Munster's Case

by Håkan Nesser

“Has she ever gone away like this before?”

  “Never.”

  “Have you called the hospitals? Something might have happened to her—a minor accident, it doesn’t need to be anything serious.”

  “I’ve spoken to both Rumford and Gemejnte. They knew nothing—and in any case, she would have been in touch.”

  “Had you fallen out, perhaps? Quarreled?”

  “We never quarrel.”

  “What was she wearing?” Münster asked.

  Van Eck looked confused.

  “Why do you want to know that?”

  Münster sighed.

  “Haven’t you wondered about that?” he asked. “Have any of her jackets disappeared as well? Has she taken a suitcase with her? If you haven’t checked that, perhaps you would be so kind as to do so now.”

  “Excuse me,” said Van Eck as he hurried out into the hall. They could hear him rummaging around among coat hangers and shoes for a while, and then he came back.

  “Yes,” he said, “both her hat and coat are missing, and her handbag.”

  “So,” said Moreno. “Could you please check if she’s taken a bag with her—apart from her handbag, that is.”

  It took several minutes for Van Eck to investigate, but when he returned he was in no doubt.

  “No bag,” he said. “Both the suitcase and the shopping bag are in the wardrobe as usual. And she hasn’t been down into the storeroom in the basement. And what’s more, I know she came back home after doing her shopping—she put things into the fridge and the pantry. Milk and potatoes and a few tins of stuff. And other odds and ends. Diegermann’s caviar, for instance—we always buy that, the unsmoked variety. With dill.”

  “It’s pretty good,” said Münster.

  “Have you mentioned this to any of the neighbors?” Moreno asked.

  “No,” said Van Eck, squirming in his chair.

  “Any acquaintances?”

  “No. I don’t want this to come out, I mean, if it’s nothing important.… I mean …”

  He said nothing more. Münster and Moreno exchanged glances, and she was clearly on the same wavelength—she gestured with her head, then nodded. Münster cleared his throat.

  “Well, Herr Van Eck,” he said. “I think it would be best if you came to the police station with us. We can go through it all properly and write a report.”

  Van Eck took a deep breath.

  “I agree,” he said, and it was obvious that he was not in complete control of his voice. “Can I go to the bathroom first? My stomach’s a bit upset, thanks to all this.”

  “Please do,” said Moreno.

  While they were waiting they took the opportunity of looking around the cramped two-bedroom apartment. It contained nothing that surprised them. A bedroom with an old-fashioned double bed with a teak headboard and net curtains in light blue and white. Living room with television set, glass-fronted display cupboard, and a drab three-piece sofa set in hard-wearing polyester. No books apart from a reference work in ten bright red volumes—but lots of magazines and a mass of landscape reproductions on the walls, and hand-painted porcelain vases on the bureau and tables. The kitchen where they had been sitting was barely big enough for three people: refrigerator, stove, and sink from the late fifties, by the looks of it, and the potted plants on the window ledges seemed to have grown and multiplied of their own accord. The artificial flower on the table looked much more natural. All the floors were covered in carpets of different styles, colors, and qualities, and the only thing that Münster could possibly interpret as an expression of personal taste was a stuffed giraffe’s head over the hat shelf in the hall—but that was probably because he had never seen a detached giraffe’s head before.

  Moreno shrugged, with a sigh of resignation, and they went back to the kitchen.

  “What about the neighbors?” she said. “Should I stay here and listen to whatever they have to say? I suppose it would be helpful if we could establish when she was last seen.”

  Münster nodded.

  “Yes, good thinking,” he said. “Should I send Krause or somebody to help?”

  “In an hour,” said Moreno. “Then at least I won’t need to walk back to the station.”

  She checked her watch. Van Eck’s stomach was taking its time.

  “What do you think?” she said. “I must say I haven’t a clue. Why on earth should this woman disappear?”

  “Beats me,” said Münster. “It must mean something, of course, and I have the feeling we need to take it seriously. Even if it all seems like a farce.”

