Munster's Case

by Håkan Nesser

  Ulrike pulled him back down onto the bed.

  “You’re staying,” she said. “They’re grown up now and have flown the nest, both of them. And they’ve seen a thing or two.”

  Van Veeteren pondered.

  “Why do we have weekdays when we can have Sundays exclusively?” he asked slyly.

  Ulrike furrowed her brow, then sat astride him.

  “Don’t think I’m in a hurry,” she said. “But one Sunday every other month is on the thin side.”

  Van Veeteren stretched out his hands and let her heavy breasts rest on them.

  “You may be right,” he said. “All right, I’ll stay then. I’ll soon be sixty, so maybe it’s time to tie up a few loose ends.”

  “The year is starting off well,” said Ulrike.

  “It could have started worse,” said Van Veeteren.

  But later, as he lay in bed waiting for her to finish in the bathroom, his thoughts reverted to last night’s dream.

  Erich? he thought. Münster? Intendent Münster?

  Is this a dagger I see before me?

  Incomprehensible.

  At least for somebody who generally comprehends only a tiny part that is obvious.

  31

  “Happy New Year,” said Chief of Police Hiller, adjusting his tie. “Good to see you back, Reinhart. We all hope that your leave of absence did you good.”

  “Thank you, everybody,” said Reinhart. “Yes, it was relatively bearable. But I don’t understand why I’m being given this case. There seem to be enough people working on it already. Don’t tell me you’ve got stuck?”

  “Hmm,” said Hiller. “I think we’ll leave it to Intendent Münster to fill you in on that score.”

  Münster took out his notebook and looked around the table. Reinhart was right, that couldn’t be denied. There suddenly seemed to be a lot of officers on the case. Himself. Rooth and Heinemann. Jung and Moreno. And now Reinhart. Not counting Hiller, of course.

  “I suggest we go through what has happened since that find out in Weyler’s Woods,” said Münster. “It wouldn’t hurt for us all to get an overview, while Reinhart gets up to speed.”

  Hiller nodded approvingly and made clicking noises with the new Ballograf pen he’d been given as a Christmas present.

  “Right, it was the twenty-first of December when a young girl, Vera Kretschke, found a head hidden in a plastic bag. It was pretty clear from early on that it belonged to Else Van Eck, who had been missing since the end of October. Her husband, Arnold Van Eck, identified her right away: it was a bit too much for him, and he’s been in the hospital out at Majorna ever since.…”

  “Poor bastard,” said Reinhart.

  “Apparently he hasn’t spoken for a week,” said Moreno.

  “During the eleven days that have passed since, we’ve discovered three more bags, but she’s still not complete. Her left leg and part of her torso are still missing—her pelvis, to be more precise. Two more bags, presumably. Twelve officers are still searching, but it’s not an easy task, of course, even if we assume that everything was dumped in Weyler’s Woods. Nothing has been buried so far: the murderer just covered the bags up as best he could, with leaves and twigs and such.”

  “He didn’t have a shovel,” said Rooth. “Careless type.”

  “Quite possibly,” said Münster. “In any case, according to Meusse she’s been dead for up to two months, so there’s nothing to suggest that she wasn’t murdered the same night she disappeared … the twenty-ninth or soon after. The butchery isn’t too badly done—I’m quoting Meusse—and could well have been performed by someone with a certain amount of professional skill, although the tools used were of poor quality. An ordinary, fairly blunt carving knife or something similar. Plus a cleaver, in all likelihood. The actual cause of death seems to have been several powerful blows to the head with a heavy instrument. The parietal bone was smashed, and bits of bone penetrated the brain; but the killer probably also severed the carotid artery before he started cutting her up. As for the plastic bags, they are widely available and can be bought by the roll in seven out of ten grocer’s shops or supermarkets. The only thing that might be worth noting is that they were yellow. You can buy dark green ones of the same type, a color that would’ve been preferable if you didn’t want them to be easily found.”

  “He probably didn’t have any others at home,” said Rooth.

