Munster's Case

by Håkan Nesser

“Go around the house and check,” said Van Veeteren. “I’ll stay here.”

  It took less than half a minute for Reinhart to go around to the back and then return.

  “It’s not possible to get around the whole building,” he explained. “This house is joined onto the next one. I couldn’t see anything through the windows. I don’t think there’s anybody in.”

  “Then what the hell is Münster’s car doing here?” asked Van Veeteren. “We have to go in.”

  “I suppose we do,” said Reinhart.

  Van Veeteren muttered a stream of curses while looking for a suitable means of assistance. He eventually found a stone the size of a clenched fist in the soaking-wet flower bed next to the drive. He dried it, weighed it in his hand for a second or two, then threw it at the living room window.

  “Bull’s-eye,” said Reinhart. He went up to the broken pane, removed a few pieces of glass, put his hand through the hole, and opened it.

  It was Van Veeteren who climbed in first, and Van Veeteren who saw him first.

  “Oh fuck!” he said. “Fuck, fuck, fuck!”

  Intendent Münster was lying on his stomach on the light-colored parquet floor, halfway out into the hall, as if he had been on his way out when he fell. His arms were stretched along the sides of his body, and on the back of his light green sweater, about an inch above the waistband of his trousers and to the right of his spine, was a dark red stain, slightly bigger than the palm of a man’s hand.

  “Ambulance, Reinhart! Like greased lightning!” roared Van Veeteren. Then he leaned down over Münster and started checking his pulse.

  Good God, he thought. This wasn’t part of my leave-of-absence agreement.

  When Mauritz Leverkuhn left his home in Frigge, he drove due south for an hour and a half. When he came to Karpatz he changed direction and continued eastward until he came to Tilsenberg, just a few miles from the border. He filled his tank and turned off toward the north.

  The nationwide alert was set in motion at 8:45, and when a police patrol car found his white Volvo at a rest stop off the motorway just outside Kossenaar, it was half past six in the morning.

  Mauritz Leverkuhn was lying asleep under a blanket on the backseat, shivering, with a sky-high temperature and in a state of total exhaustion. On the floor in front of the passenger seat was a carving knife with a handle of mahogany and a blade about eight inches long, covered in blood.

  Leverkuhn was taken to the police station in Kossenaar, but his condition was such that he was not subjected to questioning.

  Given the circumstances, it was not considered necessary for him to say anything at all.

  V

  41

  It took the two divers dressed in green and black less than a quarter of an hour to find Felix Bonger.

  Jung stood in the rain in the middle of the little group of onlookers in Bertrandgraacht, and tried to benefit from the scant shelter provided by Rooth’s battered umbrella. When the swollen body was lifted up onto the quay and put inside a black body bag, he noticed that the woman on his left, the mannish Barga, was sniffling.

  “It’s so sad,” she said. “He was such a fine fellow, Bonger.”

  “He was indeed,” said Jung.

  “They should really have left him there. Buried under his own boat—that would have been stylish.”

  Maybe, Jung thought. That wasn’t such a bad idea. Although perhaps it would have been more stylish if they had never found him. Let’s face it, he had nothing to do with that other business. Absolutely nothing.

  He had slipped on the gangplank, that’s all, when he came home that Saturday night. Drunk and unsteady on his feet. It could have happened to anybody, Jung thought. It could have happened to me. Presumably he had hit his head and fell into the water. Sunk a few feet, and later floated up against the bottom of his own canal boat.

  And stayed there. Under his own floor. Yes, Barga had a point.

  “Poor bastard,” said Rooth. “Lying in the water doesn’t make you any prettier. But I should congratulate you. You were right after all.… There was nothing more mysterious to it than that. I wonder how many other missing persons are lying in canals.”

  “Let’s not worry about that just now,” said Jung. “I think we ought to try to get a roof over our heads instead.”

  “Another good idea,” said Rooth, shaking the umbrella so that Jung became even wetter than he was already. “But there’s one thing you can clear up for me first, before I forget.”

  “What’s that?” said Jung.

  “That pair of screwing machines … de Booning and whatever the other bugger is called—why did they move out?”

  “Menakdise,” said Jung. “Tobose Menakdise. Guess.”

  “I haven’t a clue,” said Rooth.

  “Okay. They need a bigger flat. She’s expecting a child.”

  “How odd,” said Rooth.

  Jung was just about to turn around and leave when he felt a hand on his shoulder. It was Fru Jümpers, who was standing under another dripping umbrella.

  “I was just wondering,” she said. “Would you gentlemen like to come in for a glass of something? In my boat that is. Barga and I think we ought to drink a toast to the dearly departed.”

  “I don’t know about that,” said Jung. “I think we ought to—”

  “Yes, of course,” said Rooth. “We’ll be there in two flicks of a donkey’s tail.”

  At first Ulrike Fremdli thought the antiquarian bookshop was closed, but then she saw Van Veeteren sitting back in a wing chair in the middle of all the shelves.

