Munster's Case

by Håkan Nesser

  “Good thinking,” said Moreno. “But how are we going to find him?”

  Münster thought for a moment.

  “If that’s the answer,” he said, “we’ll never find him.”

  “Unless he starts talking out of turn,” said Jung. “And somebody is kind enough to tip us off.”

  Münster sat in silence for a few seconds again, eyeing his colleagues one after the other.

  “Do you really think this is what happened?”

  Jung shrugged and yawned. Moreno looked doubtful.

  “It’s very possible,” she said. “Considering we don’t have the slightest hint of a motive, that could well be the answer. And nothing had been stolen from the place apart from that knife.”

  “You don’t need to have a motive for killing anyone nowadays,” said Jung. “All that’s needed is for you to feel a bit annoyed, or to think you’ve been slighted for one reason or another, and that gives you the green light to go ahead and snuff someone out. Would you like a few examples?”

  “No thank you,” said Münster. “Motives are beginning to be a bit old-fashioned.”

  He leaned back and folded his hands behind his head. Moreno’s digital wristwatch produced a mournful chirping sound.

  “Five o’clock,” she said. “Was there anything else?”

  Münster leafed through the documents on his desk.

  “I don’t think so.… Hang on. Did any of the old boys say anything about having won some money?”

  Moreno looked at Jung and shook her head.

  “No,” said Jung. “Why?”

  “Well, the people at Freddy’s had the impression that they were celebrating something last night, but I suppose they were just guessing. This fourth character … Bonger. We’d better make sure we find him, no matter what?”

  Jung nodded.

  “I’ll check in on him again on the way home. Otherwise it’ll be tomorrow. He doesn’t have a telephone, we’d have to contact him via his neighbor. I can’t believe there are still people like that about.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Moreno.

  “People without a telephone. In this day and age.”

  Münster stood up.

  “All right,” he said. “Thank you for coming in on a Sunday. Let’s cross our fingers and hope that somebody confesses tomorrow morning.”

  “Yes, let’s hope,” said Jung. “But I doubt somebody who bumps off a poor old man in that manner is going to start being bothered by pangs of conscience. Let’s face it, this is not a very pleasant story.”

  “Very nasty,” said Moreno. “As usual.”

  On the way home Münster called in at the scene of the crime in Kolderweg. As he was the one in charge of the investigation, for the moment at least, it was of course about time he did so. He stayed for ten minutes and wandered around the little three-roomed flat. It looked more or less as he had imagined it. Quite run-down, but comparatively neat and tidy. A hodgepodge of bad taste on the walls, furniture of the cheap fifties and sixties style. Separate bedrooms, bookcases with no books, and an awful lot of dried blood in and around Leverkuhn’s sagging bed. The body had been taken away, as had the bed linen: Münster was grateful for that. It would have been more than enough to examine the photographs during the course of the morning.

  And of course, what Moreno had said described the scene of the crime exactly.

  Very nasty.

  When he finally came home he could see that Synn had been crying.

  “What’s the matter?” he asked, hugging her as gently as if she were made of dreams.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I just don’t want life to be like this. We get up in the mornings and get ready for work, and send the children off to school. We see each other again after it’s dark, we eat, and we go to sleep. It’s the same all week long.… I know it has to be like this right now, but what if we were to drop dead in a month? Or six months? It shouldn’t be like this. There ought to be time to live as well.”

  “Just live?” Münster said.

  “Just live,” said Synn. “Okay, I know there are people who are worse off than we are.… Ninety-five percent of humanity, to be exact.”

  “Ninety-eight,” said Münster.

  He stroked her tenderly over the nape of her neck and down her back.

  “Should we go and watch the children sleep?”

  “They’re not asleep yet,” said Synn.

  “Then we’ll just have to be patient,” said Münster.

  6

  It was only when he entered the police station on Monday morning that Münster remembered he hadn’t yet contacted the Leverkuhns’ children. One and a half days had passed since the murder; there was no further time to be lost. Luckily the media had not published any names in their restrained coverage of the case, so he hoped that he would still be the first to break it to them.

  It was bad enough to have to be the bearer of bad news. Even worse if the bereaved had already been informed—a position Münster had found himself in several times before.

  In order to avoid any further delay he instructed Krause to make preliminary contact—not to pass on the message itself, but to prepare the way so that Münster himself could give them the gloomy facts.

  After all, he had already accepted the fact that it was his duty to do so.

  Half an hour later he had the first of them on the line. Ruth Leverkuhn. Forty-four years old, lives up north in Wernice, more than sixty miles from Maardam. Despite the distance involved, as soon as Münster had explained that her father had been the victim of an accident, they arranged a private meeting: Ruth Leverkuhn preferred not to discuss serious matters on the telephone.

  But she was told that Waldemar Leverkuhn was dead, of course.

  And that Münster was a CID officer.

  So, the Rote Moor Café in Salutorget it was. Since, for whatever reason, she preferred such a location rather than the police station.

  And at twelve noon. Since, for some other unknown reason, she preferred to talk to the police before visiting her mother in Bossingen.

