by Håkan Nesser
“Where had you been?”
“Bossingen. Visiting a friend. We generally meet on a Saturday.… Not every week, but now and then. I’ve already told an officer this.”
“Yes, I know,” said Münster. “What time was it when you set off from Bossingen?”
“I took the twelve o’clock train. It leaves at eleven fifty-nine, and is supposed to arrive at a quarter to one. But it was nearly two.”
“And then what?”
“Then I went home and found him.”
She shrugged and fell silent. She still hadn’t raised her eyes. For a brief second Münster recalled a kitten that had been run over; he’d found it when he was ten or eleven. It was lying there, stuck to the asphalt in a pool of blood as he came cycling past, and it hadn’t raised its eyes either. It simply lay there, staring into the tall grass at the side of the road, waiting to die.
He wondered why that particular image had come back to him on this gloomy morning. It wasn’t Fru Leverkuhn who was dying after all, it was her husband who was dead.
Murdered. Seventy-two years of age and he had met his killer, a killer who had found it safest to stab his knife into him between twenty and thirty times, making sure he would never again be able to get out of bed.
At some time between half past twelve and half past two, according to the preliminary forensic report, which had been delivered shortly before Münster arrived at the police station.
A bit over the top, to be sure. One or two stabs would presumably have been enough. The loss of blood had been so great that for once it was justified to talk about bathing in his own blood. Apparently there was more on the bed and on the floor than in the man’s body.
He eyed Marie-Louise Leverkuhn and waited for a few seconds.
“And so you phoned the police straight away?”
“Yes … er, no: I went outside for a bit first.”
“Went outside? What on earth for?”
She shrugged once again.
“I don’t know. I must have been in some sort of shock, I suppose.… I think I was intending to walk to Entwick Plejn.”
“Why did you want to go to Entwick Plejn?”
“The police station. I was going to report it there … but then it dawned on me that it would be better to phone. I mean, it was late, and I supposed they would only be open there during office hours. Is that the case?”
“I think so,” said Münster. “What time did you get back?”
She thought for a moment.
“Just after half past two, I suppose.”
Münster thumbed through his papers. That seemed to be right. The call had been recorded at 02:43.
“I see here it says that the door wasn’t locked when you got home.”
“No.”
“Had somebody broken in?”
“No. He sometimes forgot to lock it … or just didn’t bother.”
“He seemed to have been drinking quite heavily.”
She made no reply. Münster hesitated for a few moments.
“Fru Leverkuhn,” he said eventually, leaning forward over the desk and trying to fish her gaze up from the floor. “There is no doubt at all that your husband was murdered. Have you any idea of who might have done it?”
“No.”
“Not the slightest suspicion? Somebody he might have fallen out with, or something of the sort?”
She shook her head ever so slightly.
“Was anything missing from the apartment? Besides the knife, that is.”
“I don’t think so.”
“No trace of the killer?”
“No.”
“Was there anything at all that you noticed, that you think might be of significance?”
A shudder ran through her body, and she raised her eyes at last.
“No, everything was the same as usual, everything.… Oh, what am I saying? I mean …”
“It’s okay, I understand,” said Münster. “It’s as you said, you’ve had a nasty shock. We’ll have a break now. I think it would be best if you have a lie down for a while. I’ll send for a lady officer to look after you.”
He closed his notebook and stood up. Beckoned Fru Leverkuhn to accompany him and opened the door for her. As she passed by close to him, he noticed her smell for the first time.
Mothballs, unless he was much mistaken.
Rooth looked very much like how Münster felt.
“Have you been at it for long?”
Rooth stirred his coffee with a pencil.
“You can say that again,” he said. “When I was a kid we used to have something called Sunday mornings. Where have they gone to?”
“No idea,” said Münster. “You’ve been there, I take it?”
“For three hours,” said Rooth. “I got there shortly after Krause. Spent an hour looking at the bloodbath, two hours interviewing the neighbors. Krause looked after the wife.”
“So I heard,” said Münster. “What did the neighbors have to say?”
“Unanimous information,” Rooth explained as he dug a sandwich out of a plastic bag on his deck. “Would you like one?”
Münster shook his head.
“Unanimous information? What the hell does that mean?”
Rooth blew his nose.
“There are only six apartments in the house. One is empty. Three—including the Leverkuhns’—are occupied by retirees. Sixty-five and up. A fat woman in her forties lives in the fourth, and a young couple in the last one. They were all at home last night and they all heard the same thing.”
“You don’t say. What?”
“The young couple screwing away. The sound insulation seems to be bad, and they don’t have the best bed in the world, apparently.”
“Three hours?” said Münster.
Rooth took a bite at his sandwich and frowned.
“Yes, and they admit it. The stallion isn’t exactly a bloody athlete either, by the looks of him. But then, he’s black, of course. It sometimes makes you wonder.…”
“Are you telling me that these old folk were lying awake listening to sexual gymnastics the entire time between eleven and two?”
