The Unlucky Lottery

by Håkan Nesser

  Weyler’s Woods nature park was not large, but it was popular and well looked-after. There were waste paper bins and rubbish bins alongside all the paths for walkers and joggers that criss-crossed the forest in all directions, and she didn’t usually need to stop and pick up rubbish that had been dumped like this.

  Occasionally an ice-lolly stick or an empty cigarette packet, perhaps, but not a big plastic carrier bag.

  Vera Kretschke was the chairman of her school’s environmental society – had been for the last three terms – and she felt a certain responsibility.

  She stepped out resolutely into the undergrowth. Shook the raindrops off the young birch sapling before ducking down underneath it and pulling out the plastic carrier bag. Most of it had been hidden under leaves and twigs, and she had to pull quite hard to get it loose.

  Dirty bastards, she thought. Filthy pigs.

  Then she looked inside the bag.

  It contained a head. A woman’s head.

  She started vomiting without being able to stop it. It simply came spurting out of her, just as it had done that time a few years ago when she’d eaten something very dodgy at the Indian restaurant in the centre of town.

  Some of it went into the bag as well. Which naturally didn’t make matters any better.

  And Reuben didn’t phone, so there was another sleepless night in store for poor Vera Kretschke.

  ‘Fucking hell!’ roared Inspector Fuller. ‘This sort of thing simply shouldn’t happen.’

  Warder Schmidt shook his large head and looked unhappy.

  ‘But it has happened . . .’

  ‘How the hell did she do it?’ said Fuller.

  Schmidt sighed.

  ‘Ripped up the blanket to make a rope, I think. And then used that little bit of pipe high up in the corner – we’ve talked about that before.’

  ‘I take it you’ve cut her down?’

  ‘No . . .’ Schmidt shuffled and squirmed uneasily. ‘No, we thought you might like to take a look at her first.’

  ‘Hell’s bells,’ muttered Fuller, getting to his feet.

  ‘We only found her a couple of minutes ago,’ said Schmidt apologetically. ‘Wacker is there now, but she’s dead, there’s no doubt about that. And there’s a letter on the table as well.’

  But Inspector Fuller had already elbowed his way past and was charging down the corridor towards cell number 12.

  Damn and blast, thought Schmidt. And it’s my birthday today.

  When Fuller had established that fru Leverkuhn really was in the state that had been reported, he arranged for a dozen photographs to be taken and had her cut down. Then he sent for a doctor, took a couple of tablets to calm his upset stomach, and phoned Intendent Münster.

  Münster took the lift down and eyed the dead woman on the bed in her cell for ten seconds. Asked Fuller how the hell something like this could happen, then took the lift back up to his office.

  When he had read the letter twice, he rang Moreno and explained the situation.

  ‘Quite unambiguous,’ said Moreno after reading Marie-Louise Leverkuhn’s final message to the world.

  ‘Yes, very clear,’ said Münster. ‘She’s done her husband in, and now it was her turn. She was a woman of action, nobody can take that from her.’

  He stood up and looked out at the rain.

  ‘But it’s a bugger that she’s committed suicide in her cell,’ he muttered. ‘They’ll have to revise their procedures. Hiller looked like a plum about to explode when he heard about it.’

  ‘I can well imagine,’ said Moreno. ‘But she did it well. Did you see the rope she’d made? Plaited four strands thick, it must have taken her several hours. A man would never have been able to do it.’

  Münster said nothing. A few seconds of silence passed.

  ‘Why did she do it?’ asked Moreno. ‘I mean, you can understand that she didn’t particularly fancy spending the last years of her life in prison, but . . . Was it only that?’

  ‘What else could it be?’ said Münster. ‘I reckon that’s a good enough reason. If there’s anything to wonder about, it’s why she waited until now. It’s not exactly straightforward to commit suicide in a prison cell. Even if you are skilled, and the routines are bad. Or was it something else, d’you think? Why now?’

  Moreno shrugged.

  ‘I don’t know. But there doesn’t seem much point in speculating now. We’ve got the key, after all.’

  Münster sighed, and turned round.

  ‘What a pointless life,’ he said.

  ‘Marie-Louise Leverkuhn’s?’

  ‘Yes. Can you see any point in it? She had murdered her husband, then killed herself. One of her children is in a psychiatric hospital, and the other two are not exactly the life and soul of any party. No grandchildren. Well, you tell me if there’s some point that I’ve missed.’

