Munster's Case

by Håkan Nesser

  A lovely, gray Sunday, just right for sitting indoors. There was certainly something to be said for postponing a key interrogation until Monday morning. A softening-up day in the cells was usually enough to make most criminals confess to more or less anything you wanted them to.

  He’d had plenty of experience of that in the past.

  As for the chances of such a confession having been made … well, Intendent Münster thought it best not to think in any detail about that. It was better to allow himself to hope for a while. You never know. And if there was one thing about this damned job that you could be certain about, this was it.

  That you can never know.

  He turned up his collar to keep the rain out, put his hands into his pockets, and allowed himself to feel some cautious optimism.

  4

  Jung had a headache.

  There were reasons for that, but without saying a word about it to his colleagues he took the streetcar to Armastenplejn, where Palinski lived. Today was one of those days when there was no point in hurrying, he told himself, stressing that fact with pedagogical insistence.

  The streetcar was practically empty at this ungodly hour on Sunday morning, and as he sat swaying from side to side on the vandalized seat he took the opportunity of slipping two effervescent tablets into the can of Coca-Cola he had bought in the canteen. The result was an astounding amount of froth, and he found himself needing to slurp down the foaming drink as quickly as he could. Even so, his jacket and trousers were covered in a mass of stains, and he realized that his goings-on found little in the way of tolerant understanding in the four prudish female eyes staring at him from a few rows farther back. On their way to church, no doubt, to receive well-earned tolerant understanding of their own foibles. These stout-hearted ladies.

  So what? Jung thought. He stared back at them and wiped away the mess as best he could with his scarf.

  His head was still aching when he got off. He found the right building, and noticed a café next door that was open. After a few seconds’ hesitation, he went into the café and ordered a cup of black coffee.

  Keep off the booze when you’re on standby! That was a sensible rule, tried and tested; but it had been Maureen’s birthday, and you sometimes need to reorganize your priorities.

  Besides, they had had the apartment to themselves for once—in fact, it was the first time since they had moved in together at the end of August. Sophie was sleeping over in the home of one of her girlfriends. Or possibly boyfriends—she would soon be seventeen, after all.

  They had spent a few hours eating and drinking. Shared a rather expensive Rioja in front of the television for a couple more hours. Then made love for an hour and a half. At least. He remembered looking at the clock and noting that it was twenty-five minutes to four.

  The duty officer had rung at a quarter to six.

  I’m a wreck today, Jung thought. But a quite young and happy wreck.

  He emptied his cup of coffee and ordered another.

  Palinski also looked like a wreck, but forty years older. His white shirt might possibly have been clean the previous evening, but after being exposed to a night of sweaty alcoholic fumes it was no longer particularly impressive. A pair of disconsolate, thin legs stuck out from underneath it, crisscrossed with varicose veins and wearing a pair of sagging socks. His head was balanced precariously on a fragile stick insect of a neck, and seemed to be on the point of cracking at any moment. His hands were trembling like the wings of a skylark, and his lower jaw was apparently disconnected from its anchorage.

  Oh my God, Jung thought as he waved his ID in front of Palinski’s nose. I’m standing here face-to-face with my own future.

  “Police,” he said. “Let me in.”

  Palinski started coughing. Then closed his eyes.

  Headache, was Jung’s diagnosis. He gritted his teeth and forced his way in.

  “What do you want? I’m not well.”

  “You’re hungover,” said Jung. “Stop lying.”

  “No … er,” said Palinski. “What do you mean?”

  “Are you saying you don’t know what a hangover is?”

  Palinski did not reply, but coughed up some more phlegm and swallowed it. Jung looked around for a spittoon, and took a deep breath. The air in the apartment was heavy with the reek of old man. Tobacco. Unwashed clothes. Unscrubbed floors. He found his way into the kitchen and managed to open a window. Sat down at the rickety table and gestured to his host to follow suit.

  “I must take a pill first,” croaked Palinski, and he staggered into what must presumably be the bathroom.

