by Håkan Nesser
But some other time, not now. She clambered into the car and thought that all she wanted to do for the moment was to discuss the matter with Intendent Münster. Preferably in a whisper, as they had found themselves doing in the church that morning: but perhaps that was asking too much.
Quite a lot too much, in fact. She started the car. No doubt it would be best to postpone that conversation as well until tomorrow, she decided. To be on the safe side.
After these deliberations Inspector Moreno drove back to her temporary home, and spent all evening thinking about the concept of the battle of the sexes.
33
With the aid of Constables Klempje and Dillinger, Rooth and Jung searched the Leverkuhns’ flat in Kolderweg for four long hours on the Tuesday after fru Leverkuhn’s funeral.
It would have been quicker, Jung decided later, had they done so without the assistance of the constables altogether. Thanks to unbridled enthusiasm, Dillinger managed to demolish a bathroom cupboard that had no doubt been fixed to the wall for many a year (but since neither inhabitant of the flat was any longer of this world, Rooth reckoned that they could lie low when it came to the question of damages), and Klempje’s bulky frame tended to get in the way – until Jung had had enough and sent him packing to the attic space instead.
‘Aye, aye, Captain,’ said Klempje. Saluted and disappeared up the stairs. When Jung went to check on how things were going not long after, it transpired that with the aid of a bolt cutter, Klempje had broken into fröken Mathisen’s jam-packed storeroom and succeeded in removing most of the contents and piling them up in the narrow corridor outside. It was a considerable amount. Jung fetched Dillinger, gave still more detailed instructions to the pair of them, and half an hour later they came downstairs to report (Klempje looked suspiciously sleepy): there were no diaries to be seen, neither in Mathisen’s nor in the Leverkuhns’ storeroom.
No doubt about it, as sure as amen in church or whores in Zwille – they hadn’t found a single bloody page, full stop.
Jung sighed and announced that unfortunately, the same applied to the flat itself. Although he expressed it differently.
‘What a lot of crap,’ said Rooth when he’d locked the door behind them. ‘I’m hungry.’
‘There’s something wrong with your metabolism,’ said Jung.
‘What does that mean?’ asked Klempje, yawning so broadly that his neck muscles creaked. ‘I’m hungry as well.’
Jung sighed again.
‘But perhaps it means something,’ he said. ‘If you look at it that way.’
‘What the hell are you on about?’ wondered Rooth.
‘Don’t you see?’
‘No,’ said Rooth. ‘Don’t keep me guessing like this. I can hardly contain myself.’
Jung snorted.
‘There are some cops you can bribe by offering them a bun,’ he said. ‘Anyway, look at it like this. If she really did keep diaries, this Leverkuhn woman, and has now destroyed them, that must mean that they contained something of importance. Something she didn’t want anybody else to read. Don’t you think?’
Rooth thought about that as they walked back to the car.
‘Crap,’ he said. ‘That’s just normal. Who the hell do you think wants to leave a load of diaries to posterity? Irrespective of what’s in them? Not me in any case. So that doesn’t mean a thing.’
Jung conceded that there was probably something in that, but didn’t think there was any reason to expand on it.
‘I didn’t know you could write,’ he said instead.
‘Of course he can,’ said Klempje, picking his nose. ‘What a lot of bloody crap!’
When they got back to the police station, Jung and Rooth went down to the prison cells for a chat with Inspector Fuller: it emerged more clearly than was desirable that Marie-Louise Leverkuhn had made no effort at all to keep a diary during the six weeks she had spent in cell number 12. Either in notebooks with black oilcloth covers or anywhere else. Fuller could stake his bloody reputation on that, he claimed.
For safety’s sake they checked with all the warders and the drowsy chaplain, and everybody agreed. Even if no more reputations were staked.
There were no diaries. It was as simple as that.
‘Okay,’ said Rooth. ‘Now we know. It seems that everybody draws a blank in this bloody lottery.’
