The Unlucky Lottery

by Håkan Nesser

  ‘You can say that again,’ said Münster, looking up from the pile of papers he was leafing through. ‘She’s confessed.’

  ‘What?’ said Moreno.

  ‘Fru Leverkuhn. She rang at a quarter past seven this morning and confessed that she had murdered her husband.’

  Moreno sat down on a chair.

  ‘Well I’ll be damned!’ she said. ‘So it was her after all?’

  ‘That’s what she claims,’ said Münster.

  THREE

  22

  The police spent three days with her, and then she was left more or less alone. From the second week onwards her visitors were restricted to a handful of people.

  Her lawyer was called Bachmann, and came almost every day – in the beginning, at least. She had met him in connection with the first interrogation at the police station, and he hadn’t made a particularly good impression on her. A well-dressed, overweight man of about fifty with thick, wavy hair that he probably dyed. A large signet ring and strong, white teeth. He suggested from the very start that they should follow the manslaughter line, and she went along with that without really thinking about it.

  She didn’t like the man, but reckoned that the more she let him have his own way, the less time she would need to spend discussing matters with him. In the middle of the month, he kept away several times for a few days on end; but in December, as the date of the trial approached, there was a lot to run through again. She didn’t really understand why, but never asked.

  Get it over with quickly, she thought: and that was the only request she put to him. Don’t let it become one of those long-drawn-out affairs with special pleading and the cross-examination of witnesses and all the rest that she was used to from the telly.

  And Bachmann put his hand on his heart, assuring her that he would do his best. Although there were several things that were unclear, and one simply can’t get away with anything at all in court.

  Every time he pointed this out he gave her a quick smile, but she never responded with one of her own.

  The chaplain was called Kolding, and was about her age. A low-key preacher who always brought with him a flask of tea and a tin of biscuits, and generally sat on the chair in her cell for half an hour or so, without saying very much. In connection with his first visit he explained that he didn’t want to harass her, but it was his intention to call in every two or three days. In case there was something she would like to take up with him.

  There never was, but she had nothing against his sitting there. He was tall and thin, slightly stooping in view of his age, and he reminded her of the vicar who conducted her confirmation classes. She once asked him if they were relatives, but of course they were not.

  However, he had worked for a while in the Maalwort parish in Pampas. This emerged from one of their sparse conversations, but as she had only been to church once or twice during all the years they had lived only a stone’s throw away, there was not much to say about this circumstance either.

  Nevertheless, he would sit there in the corner several afternoons a week. And made himself available, as he had promised. Perhaps he was simply tired, and needed to rest for a while, she sometimes thought.

  In so far as he had any effect on her at all, at least he did not annoy her.

  Other people who took the trouble to come and visit her were her two children and the assiduous Emmeline von Post.

  Before the trial began, when she counted up the visits, she concluded that Mauritz had been three times, and Ruth and Emmeline twice each. On her birthday, the second of December, Mauritz and Ruth turned up together with a Sachertorte and three white lilies – which for some reason she found so absurd that she had difficulty in not bursting into laughter.

  Otherwise she made a big effort – during all these visits and greetings – to behave politely and courteously; but the circumstances sometimes meant that the atmosphere inside her pale yellow cell often felt tense and strained. Especially with Mauritz, there were a few occasions when heated words were exchanged about trivialities – but then she hadn’t expected anything else.

  On the whole, however, her time in prison – the six weeks of waiting before the trial began – was a period of rest and recovery, so that when she went to bed the evening before the proceedings started, she felt inevitably a bit worried about what lay in store, but also calm, and quite confident that her inner strength would carry her through these difficult times.

  As it had done thus far.

  The trial began on a Tuesday afternoon, and her lawyer had promised her that it would be all over by the Friday evening – always assuming that no complications arose, and there was hardly any reason to expect that they would.