  It took five minutes. Then Palinski reappeared in a frayed dressing gown and with a newly scrubbed face. He was evidently a little more cocksure.

  “What the devil do you want, then?” he said, sitting down opposite Jung.

  “Leverkuhn is dead,” said Jung. “What can you tell me about that?”

  Palinski lost control of his jaw and his cockiness simultaneously.

  “What?”

  “Murdered,” said Jung. “Well?”

  Palinski stared at him, his mouth half open, and began trembling again.

  “What … what the devil are you saying?”

  “I’m saying that somebody murdered Waldemar Leverkuhn in his home last night. You are one of the last people to see him alive, and I want to hear what you have to say for yourself.”

  It looked as if Palinski was about to faint. I’m probably coming down too heavily on him, Jung thought.

  “You and he were out together last night,” he said, trying to calm things down. “Is that right?”

  “Yes … yes, we were.”

  “At Freddy’s in Weiskerstraat?”

  “Yes.”

  “Together with two other gents?”

  “Yes.”

  Palinski closed his mouth and clung to the tabletop.

  “Are you all right?” Jung asked tentatively.

  “Ill,” said Palinski. “I’m ill. Are you saying he’s dead?”

  “As dead as a doornail,” said Jung. “Somebody stabbed him at least twenty times.”

  “Stabbed him?” Palinski squeaked. “I don’t understand.”

  “Neither do we,” said Jung. “Maybe you could make us a cup of tea or coffee, so that we can talk it through in peace and quiet?”

  “Yes.… Of course,” said Palinski. “Fucking hell! Who could have done a thing like that?”

  “We don’t know,” said Jung.

  Palinski stood up with considerable difficulty.

  “The way of all flesh,” he said out of the blue. “I think I need a few drops of something strong. Fucking hell!”

  “Give me a couple as well,” said Jung.

  He left Palinski an hour later with a fairly clear head and fairly clear information. Yes, they had been at Freddy’s as always on a Saturday night. From about half past six until eleven o’clock, or thereabouts. They’d eaten and drunk and chatted. About politics, and women, and all things in heaven and earth.

  As usual. Maybe they’d been a bit merry. Leverkuhn had fallen under the table, but it was nothing serious.

  Then Palinski and Wauters had shared a taxi. He’d gotten home at about twenty past eleven and gone straight to bed. Bonger and Leverkuhn had walked home, he thought, but he wasn’t sure. They’d been standing outside Freddy’s, arguing about something or other, he thought, when he and Wauters went off in their taxi.

  Had the gentlemen been quarrelling? Good Lord no! They were the best of friends. That’s why they kept meeting at Freddy’s every Wednesday and Saturday. And sometimes more often than that.

  Any other enemies? Of Leverkuhn, that is.

  No … Palinski shook his aching head cautiously. Enemies? How the devil could he have had any enemies? You didn’t have enemies when you were their age, for Christ’s sake. People with enemies lived to be only half their age.

  And Leverkuhn didn’t show any signs of behaving oddly as the evening wore on.

  P
alinski frowned and thought that over.

  No, nothing at all.

  It was raining when Jung came out into the street again, but nevertheless he decided to walk to the canals, where he had his next appointment.

  Bonger.

  Apparently, he had a houseboat on the Bertrandgraacht, and as Jung walked slowly along Palitzerlaan and Keymerstraat, he thought about how often he himself had considered that way of living. In the old days, that is. Before Maureen. There was something especially attractive about living on a boat. The gentle rocking of the dark canal waters. The independence. The freedom—or the illusion of freedom in any case—yes, it had its appeal.

  When he came to the address he had been given, he realized that it had its negative sides as well.

  Bonger’s home was an old, flat-bottomed, wooden tub barely thirty feet long; it was lying suspiciously deep in the water, and the need of paint and maintenance was obvious. The deck was full of cans and drums, ropes, and old trash, and the living area in the cabin seemed to be mainly below water level.