Shortly before Münster went home for the day he had a phone call from Reinhart.
‘Have you a quarter of an hour to spare?’
‘Yes, but not much more,’ said Münster. ‘Are you coming to my office?’
‘Come to mine instead,’ said Reinhart. ‘Then I can smoke in peace and quiet. There are a few things I’m wondering about.’
‘I’ll be with you in two minutes,’ said Münster.
Reinhart was standing by the window, watching the sleet fall, when Münster arrived.
‘I seem to recall that the chief inspector thought January was the worst month of the year,’ he said. ‘I must say I agree with him. It’s only the sixth today, but it feels as if we’ve been at it for an eternity.’
‘It can’t have anything to do with the fact that you’ve only just started work again, can it?’ Münster wondered.
‘I shouldn’t think so,’ said Reinhart, lighting his pipe. ‘Anyway, I had just a few little theoretical questions.’
‘Good,’ said Münster. ‘I’m fed up with being practical all the time.’
Reinhart sat down behind his desk, turned his chair and put his feet up on the third shelf of the bookcase, where there was a space left for precisely this purpose.
‘Do you think she’s innocent?’ he asked.
Münster watched the wet snow falling for five seconds before replying.
‘Possibly,’ he said.
‘Why should she confess if she didn’t do it?’
‘There are various possibilities.’
‘Such as?’
Münster thought.
‘Well, one at any rate.’
‘One possibility?’ said Reinhart. ‘That’s what I call a multiplicity.’
‘Who cares?’ said Münster. ‘Perhaps it’s simplisticity, but it could be that she was protecting somebody . . . Or that she thought she was. But that’s just speculation, of course.’
‘Who might she have been protecting?’
The telephone rang, but Reinhart pressed a button and switched it off.
‘That’s obvious,’ said Münster, with irritation in his voice. ‘I’ve been wondering about that from the very start, but there’s no evidence to support it. None at all.’
Reinhart nodded and chewed at the stem of his pipe.
‘Then there’s fru Van Eck,’ Münster said. ‘And this damned Bonger. That complicates matters somewhat, don’t you think?’
‘Of course,’ said Reinhart. ‘Of course. I tried to talk to the poor widower at Majorna today. But there’s not much of a spark left in him, it seems . . . Ah well, what are you going to do now? In the way of positive action, I mean.’
Münster leaned back on his chair.
‘Follow up that simplistic thought,’ he said after consulting himself for a few seconds. ‘See if it holds water, at least. I need to get about a bit and chase things up. Only one of the siblings attended the funeral, so we didn’t get very far then. And it wasn’t exactly fun either, interrogating the mourners as soon as they left the church.’
‘No, it wouldn’t be,’ said Reinhart. ‘When are you setting off?’
‘Tomorrow,’ said Münster. ‘They live quite a long way up north, so it might well be a two-day job.’
Reinhart thought for a while. Then he removed his feet from the book shelf and put down his pipe.
‘It certainly is a bloody strange business, don’t you think?’ he said. ‘And unpleasant.’
‘Yes, indeed,’ said Münster. ‘I suppose they could be coincidences. It’s over two months now since it all started, but it’s only now that I’m beginning to sniff the possibility of a motive.’
&nb
sp; ‘Hmm,’ said Reinhart. ‘Does it include Else Van Eck?’
‘I’m not really sure. It’s only a very faint whiff at the moment.’
Reinhart’s face suddenly lit up.
‘Well, I’ll be damned!’ he said. ‘You’re beginning to sound like the chief inspector. Are you starting to get old?’
‘Ancient,’ said Münster. ‘My kids will start thinking I’m their grandad if I don’t get a week off soon.’
‘Time off, oh yes . . .’ said Reinhart with a sigh, and his eyes began to look dreamy. ‘No, sod this for a lark, it’s time to go home. I’ll see you in a few days’ time, then. Keep us informed.’
‘Of course,’ said Münster, opening the door for Intendent Reinhart.