  Moreno glanced at the letter again. Folded it up and put it back in the envelope.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘But that’s the way it is. It’s hardly likely to be a story with a happy end if we’re involved in it.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ said Münster. ‘But there ought to be limits nevertheless . . . The occasional little diamond among all the shit. What are you doing for Christmas?’

  Moreno pulled a face.

  ‘The main thing is that I don’t have to see Claus,’ she said. ‘He’s due back tomorrow. At first I intended working over the holidays, but then I bumped into an old friend who had just been dumped. We’re taking six bottles of wine with us to her house by the sea.’

  Münster smiled. Didn’t dare ask about details of the Claus situation. Or what state she was in now. There were certain things that were nothing to do with him, and the less he asked, the better. It was safer that way.

  ‘Good for you,’ he said. ‘Make sure you don’t swim out too far.’

  ‘I promise,’ she said.

  ‘I’m working tomorrow,’ said Münster as he shuffled the cards for Marieke. ‘Then I’m off for six days.’

  ‘About time,’ said Synn. ‘I don’t want this autumn back again. We need to find a strategy to overcome this, we really do.’

  ‘A strategy?’ asked Münster.

  ‘Star-tea-gee,’ said Marieke. ‘Jack of clubs.’

  ‘I’m serious,’ Synn continued. ‘It’s better to throttle the depression before it makes a mess of everything. We have to make time to live. Remember that my mother went to the wall at the age of forty-five. She lived to be seventy, but she didn’t smile once during the last twenty-five years.’

  ‘I know,’ said Münster. ‘But you’re only thirty-eight. And you look like twenty-two.’

  ‘Seven of hearts,’ said Marieke. ‘Your turn! How old are you, Daddy?’

  ‘A hundred and three,’ replied Münster. ‘But I feel older. All right, I agree with you. We need to do something.’

  For a second he tried to compare his life with that of the Leverkuhn family, tried to see where they stood in relation to one another – but the thought was so absurd that it collapsed immediately.

  ‘We’ll start the day after tomorrow,’ he said. ‘Was there any post today?’

  ‘Only bills and this,’ said Synn, handing him a white envelope. He opened it, and took out a sheet of paper folded twice.

  It was a brief message. Only three words. Dated two days ago.

  It’s not her.

  V.V.

  ‘Queen of spades,’ said Marieke. ‘Your turn!’

  ‘Oh hell . . .’ said Intendent Münster.

  29

  Judgment in the Marie-Louise Leverkuhn case was announced on the morning of Monday, 22 December, in the Maardam court house.

  Unanimously, the jury had found fru Leverkuhn guilty of the first degree murder of her husband, Waldemar Severin Leverkuhn, in accordance with paragraphs forty-three and forty-four of the penal code. She was sentenced to six years in prison, the shortest time allowed by the law: Judge Hart announced in all seriousness that this reflected the fact that
the guilty person was already dead and hence was not expected to serve the sentence.

  He then explained that an appeal against the verdict could be lodged in accordance with usual procedures within ninety days, slammed his enormous hammer down on the desk, and declared the case closed.

  Pathologist Meusse dried his hands on his coat and looked up.

  ‘Yes, what is it?’

  Rooth cleared his throat.

  ‘It’s about a skull . . .’

  ‘That skull,’ added Jung.

  Meusse glared at them over the edge of his misted-up glasses and beckoned them to follow him. He led the way through a series of chilly rooms before finally coming to a stop in front of a large refrigerator.

  ‘It’s in here,’ he said, opening the door. ‘Unless I’m mistaken.’

  He took out a white plastic sack and lifted up a decapitated woman’s head by her hair. It was swollen and discoloured, with blotches and pustules of every hue from ochre to deep lilac. The eyes were closed, but a few centimetres of dark brown tongue were sticking out of the mouth. The nose looked like a lump of excrement. Jung could feel his stomach turning over, and hoped he wouldn’t be forced to leave the room.

  ‘Bloody hell!’ said Rooth.

  ‘Yes, it’s not going to win a beauty contest,’ said Meusse. ‘She could have been lying there for a couple of months, I would think. The plastic carrier bag was high quality, otherwise rather more might have been nibbled away.’

