Munster's Case

by Håkan Nesser

  Engel inhaled and thought it over. Scratched his nose and drank a little more mulled wine.

  “It’s not anybody living in this building,” he said in the end. “And not one of his friends. So it has to be some madman from the outside.”

  Rooth scratched at the back of his neck.

  “Do you know if he had any enemies, people who didn’t wish him well?”

  “Of course he didn’t,” said Engel. “Leverkuhn was a good man.”

  “What about his wife?”

  “A good woman,” said Engel laconically. “She moans a bit, but that’s the way they are. Are you married, Inspector?”

  “No,” said Rooth, emptying his glass. “I never got around to it.”

  “Neither did I,” said Engel. “I’ve never managed to hang on to a woman for more than three hours.”

  Rooth suspected he was dealing with a kindred spirit, but he refrained from exploiting the connection.

  “Okay,” he said instead. “Many thanks. We’ll probably be in touch again, but it’s not certain.”

  “I hope you can solve it,” said Engel. “There are too many murderers on the loose nowadays.”

  “We shall see,” said Rooth.

  Nobody seems to be taking this especially hard, he thought as he emerged into the stairwell again. If they really were looking for a madman—a lunatic dropout—one might have expected to find traces of fear and uncertainty. But not in this case, it seemed. Unless of course he chose to interpret Herr Engel’s parting words literally.

  Perhaps people in general have grown just as accustomed over the years to violent deaths and perversities as he had himself. That wouldn’t surprise me, Rooth thought somberly.

  He had hardly walked out the front door when he was accosted by a bearded man about thirty-five years old with a notebook and pen in his hand.

  “Bejman, Neuwe Blatt,” he explained. “Have you got a moment?”

  “No,” said Rooth.

  “Just a couple of questions?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “We’ve already told you all we know.”

  “But you must know something else by now, surely?”

  “Hmm,” said Rooth, looking around furtively. “Not officially.”

  Bejman leaned forward to hear better.

  “We’re looking for a redheaded dwarf.”

  “A redheaded …?”

  “Yes, but don’t write anything about that, for God’s sake. We’re not really sure yet.”

  He observed the reporter’s furrowed brow for two seconds, then hurried over the street and jumped into his car.

  I shouldn’t have said that, he thought.

  10

  The Rote Moor was characterized by stucco work, uninspiring cut-glass chandeliers, and self-assured women. Münster sat down behind an oak-paneled wing and hoped the pianist didn’t work mornings. As he sat there waiting, gazing out of the crackled windowpane overlooking Salutorget and the bustling shoppers, he began to feel for the first time that he was able to concentrate on the case.

  As usual. It always took some time before the initial feeling of distaste faded, a day or two before he managed to shake off his immediate reactions—protesting and distancing himself from the violent killing that was always the starting point, the starting gun, the opening move in every new case. Every new task.

  And the disgust. The disgust that was always there. At the start of his career—when he spent nearly all his working time in freezing cold cars on stakeouts during the night, or thanklessly shadowing suspects, or making door-to-door inquiries—he had believed the disgust would go away once he had learned how to face up to all the unpleasantness; but as the years passed he realized that this was not the case. On the contrary, the older he became the more important it seemed to have to protect himself and to keep things at arm’s length. It was only when the initial waves of disgust had begun to ebb that it made any sense to start digging deeper into the case. To become closely acquainted with the nature of the crime. Its probable background. Causes and motives.

  The very essence, as Van Veeteren used to put it.

  The pattern.

  No doubt the chief inspector had taught him some of these strategies, but not all. During the last few years—the last few cases—Van Veeteren’s disgust had been even greater than his own, he was certain of that. But perhaps that was a right that came with increased age. Age and wisdom.

  Hard to say. There was a sort of pattern in the chief inspector’s last years as well. And in his current environment among all those books. That unfathomable concept known as the determinant that Münster had never really come to grips with. Never understood what it actually meant. But perhaps it would dawn on him one of these days: time and inertia were not only the province of oblivion, but sometimes also of gradual realization. It was a fact.

  But Waldemar Leverkuhn. Forget everything else! Münster rested his head on his hands.

  A seventy-two-year-old retiree killed in his sleep. Brutally murdered by a hair-raisingly large number of stab wounds—excessive violence, as it was called. A dodgy term of course, but perhaps it was appropriate in this case.

  Why?

  For Christ’s sake, why so many stab wounds?

  A waitress in a white hat coughed discreetly, but Münster asked her to wait until his companion arrived, and she withdrew. He turned his back on the premises and instead watched two pigeons strutting back and forth on the broad window ledge while he tried to conjure up an image of Leverkuhn’s mutilated body in his mind’s eye.

  Twenty-eight stabs. What did that suggest?

  It was hardly an insoluble puzzle. Fury, of course. Raging fury. The person who had put an end to this old man had been totally out of self-control. There had been no reason to continue after four or five stabs if the aim had been simply to kill the victim. Meusse had been crystal clear on that point. The last thirty seconds—the last fifteen or twenty stabs—were an expression of something other than the urge to kill.

  Frenzy? Insanity? Revenge and retribution, perhaps? An implacable and long-standing hatred finally erupting and resolving itself?

