The Unlucky Lottery

by Håkan Nesser

  ‘Münster,’ said Münster. ‘Not Müssner.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Malinowski. ‘I’ve made a note.’

  He started the engine and set off. It was almost six o’clock, and darkness was beginning to settle over the deserted town. A strong wind had blown up again, but there still hadn’t been a drop of rain this long Thursday.

  He parked a few minutes later. Remained seated for a while, composing himself. Then he checked he had both his gun and his mobile with him, and got out of the car.

  39

  ‘There’s a film by Tarkovsky,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘His last one. The Sacrifice. That is what this is all about.’

  Reinhart nodded. Then he shook his head.

  ‘Enlighten me,’ he said. ‘I’ve seen it, but it was several years ago.’

  ‘You should see Tarkovsky’s films several times, if you have the opportunity,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘There are so many layers of meaning. You don’t remember this one?’

  ‘Not off the top of my head.’

  ‘He poses a fundamental question in that film. We could put it like this: if you meet God in a dream and make him a promise, what do you do when you wake up?’

  Reinhart put his pipe into his mouth.

  ‘I do recall that,’ he said. ‘He’s going to sacrifice his son in order to make the reality that is threatening everybody merely an illusion, isn’t that right? A world war becomes only a nightmare if he carries out that deed.’

  ‘Something like that,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘The question, of course, is whether we really do receive signs like that. And what happens if we ignore them. Break the agreement.’

  Reinhart sat in silence for a while.

  ‘I never stood on the lid of a well during the whole of my childhood,’ he said.

  ‘That’s presumably why you’re still alive,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘How long to go?’

  ‘An hour,’ said Reinhart. ‘I have to say I’m still not at all sure what the devil Tarkovsky has to do with this trip. But I suspect you’re not going to tell me?’

  ‘You suspect correctly,’ said Van Veeteren, lighting a newly rolled cigarette. ‘That’s also part of the agreement.’

  The taxi driver’s name was Paul Holt. It was Krause who had tracked him down, and Moreno met him in his yellow cab outside the Hotel Kraus. A slim man in his thirties. White shirt, tie and a neat pony-tail. Moreno sat down in the front passenger seat, and when he shook her hand and introduced himself she discerned a distinct smell of marijuana in his breath.

  Ah well, she thought. He’s not going to be driving me anywhere.

  ‘It’s about that fare of yours a few months ago,’ she said. ‘Fru Leverkuhn in Kolderweg. How well do you remember it?’

  ‘Quite well,’ said Holt.

  ‘It wasn’t exactly yesterday,’ said Moreno.

  ‘No,’ said Holt.

  ‘You must have had hundreds of fares since then, surely?’

  ‘Thousands,’ said Holt. ‘But you remember the special ones. I can tell you in detail about an old man in spotted trousers I drove eight years ago, if you want me to. In detail.’

  ‘I understand,’ said Moreno. ‘And that trip with fru Leverkuhn – that was special, was it?’

  Holt nodded.

  ‘In what way?’

  Holt adjusted his hair ribbon and clasped his hands over the steering wheel.

  ‘You know that as well as I do,’ he said. ‘I mean, there were articles in all the newspapers about them. Mind you, I’d have remembered that trip in any case.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘It was a bit unusual, and that’s the kind of thing you remember.’

  ‘So I gather,’ said Moreno. ‘Can you tell me where you drove to, and what she did?’

  Holt wound down the side window a decimetre and lit an ordinary cigarette.

  ‘Well, it was more of a goods delivery than anything else. Both the back seat and the boot were full of suitcases and bags. I think I pointed out to her that there were delivery firms for jobs like that, but I’m not sure. I took it on, anyway. You do what you have to do.’

  ‘Where did you go?’

  ‘First to the charity shop in Windemeer,’ said Holt. ‘Dropped off quite a few of the bags. I waited outside while she sorted things out in the shop. Then we continued to the Central Station.’

  ‘The railway station?’

  ‘Yes, the Central Station. We carried in the rest of the stuff, I think there was a suitcase and two other bags – those big, soft-sided bags, you know the kind of thing. Yes, there were three of them. Heavy they were, as well. She locked them away in left-luggage lockers, and then we drove back to Kolderweg. She got out at the shopping centre. It was pissing down.’

  Moreno thought for a while.

  ‘You have a good memory for details,’ she said.

  He nodded, and drew on his cigarette.

  ‘I suppose so,’ he said. ‘But as I said, it’s not the first time I’ve thought about that trip. Once you’ve recalled something, it’s there. Sort of like a photo album. Don’t you find that as well?’