  Rooth swallowed and averted his gaze. For want of anything else he found himself looking at Jung, who was standing about thirty centimetres away. Jung felt another spasm in his stomach, and closed his eyes.

  ‘Do you recognize her?’ asked Rooth, his voice shaking.

  Jung opened his eyes and nodded vaguely.

  ‘I think so,’ he said. ‘Can you say anything about the cause of death?’

  Meusse put the head back into the bag.

  ‘Not yet,’ he said. ‘She’s had a few hefty blows with something heavy on the crown of her head, but God only knows if that’s what killed her. But she must have flaked out in any case – it’s one hell of a contusion. You reckon you know who she is?’

  ‘We think so,’ said Rooth. ‘Two months, is that what you said?’

  ‘Plus or minus a few weeks,’ said Meusse. ‘You’ll get more accurate data the day after tomorrow.’

  ‘That’ll be Christmas Eve,’ said Rooth.

  ‘You don’t say?’ said Meusse.

  ‘How did the decapitation take place?’ asked Jung.

  Meusse stroked over his own bald head a few times as if to check that it was still in place.

  ‘A knife,’ he said. ‘And a butcher’s cleaver, I think. Not the instruments I would have chosen myself for that kind of operation, but it evidently worked okay.’

  ‘Evidently,’ said Rooth.

  ‘How old?’ asked Jung.

  Meusse snorted.

  ‘If you know who it is, you ought to know how old she is,’ he muttered, and started walking back to his office.

  ‘Just double-checking,’ Rooth explained. ‘Our lady was closer to seventy than anything else. Does that fit in?’

  ‘Not too bad,’ said Meusse. ‘This head seems to be between sixty-five and seventy-five, according to my preliminary calculations. But I didn’t receive her until yesterday afternoon, so I don’t want to be more precise than that yet.’

  Jung nodded. He had never heard Meusse being prepared to give an exact estimation, but on the other hand, he had never heard of Meusse ever guessing wrongly. If Meusse said that the head they had just been gaping at had belonged to a woman of about seventy who had been beaten to death with a blunt instrument hitting the crown of her head about two months ago, there were doubtless good reasons for believing that this was in fact the case.

  And that the woman in question was Else Van Eck, and nobody else.

  ‘Hmm,’ said Rooth when they emerged from the Forensic Medicine Department and turned up their collars to keep out the driving drizzle. ‘That was a turn-up for the bloody books. Changes things quite a bit, I suspect.’

  ‘Maybe we ought to give Münster a ring,’ said Jung.

  ‘No doubt we should,’ said Rooth. ‘But I reckon we ought to get a bite to eat first. This is going to cause masses of work and trouble, I can feel it coming.’

  ‘I’m sure you’re right,’ said Jung. ‘It’s in the air.’

  FOUR

  30

  He woke up and didn’t know who he was.

  It took a second, or half of one, but it had been there. The moment of complete blankness in which no past existed. No memories. No defeats.

  No falseness, no inadequacies.

  Not even a name.

  Half a second. Merely a drop in a large ocean of humanity. Then it came back.

  ‘Hmmm . . .’ mumbled the woman by his side. Turned over and buried her head more deeply in the pillow. Pressed herself closer to him.

  Ah well, he thought. It could be worse. He looked at the clock. Half past seven. He remembered the date as well. The first of January! Good Lord, they hadn’t gone to bed until after two; and as they were in bed, then . . .

  He smiled.

  Noticed that he was smiling. There was an unusual twitching in his cheek muscles, but by Jove, it was a smile. Half past seven after two or three hours’ sleep! On the first day of the year.

  He adjusted the pillows and observed her. Ulrike Fremdli. With chestnut-brown hair and one breast peeping out through a gap in the covers. A large and mature woman’s breast with a nipple that had served two children, and on a New Year’s morning like this it certainly seemed to be delivering a message of peace and goodwill. Of friendship and brotherhood and love between all people on earth, among all these drops in this ocean . . .

  Good Lord, Van Veeteren thought. I’m losing the plot. Life is a symphony.

  He stayed in bed and scarcely dared to breathe. As if the slightest movement would be enough to break this fragile moment.

  I want to die at a moment like this, he thought.

  Then a dream took possession of him again.