34
He allowed himself an extra hour the next morning. Made the beds, did the washing up, took Marieke to nursery school and left Maardam by ten o’clock. Driving rain came lashing in from the sea, and he was relieved to be sitting in a car with a roof over his head.
His main travelling companion was oppressive exhaustion, and it was not until he had drunk two cups of black coffee at a service station by the motorway that he began to feel anything like awake and clear in the head. Van Veeteren used to say that there was nothing to compare with a long car journey – in solitary majesty – when it came to unravelling muddled thoughts, and when Münster set off he had cherished a vague hope that the same would apply to him as well.
For there was certainly quite a lot to get to grips with. And a lot of tangles to unravel.
First of all, Synn. His lovely Synn. He had hoped that they would have been able to have a heart-to-heart talk the previous evening after the children had gone to sleep, but that’s not how it had turned out. Quite the reverse, in fact. Synn had settled down on her side and turned out the light before he had even got ready for bed, and when he made tentative moves to try and make contact with her, she had already fallen asleep.
Or pretended to, he wasn’t sure which. He lay awake until turned two, and felt awful. When he finally dropped off, he dreamed instead of Ewa Moreno. Nothing seemed to be going right.
Is the relationship coming to an end? Münster wondered as he came to the hills around Wissbork. Is that what happened when two people started drifting away from each other? As they say.
He didn’t know. How the hell could he know?
All you can do is look after your own life, he thought. That is the only consideration. All comparisons are gratuitous and would-be-wise. Synn is unique, he is unique, and so are their family and their relationship. There are no guidelines, no pattern to follow. All you can do is rely on your feelings and intuition. Dammit all.
I don’t want to know, he suddenly realized. I don’t want to know how it’s going to turn out. It’s better to be blind, and to hope.
But Synn was right in one respect in any case, even a worn-out detective-intendent could understand that. Things couldn’t go on like this – no way. Not their lives, or other people’s for that matter. If they couldn’t succeed in changing the conditions, making some radical changes to the way things were at present, well . . . It was like sitting in a train that was slowly but inexorably approaching a terminus where there was no alternative but to get off and go their separate ways. Whether they wanted to or not.
Has she as bad a conscience as I have? he wondered in a sudden flash of insight.
Or was that aspect also infected by the sex roles? Perhaps that was another shield against a nagging conscience, he wondered now that he was looking more closely at the situation – that calm, female sense of certainty, which could evidently survive no matter what the circumstances, but which he could never understand.
But which he loved.
Hell’s bells, Münster thought. The more I think about it, the less I understand.
He had driven more than a hundred kilometres before he was able to concentrate his thoughts on his work and the investigation.
The Leverkuhn case.
Leverkuhn–Bonger–Van Eck.
He worked out that it was now over ten weeks since the whole thing began. And they had been standing still for most of that time, if he were to be honest: November and half of December while fru Leverkuhn had been on remand and they failed to find the slightest trace of Else Van Eck.
But then the investigation had exploded into action the week before Christmas. Marie-Louise Leverkuhn’s suicide and the discovery in Weyler’s Woods.
It was as if everything had conspired to ruin his Christmas break, he told himself glumly. To take away from him the opportunity to stop that train heading for ruin. And new incidents kept on cropping up after that as well – tin after tin of red herrings, as Rooth had put it.
The information about the diaries, for instance. Did any diaries still exist? They had existed, that was clear; but if he would ever be able to read what was in them (assuming there was something of importance) – well, that was probably a vain hope.
And that woman’s report to Moreno, to take another example. About family relationships by the seaside over a few summers in the sixties. What was the significance of that?
Or yesterday’s discussion with Reinhart. Although he didn’t know all that much about the investigation, Reinhart seemed to be thinking along the same lines as Münster himself. But perhaps that wasn’t too surprising – Reinhart was generally more perceptive than most.
