Munster's Case

by Håkan Nesser

  Her father had been murdered in his bed.

  Her mother had confessed to doing it.

  Wasn’t that enough?

  Was it really necessary to pester the survivors, and didn’t the police have more important things to do?

  Moreno had to admit she could understand Leverkuhn’s point of view.

  The visit didn’t turn out to be especially successful.

  Ruth Leverkuhn received her in a loose-fitting wine-red tracksuit with the text PUP for the cup in flaking yellow letters over her chest. She had a wet towel wound around her head, dripping water on her bosom and shoulders, and on her feet were wrinkled, thick skiing socks. On the whole she was not a pretty sight.

  “Migraine,” she explained. “I’m in the middle of an attack. Can we keep this as short as possible?”

  “I realize this must be very traumatic for you,” Moreno began, “but there are a few things we’d like to shed some light on.”

  “Really?” said Leverkuhn. “What exactly?”

  She led the way into a living room with low, soft sofas, Oriental fans, and a mass of brightly colored fluffy cushions. The apartment was on the fifth floor, and the picture window gave a splendid view over the flat landscape with scattered clumps of bare deciduous trees, church towers, and arrow-straight canals. The sky was covered in rain clouds, and mist was starting to roll in from the sea like a shroud. Moreno stood for a few moments taking in the scenery before sinking down among the fluff.

  “What a lovely view you have!” she said. “It must be very pleasant to sit here, watching dusk fall.”

  But Leverkuhn was not particularly interested in beauty today. She muttered something and sat down opposite Moreno on the other side of the low cane table.

  “What do you want to know?” she asked after a few seconds of silence.

  Moreno took a deep breath.

  “Were you surprised?” she said.

  “What?” said Leverkuhn.

  “When you heard she had confessed. Did you get another shock, or had you suspected that it was your mother who was guilty?”

  Leverkuhn adjusted the wet towel over her forehead.

  “I don’t see the point of this,” she said. “The fact is that my mother has killed my father. Isn’t that enough? Why do you want details? Why do you want to drag us even further through the mud? Can’t you understand how it feels?”

  Her voice sounded unsteady. Moreno guessed that it was to do with the migraine medicine, and began wondering once again why she was sitting there. Using her job as cover for her own therapy was not especially attractive, now that she came to think about it.

  “So you weren’t surprised when your mother confessed?” she said.

  No reply.

  “And then we have the other two strange occurrences,” Moreno continued. “Herr Bonger and Fru Van Eck. Did you know them?”

  Leverkuhn shook her head.

  “But you have met them?”

  “I suppose I must have seen the Van Ecks once or twice. But I’ve no idea who Bonger is.”

  “One of your father’s friends,” said Moreno.

  “Did he have any friends?”

  It slipped out before she could stop it. Moreno could see clearly that she wanted to bite her tongue off.

  “What do you mean by that?”

  Leverkuhn shrugged.

  “Nothing.”

  “Was your father a solitary person?”

  No reply.

  “You don’t know much about his habits in recent years, then? Friends and such?”

  “No.”

  “Do you know if they socialized with the Van Ecks occasionally? Your father and mother, that is? Either of them?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “How often did you visit your parents?”

  “Hardly ever. You know that already. We don’t have a good relationship.”

  “So you didn’t like your father?”

  But now Ruth Leverkuhn had had enough.

  “I … I’m not going to answer any more questions,” she said. “You have no right to come poking around into my private life. Don’t you think we’ve suffered enough from all this?”

  “Yes,” said Moreno. “Of course I do. But no matter how awful it might seem, we have to try to find our way to the truth. That’s our job.”

  That sounded a bit pompous—find our way to the truth!—and she wondered where that formulation could have come from. A few moments passed before Leverkuhn answered.

  “The truth?” she said, slowly and thoughtfully, turning her head and apparently directing her attention at the sky and the landscape. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. Why should anybody go digging after something which is ugly and repulsive? If the truth were a beautiful pearl, then yes, I could understand why anyone should want to go hunting after it; but as it is … well, why not let it lie hidden, if somebody is managing to hide it so well?”

  Those were momentous words coming from such a sloppy woman, Moreno thought, and as she drove back home she wondered what they could mean.

  The ugly snout of the truth?

  Was it merely a general reflection about a family with bad internal relationships, and the feeling of hopelessness after the final catastrophe? Or was it something more than that?

  Something more tangible and concrete?

  As dusk was falling and she drove into Maardam over the Fourth of November Bridge and along Zwille, she still hadn’t found an answer to these questions.

  Apart from an irritating feeling that she was absolutely sure about.

  There was more to this story than had come to light. A lot more. And therefore good reason to continue with these efforts to penetrate the darkness.

  Even if the pearls were black and cracked.

  26

  The trial of Marie-Louise Leverkuhn dragged on over three long afternoons in the presence of dwindling audiences in the public gallery. The only person who seemed to have any doubts about her guilt—going by the grim expressions on his face—was Judge Hart, who occasionally intervened with questions that neither the prosecutor nor defense counsel seemed to have bothered with.

