by Håkan Nesser
I expect it’s very different in the summer, he thought.
As agreed, he first met the woman he had spoken to twice on the telephone—the same confidence-inspiring welfare officer who had informed him about Irene Leverkuhn’s illness during the first stages of the investigation in October.
Her name was Hedda deBuuijs, and she seemed to be about fifty-five. A short, powerfully built woman with dyed iron-gray hair and a warm smile that seemed unable to keep away from her face for more than a few seconds at a time. It was clear to Münster that the respect for her he had felt during the telephone calls was in no way precipitate or unfounded.
She gave him no new information in connection with his impending meeting with Irene Leverkuhn, and explained that he should not expect too much and that she would have time for a brief chat with him afterward, if he felt that would help.
Then she rang for a nurse, and Münster was led along several of the stone paths to one of the yellow buildings at the far end of the grounds.
He didn’t really know what to expect from his meeting with Irene Leverkuhn—or indeed if he expected anything at all. In appearance she was nothing at all like her overweight brother and sister. More like her mother: slim and wiry, it seemed, under her loose-fitting pale blue hospital jacket. Slightly hunchbacked, with long, thin arms and a birdlike face. Narrow nose and pale eyes noticeably close together.
She was sitting at a table in quite a large room, painting in watercolors on a pad. Two other women were sitting at different tables busy with some kind of batik prints, as far as Münster could tell. The nurse left, and he sat down opposite Irene Leverkuhn. She glanced at him, then returned to her painting. Münster introduced himself.
“I don’t know you,” Irene said.
“No,” said Münster. “But perhaps you’d like to have a little chat with me even so?”
“I don’t know you,” she repeated.
“Do you mind if I sit here for a while, and watch while you paint?”
“I don’t know you. I know everybody here.”
Münster looked at the painting. Blue and red in big, wavy shapes: she was using too much water and the paper was buckling. It looked more or less like it did when his own daughter occupied herself with the same pastime. He noticed that the used pages in the pad looked roughly the same.
“Do you like living here at the Gellner Home?” he asked.
“I live in number twelve,” Irene said. “Number twelve.”
Her voice was low and totally without expression. As if she were speaking a language she didn’t understand.
“Number twelve?”
“Number twelve. The other girl is called Rebecka. I’m also a girl.”
“Do you often have visitors?” Münster asked.
“Liesen and Veronica live in number thirteen,” said Irene. “Liesen and Veronica. Number thirteen. I live in number twelve. Rebecka also lives in number twelve. Twelve.”
Münster swallowed.
“Do you often have visits from your family? Your mother and father, your brother and sister?”
“I’m painting,” said Irene. “Only girls live here.”
“Ruth?” said Münster. “Does she often come here?”
“I don’t know you.”
“Do you know who Mauritz is?”
Irene didn’t reply.
“Mauritz Leverkuhn. Your brother.”
“I know everybody here,” said Irene.
“How long is it since you came here?” Münster asked.
“I live in number twelve,” said Irene.
“Do you like sitting here, talking to me?”
“I don’t know you.”
“Can you tell me your mother’s and father’s names?”
“We get up at eight o’clock,” said Irene. “But we can lie in until nine if we want. Rebecka always stays in bed until nine.”
“What are you called?” Münster asked.
“I’m called Irene. Irene’s my name.”
“Have you any brothers and sisters?”
“I’m painting,” said Irene. “I do that every day.”
“Your painting is beautiful,” said Münster.
“I paint in red and blue,” said Irene.
Münster stayed for a while, until she finished the picture. She didn’t even look at it, but simply turned to another page in the pad and started again. She never looked up to glance at him, and when he stood up to leave, she seemed unaware of his presence or his going.
Or even that he had ever been there.
“One of the problems,” said deBuuijs when Münster returned to her office, “is that she is physically well. She might even be happy. She is forty-six years old, and frankly, I can’t see her surviving in society, functioning as a normal citizen. Can you?”
“I don’t really know,” said Münster.
Fröken deBuuijs eyed him for a few seconds, smiling as usual.
“I know what you’re thinking,” she said eventually. “Cows and hens and pigs are also happy. Or contented, at least … until we slaughter them. But we demand a little bit more from life. Don’t we?”
“Yes,” said Münster. “I suppose we do.”
“Irene hasn’t always been like this,” said deBuuijs. “Ever since she fell ill she has retired into her own little, familiar world, but she didn’t feel secure before then either. In recent years, as long as she’s been here in the Gellner Home, she’s behaved as I assume she did when you spoke to her.”
“Inside herself?” said Münster.
“You could put it like that. Never anywhere distant from her immediate surroundings. Neither in time nor space. But contented, as I said.”
Münster thought for a moment.
“Is she on medication?”
DeBuuijs shook her head. “Not anymore. Or nothing to speak of, in any case.”
“Any kind of … treatment?”
She smiled again. “I thought we’d get around to this eventually,” she said. “We are expected to do something, after all—right? The least we can do is try to restore some kind of dignity.… Yes, of course Irene undergoes therapy—if she didn’t, she would presumably come to a full stop one of these days.”
