by Håkan Nesser
‘Bah,’ said Berga, lighting the cigarette. ‘Bonger had problems, there’s no doubt about that. My tip is that he’s in Hamburg or maybe South America, and that he’ll make bloody sure he doesn’t come back here.’
There was silence for a few seconds while the mugs were emptied. Then Rooth thought it was time to change tack.
‘Why is his boat moored as it is?’ he asked. ‘It seems a bit odd.’
‘Burp,’ belched fru Jümpers. ‘It’s been moored like that for twenty years. The former owner did it – he was a Muslim of some kind or other and wanted open water on all sides of his boat, said it was good for his karma or something.’
Jung suspected she had mixed up the religions, but let it pass. He glanced at Rooth, who was looking increasingly tormented. Best leave it at that, he thought.
‘Anyway, we’d better be making a move,’ he said, draining the last drops from his mug.
‘You may be right,’ said Rooth. ‘Thank you very much. It’s been most interesting.’
‘Bye bye,’ said Barga, waving her cigarette around. ‘Make sure you clean up a bit among the riff-raff so that it’s safe for a respectable lady to walk home.’
‘Huh, kiss my arse,’ said fru Jümpers.
‘What the hell did we come here for?’ wondered Rooth when they were back on the frosty quay.
Jung shrugged.
‘Search me. Münster just wanted us to check up on the situation. He seems to have trouble in letting this case go.’
Rooth nodded glumly.
‘He certainly does,’ he said. ‘As far as I’m concerned I’d like to forget all about this visit. I’ve come across fairer maidens in my time.’
‘I should hope so,’ said Jung. ‘But what d’you think about that Barga?’
Rooth shuddered.
‘Away with the fairies,’ he said. ‘Nothing of what she said made sense. First it was a mystery, then she knew all about it . . . But if that Bonger really did owe money, surely this was an ideal situation for him to pay it back, now that they’d won the lottery.’
‘Exactly what I was thinking,’ said Jung.
‘I doubt it,’ said Rooth. ‘Shall we move on now?’
‘By all means,’ said Jung.
Moreno drove up to Wernice. She doubted if she would be well received by Ruth Leverkuhn, and while she sat waiting for the bascule bridge over the Maar to go up and down, she also wondered about the point of the visit. Always assuming there was one. Ruth Leverkuhn had sounded quite off-putting on the telephone, finding it hard to understand why the police needed to stick their noses still further into this personal tragedy than they had done already.
Her father had been murdered in his bed.
Her mother had confessed to doing it.
Wasn’t that quite enough?
Was it really necessary to pester the survivors still more, and didn’t the police have more important things to do?
Moreno had to admit that she could understand Leverkuhn’s point of view.
And the visit didn’t turn out to be especially successful either.
Ruth Leverkuhn received her in a loose-fitting wine-red tracksuit with the text PUP FOR THE CUP in flaking yellow 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 throw 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 coloured fluffy cushions. The flat 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 discreet 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 down into the dirt? 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 she came to think about it.
‘So you weren’t surprised?’ she said even so.
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, both him and her. 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 suchlike?’
‘No.’
‘Do you know if they socialized with the Van Ecks occasionally? Your father and mother, that is? Either of them?’
‘I’ve no idea.’
‘How often did you visit your parents?’
‘Hardly ever. You know that already. We did not 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, no doubt – 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 anybody 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 realized that, 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?
&nb
sp; 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 yet come to light. A lot more. And hence good reason to continue with these tentative efforts to penetrate the darkness.
Even if the pearls were black and crackled.
26
The trial of Marie-Louise Leverkuhn dragged on over three long-drawn-out afternoons in the presence of dwindling audiences in the public gallery. The only person who seemed to have any doubts about her guilt – to go by the grim expression on his face – was Judge Hart, who occasionally intervened with questions that neither the prosecutor nor defence counsel seemed to have bothered about.
Nor had she, come to that.
Otherwise, it seemed that the line of truth was going to be drawn somewhere in the grey 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 pretty 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 females 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 defence one. She was never quite sure precisely what role the prosecutor’s henchmen were supposed to be playing: if she understood it correctly, they comprised a doctor, a pathologist and some kind of police officer. Their evidence merely confirmed what was claimed to be known already. Perhaps that was the point in fact: 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 defence’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 in the witness box – 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 paper 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 paper handkerchiefs, 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 with no more beating about 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 malice aforethought 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 Maardam police station.
As she sat in the car taking her back to that 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 knew 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 and visit her. And so he didn’t.
Ruth phoned on Friday evening and Mauritz did the same quite early on Saturday morning, but it was Sunday afternoon before Ruth’s large body flopped down on the chair.
‘Mum,’ 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 gave vent to 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 her, she fell asleep and had a dream.
She was on a train. It was racing through flat, monotonous countryside, at such a high speed that it was almost impossible to make out anything that flashed past the dirty and rather 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 obvious that she was getting younger, the further they travelled. 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 backwards through life. On and on it went until everyone was only a small child, and when anybody in the carriage became so small that he or she looked like a new-born baby, the train stopped at a station. A few people in long, white coats with stethoscopes round 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 all 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 a
nd 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 angel sternly – she could now see that it 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.
Moritz also came on Sunday. At about half past six, just after the warder 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 was such things as 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.
Perhaps he had assumed there would be this kind of difficulty, because 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 warder again, asked for pencil and paper, and shortly afterwards sat down at the little table to search for the right words.