  However, the first few hours in the courtroom were characterized by ceremonial posturing and a slow pace that made her wonder. She had been placed behind an oblong wooden table with bottles of mineral water, paper mugs and a notepad. On her right was her lawyer, smelling of his usual aftershave; on her left was a youngish woman dressed in blue, whose role was unclear to Marie-Louise Leverkuhn. But she didn’t ask about it.

  This was not one of the bigger courtrooms, as far as she knew. The space for members of the public and journalists was limited to about twenty chairs behind a bar at the far end of the rectangular room. Just now, on this first afternoon, the audience was restricted to six people: two balding journalists and four women reassuringly well into pensionable age. It was a relief to find that there were so few: but she suspected that there would be rather more people sitting on the high-backed chairs later on in the performance. Once it was properly under way.

  Sitting opposite her, enthroned on a dais barely a decimetre high, was Judge Hart behind a broad table covered in a green cloth hanging down to the floor on all sides – so that one didn’t need to look at his feet. Or up skirts, she fantasized, if the judge happened to be a woman. But she didn’t know. In any case, her own administrator of justice was a man of generous proportions in his sixties. He reminded her very much of a French actor whose name she couldn’t remember, no matter how hard she tried. Ended in -eaux, she seemed to recall.

  On the right of the judge were two other officers of justice – young and immaculately groomed men wearing glasses and impeccable suits – and on the left was the jury.

  In the early stages everything was aimed at the six members of this jury: four men and two women, and as far as she could make out it was all intended to establish the irreproachable and impartial nature of their characters when it came to the trial that was about to start.

  When they had all been approved, Judge Hart declared that proceedings could begin and handed over to the prosecutor, fru Grootner, a woman in late middle age wearing a beige costume and with a mouth so wide that it sometimes seemed to continue for some distance outside the face itself. She stood in front of her table on the other side of the central aisle, leaning back with her ample bosom as a counterbalance, and pleaded her cause for over forty-five minutes. As far as Marie-Louise Leverkuhn could understand it was based on the premise that in the early hours of 26 October she had stabbed to death Waldemar Leverkuhn with malice aforethought and in full control of her senses, so that the only crime she could possibly be accused of was first degree murder. And hence this was the count that she would have to answer for.

  Does she really believe what she’s saying? Leverkuhn wondered to herself: but it was hard to judge what was hiding behind the torrent of words and the streamlined spectacles which, on closer examination, proved to have precisely the Cupid’s bow form that was missing from her lips.

  When the prosecutor had finished, it was the defence’s turn. Bachmann stood up with all the dignity he could muster, stroked his right hand several times over his mahogany-brown hair, and then announced that the defence would contest the charge and instead plead guilty to manslaughter.

  He elaborated on this forcefully and verbosely for almost as long as the wide-mouthed prosecutor had spouted forth, and Marie-Louise felt frequently as if her e
yelids were closing down.

  Perhaps she hadn’t slept as well as she’d thought last night?

  Perhaps she was too old for this kind of thing. Would everything be over and done with more quickly if she were to plead guilty to murder?

  When proceedings were suspended for the day shortly after four o’clock, she hadn’t needed to answer a single question. Or even utter a single word. Bachmann had already explained that this was how things would go on the first day, but even so she felt somewhat confused as she was led out by the lady in blue who had remained at her side all the time.

  It’s like being at the dentist’s or in hospital, she thought with a mixture of relief and disappointment. One is beyond doubt the leading character, but doesn’t have a single word to say about it.

  Still, that was presumably the norm in courts of law as well.

  23

  ‘A longer racket,’ said Van Veeteren, feeling his back. ‘That’s what’s needed, dammit. I don’t understand why they don’t invent something of the sort.’

  ‘Why?’ said Münster.

  ‘So that you don’t need to bend such a bloody long way down for drop shots, of course. My back isn’t what it used to be. Never has been.’

