Munster's Case

by Håkan Nesser

  “We’ll be finished by this evening,” he said. “But everything she says is unverified so far. And it’s likely to stay that way—the streets were pretty deserted, and there’s not much reason to stand gaping out of the window at that time either. But she ought to have passed Dusar’s Café, where there were a few customers. We’ll check there this evening. But it was raining.…”

  Münster turned over a page.

  “The relatives,” he said. “Three children. Between forty and fifty or thereabouts. Two of them are traveling here today and tomorrow, I’ve arranged to meet them. The eldest daughter is in a psychiatric home somewhere, and I don’t think we have any reason to disturb her.… No, I don’t suppose any of us thinks it’s a family affair, do we?”

  “Does anybody think anything at all?” muttered Moreno, gazing down into her empty coffee mug.

  “Me,” said Rooth. “My theory is that Leverkuhn was murdered. Shall we proceed to the old geezers?”

  Moreno and Jung reported on their visits to Wauters and Palinski, and the failed attempts to contact Bonger. Meanwhile Münster contemplated Moreno’s knees and thought about Synn. Rooth ate two more Danish pastries and Heinemann polished his thumbnails with his tie. Münster wondered vaguely if there really was a mood of despondency and a lack of active interest hanging over the whole group, or if it was just himself who was affected. It was hard to say, and he made no effort to answer the question.

  “So he’s disappeared, has he?” said Rooth when Moreno and Jung had finished. “Bonger, I mean.”

  Jung shrugged.

  “He hasn’t been home since last Saturday night.”

  Krause cleared his throat to show signs of enthusiasm.

  “For Christ’s sake,” he said. “Four old farts, and two of them have gone. There must be a connection, surely. If they’ve all managed to hang on until they are past seventy, it’s surely pretty unlikely that one of them would disappear naturally the same night as another of them is murdered!”

  “ ‘Disappear naturally’?” said Jung. “What does that mean?”

  “What’s it to do with their age?” Heinemann asked, frowning. “I’ve always been under the impression that your chances of dying are greater, the older you get. Isn’t that the case? Statistically, I mean.…”

  He looked around the table. Nobody seemed to be inclined to answer. Münster avoided his gaze and looked out the window instead. Noted that it had started raining again. How old is Heinemann? he asked himself.

  “Anyway,” said Rooth, “it’s possible that there’s a connection here. Do the other oldies know whether or not Bonger returned home on Saturday?”

  Jung and Moreno looked at each other.

  “No,” said Jung. “Not as far as they’ve told us. Should we give ’em a grilling?”

  “Let’s wait for a bit with that,” said Münster. “Tomorrow morning … If Bonger hasn’t turned up by then, then something funny’s going on. He isn’t normally away from his boat for more than a few hours at a time, isn’t that what you said?”

  “That’s right,” said Jung.

  Silence again. Rooth scraped up a few crumbs from the empty plate where the pastries had been, and Heinemann returned to cleaning his glasses. Krause looked at the clock.

  “Anything else?” he wondered. “What do we do now? Speculate?”

  Nobody seemed especially enthusiastic about that either, but eventually Rooth said:

  “A madman, I’ll bet two cocktail sausages on it. An unplanned murder, the only motive we’ll ever find will be a junkie as high as a kite—or somebody on anabolics, of course. Did he need to be strong, by the way? What does Meusse have to say about that?”

  “No,” said Münster. “He said … he maintained that with well-hung meat and a sharp knife you don’t need a lot of strength.”

  “Ugh, for Christ’s sake,” said Rooth.

  Münster looked around for any further comments, but as none were offered he realized that it was time to draw the meeting to a close.

  “You’re probably right,” he said, turning to Rooth. “For as long as we don’t find a motive, that’s the most likely solution. Should we send out a feeler in the direction of the drug squad?”

  “Do that,” said Moreno. “A feeler, but not one of us.”

  “I’ll see what I can do,” Münster promised.

  Moreno stayed behind for a while after the others had left, and only then did Münster discover that he’d forgotten a detail.