  The latter possibility was mere speculation; but it was logical, and there was nothing to rule it out.

  The possibility that there might be a deep-seated motive, in other words.

  Münster tapped on the windowpane and the pigeons flew off, their wings numb with cold.

  But of course there was nothing to rule out Rooth’s theory either—a crazy drug addict. Nothing at all.

  You pay your money and make your choice, Münster thought.

  Still, even if Chief of Police Hiller cuts our resources to the bone, I’m going to have a stab at resolving this case.

  Good grief! What am I saying? Münster thought with a shudder. It sometimes seemed as if words acquired a life of their own, and lay in wait ready to ambush him.

  Ruth Leverkuhn turned up at ten minutes past twelve: ten minutes late, a fact to which she devoted several explanations. She had been a bit late setting off. Lots of traffic, and then she couldn’t find a parking space, neither in the square nor down at Zwille; she finally found one in Anckers Steeg and had only put money in the meter for half an hour. She hoped that would be enough.

  In view of what they had to talk about, Münster received these trivial bits of information with suppressed surprise. Observed in silence as she hung her brown coat over the back of the empty chair at their table, she made quite a show of digging cigarettes and a lighter out of her handbag, adjusted her glasses and the artificial flowers on the table.

  She was about his own age, he surmised, but a bit overweight and the worse for wear. Her brown-tinted shoulder-length hair hung like shabby and unwashed curtains around her pale face. Restlessness and insecurity surrounded her almost like body odor, and it was only when she lit a cigarette that there was a pause in her nervous chattering.

  “Have you been in touch with your mother?” Münster asked.

 
“Yes.” She nodded, inhaled deeply, and examined her fingernails. “Yes, I’ve heard what happened. I phoned her after I’d spoken to you. It’s awful, I don’t understand, it felt as if it were a dream when I got into the car and drove here … a nightmare, rather. But is it really true? That somebody killed him? Murdered him? Is it true?”

  “As far as we can tell,” said Münster.

  “But that’s absolutely … awful,” she said again, taking another drag at her cigarette. “Why?”

  “We don’t know,” said Münster. “I’d like to ask you a few questions, if you don’t mind.”

  She nodded and took another drag. The waitress appeared again and took their order: café au lait for Fröken Leverkuhn, black coffee for the intendent. He took out his notebook and put it on the table in front of him.

  “Did you have a good relationship with your father?” he asked.

  She gave a start.

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “Exactly what I said,” said Münster. “Did you have a good relationship with him?”

  “Well, yes.… He was my father after all.”

  “It does happen that children sometimes have bad relationships with their fathers,” Münster pointed out.

  She hesitated. Scratched herself quickly on the outside of her left breast and took another drag.

  “We haven’t had all that much contact lately.”

  “Lately?”

  “Since I grew up, I suppose you could say.”

  “Twenty, twenty-five years?” Münster asked.

  She made no reply.

  “Why?” Münster asked.

  “It just turned out that way.”

  “Did the same apply to your brother and sister?”

  “More or less.”

  “How often did you meet your mother and father?”

  “Just occasionally.”

  “Once a month?”

  “Once a year, more like.”

  “Once a year?”

  “Yes.… At Christmas. But not always. You might think it sounds bad, but they didn’t take any initiatives either. We simply didn’t socialize. Why should we have to observe social conventions when nobody concerned was bothered?

  “I’m a lesbian,” she added, out of the blue.

  “Really,” said Münster. “What has that to do with it?”

  “I don’t know,” said Ruth Leverkuhn. “But people talk.”

  Münster watched the pigeons, which had returned, for a while. Ruth put two spoonfuls of sugar into her cup and stirred.

  “When did you last see your father?”

  She stubbed out her cigarette and started fumbling for another one while she thought it over.

  “That would be nearly two years ago,” she said.

  “And your mother?”

  “The same. We were there for Christmas. Two years ago.”

  Münster noted it down.

  “Have you any idea what might have happened?” he asked. “Did your father have any enemies? People who have known him for a long time, who didn’t like him?”

  “No …” She moved her tongue up behind her upper lip and tried to look thoughtful. “No, I have no idea at all. Not the slightest.”

  “Any other relatives?”

  “Only Uncle Franz. He died a few years ago.”

  Münster nodded.

  “And how were things between your mother and father?”

  She shrugged.

  “They stuck together.”

  “Evidently,” said Münster. “Did they have much of a social life?”

  “No … no, hardly any at all, I should think.”

  Münster thought for a moment.

  “Do you intend to visit your mother now?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Of course. What did you think?”

  The last convention, Münster thought.

  “What do you do for work?”

  “I’m a shop assistant.”

  “In Wernice?”

  “Yes.”

  “What were you doing last Saturday evening?”

  “What do you want to know that for?”

  “What were you doing?”

  She took out a paper handkerchief and wiped her mouth.

  “I was at home.”

  “Do you live alone?”

  “No.”

  “With a girlfriend?”

  “Yes.”

  “Was she also at home last Saturday evening?”

  “No, she wasn’t, as it happens. Why are you asking about that?”