  “It might be as simple as that,” Münster agreed. “All the body parts found so far have been naked. No clothes, no other details that could have left clues. Fingerprints are out of the question, of course, given the length of time that’s passed.”

  He paused and looked around the table again.

  “It won’t help us much even if we do find the missing parts,” said Jung.

  “No,” said Rooth. “Presumably not. But it’s no fun sitting with a puzzle with two pieces missing.”

  “It’s not exactly a fun puzzle, no matter what,” said Moreno.

  “It seems not,” said Reinhart. “What do you have in the way of suspicions?”

  There was silence for a few seconds, broken only by the clicking of the chief of police’s new pen.

  “Let’s consider what we know first,” said Münster, “and then we can start speculating. We’ve spoken to a lot of people, mainly neighbors in the same building—there aren’t many relatives and friends—and overall, it has to be said that we haven’t found very much. Fru Van Eck disappeared on the evening of Wednesday, the twenty-ninth of October, while her husband was attending a course at the Riitmeeterska school. She was last seen shortly after six o’clock that evening—one of the neighbors thinks she heard her in her apartment at around seven—but she wasn’t there when Arnold Van Eck got home at eight o’clock. Nobody has been able to tell us any more than that.”

  “Could it be one of them?” wondered Reinhart. “The neighbors, I mean. And is it certain that she was the one in the flat at seven o’clock?”

  “It could have been one of the other people in the building,” said Münster. “Hypothetically, at least. I think it’s best to discuss that later, when we start looking at links with the other case—Waldemar Leverkuhn. But as for the person who was heard inside the flat, it could have been anybody at all.”

  “The murderer, for instance?” said Reinhart.

  “For instance,” said Münster.

  “What’s with these Leverkuhns?” wondered Reinhart.

  Münster sighed and turned over a page.

  “I don’t really know, to be honest,” he said. “On the surface it all seems crystal clear.…”

  “Some surfaces can be both crystal clear and paper thin,” said Reinhart. “I’ve been following it to some extent in the newspapers, but we all know how they report things.”

  “Start from the beginning,” said the chief of police.

  “Start from the twenty-fifth of October,” said Münster. “That’s when it all begins. Fru Leverkuhn comes home and finds her husband stabbed to death in his bed. We launch an investigation, and after ten days she calls us and confesses to having done it herself. In an attack of anger. We spend a week interrogating her thoroughly, and before long both we and the prosecutor think we have enough evidence. Anyway, things then follow the usual path, the trial begins in the middle of December, and it’s over after three or four days. Nothing remarkable. The prosecutor presses for murder, the defense for manslaughter. While waiting for the verdict, on Sunday the twenty-first, she hangs herself in her cell.… She plaits a rope from strips of blanket and manages to hook it onto a jutting piece of pipe in a corner of her cell. Obviously, a lot has been said about how that could happen, so perhaps we don’t need to go into it here. She’s left a suicide note as well, in which she wrote that she had decided to take her own life in view of the circumstances.”

  “The circumstances?” said Reinhart. “What circumstances?”

  “That she had killed her husband, and had nothing to look forward to apart from several years behind bar
s,” said Moreno.

  “It’s not exactly difficult to understand her motive,” said Münster. “But what is difficult to explain is why she waited so long. Why she allowed herself to be arrested and charged, and then put on a show in court before putting an end to it all.”

  “Didn’t she write anything about that in the letter?” wondered Reinhart.

  Münster shook his head.

  “No. It was just a few lines, and of course you can’t expect logical reasoning. She must have been pretty exhausted mentally, and a decision like that must’ve taken a lot of thought.”

  “You’d think so,” said Rooth.

  Heinemann cleared his throat and put his glasses on the table.

  “I’ve spoken to a woman by the name of Regine Svendsen,” he began pensively. “A former colleague of Fru Leverkuhn’s. We spoke about precisely these psychological aspects. She seems to have known Leverkuhn well—until a few years ago, at least. It’s risky to jump to conclusions in cases like this, and she was careful to stress that …”

  “What did she say?” said Rooth. “If we cut the crap.”