Münster waited.
“We work partly on a traditional basis,” explained deBuuijs, “but we also experiment to some extent. We don’t take any risks, of course, but in Irene’s case it has worked surprisingly well—or at least, that’s what our therapist says.”
“Really?” said Münster.
“We have a sort of conversational therapy every day. In small groups. We do that with all our patients. And then we have a few therapists who come here and work on an individual basis. Various schools of thought and methods, we don’t want to exclude anything. Irene has been meeting a young woman by the name of Clara Vermieten for nearly a year now, and it seems to have gone well.”
“In what way?” Münster asked.
“I don’t really know,” said Hedda deBuuijs. “They’re taking a break at the moment because Clara has just had a baby; but she intends to continue the therapy in the spring.”
Münster began to wonder if deBuujis had something hidden up her sleeve, or if she was just making conversation out of pure politeness.
“If you would like to listen in, I can fix that,” said deBuuijs after a short pause. “Seeing as you have come all that way.”
“Partake?” wondered Münster.
“All the conversations are recorded on tape. I haven’t heard them, but I called Clara when I heard that you were coming. She has nothing against your listening to the tapes. Assuming that you don’t abuse them in any way, of course.”
“Abuse them?” said Münster. “How would I be able to abuse them?”
DeBuuijs shrugged.
“I might have to switch off certain comments now and then,” she said. “That’s part of my job. Is that okay with you?”
“Yes,” said Münster. “I understand.”
DeBuuijs stood up.
“Yes, please,” said Intendent Münster. “I could do with one.”
37
“What do you mean?” said Jung. “How it happened?”
“It’s an idea that struck me,” said Moreno. She bit her lip and hesitated for a few seconds. “Do you remember that day—a Thursday, I think it was—when Arnold Van Eck reported that his wife had disappeared? We drove there.… Come to think of it, it was just Münster and I. Anyway, we arrived at Kolderweg to talk to Van Eck. We met Fru Leverkuhn in the entrance hall. She was clearing away stuff that had belonged to Waldemar, carrying out suitcases and sacks with his old clothes. She was going to take them to the charity shop in Windemeerstraat. She was busy doing that for most of the time we were there. But of course … of course, it wasn’t just clothes she was carrying out.”
Rooth froze, with his coffee cup halfway to his mouth.
“What the hell are you saying?” he exclaimed. “Are you suggesting … are you suggesting that she was carrying out the Van Eck woman before your very eyes? Butchered and packaged? That’s the most … who was it who said something about a blind boy a few minutes ago?”
“It’s not possible,” said Reinhart. “Or maybe that’s exactly what it is,” he added after a few seconds. “Do you really believe this?”
“I don’t know,” said Moreno. “What do you all believe?”
“Believing is something you do in church,” said Rooth. “You were the one there, watching. How the hell could we know what she had in the bags?”
“It’s a bit steep,” said Jung. “It sounds incredible.”
Nobody spoke. Moreno stood up and started walking back and forth in front of the window. Reinhart watched her as he scraped out his pipe and waited. Rooth swallowed his Danish pastry and looked around for another. When he failed to find one, he sighed and shrugged.
“Okay,” he said. “As you all seem to have been struck dumb, I’ll take over the baton. Shall we go there again? For the seventy-fourth time? In any case we need to check if there’s anything left of that magazine. And see if we can find any bloodstained suitcases. Although we ought to have found those already if they exist. If it is as Moreno says, it would be the most … Christ Almighty, the most …”
He couldn’t think of what it would be. Reinhart put down his pipe and cleared his throat demonstratively.
“Jung and Moreno,” he said. “You know the way?”
“Haven’t you left yet?” said Rooth.
“There’s just one thing I don’t understand,” said Moreno after they had established that there wasn’t so much as a quarter of a square centimeter left of the Breuwerblatt’s September issue—nor any sign of bloodstained suitcases—in the Leverkuhns’ apartment in Kolderweg. “If it really was her.”
“What?” said Jung.
“Why?” said Moreno.
“Why?”
“Yes. Why on earth would she also want to kill Else Van Eck as well?”
Jung thought for a moment.
“Where do you think she did it?” he said. “The butchery, I mean. If we ignore why for the time being.”
Moreno shook her head.
“How should I know? The bathtub, perhaps. Yes, she hit and killed her with a frying pan, then butchered her in the bathroom—that sounds about right, don’t you think? That’s what I’d do. Afterward you only need to rinse everything down, maybe a bit of soap or scrubbing powder. But why? Tell me why! We can’t just ignore the cause, there must be a reason.”
“I don’t know,” said Jung. “I’m just one of the blind boys.”
At a quarter to two—that same rain-free January day—there was a discreet knock on the door of Inspector Reinhart’s room.
“Come in,” said Reinhart.
The door opened slowly, and Winckelhübe the linguist popped his head around it.
“Ah, yes,” said Reinhart, looking up from his pile of papers.