  The son, Mauritz Leverkuhn, born 1958, rang barely ten minutes later. He lived even farther north—in Frigge—and Münster didn’t beat around the bush. He got straight to the point.

  Your father is dead.

  During the night between Saturday and Sunday. In his bed. Murdered, it seemed. Stabbed with a knife.

  It “seemed,” Münster thought as he listened to the silence at the other end of the line. Talk about cautious prognoses.…

  Then he heard—or at least, thought he could hear—the usual muted signs of shock in Mauritz Leverkuhn’s confused questions.

  “What time, did you say?”

  “Where is my mother?”

  “Where’s the body now?”

  “What was he wearing?”

  Münster filled him in on these points and more besides. And made sure he had Emmeline von Post’s telephone number so that he could contact his mother. Eventually he expressed his condolences and arranged a meeting on Tuesday morning.

  The son’s intention was to set off as soon as possible—no later than this evening—in order to be by his mother’s side.

  As far as the eldest daughter, Irene Leverkuhn, was concerned, Münster had already spoken to the Gellner Home, where she had been a resident for the last four years. A confidence-inspiring welfare officer had listened and understood, and assured Münster that she personally would inform her patient about her father’s untimely death.

  In the most appropriate way, and as considerately as possible.

  Irene Leverkuhn was in a frail state.

  Münster decided to postpone a conversation with this daughter indefinitely. The welfare officer had indicated that in all probability it would not be productive, and there were things to do that were no doubt more important.

  He sat for a while wondering about what they might be. What more important things? There was still half an hour to go before the update meeting, and for want of
anything better to do he took another look at the forensic crime scene report, to which a few more pages had been added during the night. He also phoned and spoke to the pathologists Meusse and Mulder at the lab, but neither of them was able to cast much light on the darkness. None at all, to be more precise.

  But there were still a few analyses left to do, so there was hope.

  It would be silly to throw in the towel too soon, Mulder pointed out, as was his wont. These things take time.

  Jung did not have a headache this Monday morning.

  But he was tired. Sophie had come home quite late on Sunday evening after being away for nearly two whole days. Over tea and sandwiches and a bit of intimate small talk in the kitchen, it emerged that she had taken the opportunity of making her sexual debut on Saturday night.

  About time, too: she was sixteen, well on the way to seventeen, and most of her girlfriends were way ahead of her in that respect. The unfortunate part was that she was not especially interested in the young boy in question—a certain Fritz Kümmerle, a promising central midfielder with a shot like Beckenbauer’s and a future staked out on soccer pitches all over Europe and indeed the world—and that they had made no attempt to take precautions.

  Plus, she had been somewhat intoxicated at the time. Due to red wine and other substances as well.

  Obviously it was mainly up to Maureen to look after her sobbing daughter, but even so Jung was aware—with a dubious feeling of satisfaction as well as of being an outsider—of the trust displayed in him simply by the fact that he was allowed to be present during these discussions. To be sure, he had known Sophie for four or five years by now, but nevertheless, he was no more than a plastic father.

  Perhaps it was not irrelevant that her real father was a piece of shit.

  Anyhow, neither Jung nor Maureen nor the unhappy debutante had gone to bed before half past one.

  So he was a little on the tired side.

  Bonger’s boat didn’t seem to be in any better condition. Just as run-down as it had looked the previous day, Jung decided. He tugged at the bell rope several times without success, and looked around to see if there was any sign of life elsewhere on the dark canal. The woman on the boat next door seemed to be at home: a thin, gray wisp of smoke was floating up out of the chimney, and the bicycle was locked to the railings under the lime tree, in the same place that she had parked it yesterday. Jung walked over to her boat, announced his presence with a cough, and tapped his bunch of keys on the black-painted rail that ran around the whole boat. After a few seconds she appeared in the narrow doorway. She was wearing a thick wool sweater that reached down as far as her knees, high rubber boots, and a beret. In one hand she was holding the gutted body of an animal—a hare, as far as Jung could tell. In her other hand, a carving knife.

  “Sorry to disturb you,” said Jung.

  “Huh,” said the woman. “It’s you again.”

  “Yes,” said Jung. “Perhaps I should explain myself.… I’m a police officer. Detective Inspector Jung. I’m looking for Herr Bonger, as I said.”

  She nodded grumpily, and suddenly seemed to become aware of what she was holding in her hands.

  “Stew,” she explained. “Andres bumped it off yesterday.… My son, that is.”

  She held up the carcass, and Jung tried to give the impression of looking at it with the eye of a connoisseur.

  “Very nice,” he said. “We all end up like that eventually.… But this Bonger—you don’t happen to have seen him, I suppose?”

  She shook her head.

  “Not since Saturday.”

  “He didn’t come home last night, then?”

  “I doubt it.”

  She came up on deck and peered at Bonger’s boat.

  “No lights, no smoke,” she said. “That means he’s not in, as I explained yesterday. Anything else you want to know?”

  “Does he go away often?”

  She shrugged.