  He leaned back in his chair and looked out the window. The melancholy weather was persisting. Heavy clouds were rolling in from the sea, and the pane was dappled, even though it wasn’t actually raining.

  Gloom, Münster thought. Who wouldn’t want to vanish in weather like this?

  There was the sound of the toilet flushing. Van Eck came out.

  “I’ve finished,” he said, as if he were a three-year-old at a potty-training camp.

  “Okay, then let’s go,” said Münster. “Inspector Moreno will stay behind and investigate a few things.”

  Van Eck’s lower lip started trembling, and Moreno tapped him cautiously on the shoulder.

  “This will sort itself out, don’t worry,” she said. “There’s bound to be a perfectly natural explanation.”

  Presumably, Münster thought. So much seems to be natural nowadays.

  18

  Inspector Moreno checked out of Hotel Bender at about four o’clock on Thursday afternoon. The nose-ringed receptionist tried to make her pay for a second night, since she had occupied the room after twelve noon, but she refused. For the first time in ages (or maybe the first time ever? she asked herself) she chose to use her work status for her personal gain.

  As it was only a matter of 140 guilders, perhaps she could be excused.

  “I’m a detective inspector,” she explained. “We needed the room in order to keep an eye on a certain transaction taking place in this hotel. That mission is now completed. Unless you want your name mentioned in less than flattering circumstances, I suggest you charge me for one night and no more.”

  The young man, as thin as a rake, thought for a couple of seconds.

  “I understand,” he said then. “Let’s say just the one night.”

  There was no Claus sitting outside her door when she got home, but she phoned him as soon as she had downed half a glass of wine.

  She explained, without beating around the bush or becoming emotional, that she had a demand to make. An ultimatum, if he liked. If there was going to be any possibility of repairing the relationship they used to have—and even as she spoke those words she realized that by doing so she was giving him false hope—she demanded two weeks without being disturbed.

  No telephone calls, no greetings. No damned roses.

  Two whole weeks. Fourteen days from today. Did he agree?

  He did, he announced after what seemed rather too long a silence. But only if he really could count on their meeting and discussing things properly once that time had run out.

  And that neither of them would initiate anything else during those two weeks.

  Initiate? Moreno thought. Anything else?

  She agreed to the discussion, and avoided the other demand by making no comment and hanging up.

  Then she drank the remaining wine. So there, she thought. I’ve delayed his execution by two weeks. Cowardly. But it feels good.

  She curled up in a corner of the sofa with another glass of wine and the notes she had made at Kolderweg. Adjusted the cushions and switched on the reading lamp: the light it produced was so restricted that it almost felt like sitting inside a one-man tent, a tiny bright cone in the darkness where she could hide herself away, cut off from all the surroundings that she would rather forget. Men, darkness, and so on.

  At last, she thought. Time to concentrate on the case, and pay no attention to herself or the world around her.

  Especially herself. />
  She had written down the tenants in Kolderweg 17 on the first page of her notebook. From the top down:

  3. Ruben Engel Leonore Mathisen

  2. Waldemar Leverkuhn/ Tobose Menakdise/

  Marie-Louise Leverkuhn Filippa de Booning

  1. Arnold Van Eck/Else Van Eck Empty apartment

  The facts were first and foremost that Waldemar Leverkuhn was dead. She crossed his name out and continued.

  Marie-Louise Leverkuhn? What was there to say about the widow?

  Not a lot. She had returned from the charity shop shortly after noon. Moreno had a short conversation with her, but in view of what the poor woman had already been through in terms of traumatic experiences and vigorous interviews, she restricted herself to what was absolutely necessary. Fru Leverkuhn said she had drunk coffee with Else Van Eck in the latter’s apartment on Tuesday afternoon, had then bumped into her on the stairs the following morning (when she was on her way to the police station to talk to Intendent Münster), but apart from that she had neither seen nor heard anything of the caretaker’s wife, she claimed.