  Münster considered these words of wisdom and switched on the shower. He had won all three sets as usual, it was true, but the chief inspector – former chief inspector – had offered stiff opposition. 15–9, 15–11, 15–6 were the scores, which suggested that Van Veeteren was in better condition now than he had been before leaving the police station, rather than the opposite.

  Nevertheless he surely can’t have much further to go before passing the sixty mark? Münster thought, trying to brush aside the possibility that the fairly even outcome of the match might have something to do with his own state at the moment.

  ‘Adenaar’s now?’ wondered Van Veeteren as they came up to the foyer. ‘I gather you need to get something else off your chest.’

  Münster coughed a little self-consciously.

  ‘If you have time, Chief Inspector.’

  ‘Stop using those words, will you?’ grunted Van Veeteren.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Münster. ‘It takes time to get used to it.’

  ‘I know that only too well,’ said Van Veeteren, holding the door open.

  ‘I suppose it’s Leverkuhn that’s worrying you, is it?’

  Münster looked out in the direction of the square, and took a deep breath.

  ‘Yes,’ he admitted. ‘The trial started this afternoon. I just can’t get it out of my head.’

  Van Veeteren took out his unwieldy cigarette machine and started filling it with tobacco.

  ‘Those are the worst kind,’ he said. ‘The ones that don’t allow you to sleep at night.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Münster. ‘I dream about this accursed case. I can’t make head nor tail of it, whether I’m awake or asleep. Despite the fact that I’ve been through it hundreds of times, both with Jung and Moreno. It doesn’t help.’

  ‘Reinhart?’ Van Veeteren asked.

  ‘On paternity leave,’ sighed Münster. ‘Playing with his daughter.’

  ‘Ah, yes, of course,’ said Van Veeteren, pressing down the lid of the machine so that a rolled cigarette fell onto the table. With a contented expression on his face he placed the cigarette between his lips and lit it. Münster watched his activities in silence.

  ‘Do you think she didn’t do it?’ asked Van Veeteren after his first drag. ‘Or what’s the problem?’

  Münster shrugged.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he admitted. ‘I suppose it must have been her, but that’s not the end of the case. We have fru Van Eck and that damned Bonger as well. Nobody’s seen any trace of either of them since they vanished, and that was over a month ago now.’

  ‘And fru Leverkuhn has nothing to do with them?’

  ‘Not a thing. If you can believe what she says, that is. We pressed her pretty hard once she’d confessed, but she didn’t give an inch. She owns up to stabbing her husband in a fit of anger, but she’s as innocent as a newborn babe as far as the others are concerned, she claims.’

  ‘Why did she kill her husband?’

  ‘Why indeed?’ said Münster glumly. ‘She just says it was the last straw.’

  ‘Hmm,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘What kind of a straw could that have been; was she more precise about it? If we assume that the camel’s back was full.’

  ‘That he’d won some money, but didn’t intend to give her a penny. She says she came home and found him lying in bed bragging about all the things he was going to buy, and after a while she’d had enough.’

  Van Veeteren drew on his cigarette and thought for a moment.

  ‘I suppose it could happen like that,’ he said. ‘Is she the type?’

  Münster scratched his head.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘If we assume that she’s been leading that camel all her life – or throughout their marriage at any rate – well, I suppose it could be true; but it’s hard for an outsider to judge. That’s her story in any case – that she’s had to put up with this and that for what seemed to be for ever, and she simply couldn’t take it any more. Something snapped inside her, she says, and so she did it.’

  Van Veeteren leaned back and stared up at the ceiling.

  ‘Theories?’ he said eventually. ‘Do you have any? What do you think? About the Van Eck woman, for instance?’

  Münster suddenly looked almost unhappy.

  ‘I’ve no bloody idea,’ he said. ‘Not the slightest. As I said before, I find it difficult to believe that these three cases are not connected in some way. It seems pretty unlikely that Bonger, Leverkuhn and fru Van Eck would all kick the bucket in the same way purely by chance.’

  ‘You don’t know that Bonger and Van Eck are dead,’ Van Veeteren pointed out. ‘Or have I missed something?’