  “No,” she said. “No, he isn’t away often for more than an hour or two. Why do you want to find him?”

  “Routine inquiries,” said Jung.

  “And what the hell is that supposed to mean?” said the woman. “I’m not an idiot, you know.”

  “We just want to ask him a few questions.”

  “What about?”

  “You don’t seem to be too fond of the police,” said Jung.

  “Too right I’m not,” said the woman.

  Jung thought for a moment.

  “It’s about a death,” he explained. “One of Bonger’s friends has been murdered. We think Bonger might have some information that could be useful for us.”

  “Murder?” said the woman.

  “Yes,” said Jung. “Pretty brutal. With something like that.” He pointed at the carving knife. The woman frowned ever so slightly.

  “What’s your name, by the way?” Jung asked, taking a notebook out of his pocket.

  “Jümpers,” said the woman reluctantly. “Elizabeth Jümpers. And when is this murder supposed to have taken place?”

  “On Saturday night,” said Jung. “In fact Herr Bonger is one of the last people to have seen the victim. Waldemar Leverkuhn. Perhaps you know him?”

  “Leverkuhn? No … I’ve never heard of him.”

  “Do you know of any relatives or friends he might be staying with? Bonger, that is.”

  She thought for a moment, then shook her head slowly.

  “No, I don’t think so. He’s a pretty solitary character.”

  “Does he ever have visitors on his boat?”

  “Never. At least, I’ve never seen any.”

  Jung sighed.

  “Ah well,” he said. “I expect he’ll turn up. If you see him, could you please tell him we’ve been looking for him. It would be good if he could contact us as soon as possible. He can ring at any time.”

  He handed her a business card. The woman put the knife down, took the card, and put it in her back pocket.

  “Anyway, thank you for your help,” said Jung.

  “You’re welcome,” said the woman. “I’ll tell him.”

  Jung hesitated.

  “Is it a good life, living on a boat like this?” he asked.

  The woman snorted.

  “Is it a good life, being a detective inspector like you?” she asked.

  Jung gave her a quarter of a smile and took his leave.

  “Good luck with the stew!” he shouted as he passed by Bonger’s boat, but she had already gone inside.

  Not an easy person to make contact with, he thought as he clambered into his car.

  But with a heart of gold under that rough exterior, perhaps?

  Being a detective inspector like you?

  A good question, no doubt about that. He decided not to consider it in any detail. Checked his watch instead, and realized he would be hard-pressed to get to the update meeting in time.

  7

  It was in fact true that Emmeline von Post had been a colleague of Marie-Louise Leverkuhn’s for twenty-five years.

  And it was also true that they had known each other for nearly fifty. That they had never really lost contact since they left Boring’s Commercial and Office College at the end of the 1940s. Despite getting married, having children, moving house, and all the other things.

  But it was hardly true to say that Fru von Post counted Fru Leverkuhn among her very best friends—something the latter might well have claimed, had she been asked. What was true is that since Edward von Post died of cancer four years ago, the two women had socialized much more than they had previously done: they met two Saturdays every month, alternating between Kolderweg in the town center, and the terraced house out in Bossingen—but in reality, well … something vital was missing. And Emmeline von Post knew exactly what it was. That important little ingredient, that dimension of trust, open-heartedness, and jokey exchanges; that simple and yet difficult element that she so eagerly and painlessly developed when she was with two or three other close friends, all of them in
the prime of life it has to be said. But this … this dimension was simply never present when she was together with Marie-Louise Leverkuhn.

  That was simply the way it was. Unfortunately and regrettably. It was difficult to say why, but there was no doubt that there was a limit to their closeness—she had thought about it many times—an invisible line that they were careful not to cross. On the few occasions when she happened to cross it even so, she could immediately see the effect by her friend’s reaction. A reserved shaking of the head. Pursed lips, raised shoulders … even a negative silence. When she thought about it she realized that it had been that way from the very beginning. It was not something that had developed over the years, and perhaps the fact of the matter was (Emmeline used to think in moments of philosophical perspicacity) that the relationship between people was established and written in stone during the very first contacts, the earliest meetings, and there was not much one could do about it afterward.

  Just as it said in that American detective novel she had received from her book club a year or so ago.

  Not that she herself was especially keen to pass on intimate details about her husband and children and their private life, of course not; but nevertheless, most people seemed to be rather more willing than Marie-Louise Leverkuhn to lift the veil of secrecy, even if only a tiny little bit.

  However, that’s the way it was. Marie-Louise simply wasn’t the confiding type, and of course there were other worthwhile aspects of life: they had no difficulty in talking about their aches and pains, their medication, and their recipes for rhubarb pie. About colleagues, television personalities, and the price of vegetables; but their private lives remained exactly that: private.

  The fact that Emmeline von Post had rushed over to help out in a catastrophic situation like this was naturally due to the fact that there was no one else. She knew that. To Marie-Louise Leverkuhn, just as she had explained to the police, she was the faithful friend who would do whatever she could to help, no matter what the weather.

  The loyal and only friend.