  Nor had she, come to that.

  Otherwise, it seemed that the line of truth was going to be drawn somewhere in the gray area between murder and manslaughter. In accordance with a series of points difficult to pin down, such as reasonable doubt, temporary state of unsound mind, degree of legal competency, time for reflection in prevailing circumstances—and so on.

  She found these questions pointless. Instead of listening while they were being argued about, she often sat observing members of the jury. These unimpeachable men and women holding her fate in their hands—or imagining that they did so, at least. For some reason it was one of the two women who captured her interest. A dark-haired woman aged sixty-something—not much younger than she was. Slim and wiry, but with a certain stature that was noticeable mainly in the way she held her head: she hardly ever looked at the person who happened to be speaking—usually the prosecutor or the tiresome Bachmann—but seemed to be concentrating on something else. Something inside herself.

  Or more elevated. I could entrust myself to a woman like that, thought Marie-Louise Leverkuhn.

  The prosecution had called three witnesses in all, the defense one. She was never quite sure precisely what role the prosecutor’s henchmen were supposed to be playing: if she understood it rightly, they comprised a doctor, a pathologist, and some kind of police officer. Their evidence merely confirmed what was claimed to be known already, and perhaps that was the point: Judge Hart asked a few questions that could have opened up new avenues of thought, but nobody seemed to be particularly interested. Nothing was really at stake, and the ventilation in the rather chilly room left a lot to be desired—best to get it all over with as painlessly as possible, everybody seemed to be agreed on that. Nevertheless, interrogation of the witnesses for the prosecution took almost two hours.

  Emmeline von Post, the defense’s so
-called character witness, took up considerably less time (probably about a quarter of an hour; she didn’t check). All in all it was a rather painful episode. But nothing else could reasonably have been expected. Bachmann hadn’t told her that he intended to put Emmeline on the stand—if he had, she would have prevented him. No doubt about that.

  After Emmeline von Post had come to the stand, confirmed who she was, and sworn the oath, barely half a minute passed before she burst out crying. Judge Hart adjourned proceedings while a female usher hurried up to administer a carafe of water, some tissues, and a dose of humane sympathy.

  Bachmann then managed to continue for a few minutes before she collapsed in tears again. Another pause ensued, with snuffling and more tissues, and when the poor woman finally seemed to be more or less composed, Bachmann took his courage in both hands and asked her the crucial question without beating around the bush.

  “You have known the accused almost all your life, Fru von Post. Given your familiarity with her character, do you consider it credible that she would murder her husband with premeditation in the way that the prosecution has tried to suggest?”

  Emmeline von Post (who naturally had no idea of what the prosecution had tried to suggest, as she had not had the right to be present in court until it was her turn) sobbed several times. Then she replied in a comparatively steady voice: “She would never hurt a fly. I can swear to that.”

  Bachmann had no more questions.

  Nor did Prosecutor Grootner.

  Not even Judge Hart.

  The final pleas were made on Friday, a performance confusingly similar to the opening session on Tuesday. When it was over Hart declared the proceedings closed. Sentence would be passed the following Thursday: until then Marie-Louise Leverkuhn would be remanded as had been the case since her arrest thirty-nine days ago—in cell number 12 in the women’s section of the jail in the Maardam police station.

  As she sat in the car taking her back to her cell she felt more relieved than anything else. To the best of her knowledge nothing had gone wrong during the trial (apart from the Emmeline von Post farce, but that had nothing to do with the main business), and all that remained now was a few days of waiting.

  No more decisions. No questions. No lies.

  It rained almost all weekend. Somewhere below her little window was a corrugated iron roof, on which the variations in the rain were just as clear as the notes from a musical instrument. She liked it: lying stretched out on the bed with the green blanket pulled up to her chin and the window slightly open.… Yes, there was something deeply soothing about it. Something inside her was finally able to rest.

  Something had come home after a long, long journey.

  It was remarkable.

  The chaplain came to see her as usual. A short visit on both Saturday and Sunday. He sat there in his corner half asleep, as if keeping watch at a deathbed. She liked the idea of that as well.

  Bachmann had threatened to put in an appearance and talk her through the situation, but she realized that it was no more than an empty promise typical of his profession. He had looked very depressed during the final days of the trial, and she had not encouraged him to come to visit her. And so he didn’t.

  Ruth phoned on Friday evening and Mauritz did the same early on Saturday morning, but it was Sunday afternoon before Ruth’s large body flopped down on the chair.

  “Mom,” she said after the initial silence.

  “Yes, what do you want?” said Marie-Louise Leverkuhn.

  That was a question her daughter was unable to answer, and not much more was said. After twenty minutes she vented a deep sigh and left her mother to her own devices.

  It felt almost like a sort of victory when the door was locked behind her, Marie-Louise thought. It was strange that she should think that, of course; but that’s the way it was.

  Things had turned out the way they had, and that’s the way it was. Only a few minutes after Ruth had left, she fell asleep and had a dream.

  She was on a train. It was racing through flat, monotonous countryside, at such high speed that it was almost impossible to make out anything that flashed past the dirty, scratched window.