  “You won’t sell much if you sit there all the time,” she said.

  Van Veeteren looked up from the little leather-bound volume he had in his hand.

  “You have to become acquainted with the stock,” he said. “Nice to see you.”

  “The same to you,” said Ulrike Fremdli with a smile. Then she became serious. Looked at him with a slightly doubtful expression, shaking her head slowly.

  “You are a remarkable fellow,” she said. “I can’t get over that. Do you mean … are you saying that your Macbeth dream came true?”

  “True and true,” muttered Van Veeteren.

  “How is he?”

  “Better,” said Van Veeteren. “I was there an hour ago. He’ll pull through, but they’ll have to remove that kidney. And he’s bound to be off work for several months—maybe that’s just what he needs. He was foolish to go in on his own like he did.”

  Ulrike nodded.

  “He’s been worn-out,” said Van Veeteren. “At least, that’s what his wife, Synn, said. She was there at the hospital with the children. And Inspector Moreno as well.… It was good we turned up when we did—he couldn’t have coped with lying there for much longer.”

  “But what about that dream?” said Ulrike again.

  Van Veeteren didn’t answer. Instead he leafed back through a few pages of the book he was reading.

  “ ‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy,’ ” he quoted. “Hamlet. A lovely little edition. Printed in Oxford in 1836. Just came in.”

  He held it up.

  “I thought it was Macbeth we were talking about?” said Ulrike.

  Van Veeteren stood up and replaced the volume in a bookcase with glass doors.

  “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “There’s something about Shakespeare. I think he’s said more or less all that needs saying. He covers everything, you could say.… He’d even have been able to make something of that Leverkuhn family, no doubt.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Listen to this. The father rapes both his daughters.… One goes out of her mind, the other becomes a lesbian. The son murders his father and stabs a police officer. The mother takes all the guilt upon herself, butchers a witness, and hangs herself. Just the stuff to turn into a tragedy, don’t you think?”

  Ulrike eyed him skeptically.

  “Is that what it’s all about?” she said. “Thi
s case?”

  “In a nutshell,” said Van Veeteren. “And you should bear in mind that until three months ago they were regarded as a perfectly normal family—until somebody happened to lift the lid on them.”

  Ulrike thought that over for a while.

  “How do you put up with it?” she said in the end.

  “I don’t put up with it,” said Van Veeteren. “I work in a bookshop.”

  She nodded.

  “I’ve heard it said. But you put your oar in, nevertheless, don’t you?”

  “I become involved,” said Van Veeteren. “There’s a difference. Anyway, it’s …”

  “It’s time for lunch,” said Ulrike. “I’m free until two o’clock. Are you coming?”

  “Of course,” said Van Veeteren, stretching his arms above his head. Adjusted his back gingerly and suddenly looked worried.

  “What’s the matter?”

  Van Veeteren cleared his throat. “Nothing. I just can’t help wondering, that’s all.”

  “Wondering?”

  “If this really was the way the tragedy happened. If life is a novel or a play, as some people suggest, it wouldn’t be all that difficult to write another chapter, or another scene—or what do you think?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Ulrike Fremdli. “I’m hungry.”

  He took hold of her hand and squeezed it slightly awkwardly.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s just that I sometimes find it a bit hard to keep my thoughts in check. Let’s go.”

  42

  Elaine Vorgus stared first at the tarot cards, and then at her lover.

  “It’s remarkable,” she said. “I don’t think it’s ever happened to me before. All sixteen cards the wrong way around—no, I’ve never seen the likes of it before. I’ll have to look it up in the books.”

  “What does it mean?” asked Ruth Leverkuhn, sipping her wine at the same time as she leaned forward over the table and stroked her girlfriend’s bare arm. “What does it mean when they’re back to front?”

  It was not the first time they’d been sitting there like this, and even if it was Ruth’s fate lying on the table in front of them, she knew that it meant more to her girlfriend than it did to herself. Elaine responded to her caress and looked up from the cards.

  “The significance is the opposite of what the cards say,” she said. “The message is reversed. Wealth means poverty, strength means weakness, love means hatred.… It’s as simple as that. But all sixteen cards, that must mean something very special. As if …”

  “As if what?” said Ruth, with loving patience.

  “As if it referred to somebody quite different from you. As if the whole of you were back to front in some way.… But I’m only guessing. I’ve never come across sixteen cards the wrong way around before.”

  “Let’s write it all down and leave it until later,” said Ruth. “I want to drink more wine and then make love instead.”

  Elaine smiled and thought for a while. Then she raised her glass and ran her tongue over her lips a few times.

  “Your wish is my command,” she said with a smile. “Where would you like to start? In the bath, perhaps? I think I’d like that. I just need to make that phone call first.”

  “The bath’s a good idea,” Ruth decided. “Yes, I’d like to have you with me in the bath. Write down what’s on the cards and then make that call. I’ll get in the bath first, and be waiting for you.”

