realized that the passive resignation displayed by Mauritz Leverkuhn for the past few minutes was not quite what it had seemed. And too late when he realized that the carving knife they had spent so much time looking for in October and the beginning of November had not in fact been thrown into a canal or a rubbish bin. It was in Mauritz Leverkuhn’s hand now, just as it had been during the night between the 25th and 26th of October. He discovered that fact via the corner of his eye looking over his right shoulder, felt for his pistol in its holster, but that was as far as he got. The knife blade entered his midriff from behind: he felt an agonizing stab of pain, then he fell headfirst to the floor without breaking the fall with his hands.
The pain was so acute that it paralysed him. Penetrated the whole of his body like a white-hot iron drill of agony. Neutralized his ability to move. Annihilated time and space. When it eventually began to ease, he heard Mauritz Leverkuhn leave and slam the outside door.
He turned his head, and thought the cool parquet floor felt pleasant against his cheek. Gentle and conciliatory. It’s my tiredness, he thought. This would never have happened if I hadn’t been so tired.
Before a black wave of oblivion flowed over his consciousness, he thought two more thoughts.
The first was to Synn: Good, I need never know how things would have turned out.
The second was just one word:
No.
The police station in Frigge had moved since Van Veeteren served his apprenticeship in that northern coastal town. Or rather, they had squeezed a new building into the same block and rehoused the forces of law and order in almost the same place as before. Van Veeteren didn’t think the move had improved anything. The new police station was built mainly of grey concrete and bullet-proof glass, and the duty officer was a young red-haired man with prominent ears. Not a bit like old Borkmann.
Ah well, Van Veeteren thought. At least his hearing ought to be sharp.
‘Reinhart and Van Veeteren from Maardam,’ said Reinhart. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Inspector Liebling,’ said the red-head, shaking hands.
‘Chief Inspector Van Veeteren actually used to work up here,’ said Reinhart. ‘But that was probably before you were born.’
‘Really?’ said Liebling.
‘At the dawn of recorded time,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘Late nineteenth century. Have you heard anything?’
‘You mean…?’ said Liebling, feeling a little nervously for his thin moustache.
‘He ought to be here now, for Christ’s sake,’ said Reinhart. ‘It’s nearly eight o’clock.’
‘Intendent Münster from Maardam,’ Van Veeteren explained.
‘Yes, I know,’ said Liebling. ‘Malinowski filled me in when I relieved him. I have the details here.’
He tapped away at the computer keyboard and nodded his head in acknowledgement.
‘Intendent Münster, yes. Expected to come in with a suspect… but there hasn’t been one yet. He hasn’t turned up yet, I mean.’
‘When did he contact you?’ Van Veeteren asked.
Liebling checked.
‘At 17.55,’ he said. ‘Inspector Malinowski took the call, as I said. I came on duty at half past six.’
‘And he hasn’t rung again?’ asked Reinhart.
‘No,’ said Liebling. ‘We haven’t heard anything more since then.’
‘Did he give you any instructions?’
Liebling shook his head.
‘Only that we should stand by for when he arrived with this… person. We’ve got his number, of course. His mobile.’
‘So have we,’ said Reinhart. ‘But he’s not answering.’
‘Damn and blast!’ said Van Veeteren. ‘Give us the address, and we’ll go there! This is taking too long.’
Liebling printed it out.
‘Krautzwej 28,’ he said. ‘It’s out at Gochtshuuis. Would you like me to come with you? To show you the way?’
‘Yes, come with us,’ said Van Veeteren.
‘There’s a light on in any case,’ said Reinhart ten minutes later. ‘And that’s his car.’
Van Veeteren thought for a moment.
‘Ring one more time, to make sure we don’t barge in at a vital moment,’ he said.
Reinhart took out his mobile and dialled the number. Waited for half a minute.
‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘He might have switched it off, of course. Or forgotten to charge the batteries.’
‘Batteries?’ said Van Veeteren. ‘Do you need batteries in those bloody things as well?’
Inspector Liebling cleared his throat in the back seat.
‘There’s no other car standing outside,’ he pointed out. ‘And there doesn’t seem to be a garage… Assuming the Audi belongs to your man, that is.’
‘Hmm,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘That’s right. Okay, let’s go in. Liebling, stay here in the car, in case something happens.’
‘Got you,’ said Liebling.
Reinhart and Van Veeteren approached the front door cautiously, and listened.
‘Can’t hear a thing,’ said Reinhart. ‘Apart from the bloody wind. Nothing to be seen through the window either. What shall we do? Ring the bell?’
‘Try the door first,’ said Van Veeteren.
Reinhart did as bidden. It was locked.
‘Okay, we’ll ring the bell,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘Have you got your gun?’
Reinhart nodded and took out his Grossmann. He pressed himself as close to the wall as he could and Van Veeteren rang the bell.
Nothing happened. Van Veeteren waited for ten seconds, then rang again.
Nothing.
‘Go round the house and check,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘I’ll stay here.’
It took less than half a minute for Reinhart to go round to the back, and then return.
‘It’s not possible to go round the whole building,’ he explained. ‘This house is joined onto the next one. I couldn’t see anything through the windows. I don’t think there’s anybody in.’
‘Then what the hell is Münster’s car doing here?’ asked Van Veeteren. ‘We have to go in.’
‘I suppose we must,’ said Reinhart.
Van Veeteren muttered a stream of curses while looking for a suitable means of assistance. He eventually found a stone the size of a clenched fist in the soaking wet flowerbed next to the drive. He dried it, weighed it in his hand for a second or two, then threw it at the living room window.
‘Bull’s eye,’ said Reinhart. He went up to the broken pane, removed a few pieces of glass, put his hand through the hole and opened it.
It was Van Veeteren who climbed in first, and Van Veeteren who saw him first.
‘Oh, hell!’ he said. ‘Hell, hell, hell!’
Intendent Münster was lying on his stomach on the light-coloured parquet floor, halfway out into the hall, as if he had been on his way out when he fell. His arms were stretched along the sides of his body, and on the back of his light green jumper, a few centimetres above the waistband of his trousers and to the right of his spine, was a dark red stain, slightly bigger than the palm of a man’s hand.
‘Ambulance, Reinhart! Like greased lightning!’ roared Van Veeteren. Then he leaned down over Münster and started checking his pulse.
Good God, he thought. This wasn’t part of my leave of absence agreement.
When Mauritz Leverkuhn had left his home in Frigge, he started driving more or less due south for an hour and a half. When he came to Karpatz he changed direction and continued eastwards until he came to Tilsenberg, just a few kilometres from the border. He filled his tank and turned off towards the north.
The nationwide alert was set in motion at 20.45, and when a police patrol car found his white Volvo in a lay-by off the motorway just outside Kossenaar, it was turned half past six in the morning.
Mauritz Leverkuhn was lying asleep under a blanket on the back seat, shivering, with a sky-high temperature and in a state of total exhaustion. On the floor in front of the passenger seat was a carving knife with a handle of mahogany and a blade about twenty centimetres long, covered in blood.
Leverkuhn was taken to the police station in Kossenaar, but his condition was such that he was not subjected to questioning.
Given the circumstances, it was not considered necessary for him to say anything at all.