  Even so, she knew that what was out there was life. Her own life. Flashing past at high speed. She was sitting with her back to the engine, and it soon became clear that she was getting younger the farther they traveled. The same applied to her fellow passengers. The young woman sitting opposite her was suddenly no more than a little girl, and the elderly man in the corner with the shaking hands and bewildered eyes was soon transformed into a smart, blue-eyed young man in uniform.

  A journey backward through life. On and on it went until everyone was only a small child, and when someone in the carriage became so small that he or she looked like a newborn baby, the train stopped at a station. A few people in long, white coats with stethoscopes around their necks came on board and picked up the pink little lumps from the dirty seats. Made them all belch and cry a little, collected the blue ticket that they were each holding in their tiny hands, and left the train with the little creatures over their shoulders.

  When it was her turn—it was an unusually big and fat doctor with wings on his back who lifted her up—it turned out that she didn’t have a ticket.

  “Haven’t you got a ticket?” asked the man sternly—she could now see that he was an angel. “In that case you can’t be born.”

  “Thank you, oh, thank you!” She smiled up into his florid face. “If I can’t be born, I suppose that means I don’t need to live?”

  “Ho ho,” said the angel cryptically and put her back down on the seat.

  And so she continued the train journey into eternity, through the night of the unborn.

  And she was happy. When she woke up she had butterflies in her stomach.

  I don’t need to live.

  Mauritz also came on Sunday. At about half past six, just after the warden had been in to collect the dinner tray.

  He had spent five hours in the car driving there and seemed stressed and irritated. Although perhaps it was just his customary insecurity that lay behind it. He rang for coffee, said that he wanted some, but when it was actually standing on the shaky plastic table, he never touched it.

  He also had difficulty in finding anything to say, just as Ruth had done. All they talked about were things like prison routines and the situation on the candle-ring front in the run-up to Christmas. Mainly red and green this year, it seemed. She wished he would leave, and after half an hour said as much.

  He had assumed there would be this kind of difficulty, and so he had written a letter. He stood up and produced it from an inside pocket in his ugly blazer with the firm’s emblem on the breast pocket. He handed it over without a word, then rang the bell and was let out.

  It was only one and a half pages long. She read it three times. Then she tore it up into tiny pieces and flushed it down the toilet in the scruffy little booth in the corner of the cell.

  It took a while. The pieces kept floating back up to the surface, and as she stood there pressing the flush button over and over again, she made up her mind what to do next.

  She called the warden again, asked for pencil and paper, and shortly afterward sat down at the little table to search for the right words.

  The only surprise she felt at her decision was how easy it had been to make. Half an hour later she drank tea and ate a couple of sandwiches with an eager appetite, as if life were still something relevant to her.

  27

  Moreno had gotten in touch with Krystyna Gravenstein via the secretary at Doggers grammar school, where she had worked until she retired three years ago.

  Gravenstein welcomed her into the little two-bedroom apartment in Palitzerstraat, at the top of the building with a view over the river and Megsje Bois. Moreno wondered if everybody had such splendid views from their homes nowadays when she entered the apartment, and recalled Ruth Leverkuhn’s picture window. It seemed to be the case, at least for home owners on t
he distaff side. Fröken Gravenstein was a slim little woman with a mass of chalk-white hair and owl eyes behind thick spectacles. Tweed suit and crocheted shawl over her shoulders. She moved a pile of books from a tubular steel armchair and urged the inspector to sit down, sat down herself on a revolving chair in front of a desk, and spun around. Of the two rooms, one served as a bedroom and the other a study. Moreno guessed that nothing else was required. The desk, with a view of rooftops and the open sky, was covered in papers, books, dictionaries, and a computer. Bookshelves covered the walls from floor to ceiling and were chockablock with books.

  “I’ve started to do a bit of translating since I finished at the school,” Gravenstein explained, with a faint suggestion of a smile. “You have to find something to do. Italian and French. It helps to make the pension go a bit further as well.”

  Moreno nodded in agreement.

  “Literature, I assume?” she asked.

  “Yes,” said Gravenstein. “Mostly poetry, but I’ve done the occasional novel as well.”

  “So you used to teach at Doggers, right? Romance languages?”

  “For thirty-seven years … Thirty-seven …”

  She shrugged and looked somewhat apologetic. Moreno gathered that she didn’t exactly long to be back in front of classes again. And that it was time to come to the point.

  “You were a colleague of Else Van Eck’s, I understand,” she began. “That’s why I want to talk to you. Are you aware of what has happened?”

  “She’s vanished,” said Gravenstein, adjusting her spectacles.

  “Exactly,” said Moreno. “She’s been missing for nearly seven weeks now, and we still don’t have a clue where she is. There are good reasons for suspecting she is no longer with us. Were you close to her as a colleague?”

  Her hostess shook her head and looked worried.

  “No,” she said. “Certainly not. Nobody was—I’m sorry to have to say that, but it’s the way it was. We never met in our free time—apart from the odd occasion when the French Society had something interesting in its program.”