“Not all the time; they dozed off now and again. There’s only one couple, by the way. Van Ecks on the ground floor. The others are on their own … Herr Engel and Fröken Mathisen.”
“I see,” said Münster, thinking that information over. “But nobody heard anything from the Leverkuhns’ apartment?”
“Not even a fly’s fart,” said Rooth, taking another bite. “Nobody noticed any visitors entering the premises, and nobody heard any suspicious sounds, apart from the screwing. But it seems that getting into the building is no problem. According to Van Eck you can open the outside door with a toothpick.”
Münster said nothing while Rooth finished off his sandwich.
“What do you think?” he asked.
Rooth yawned.
“Not a bloody thing,” he said. “I’m a bit too tired to think. I assume somebody got in, stabbed the poor bastard to death, then left. Or was sitting waiting for him when he came home. Take your pick.”
“Twenty to thirty stabs?” said Münster.
“Two would have been enough,” said Rooth. “A madman, I assume.”
Münster stood up and walked over to the window. Forced apart a couple of slats in the venetian blinds and peered out over the mist-covered town. It was nearly half past eight, but it was obvious that it was going to be one of those gray, rainy Sundays when it never became really light. One of those damp waiting rooms.
He let go of the blinds and turned around.
“Why?” he said. “Who the hell would want to stab to death a seventy-year-old man like this?”
Rooth said nothing.
“What about the weapon?”
Rooth looked up from his coffee cup.
“The only thing missing from the apartment—according to the wife, at least—is a carving knife. Meusse says it could have been the one the killer used. The length seems to be ab
out right, so that’s the assumption he’s making.”
“Hmm,” said Münster. “What are you thinking of doing now, then?”
Rooth scratched his chin.
“Going home and lying down for a bit. You’re taking over as I understand it. I’ll be back on duty tomorrow if I’m still alive. There are a few people that need to be informed, by the way. I saved that for you. I hope you’ll forgive me, but you’re better at that kind of thing than I am. Besides, you can’t make phone calls like that at any old time in the morning.”
“Thank you,” said Münster. “Who needs to be informed?”
Rooth took a scrap of paper from his inside pocket.
“A son and a daughter,” he said. “Neither of them live here in Maardam. There is another daughter, but she’s in a psychiatric hospital somewhere or other, so I suppose that can wait.”
“All right,” said Münster, accepting the addresses. “Go home and go to bed, I’ll solve this little problem.”
“Good,” said Rooth. “If you’ve cracked it by tomorrow morning you’ll get a bar of chocolate.”
“Stingy old bastard,” said Münster, lifting up the receiver.
There was no reply from either of the numbers, and he wondered if he ought to hand the job over to Krause or one of the others. In any case, it was obvious that old Fru Leverkuhn did not feel she was in a fit state to call her children. To call and tell them that somebody had just killed their father, that is, by stabbing him twenty to thirty times with the knife they had given him as a Christmas present fifteen years ago.
He could appreciate her point of view. He folded the scrap of paper and decided that this was one of those tasks he couldn’t simply delegate to somebody else. Duties, as they used to be called.
Instead he rang Synn. He explained that he would probably have to work all day, and he could hear the disappointment in her silence and the words she didn’t speak. His own disappointment was no less heartfelt, and they hung up after less than a minute.
There were few things Intendent Münster liked better than spending a day in a damp sitting room with Synn. And their children. An unplanned, rainy Sunday.
He closed his eyes and leaned back in his desk chair.
Why, he thought listlessly.
Why did somebody have to go and kill an old man in this bestial fashion?
And why did he have to have a job that so often required him to spend rainy Sundays digging out answers to questions like this, instead of being with his beloved family?
Why?
He sighed and looked at the clock. The morning had barely started.
3
He walked to Freddy’s. A gray mist hung over the canals and the deserted Sunday streets, but at least it had stopped raining for the moment. The little restaurant was in Weiskerstraat, on the corner of Langgraacht, and the entrance doors were not yet open. SUNDAYS NOON TO MIDNIGHT, it said on a yellowed piece of paper taped to the door, but he knocked on the wet glass, and after a long pause, he was allowed in. The door was opened by a powerfully built woman in her forties. She was almost as tall as he was, dressed in jeans and a flannel shirt, with a slightly grubby red shawl over her head. She was evidently busy transforming the premises into a reasonably presentable state.
Sprucing up the place.
“Elizabeth Gautiers?”
She nodded and put a pile of plastic-laminated menus down on the bar counter. Münster looked around. The lighting was very low-key—he assumed this was connected with the level of cleanliness aimed at. Otherwise it looked much the same as any other similar establishment. Dark wooden panels, drab furnishings in brown, green, and red. A cigarette machine and a television set. Another room at the back had tables with white cloths and was a bit more generously lit: a slightly more posh dining area. Voices and the clattering of pots and pans could be heard from the kitchen. It was half past ten and they were starting to prepare for lunch.
“Was it you who rang?”
Münster produced his ID and looked for a convenient place to sit.
“We can sit through there. Would you like anything?”
She pointed toward the white tablecloths and led the way through the saloon doors.