  Once in the bathroom she stood and contemplated her sizable body in the mirror. Lifted up her heavy breasts and sucked at each nipple for a few seconds. Stroked herself carefully between her legs with a finger in order to get confirmation of her desire.

  Then her brother cropped up in her thoughts again, and she moved her hands to more neutral regions.

  Poor Mauritz, she thought. Fool! She sighed and wrapped a bath towel around her. Continued thinking while she somewhat mechanically and absentmindedly rearranged the perfume bottles on the shelf under the mirror and selected her favorite foam bath scents.

  What is the point of confessing to something you haven’t done?

  The question had been buzzing around in her mind for some days now. Nagging at her, making her worry. Why couldn’t Mauritz simply have admitted to being a weakling instead? A cowardly and confused person who would never have been able to carry off anything like that? Not in any circumstances.

  Twenty-eight stabs! Mauritz?

  It was ridiculous. Anybody who knew anything at all about him could have explained that it was absolutely impossible.

  But of course there wasn’t anybody who knew anything about him. Apart from her.

  So perhaps it wasn’t all that odd after all. She had begun to realize that was the case after a few days. That he wanted to take the blame, and that people believed him. There was a sort of logic. A twisted and back-to-front logic, but it made sense even so.

  But why had he gone to the trouble of buying an identical knife when they had already disposed of the real one—that was a genuine mystery. When she thought about it, she realized that this was the only thing she didn’t understand. Couldn’t make head or tail of it. He could never have planned to use it. To stab that police officer? The fact that he actually did so could hardly be explained in any other way than his being possessed by a sudden ability to act. Sudden and unexpected. Like a will-o’-the-wisp. Nothing else.

  That was presumably how things were. The knife was an idée fixe. The stabbing of the police officer a coincidence: an act on the spur of the moment. Something to show her—or Irene, in some obscure way—that he did have it inside him.… But no, it was too far-fetched. Too logical. Mauritz could never plan and carry out anything like that. He could work something similar out in hindsight, perhaps, but he could never plan it in advance and then do it. He had never been able to think and act like that. That was the root of his weakness.

  When he came to visit her in a state of near nervous collapse that Saturday in October, he had declared that he was going to do it—he had just discovered all the horrors that had happened in the past and was on his way to Maardam to give his father what he deserved. To take horrific revenge for their ruined youth and kill him without mercy. She had asked him why on earth he had come to her first, and then it was only a few minutes before he had collapsed in a heap on her sofa. Lay there, sniffling and shaking.

  It was when she saw that pitiable performance that she made up her own mind. Decided to carry out the deed herself. He didn’t even try to protest. Simply gaped at her with eyes shining in gratitude. Gratitude and desperate, desperate weakness.

  That was also the image she had in her mind’s eye when she did the deed. That damp-eyed, naked helplessness on the face of her brother. That pent-up hatred of their father.

  And now he was in prison. For a number of crimes. It was remarkable, no doubt about it. When she spoke to him a few hours ago, he had seemed just as calm and collected as he had been for the last few days.

  Reconciled, perhaps. Ready to take his punishment for the crime it had been his duty to commit, but which he didn’t dare do. And for what he had done on the spur of the moment when in a confused state. Come to think of it, she couldn’t recall ever having heard him sounding as secure and harmonious as he did now. Not as a child, or as a youth, or as an adult. That was the fact of the matter.

  Perhaps there was a sort of meaning after all, Ruth thought. A point to it all. If her mother hadn’t managed to protect her daughter as she had intended—simply because Mauritz hadn’t been able to go through with the pretense—then perhaps there was no reason to prevent him from doing it. To take the blame as the vicarious murderer. If that’s what he wanted to do.

  Poor little Mauritz. Poor little brother.

  She shook her head. That was the fact of the matter. And there was a lot in what Elaine had said. All the cards were the wrong way around.

  Now she appeared in the doorway. Ruth observed her slim, naked body in the mirror. Her hot, slig
htly intoxicated gaze. Her black, almost bluish hair.

  I love her, she thought. Love, love, love. At least there is one member of the family left who is capable of doing that.

  In her own way.

  She smiled. Let the bath towel fall to the floor.

  A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Håkan Nesser was awarded the 1993 Swedish Crime Writers’ Academy Prize for new authors for his novel Mind’s Eye (published in Sweden as Det Grovmaskiga Nätet). He received the Best Novel Award in 1994 for Borkmann’s Point and in 1996 for Woman with Birthmark. In 1999 he was awarded the Crime Writers of Scandinavia’s Glass Key Award for the best crime novel of the year for Carambole. Nesser lives in Sweden and London.

  ALSO BY HÅKAN NESSER

  Borkmann’s Point

  The Return

  Mind’s Eye

  Woman with Birthmark

  The Inspector and Silence

  A NOTE ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR

  Laurie Thompson taught Swedish at the University of Wales and was editor of Swedish Book Review from its launch in 1983 until 2002. He has been a full-time literary translator for several years and has translated more than forty books from the Swedish. He was born in New York, but now lives in rural West Wales with his Swedish wife and several cats.