  Münster sighed.

  ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘But it doesn’t exactly make things any easier if they’ve simply gone missing.’

  Van Veeteren said nothing for a few seconds.

  ‘Presumably not,’ he said eventually. ‘What have you done about it? From the point of view of the investigation, I mean. You presumably haven’t just wandered around thinking this?’

  ‘Not a lot,’ Münster admitted. ‘Since the prosecutor charged fru Leverkuhn, we’ve only been going through the routine motions as far as Bonger and fru Van Eck are concerned.’

  ‘Who’s in charge of the investigation?’ asked Van Veeteren.

  ‘I am,’ said Münster, taking another swig of beer. ‘But once fru Leverkuhn is sentenced Hiller is probably going to shelve the other cases. That will be next week. There are a few other things to keep us occupied.’

  ‘Really?’ said Van Veeteren.

  He drained his glass and signalled for another. While waiting for it to be served, he sat in silence with his chin resting on his knuckles as he gazed out of the window at the traffic and the pigeons in Karlsplats. When the beer arrived he first siphoned off the froth, then almost emptied it in one enormous swig.

  ‘Very good!’ he announced. ‘All that exercise makes you thirsty. So why exactly did you want to speak to me?’

  Münster suddenly looked embarrassed. He never learns, Van Veeteren thought. But then, perhaps it’s not a bad thing to have a few red cheeks in the police force. It makes things seem nice and peaceful.

  ‘Well?’

  Münster cleared his throat.

  ‘All that stuff about intuition. I thought I’d ask the chief . . . ask you to do me a favour, to be frank.’

  ‘I’m all ears,’ said Van Veeteren.

  Münster squirmed on his chair.

  ‘The trial,’ he said. ‘It would be good to get an idea of whether she really is as guilty and as innocent as she says. Fru Leverkuhn, that is. If somebody with an eye for such things could go and take a look at her. Whether she’s found guilty or not.’

  ‘Which she will be?’ said Van Veeteren.
<
br />   ‘I think so,’ said Münster.

  Van Veeteren frowned and contemplated his cigarette machine.

  ‘All right,’ he said. ‘I’ll go there and take a look at her, then.’

  ‘Excellent,’ said Münster. ‘Many thanks. Room 4. But it’ll be all over by Friday, if I’m not much mistaken.’

  ‘I’ll go tomorrow,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘The eagle’s eye never sleeps.’

  Huh, big chief him never wrong, Münster thought. But he said nothing.

  24

  ‘Tell me about when you came home in the early hours of 26 October!’

  Prosecutor Grootner pushed up her spectacles and waited. Marie-Louise Leverkuhn took a sip of water from the glass on the table in front of her. Cleared her throat and straightened her back.

  ‘I got home at about two o’clock,’ she said. ‘There had been a power cut on the railway line to Bossingen and Löhr. We were at a standstill for an hour. I’d been to visit a friend.’

  She looked up at the public gallery, as if she were looking for a face. The prosecutor made no attempt to hurry her, and after a while she continued of her own accord.

  ‘My husband woke up as I came through the door into the bedroom, and started making abusive remarks.’

  ‘Abusive remarks?’ wondered the prosecutor.

  ‘Because I’d woken him up. He claimed I’d done it on purpose. Then he went on and on.’

  ‘How did he go on?’

  ‘He said he’d won some money, and that he was going to spend it so that he didn’t have to see me so often.’

  ‘Did he usually say things like that?’

  ‘It happened. When he’d been drinking.’

  ‘Was he drunk that evening?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How drunk?’

  ‘He was pretty far gone. Slurring when he spoke.’

  Short pause. The prosecutor nodded thoughtfully several times.

  ‘Please continue now, fru Leverkuhn.’

  ‘Well, I went out into the kitchen and saw the knife lying on the draining board. I’d used it when I’d been cutting up some ham that afternoon.’