Then there was that conversation with Ruth Leverkuhn after the funeral. A woman difficult to warm to. It hadn’t yielded much, either. A pity he didn’t know about what Lene Bauer had said at the time. It would have been interesting to ask her to comment, if nothing else.
Yes, there were a few openings, no doubt about that.
Or pitfalls, if one preferred to adopt Rooth’s pessimism.
Speaking of openings, he couldn’t help wondering about the conversation with Van Veeteren yesterday evening. The chief inspector had rung shortly before nine to ask about the latest developments. Münster had failed to discover exactly what he wanted to know, or what he had in mind. He had hummed and hawed and spoken in riddles, almost as he used to do when something special was brewing. Münster had met him halfway and told him about his plans, and Van Veeteren had urged him to be careful. Warned him to watch his step, in fact; but it was impossible to get him to be more precise or to give any positive advice.
This was quite remarkable, surely? Was he on his way back? Had he grown tired of life as an antiquarian bookseller?
Impossible to say, Münster decided. As so often where Van Veeteren was concerned.
And in Kolderweg the de Booning-Menakdise couple were busy moving out. The screwing machines! Or la Rouge et le Noir, as Moreno had christened them, rather more romantically. Why? Why move out just now? It sometimes seemed as if everything depended on getting out of that building. The Leverkuhns had gone. The caretaker and his wife as well. And now this young couple. Only fröken Mathisen and old Engel were left.
Very strange, Münster thought. What’s going on?
At one o’clock he still had an hour’s drive ahead of him, and decided it was time for lunch. Turned off the main road just north of Saaren and entered yet another of those postmodern rest bunkers for post-modern drivers. As he sat at his window table – with a view of the rain and the car park and four stunted larch trees – he made up his mind to inject his thoughts with a little more systematics. He turned to a new page in his notebook, which he had taken in with him, and started writing down all the things he had been thinking about during the last hour in the car. Telegram style. Then, as he sat chewing his healthy schnitzel, he had the list in front of him, and tried to extract from it some new, bold conclusions. Or at any rate a few cautious old ones: there were five centimetres of blank page left at the bottom where he could note down these thoughts.
When he had finished eating, the centimetres were still blank; but nevertheless, for some abstruse reason, he felt sure of one thing. Just the one.
He was on the right track.
Fairly sure. The blind tortoise was approaching the snowball.
It was blowing at least half a gale in Frigge. When Münster had struggled out of his car in the circular open plaza in front of the railway station, he was forced to lean into the wind in order to make any progress at all. Inside the station he was given a map and a route description by an unusually helpful young woman in the ticket office. He thanked her for her efforts, and she explained with a smile that her husband was also a police officer, so she knew what it was usually like.
There you are, Münster thought. The world is full of understanding policemen’s wives.
Then he went out into the storm again, this time leaning backwards. Clambered back into his car and studied the information he’d been given. It seemed that Mauritz Leverkuhn lived in a suburb. Detached houses and modern terraced houses, no doubt, and only an occasional block of flats, anything but a skyscraper. It looked like it. He checked his watch. It was only half past three, but as Mauritz Leverkuhn was supposed to be suffering from influenza, there was no reason to worry that he might not be at home.
He had no intention of ringing in advance to arrange a meeting. Certainly not, Münster thought. If you’re going to take the bull by the horns, there’s not a lot of point in asking for permission first.
The suburb was called Gochtshuuis. It was on the western outskirts of the town. He started the car and drove off.
It took him a little more than fifteen minutes to find the place. A rather dull 1970s development with two-storey terraced houses alongside a canal, and a somewhat sparse strip of trees pointing at the low marshland and the sea. A windbreak, presumably. All the trees were leaning eastwards at the same angle. Mauritz Leverkuhn’s house was furthest away, where the road petered out with a postbox, a refuse recycling station and a turning area for buses.
Concrete grey. Two low storeys high, ten metres wide and with a pathetic swamp of a garden at the front. Probably a similar one at the back, facing the trees. Dusk was already in the air, and Münster noted that lights were on in two of the windows.