  Ugh! Jung thought and shuddered involuntarily in the rain. What a dump!

  There was a narrow, slippery gangplank between the quay and the rail, but Jung didn’t use it. Instead he pulled at the end of a rope running from the canal railing, over a tree root and to a bell fixed to the chimney. It rang twice, not very loudly, and it aroused no reaction. He had the distinct impression that there was nobody at home. He tugged at the rope again.

  “He’s not in!”

  Jung turned around. The hoarse voice came from a heavily muffled-up woman who was chaining a bicycle to a tree some thirty feet farther down the canal.

  “No smoke, no lanterns on,” she explained. “That means he’s not at home. He’s very careful about always having a lantern on.”

  “I see,” said Jung. “I take it you’re his neighbor.”

  The woman picked up her two grocery bags and heaved them over the railings onto another houseboat that seemed to be in rather better condition than Bonger’s—with red striped curtains in the windows and plants growing in a little greenhouse on the cabin roof. Tomatoes, by the look of them.

  “Yes, I am,” she said, climbing on board with surprising agility. “Assuming it’s Felix Bonger you’re looking for.”

  “Exactly,” said Jung. “You don’t happen to know where he is, do you?”

  She shook her head.

  “He ought to be at home, but I rang shortly before I left to go shopping. I usually get a few items for him from the Kleinmarckt on Sundays. But he wasn’t in.”

  “Are you absolutely certain?” Jung asked.

  “Climb aboard and take a look for yourself!” snorted the woman. “Nobody locks doors around here.”

  Jung did just that, walked down a few steps and peered in through the door. It was a rectangular room with a sofa bed, a table with two chairs, an electric cooker, a refrigerator, and a television set. Clothes were hanging from coat hangers along the walls, and books and magazines were strewn about haphazardly. Hanging from the ceiling were an electric bulb without a shade and a stuffed parrot on a perch. A broken concertina was lying on top of a low cupboard.

  The strongest impression, however, was the smell of dirt and ingrained damp. And of old man.

  No, Jung thought. This looks even worse than it did from the canal bank.

  When he came back up on deck the woman had disappeared into her own cabin. Jung hesitated; there was probably a question or two he ought to ask her, but as he felt his way cautiously across the gangplank again, he decided that the urge to eat could not be resisted much longer.

  And he was starting to feel cold. If he took a slightly longer route back to the police station, he guessed he would be able to stop by Kurmann’s for a steak with fried potatoes and gravy. Nothing could be simpler.

  And a beer.

  It was nearly twelve o’clock. There was no time for dillydallying.

  5

  Marie-Louise Leverkuhn left the police station with Münster’s blessing shortly after one o’clock on Sunday. She was accompanied by Emmeline von Post, the friend with whom she had spent Saturday evening and who had been informed of the awful happening a few hours previously.

  She immediately offered that the newly widowed Marie-Louise was welcome to stay in her terraced house in Bossingen.

  For the time being. Until things had calmed down a bit. In other words, for as long as it might be thought necessary.

  After all, they had known each other for fifty years. And been colleagues for twenty-five.

  Münster escorted the two ladies to the car park, and before they bundled themselves into Fröken von Post’s red Renault, he stressed once more how important it was to contact him the moment she recalled anything at all, no matter how insignificant, that might possibly be of interest to the police in their work.

  Their work being to capture her husband’s murderer.

  “In any case we shall be in touch with you in a day or so,” he added. “Thank you for volunteering to take care of her, Fröken von Post.”

  “We humans have to help each other in our hour of need,” said Marie-Louise’s short and plump friend, squeezing herself into the driver’s seat. “Where would we be if we didn’t?”

  Yes, where would we be indeed? Münster thought as he returned to his office on the third floor.

  Up the creek without a paddle, presumably. But wasn’t that where we were all heading for anyway?

  The forensic reports were ready half an hour later. While he sat chewing two plain sandwiches from the automatic machine in the canteen, Münster worked his way through the reports.