  “Well,” said Heinemann. “You could say Fru Leverkuhn was a very strong woman. Quite capable of doing all kinds of things. There was a sort of incorruptibility about her, according to Fru Svendsen. Or something to that effect.”

  “Really?” said Münster. “Well, clearly she has displayed an ability to take action, there’s no denying that.”

  “Have you found any diaries?” Heinemann asked.

  “Diaries?” said Münster.

  “Yes,” said Heinemann. “I spoke to this woman only yesterday—she’d been away, so I haven’t been able to report on it until now. Anyway, she claims that Marie-Louise Leverkuhn kept a diary all her life, and if that’s the case and we could manage to take a look at it—or them—well, maybe we could get some insight into things.…”

  There was a moment’s silence, then Hiller cleared his throat.

  “Yes, indeed,” he said. “I suggest you go look for these diaries—it shouldn’t be too difficult, surely?”

  Münster looked at Moreno.

  “We’ve … we’ve searched Leverkuhn’s flat,” said Moreno. “But we weren’t looking for diaries.”

  “According to Fru Svendsen there should be eight to ten,” said Heinemann. “She’s seen them, but never read them, of course. Ordinary notebooks with black oilcloth covers. Each one covering three or four years. Just short notes, presumably.”

  “That would cover no more than thirty years,” said Reinhart. “I thought she was older than that?”

  Heinemann shrugged.

  “Don’t ask me,” he said. “But I thought it was worth mentioning.”

  Münster made a note and thought about it, but hadn’t reached a conclusion before the chief of police once again took command.

  “Get over there and start looking!” he said. “Search the whole damned apartment and dig them out. The place is still under guard, I take it? That wouldn’t be unusual?”

  “Not unusual at all,” said Münster with a sigh. “Obviously. I don’t think she had a notebook with her while she was under arrest in any case—but she might have stopped keeping a diary in her old age. How long has it been since this Regine Svendsen was last in touch with her?”

  “About five years,” said Heinemann. “They worked together at Lippmann’s.”

  Reinhart had been filling his pipe for several minutes, under Hiller’s stern gaze. Now he put it in his mouth, leaned back in his chair and clasped his hands behind his head.

  “The link, what about that link?” he said. “And wasn’t there somebody else who came to a bad end?”

  Münster sighed again.

  “Absolutely right,” he said. “We have a Felix Bonger who’s disappeared as well. One of Leverkuhn’s friends. He hasn’t been seen since the night Leverkuhn was killed.”

  Chief of Police Hiller had had enough. He stopped observing Reinhart’s tobacco activities and tapped demonstratively on the table with his Ballograf.

  “Now listen here,” he said. “You have to make up your minds whether these cases are linked or not—I thought we’d already done that. Is there anything—anything at all!—to suggest that Leverkuhn’s and Fru Van Eck’s deaths are connected in any way?”

  “Well,” said Münster, “I have to say it’s unusual for two people living in the same building to be murdered within only a few days of each other, and—”

  “I regard the Leverkuhn case as finished and done with!” interrupted Hiller. “At least as long as nothing completely new comes to light. What we have to do now is to find out who murdered Else Van Eck. Mind you, if it was Fru Leverkuhn who did her in as well, that would suit me perfectly well.”

  “A neat solution,” said Reinhart. “The chief of police ought to have become a police officer.”

  Hiller was irritated for a moment, but then he continued with undiminished authority: “As for this Bonger character, he’s disappeared, so we’ll pursue the same procedures as we would for any other similar case—routine missing-persons procedures, that is.” He glanced at his watch. “I have a meeting in five minutes.”

  “We should take a smoke break,” said Reinhart. “We’re about due for one.”

  “Does anybody else wish to say anything?” asked Münster diplomatically.

  “Personally, I could do with a cup of coffee,” said Rooth.

  “You look tired,” said Moreno, closing the door.