  Moreno wrote a check mark after Marie-Louise Leverkuhn. And a question mark after Else Van Eck.

  Herr Van Eck had returned from the police station at about half past one in a rather pathetic state, and Moreno checked him as well.

  That left the acrobatic lovers Menakdise and de Booning on the second floor, and Herr Engel and Fröken Mathisen on the third. Viewed dispassionately these four were not yet involved in the case. Neutral observers (question mark again) and possible witnesses.

  She had started with the young couple.

  Or, rather, with Filippa de Booning, as Tobose Menakdise was studying medicine and had lectures all day. However, Fröken de Booning promised to ask him when he came home if he had seen or heard anything in connection with the caretaker’s wife that could throw some light on her disappearance. She herself had nothing to contribute. She had been at home most of Wednesday—studying for an upcoming exam on cultural anthropology—but she hadn’t seen any sign of Fru Van Eck at all.

  “Thank goodness,” she added, then bit her tongue. “Sorry, but she always pays us special attention. I take it you know why?”

  Moreno smiled and nodded. She felt a sudden ache in her inner thigh as she momentarily envisioned the redheaded and pale-skinned Filippa in her sexual wrestling match with Tobose, who—if the framed photograph in the hall was to be believed—was blacker than the blackest black.

  You two are still alive, she thought. Congratulations.

  Ruben Engel had had just as little to contribute—even less if you took the aching inner thigh into consideration. He had felt out of sorts and spent the whole of Wednesday in bed, he explained. Not just the evening. Moreno looked around and drew the provisional conclusion that it might have been due to his taking the wrong medication. If you didn’t feel too well in the morning, it presumably didn’t help if you then proceeded to swig glass after glass of claret, beer, and mulled wine for the rest of the day. Engel also seemed to be very upset about what was going on elsewhere in the building, she noted, and she had difficulty in ignoring his moaning and groaning about law and order and moral decadence. But there were obvious elements of the dirty old man in his outpourings: there was little doubt that he did his best to drag out her visit for as long as possible. She declined his offer of coffee, mulled wine, and gin, and eventually managed to extricate herself by half-promising to keep him informed about how the case was developing. In person.

  What an unpleasant old fart, she thought when she finally succeeded in leaving his flat.

  But then again, she told herself, it can’t be all that much fun being old, lonely, and smelly.

  No fun at all.

  The only possible gleam of light came from Fröken Mathisen, who Moreno thought seemed reminiscent in appearance of a cream puff pastry. Big, spongy, and rather delicious. What Mathisen had to say was perhaps nothing to write home about, but what she was quite clear about was that she had gone out at about seven o’clock on Wednesday evening, a few minutes past, if she remembered correctly, and that she was pretty sure she had heard noises coming from the caretaker’s apartment as she walked past the door. She couldn’t be more precise about what sort of sounds they were, apart from being sure that it seemed as if somebody was busy doing something in the hall—that somebody being Fru Van Eck, seeing as her husband was over at Riitmeerska, painting decorations onto porcelain ornaments.

  Moreno read through her notes on this conversation, and checked it off together with the remaining names—de Booning, Engel, and Mathisen.

  There was not much more to add. Krause had come to relieve her at about noon and spent the afternoon interrogating the neighbors. Not too complicated considering Fru Van Eck had been a well-known figure in the neighborhood.

  Sure enough, she had been to three of the shops in Kolderplejn, had left the last of them at about a quarter to six, and had been seen by at least two witnesses walking back home. So it wasn’t difficult to make a timetable for what seemed to be the crucial part of Wednesday evening:

  c. 6:00 Fru Van Eck arrives home

  c. 7:00 Fru Van Eck is still at home (in the hall)

  c. 8:00 Fru Van Eck has disappeared

  It could possibly be added that none of Krause’s many witnesses had seen the caretaker’s substantial wife after six p.m.

  Moreno contemplated her summary. Brilliant detective work! she concluded, and closed her notebook.

  Münster and Jung took it in turns with Arnold Van Eck.