  “Oh, shit! There was another thing,” he said. “That story about having won some money—can there be anything in it?”

  Moreno looked up from the photograph she was studying with reluctance.

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  Münster hesitated.

  “Four men club together and win some money,” he said. “Two of them kill off the other two, and presto! They’ve won twice as much.”

  Moreno said nothing for a few moments.

  “Really?” she said eventually. “You think that’s what happened?”

  Münster shook his head.

  “No,” he said. “It’s just that Fröken Gautiers down at Freddy’s said something about a win, and she admits herself that she’s only guessing.… But I suppose we ought to look into it.”

  “Rather that than drugs,” said Moreno. “I’ll take it on.”

  Münster was about to ask why she was so strongly opposed to the murky narcotics scene, but then he recalled another detail.

  Inspector Moreno had a younger sister.

  Had had, rather. He thought for a moment. Maybe that was what was depressing her, he thought. But then he noted her hunched shoulders and tousled hair and realized there must be something else as well. Something different. Apart from Synn, Inspector Moreno was the most beautiful woman he had ever had the pleasure of coming into contact with. But right now she looked distinctly human.

  “What’s the matter?” he asked.

  She sighed deeply twice before replying.

  “I feel so awful.”

  “I can see that,” Münster said. “Personal problems?”

  What an idiotic question, he thought. I sound like an emasculated social worker.

  But she merely shrugged and twisted her mouth into an ironic smile.

  “What else?”

  “I tell you what,” said Münster, playing the man of cunning and checking his watch. “You go and check up on the old dogs and I’ll talk to Ruth Leverkuhn—and then we’ll have lunch at Adenaar’s. One o’clock. Okay?”

  Moreno gave him a searching look.

  “Okay,” she said. “But I won’t be very good company.”

  “So what?” said Münster. “We can always concentrate on the food.”

  9

  “And what’s so strange about that?”

  The powerfully built woman glared threateningly at Rooth from behind her bangs, and it occurred to him that he wouldn’t have a chance against her if it came to hand-to-hand fighting. He would need a gun.

  “My dear Fru Van Eck,” he said, taking a sip of the insipid coffee her husband had made in response to her explicit command. “Surely you can understand? An unknown person gets into the building, up the stairs, into the Leverkuhns’ flat. He—or she—stabs Herr Leverkuhn twenty-eight times and kills him. It happens up there …”

  He gestured toward the ceiling.

  “… roughly twenty feet from this kitchen table. The murderer then saunters out again through the door, down the stairs, and disappears. And you don’t notice anything at all. That’s what I call strange!”

  Now she’ll thump me, he thought, bracing himself against the edge of the table so that he would be able to get quickly to his feet; but his aggressive tone of voice seemed to throw her off balance.

  “Jeez, Constable—”

  “Inspector,” insisted Rooth, “Detective Inspector Rooth.”

  “Really? Anyway, we didn’t notice a thing, neither me nor Arnold. The only thing we heard that night wer
e those screwing machines, that nigger and his mistress.… Isn’t that right, Arnold?”

  “Er, yes,” said Arnold, scratching his wrists nervously.

  “We’ve already explained this, both to you and that other flat-foot, whatever his name is. Why can’t you find whoever did it instead of snooping around here? We’re honest people.”

  I don’t doubt that for a second, Rooth thought. Not for a single second. He decided to change track.

  “The front door?” he said. “What about that? It’s usually left unlocked, I gather?”

  “No,” said Fru Van Eck. “It could very well have been locked—but it’s a crap lock.”

  “You can open it by peeing on it,” squeaked Arnold Van Eck somewhat surprisingly, and he started giggling.

  “Hold your goddamn tongue!” said his wife. “Pour some more coffee instead! Yes, it’s a crap lock, but I assume the door was probably open so that Mussolini could get in.”

  “Mussolini?” said Rooth.

  “Yes, he’d probably gone out for a screw as usual—I don’t understand why she doesn’t castrate the stupid thing.”