“Well, I’ve made a little analysis,” said Winckelhübe, scratching his stomach. “I’m not a hundred percent certain, but I’m prepared to bet on it being about seals. The text, that is.”
“Seals?” said Reinhart.
“Yes, seals,” said Winckelhübe.
“Hmm,” said Reinhart. “That’s exactly what we suspected. Thank you very much. Send your invoice to the police authorities.”
Winckelhübe remained standing there, looking slightly confused.
“Would you like a lollipop as well?” asked Reinhart. “I’m afraid we’ve run out.”
It was obvious that the therapist Clara Vermieten treated several of the patients at the Gellner Home. In the bookcase of the cramped office deBuuijs showed Münster into, four of the shelves were marked with initials. It said I.L. on the top shelf, where there were several cassettes, neatly sorted into stacks of ten. Münster counted sixty-five of them. The lower shelves contained significantly fewer.
On the tiny desk was a portrait of a dark-haired man of about thirty, a telephone, and a cassette recorder.
Ah, Münster thought. I’d better get to it, then.
He lifted down one of the stacks. He noted that there was a date on the spine of each cassette: 3/4, 3/8, 3/11 … and so on. He took one out at random and inserted it into the cassette player. It seemed to have been rewound to the beginning, as it started with a voice he assumed was Clara Vermieten’s, stating the date on which the recording was made.
Conversation with Irene Leverkuhn, the fifteenth of April, nineteen hundred and ninety-seven.
Then a short pause.
“Irene, it’s Clara. How are you today?”
“I’m well today,” said Irene in the same monotonous tone of voice that he had been listening to not long ago.
“It’s good to see you again,” said the therapist. “I thought we could have a little chat, as we usually do.”
“As we usually do,” said Irene.
“Has it been raining here today?”
“I don’t know,” said Irene. “I haven’t been out.”
“It was raining when I drove here. I like rain.”
“I don’t like rain,” said Irene. “It can make you wet.”
“Would you like to lie down, as usual?” Clara asked. “Or would you prefer to sit?”
“I’d like to lie down. I usually lie down when we talk.”
“You can lie down, then,” said Clara. “Do you need a blanket? Perhaps it’s a bit cold?”
“It’s not cold,” said Irene.
Münster pressed fast forward, then pressed play again.
“Who is that?” he heard the therapist ask.
“I can’t really remember,” said Irene.
“But you know his name, do you?”
“I know his name,” Irene confirmed.
“What’s he called?” asked Clara.
“He’s called Willie.”
“And who’s Willie?”
“Willie is a boy in my class.”
“How old are you now, Irene?”
“I’m ten. I’ve got a blue dress, but it has a stain on it.”
“A stain? How did that happen?”
“I got a stain when I had ice cream,” said Irene.
“Was that today?” Clara asked.
“It was this afternoon. Not long ago.”
“Is it summer?”
“It was summer. It’s autumn now, school has started.”
“What class are you in?”
“I have started class four.”
“What’s your class mistress called?”
“I don’t have a class mistress. We have a man. He’s strict.”
“What’s he called?”
“He’s called Töffel.”
“And where are you just now?”
“Just now I’m in our room, of course. I’ve come
home from school.”
“What are you doing?”
“Nothing.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I’ve got a stain on my dress, I’m going to the kitchen to wash it off.”
Münster switched off again. Looked at the stacks of cassettes on the shelf and rested his head on his right hand. What on earth am I doing? he thought.
He pressed fast forward and listened for another minute. Irene was talking about the kind of paper she used to make covers for her schoolbooks, and what they’d had for school lunches.
He rewound the cassette and put it back into the case. Leaned back in the chair and looked out the window. He suddenly shuddered as it dawned on him that what he had just listened to was a situation taking place—when exactly? At the very beginning of the 1960s, he guessed. The conversation was recorded less than a year ago, but in fact Irene Leverkuhn had traveled a long way back in her childhood—somewhere in that drab little house in Pampas that he had been looking at only a few weeks ago. That was pretty remarkable, for goodness’ sake.
He began to respect this therapist and what she was doing. He hadn’t managed to get a word of sense out of the woman who had sat at a desk painting, but here she was telling Clara Vermieten all kinds of things.
I must reassess psychoanalysis, Münster thought. It’s high time.
He looked at the clock and wondered how best to continue. Just listening to cassettes at random, one after the other, didn’t seem especially efficient, no matter how fascinating it might be. He stood up and examined the dates written on the cassette cases.
The first one was recorded just over a year ago, it seemed. On 11/25/1996. He took down the stack farthest to the right, comprising only four cassettes. The bottom one was dated 10/16, the top one 10/30.
He went back to the desk, picked up the telephone, and after various complications had Hedda deBuuijs on the other end of the line.
“Just a quick question,” he said. “When did Clara Vermieten take maternity leave?”
“Just a moment,” said deBuuijs, and he could hear her leafing through some ledger or other.
“The end of October,” she said. “Yes, that’s when it was. She had a little girl about a week later.”