  “Do you remember what you gave your mother as a Christmas present fifteen years ago?”

  “Eh?”

  “A Christmas present,” Münster repeated. “Nineteen eighty-two.”

  “How should I …”

  “A carving knife,” said Münster. “Is that right?”

  He saw that her facial muscles were beginning to twitch here and there, and he realized there was probably not long to go before she started crying. What the hell am I doing? he thought. This job makes you a sadist.

  “Why?” she mumbled. “I don’t know what you mean. What are you getting at?”

  “Just routine,” said Münster. “Don’t take it personally. Are you staying here overnight?”

  She shook her head.

  “I don’t think so. I’ll probably go back home tonight.… Unless Mom wants me to stay with her.”

  Why should she want that? Münster thought. Then he closed his notebook and reached his hand out over the table.

  “Thank you, Fröken Leverkuhn,” he said. “I’m sorry I had to torment you at a difficult time, but we would rather like to catch your father’s murderer, as I’m sure you understand.”

  “Yes … of course.”

  She presented him with four cold fingers for half a second. Münster pushed back his chair and stood up.

  “I think you’d better hurry before your meter runs out.”

  She glanced at the clock, stuffed the cigarettes and lighter into her handbag, and got to her feet.

  “Thank you,” she said. “I hope …”

  He never learned what she hoped. Instead she tried to produce a smile, but when it refused to stick she turned on her heel and left him.

  Ah well, Münster thought as he beckoned to the waitress. One of those conversations.

  A condensed life in twenty minutes. Why was it that other people’s lives could seem so clear-cut when my own almost always seemed to evade judgment and reflection?

  He didn’t know. One of those questions.

  11

  When Marie-Louise Leverkuhn had finished crying—a comparatively short outburst of emotion that lasted only a minute—Emmeline von Post removed her arm from her friend’s shoulders and suggested a walk by the river. The weather was quite pleasant—the occasional shower was likely during the course of the day, but there were raincoats and Wellington boots available. That she could borrow.

  Fru Leverkuhn blew her nose and declined the offer. Remained seated for a while at the kitchen table—like an injured and disheveled bird, it seemed to her hostess—and she explained that she needed a little more rest before she was ready to meet her children. Her daughter Ruth was expected about lunchtime, and it wasn’t quite clear who would be expected to support whom.

  Emmeline didn’t quite understand the last bit, but kept a straight face even so and submitted to her newly widowed friend’s wishes. Decided to go for a short walk herself instead—to the post office and the shopping center to buy a few necessities, now that there would be several mouths to feed.

  And Marie-Louise could spend the time recovering as she thought best. While waiting for the children.

  Emmeline set off as soon as the breakfast dishes had been washed, shortly before eleven, and when she returned with her grocery bags three quarters of an hour later, Marie-Louise had vanished.

  The door to Mark’s room was open, so it seemed that she had made no attempt to conceal the fact that she wasn’t there. But there was no mes
sage, not in the room or anywhere else.

  Well, Emmeline thought as she unpacked her bags and allocated the goods to the larder or the refrigerator as appropriate. I expect she’s just stepped out to buy a postage stamp or something of the sort. She’ll be back soon, no doubt.

  And so she took a Swiss roll out of the freezer, switched on the coffee maker, and sat down at the kitchen table with a newspaper.

  And waited.

  She came down to the river next to the wooden cabin that served as the rowing club’s house. A few young people were busy scraping the window frames. She hesitated for a moment before setting off westward along the unpaved bridle path through the deciduous woods. She felt almost immediately the raw, cold wind blowing off the dark water, and tied her shawl more tightly around her head. Wishing she had a wool hat instead, she dug her hands down into her coat pockets and clutched the package tighter under her arm.

  She had been along this path before—two or three times in the summer together with Emmeline—and she began to picture what it was like farther on. Tried to remember if there was any one place that was better and more inaccessible than anywhere else, but couldn’t decide for sure. She would have to make the best of it, this area along the bank of the river: waterlogged, covered in brushwood with hardly a building around—but of course it could never be 100 percent foolproof, she had realized and accepted that, seeing as there had been no opportunity to burn it, which would have been the best solution.

  She had walked only a hundred yards or so when her bad knee started to act up—the typical prickling sensations and shooting pains whenever she put her right foot down into the loose sand—and it was clear that it would be risky to continue much farther.

  But in all probability it wouldn’t be necessary anyway. The riverbank was covered in alders and brushwood, and the belt of reeds extended a long way out into the water, more than 160 feet or more in places. She could hardly have asked for anything better. When she came to the first sidetrack leading inland, she paused and looked around. No sign of anyone. She turned off along the muddy path down to a jetty that ran in a sort of diamond shape around a run-down boathouse. Walked carefully along the shaky, slippery planks to where it changed direction like the apex of a triangle, and leaned against the boathouse wall while she pressed the air out of the package and tied the string tightly. Listened attentively, but there was no sound save for the distant, mournful cries of birds and the hum of traffic a long way off on the motorway. No sign of any people. No boats on the river. She took a deep breath and hurled the package out into the reeds. Heard the rattling noise as the brittle stalks snapped, and the dull plop when it dropped into the water.