“Coffee, please,” said Münster, ignoring the fact that he had promised Synn to reduce his intake to four cups per day. This would be his third. “If it’s not too much trouble.”
It wasn’t. They sat down under the branches of a weeping fig made of cloth and plastic, and he took out his notebook.
“As I said, it’s about that group of diners you had here last night.” He checked the names. “Palinski, Bonger, Wauters, and Leverkuhn. All of them regulars, I believe? It appears Leverkuhn has been murdered.”
This was evidently news to her; her jaw dropped so far that he could hear a slight clicking noise. Münster wondered if she could possibly have false teeth—she couldn’t be more than forty-five, surely? His own age, more or less.
“Murdered?”
“No doubt about it,” said Münster, and paused.
“Er … but why?”
“We don’t know yet.”
She sat absolutely still for a few seconds. Then she removed the shawl and revealed a head of hair almost exactly the same shade of red. But not quite as grubby. A rather beautiful woman, Münster decided, somewhat to his surprise. Large, but beautiful. A good catch for the right man. She lit a cigarette.
“Robbery, I expect?”
Münster made no reply.
“Was he attacked on the way home?”
“Not exactly. Can you tell me what time he left here?”
Elizabeth Gautiers thought for a moment.
“Eleven,” she said. “Maybe a few minutes past. It had been a special occasion,” she added after a while.
“Special?”
“They got drunk. Leverkuhn fell under the table.”
“Under the table?”
She laughed.
“Yes, he really did. He dragged the tablecloth down with him, and there was a bit of a palaver. Still, we managed to stand them up and set them on their way.… You mean he was killed on the way home?”
“No,” said Münster. “In his bed. Did they have an argument, these gentlemen, or anything of the sort?”
“No more than usual.”
“Did you see how they set off for home? Did you phone for a taxi, perhaps?”
“That’s never necessary,” said Gautiers. “There are always plenty of taxis just round the corner, in Megsje Plejn. Let me see, I think two of them took a taxi—I was watching through the window. But Leverkuhn and Bonger started walking.”
Münster nodded and made a note.
“You know them pretty well, I take it?”
“I certainly do. They sit here two evenings a week, at least. Bonger and Wauters more than that—four or five times. But they are usually in the bar.…”
“How long have they been coming here?”
“Ever since I’ve been working here; that’s eight years now.”
“But yesterday they were in the restaurant?”
She stubbed out her cigarette and thought about that.
“Yes, there was something special about last night, as I said. They seemed to be celebrating something. I think they had won some money.”
Münster wrote that down.
“What makes you think that? How would they have won some money?”
“I don’t know. Soccer pools or the lottery, I expect—they usually sit here filling in coupons on Wednesday nights. They try to keep it secret for some silly reason; they don’t speak aloud about it, but you catch on even so.”
“Are you certain about this?”
She thought it over again.
“No, not certain,” she said. “But it can hardly have been anything else. They were dressed up as well. They ordered expensive wines and cognac. And they ate à la carte.… But for God’s sake, why would they want to kill Leverkuhn? Poor old guy. Was he robbed?”
Münster shook his hea
d.
“No. Murdered. Somebody stabbed him to death with a knife.”
She stared at him in astonishment.
“But who? I mean … why?”
The worst interrogations, Münster thought as he went out into the street, are the ones when the person being interviewed has nothing to say apart from repeating and confirming the questions you ask. As in this case.
“But who?”
“Why?”
Money had cropped up, and even if it was several years since Intendent Münster had flirted with Marxism, he still had the feeling that there was a crass financial side to practically everything. Especially when it had to do with his own specialty, of course. The shadowy side.
Cui bono, then? Nothing about sudden winnings had emerged from the conversation with the wife. Maybe this was a lead to be followed, although on reflection he realized that these gentlemen—or Leverkuhn at least—might well have preferred to keep quiet about such a stroke of luck, to make sure the money didn’t disappear into the housekeeping accounts or some other bottomless pit.
If they had in fact been lucky enough to pull off a win, that is. Of course it wasn’t out of the question—people did win money now and again. It had never happened to him, but no doubt that was not entirely unconnected with the fact that he very rarely gambled.
He checked his watch and decided to walk back to the police station. The clouds of mist had begun to let through some spots of rain, but it felt mild and pleasant, and after all, he was wearing an overcoat and gloves.
He wasn’t sure of what he would actually do when he got back to the station. Apart from trying to get hold of the son and daughter, of course. With a bit of luck, reports ought to have come in by now from the pathologist, Meusse, and the crime scene boys, which would no doubt provide other things that needed doing.
Moreover it was possible that Jung and Moreno had managed to get their claws into the other old gentlemen, although it was probably best not to invest too much hope in that. Both of them had looked more than acceptably weary when he had sent them out.
The best-case scenario, needless to say, would be a note on his desk to the effect that one of the oldies had broken down and confessed. Or that somebody else had, anybody. And in that case there would be nothing to stop him from going home to Synn and the kids and spending the rest of the day with the family.