  Remarkable. It was as if it had been sitting round the corner, waiting as the morning spun its treacherous web of illusory happiness: waiting to stab him as soon as he had lowered his guard a few decimetres. Wasn’t that just typical? Absolutely typical.

  It was a peculiar dream.

  A dark and gloomy old castle. With arches and staircases and large, dimly lit halls. Empty and cold, with restless flickering shadows flitting along rough stone walls. Night, evidently; and threatening voices in the distance, and adjacent rooms . . . And the piercing sound of iron against iron, or as if knives were being sharpened; and he is scurrying along through all this, from room to room, hunting for something, unclear what.

  He comes to a cell: very small, next to one wall a diminutive altar with a Madonna-relief, carved out of the dark stone of the wall, it seems; next to another wall a man asleep on a wooden bed. A thick horsehair blanket is pulled up over his shoulders and head, but even so he knows that it’s Erich.

  His son Erich.

  His wayward and accident-prone Erich. He hesitates, and as he stands there in the narrow doorway, not knowing what to do nor what is expected of him, he hears the piercing sound of the knives getting louder, then suddenly, suddenly, he sees one of those daggers hovering in the room. Hanging in mid-air above the man sleeping on the bench. A big, heavy dagger, lit up by jagged beams, glistening, rotating slowly until the tip of its razor-sharp blade is pointing straight down at the man. At Erich, his son.

  He hesitates again. Then moves carefully forward and takes away the blanket from the sleeping man’s head. And it’s not Erich lying there. It’s Münster.

  Intendent Münster lying asleep on his side, at peace with his hands under his head, totally unaware, and Van Veeteren doesn’t understand what is happening. He puts the blanket back where it was, just as carefully, hears voices and heavy footsteps approaching,
and before he has time to leave the room and reach safety, he wakes up.

  ‘It was like Macbeth. The funny thing is that I was so sure it was Erich lying there, but it turned out to be Münster.’

  Ulrike Fremdli yawned and rested her head on her hands. Eyed him over the kitchen table with a look that was almost cross-eyed with exhaustion. Charmingly cross-eyed, he thought.

  ‘You’re a remarkable person,’ she said.

  ‘Rubbish,’ said Van Veeteren.

  ‘Not at all,’ said Ulrike, stroking her hair away from her face. ‘Curiouser and curiouser. The first time you turn up in my life it’s because you are trying to find out who murdered my husband. Then you wait for over a year before getting in touch again, and now you sit here in the morning of New Year’s Day and want me to interpret your dreams. Thank you for last night, by the way. It wasn’t too bad.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Van Veeteren, and realized that he was smiling again. It was evidently beginning to be a habit. ‘Anyway, women are better at dreams,’ he said. ‘Some women, at any rate.’

  ‘I think so,’ said Ulrike. ‘I agree with you in general, that is, but you have a gift making you just as intuitive as I am. I’d always imagined that an old detective inspector would be much more resolute, but perhaps that’s just a prejudice?’

  ‘Hmm, yes,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘We know so little.’

  ‘Really?’

  He cut a slice of cheese and chewed it thoughtfully. Ulrike stuck out her naked foot under the table and stroked his calf with it.

  ‘Hmm,’ said Van Veeteren again. ‘Only a tiny bit of all there is to know. And if we don’t have a keen ear, it’s a damned minuscule bit.’

  ‘Go on,’ said Ulrike.

  ‘Well,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘This is one of my private hobby horses, of course, but since you seem to be too tired to contradict me, maybe I can enlarge a bit on it . . .’

  She stretched out the other foot as well.

  ‘Quite a humble little theory in fact,’ he said. ‘It ought to suit a clever woman like you. A woman with humble feet . . . no, carry on, please do. Anyway, let’s assume that there are an infinite number of connections and correspondences and patterns in the world, and that the cleverest of us might be able – and dare! – to comprehend . . . let’s say a hundredth part of them. The thickest of us might comprehend a thousandth, or a ten-thousandth. Let’s not go into how much I can grasp. Most of it comes to us in ways different from what the so-called western way of thinking is prepared to accept. The deductive terror. Despite the fact that this in no way contradicts it. Or threatens it. Quite the reverse, actually, for it must surely be easier to comprehend things than to comprehend how we comprehend them. Our knowledge of the world must always be greater than our knowledge of knowledge . . . Well, er, something like that. As I said.’