  “It’s a cat,” explained Arnold.

  “He’ll have gathered that, for Christ’s sake!” snorted Fru Van Eck. “Anyway, she probably propped it open with that brick like she usually does.”

  “I see,” said Rooth, and started to draw a cat in his notebook while trying to recall if he had ever come across such an uncouth woman before. He didn’t think so. In the earlier interrogation, conducted by Constable Krause, it had emerged that she had worked for most of her life as a teacher in a school for girls, so there was considerable food for thought.

  “What do you think about it?” he asked.

  “About what?” asked Fru Van Eck.

  “The murder,” said Rooth. “Who do you think did it?”

  She opened her mouth wide and tossed in two or three small cookies. Her husband cleared his throat but didn’t get as far as spitting.

  “Immigrants,” she said curtly, and washed down the cookies with a swig of coffee. Slammed her cup down with a bang. “Yes, if you take my advice you’ll start interrogating the immigrants.”

  “Why?” asked Rooth.

  “For Christ’s sake, don’t you see? It’s sheer madness! Or it could be some young gangsters. Yes, that’s where you’ll find your murderer. Take your pick, it’s up to you.”

  Rooth thought for a while.

  “Do you have any children yourselves?” he asked.

  “Of course we don’t,” said Fru Van Eck, starting to look threatening again.

  Good, Rooth thought. Genetic self-cleansing.

  “Thank you,” he said. “I won’t disturb you any longer.”

  Mussolini was lying on his back on the radiator, snoring.

  Rooth had never seen a fatter cat, and purposely sat as far away on the sofa as possible.

  “I’ve spoken to the Van Ecks,” he said.

  Leonore Mathisen smiled.

  “You mean you’ve spoken to Fru Van Eck?”

  “Hmm,” said Rooth. “Perhaps that is what I mean. Anyway, we need to clarify a few things. To ask if you’ve remembered anything else about the night of the murder now that a little time has passed.”

  “I understand.”

  “One thing that puzzles us is the fact that nobody heard anything. For example, your bedroom, Fröken Mathisen, is directly above the Leverkuhns’ but you fell asleep at …”

  He rummaged through his notebook and pretended to be looking for the time.

  “Half past twelve, roughly.”

  “That’s right,” he confirmed. Leonore Mathisen was not much smaller than Fru Van Eck, but the raw material seemed to be completely different. Like a … a bit like a currant bush as opposed to a block of granite. To take the comparison further, the bush was wearing cheerful home-dyed clothes in red, yellow, and violet, and a braided hair ribbon in the same colors. The block of granite had been grayish-brown all over and at least a quarter of a century older.

  “I heard when he came home, as I said. Shortly before midnight, I think. Then I switched on the clock radio and listened to music until … well, I suppose I dozed off after about half an hour.”

  “Was he alone when he came in?” Rooth asked.

  She shrugged.

  “No idea. I’m not even sure it was him. I just heard somebody coming up the stairs, and a door opening and closing. But it was their door, of course—I’m sure about that.”

  “No voices?”

  “No.”

  Rooth turned over a page of his notebook.

  “What was he like?” he asked. “Leverkuhn, I mean.”

  She started fiddling with one of the thin wooden beads she was wearing in clusters around her neck while weighing her words.

  “I don’t really know,” she said. “Very courteous, I’d say. He was always friendly and acknowledged me; rather dapper and correct; occasionally drank one glass too many when he was out with his friends—but never drank so much that he became unpleasant. I suppose I saw him only when he was on his way in and out, come to think about it.”

  “How long have you been living here?”

  She counted.

  “Eleven years,” she said. “I suppose the Leverkuhns have been living here twice as long as that.”

  “What about his relationship with his wife?”

  She shrugged again.

  “As it usually is, I suppose. Old people who’ve been living together all their lives.… She tended to wear the pants, but my dad had a much rougher time.”

  She laughed.

  “Are you married, Inspector?”

  “No,” Rooth admitted. “I’m single.”