  “That’s probably because I am tired,” said Münster. “I was supposed to be off for a week over the holidays: it ended up being only two and a half days.”

  “Not much fun when you have a family, I suppose.”

  Münster pulled a face.

  “Yes, having a family is great. It’s all this work that isn’t so great. It makes you lose heart.”

  Moreno sat down opposite him and waited for him to continue.

  “How are things with you?” Münster asked instead.

  “Odd,” said Moreno after a short pause.

  “Odd?”

  She laughed.

  “Yes, odd. But okay, basically. Does a heartless intendent have the strength to listen? It’ll only take half a minute.”

  Münster nodded.

  “Well, Claus came home from New York, despite everything,” Moreno said while trying to scrape a little coffee stain off her pale yellow sweater with a fingernail. “It struck me straightaway that he had changed somehow.… I think I said this, didn’t I? I couldn’t put my finger on it, but it finally came out yesterday. He’s found somebody else.”

  “What?” said Münster. “What the hell …?”

  “Yes. A month ago he was ready to take his own life for my sake, but now he has a flourishing new relationship. He met her at a restaurant in Greenwich Village, they flew home on the same plane, and they’ve evidently found each other. Her name’s Brigitte, and she’s a script girl with a television company. Huh, men …”

  “Enough of that,” said Münster. “Don’t tar everybody with the same brush, for Christ’s sake! I refuse to associate myself with this kind of … of juvenile behavior.”

  Moreno smiled. Stopped scraping and contemplated the stain, which was still there.

  “Okay,” she said. “I know. In any case, I think it’s brilliant, even if it is a bit odd, as I said. Shall we drop the battle of the sexes?”

  “By all means,” said Münster. “I’ve had more than my fair share of that as well.”

  Moreno looked vaguely sympathetic, but said nothing. Münster took a drink out of the can of soda water on his desk and tried not to belch, but belched even so. In that polite way, which brought tears to his eyes.

  “The Leverkuhn case,” he said, taking a deep breath. “Are you with me on it?”

  “Yes, I’m with you.”

  “Act three. Or is it act four? Anyway, the division of labor is clear, in broad outline at least. Rooth and Jung will lead the search for the diaries at the Leverkuhns’
place. Reinhart and Heinemann will take care of Van Eck. You and I have a bit more freedom. I’ll ignore what Hiller said about what’s resolved and what isn’t. I’m going to have another go at Leverkuhn’s children. All three, I think.”

  “Even the daughter who’s locked away?” asked Moreno.

  “Even her,” said Münster.

  “Do you think it was Marie-Louise Leverkuhn who disposed of Else Van Eck as well?”

  Münster made no reply at first. Leafed somewhat listlessly through the pile of paper on his desk. Drank the rest of the soda water and threw the empty can into the wastepaper basket.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “She flatly denied it, and why should she bother to do that when she had already admitted to killing her husband? And she took her own life, too. Why would she want to kill Van Eck? What motive could she have had?”

  “Don’t ask me,” said Moreno. “But you think they’re connected?”

  “Yes,” said Münster. “I think so. I don’t know how, but damn it, I’m going to find out.”

  He could hear the trace of weariness in his last sentence, and he could see that Moreno heard it as well. She looked at him for a moment, her brow furrowed as she searched for something consoling to say. But she found nothing.

  I wish she would just walk around the desk and give me a hug, Münster thought, closing his eyes. Or we could get undressed and go to bed.

  But nothing like that happened either.

  32

  “Hello?”

  “Hello. My name’s Jung, Maardam police. Am I talking to Emmeline von Post?”

  “Yes, that’s me. Good morning.”

  “I have just one question, so maybe we can sort it out on the telephone?”

  “Good Lord, what’s it about?”

  “Marie-Louise Leverkuhn. We’re winding up the case, and we want to sort out all the final details.”

  “I understand,” said Emmeline.

  Oh no you don’t, thought Jung. But you’re not supposed to either. “Did Fru Leverkuhn keep a diary?” he asked.

  There were a few seconds of astonished silence before Emmeline answered.