  Bearing in mind developments at Kolderweg, Hiller had agreed to release both Rooth and Jung and transfer them to the Leverkuhn case, as long as Münster needed them. The serial rapist in Linzhuisen had been lying low for more than two months, and that investigation had come to a standstill.

  Despite persistent efforts, mainly by Jung—there was something about Arnold Van Eck’s character that made Münster reluctant to interrogate him and even made him angry (perhaps it was that image of the run-over kitten spooking him again)—they did not succeed in extracting much information beyond what had emerged during the conversation at the kitchen table. Their picture of the somewhat peculiar and childless marriage became a little clearer, but on the whole no progress was made regarding the actual disappearance of the wife. No matter how hard Jung tried to penetrate the relationship and the shared lives of the couple, Van Eck was unable to produce even a hint of an explanation as to why his wife would have left him voluntarily.

  If she had done so thirty or forty years ago, it would of course have been the most natural thing in the world—even Van Eck himself could see that. But now—why leave him now?

  And so, both Münster and Jung concluded, she had not done so. There must be some other explanation. And a pretty powerful one at that: Fru Van Eck was not the sort of woman you could knock over with a feather duster, as Jung put it before leaving.

  When he was alone in his office Münster listened to the whole tape again, and if he were to be honest he thought it sounded, at least in part, more like a therapeutic conversation than an interrogation.

  But be that as it may, the fact remained: Else Van Eck, five feet eleven inches tall, weight 207 pounds, sixty-five years old, had disappeared. Probably wearing a bluish gray coat, well-fitting brown ENOC shoes (size 11), various other items, and a black felt hat. She had left her home sometime between seven and eight p.m. (the precise time had been established with the aid of Constable Krause, who had informed them of Fröken Mathisen’s observations) on Wednesday evening.

  The Wanted notice was sent out as early as two o’clock, but by five o’clock, when Münster was preparing to go home, there had still been no response from that great detective, the general public.

  But perhaps it would have been overly optimistic to expect otherwise. Perhaps they had a better chance of receiving a tip following the feeler Krause had sent out into the underworld regarding Leverkuhn, but they had so far drawn a blank there as well. Th
e informant Adolf Bosch had turned up shortly after three, delivered his report, and been paid his two hundred guilders, albeit in reverse order: Bosch wasn’t born yesterday, and the result of his dodgy researches had been aptly summed up by his own words: “Not a thing, Constable Krause, not a fucking thing!”

  Before going home for the night Münster allowed himself half an hour’s introspection in his office. He locked the door. Switched off the light. Wheeled his desk chair over to the window and put his feet up onto the window ledge.

  Leaned back and contemplated the view. It was beautiful in a way, he couldn’t deny that. Beautiful and threatening. The sky hovered over the town like a slowly but inexorably darkening lead dome. The vain attempts to illuminate things from the buzzing streets below seemed merely to emphasize the indomitable nature of the darkness rather than to offer it any resistance.

  A bit like his own work. The chief inspector used to talk about that—the fact that it’s not until we start fighting evil that we begin to realize how all-embracing it is. Only when we light a candle in the darkness do we see how vast it is.

  He shook his head in an attempt to rid himself of these questionable thoughts. They were not productive—all they did was provide unnecessary nourishment to feelings of weariness and impotence, which of course had their best growing conditions at this falling, sinking time of year.

  Despite Jung’s and his own talk of wet, bare tree trunks and all the rest of it. Inner landscapes?

  Anyway, the case! he thought and closed his eyes. The case of Waldemar Leverkuhn.

  Or was it the case of Bonger? Or Else Van Eck?

  How sure was he that they were interconnected, these three strands? There was an old rule of thumb that said that if the dead bodies of two movie projectionists were discovered, it was by no means certain that the murders were connected. But if a third one was found—well, you could reasonably assume that all the movie projectionists in the world should be given special protection.

  And now here we are with three retirees. One murdered and two disappeared. Did that mean that all the retirees in the world should be given special protection?