  She suddenly burst out laughing. Her heavy breasts bobbed up and down, and Mussolini woke up with a start. It struck Rooth that he had never made love to a woman as big as she was, and for a few moments—while her salvo of laughter ebbed away and Mussolini slunk off in the direction of the hall—he sat there trying to imagine what it would be like.

  Then he returned to the job at hand.

  “Did they have much of a social life?” he asked.

  She shook her head.

  “Frequent visitors?”

  “No, hardly ever. Not that I noticed. They live directly below me, and I have to say that for the most part it’s as quiet as a grave, even when they’re both at home. The only sounds you ever hear in this building come from the young couple, who live—”

  “I know,” said Rooth. “And they were at it as usual that night, were they?”

  “Yes, they were at it as usual that night,” she repeated, stroking her index finger along her bare lower arm, deep in thought.

  Then she smiled, revealing twenty-four perfect teeth. At least.

  My God, Rooth thought, feeling himself blush. She wants me. Now.

  I’d better do a runner before I take the bait!

  He stood up, thanked her, and took the same route as Mussolini.

  The screwing machines—Tobose Menakdise and Filippa de Booning, according to the handwritten note taped above the letter box—didn’t answer when he rang their doorbell, and when he pressed his ear against the wooden door he couldn’t hear the faintest sound from inside the flat. He concluded that they were not at home, and wrote a question mark in his notebook. Went back upstairs to the second floor instead, to talk to Herr Engel.

  Ruben Engel was about sixty-five, and his dominant feature was a large, fleshy, red nose so striking that in profile he reminded Rooth of the parrot he’d had as a textile portrait over his bed when he was a young boy. He was not sure whether the appearance—of Engel, not the parrot—was due to an excessive intake of alcohol, or whether there was some other medical cause; but in any case, he was promptly invited to sit down at the kitchen table and partake in a drop or two of mulled wine.

  It was so damned cold in the flat, Engel explained, that he always began the day with one or two warm drinks.

  In order to keep healthy, of co
urse.

  The place looked reasonably clean and tidy, Rooth thought benevolently. More or less like his own flat. Only a few days’ worth of dirty dishes, a few weeks’ worth of newspapers, and a layer of dust about a month thick on the window ledges and television set.

  “Anyway, I’m here in connection with Herr Leverkuhn,” he began, and took a swig of the steaming drink. “You said last Saturday night that you knew him a little. That you socialized occasionally.”

  Engel nodded.

  “Only to the extent that we were good neighbors,” he said. “I mean, we’ve been living in the same building for more than twenty years. We went to a football match occasionally. Had a drink together from time to time.”

  “I see,” said Rooth. “How often?”

  “Football once a year,” said Engel. “Old age is creeping up on us. There are so many hooligans. A drink now and then. I usually drink at Gambrinus just down the road, but then I always have Faludi with me.”

  “Who is Faludi?”

  “An old colleague of mine. An Arab, but a great Arab. He lives a bit farther up the block. Cheers.”

  “Cheers,” said Rooth.

  “Aren’t you on duty, by the way?”

  “Never when I take a drink,” said Rooth. “Have you thought back again to last Saturday night, as I asked?”

  “Eh? … Oh yes, of course,” said Engel, licking his lips. “But I don’t remember any more than I told you last time.”

  “So you didn’t hear or notice anything unusual?”

  “Nope. I came home at around about half past eleven and went to bed like a shot. Listened to our pair of lovers for a while, then fell asleep at midnight, or thereabouts. It’s not bad good-night music for an old fart like me, I can tell you! Hee-hee.”

  He raised his eyes to heaven and lit a cigarette. Rooth sighed.

  “Nothing else to add?”

  “Not a jot, as I’ve already said.”

  “Who do you think did it?” Rooth asked.

  That was an old Van Veeteren ploy. Always ask people what they think! They tend to pull themselves together when they are trusted to use their own judgment; and then there’s a good chance that if three out of five think the same thing, they’re right.

  In some cases two out of five.