  It was not especially uplifting reading.

  Waldemar Leverkuhn had been killed by several deep knife wounds to his trunk and neck. The exact number of blows had been established at twenty-eight, but when the last ten or twelve were made he was most likely already dead.

  There had been no resistance, and the probable time of death was now narrowed down to between 1:15 and 2:15 a.m. But taking into account the widow’s evidence, that could be narrowed down further to 1:15 to 2:00, since she had arrived home soon after two.

  At the moment of death Leverkuhn had been wearing a white shirt, tie, underpants, trousers, and one sock, and the alcohol content in his blood had been 1.76.

  No weapon had been recovered, but there was no doubt that it must have been a large knife with a blade about eight inches long—possibly identical with the carving knife reported missing by Fru Leverkuhn.

  No fingerprints or any other clues had been found at the scene of the crime, but chemical analysis of textile fibers and other particles had yet to be carried out.

  All this was carefully noted on two densely typed pages, and Münster read through it twice.

  He phoned Synn and spoke to her for ten minutes.

  He put his feet up on his desk.

  Then he closed his eyes and tried to work out what Van Veeteren would have done in a situation like this.

  That did not take very long to work out. He called the duty officer and announced that he would like to see Inspector Jung and Inspector Moreno in his office at four o’clock.

  Then he took the elevator down to the basement and spent the next two hours in the sauna.

  “Nice weather today,” said Jung.

  “We had sun yesterday,” Münster pointed out.

  “I’m serious,” said Jung. “I like these curtains of rain. The gray sort of makes you want to look inside yourself instead. At the essentials of life, if you follow me … the internal landscape.”

  Ewa Moreno frowned.

  “You know,” she said, “sometimes an unassuming colleague can say things that are very sensible. Have you been taking a course?”

  “The university of life,” said Jung. “Who’s going to kick off?”

  “Ladies first,” said Münster. “I agree with you. There’s something special about black, wet tree trunks.… But perhaps we ought to discuss that another day.”

&n
bsp; Moreno opened her notebook and started.

  “Benjamin Wauters,” she said. “Born 1925 in Frigge. Lived in Maardam since 1980. All over the place before that. He’s worked on the railways all his life until he retired. Confirmed bachelor. No relations at all—not any that he wants to acknowledge, at least. Suffers from verbal diarrhea, to be honest. Loquacious and lonely. The other old farts he meets at Freddy’s are the only company he keeps, apart from his cat. Half angora, I think. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything so well groomed. I had the impression that they take their meals together. A very neat and tidy apartment as well. Flowers on the window ledges and all that.”

  “What about last night?” interpolated Münster.

  “He didn’t have much to say about that,” said Moreno. “Apparently they had a decent meal for once—they usually spend their time in the bar. They got a bit drunk, he admitted. Leverkuhn fell under the table, and so they thought they ought to accept a walkover—that’s the way he put it. He’s a sports junkie, and a gambler, he made no attempt to conceal it. Anyway, that’s about it, though it took two hours over coffee and all his dirty jokes.”

  “No insights about the murder?”

  “None that he’d thought through,” said Moreno. “He was sure it must have been a madman and pure coincidence. Nobody had any reason to bump Leverkuhn off, he maintained. A good friend and a solid guy, even if he could be a bit cranky at times. To tell you the truth I agree with him. At any rate it seems out of the question that any of these men could have had anything to do with the murder.”

  “I agree,” said Jung, and recapitulated his meeting with Palinski and his visit to Bonger’s canal boat.

  Münster sighed.

  “A complete blank, then,” he said. “Well, I suppose that was to be expected.”

  “Were the doors unlocked, then?” Jung asked. “At the Leverkuhns’, I mean.”

  “Apparently.”

  “So we only need some junkie as high as a kite to go past, sneak inside, and find a poor old guy fast asleep that he can take his revenge on. Then sneak out the same way as he came in. Dead easy, don’t you think?”