  Yes, Ewa Moreno thought, after she had left the yellow taxi. He was right about that, surely? Surely there were things you never forgot, no matter how much you wished you could? That early morning four years ago, for instance, when she and Jung broke into a flat in Rozerplejn, and found a twenty-four-year-old immigrant woman with two small children in a large pool of blood on the kitchen floor. The letter informing her that she would be deported was lying on the table. She recalled that all right . . .

  That remained in the photo album of her memory. And other scenes as well.

  She checked her watch, and wondered if there was any point in driving back to the police station. Or in ringing and informing them about what Paul Holt had said. In the end she decided that it could wait until tomorrow. After all, everything seemed to confirm what they had guessed must be the facts. Marie-Louise Leverkuhn had used the Central Station as a storage depot for a few days, or a day or so at least, before finally disposing of the butchered caretaker’s wife in Weyler’s Woods. Simple and painless. A neat solution, as somebody had said.

  Nevertheless, on the way home she stopped to check the buses leaving the Central Station. It fitted in. There was such a bus. Number sixteen. It ran every twenty minutes during working hours. Once an hour if you preferred to work under the cover of darkness. Nothing could have been simpler.

  But she would wait until tomorrow before reporting this. Unless Intendent Münster got in touch during the evening: that would obviously present an opportunity to report then.

  It could well be an advantage to have something concrete to talk about. She had begun to feel more and more clearly that she was standing with at least one foot on the wrong side of the border. That border you had to stake everything on not crossing – not least because all the roads over it were so definitely one way only. Once over it, there was no going back.

  In the next life I’m going to be a lioness, Moreno thought, and made up her mind to sublimate all her desires and indeed the whole of the world by jumping into the bath and having a long soak in jujuba oil and lavender.

  ‘You again?’ said Mauritz Leverkuhn.

  ‘Me again,’ said Münster.

  ‘I don’t get the point of this,’ said Mauritz. ‘I’ve nothing more to talk to you about.’

  ‘But I have quite a lot to talk to you about,’ said Münster. ‘Are you going to let me in?’

  Mauritz hesitated for a moment, then shrugged and went into the living room. Münster closed the door behind him and followed. It looked the same as it had done on his first visit. The same advertising leaflets were lying in the same place on the table, and the same glass was standing beside the easy chair in which Mauritz was now sitting.

  But the television was on. A programme in which four colourfully dressed women were sitting on two sofas, laughing. Mauritz pressed a button on the remote control, and switched them off.

  ‘Yes, indeed,�
�� said Münster, ‘I have quite a lot to talk to you about. I’ve been talking to your sister this afternoon.’

  ‘Ruth?’

  ‘No, Irene.’

  Mauritz made no reply, didn’t react.

  ‘I spent several hours at the Gellner Home, in fact,’ said Münster. ‘You’ve been lying to me.’

  ‘Lying?’ said Mauritz.

  ‘Did you not say yesterday that you hadn’t been to see her for over a year?’

  Mauritz emptied his glass.

  ‘I forgot about that,’ he said. ‘I went to see her last autumn, I’m not sure when.’

  ‘Forgot?’ said Münster. ‘You were there on Saturday the 25th of October, the same day as your father was murdered.’

  ‘What the hell has that got to do with it?’

  He still didn’t seem to have made up his mind what attitude to adopt, and Münster reckoned that his head must be spinning now. But surely he must have been expecting another visit? He must have known that Münster would return sooner or later. Or had the flu and the fever stopped his mind from working?

  ‘Can you tell me what you and Irene talked about last October?’

  Mauritz snorted.

  ‘It’s not possible to talk to Irene about anything sensible. You must surely have noticed that if you’ve been visiting her?’

  ‘Maybe not in normal circumstances,’ said Münster. ‘But I don’t think she was in her normal state that Saturday.’

  ‘What the devil d’you mean by that?’

  ‘Do you want me to spell out what she told you?’

  Mauritz shrugged.

  ‘Prattle on,’ he said. ‘You seem to have a screw loose. Have had all the time, come to that.’

  Münster cleared his throat.

  ‘When you arrived at the home, she had just finished a therapy session, isn’t that right? With a certain Clara Vermieten. You saw her immediately afterwards, and then . . . then she began talking about things from your childhood, and that you had no idea about. Concerning your father.’

  Mauritz didn’t move a muscle.

  ‘Is it not the case,’ said Münster, ‘that on that Saturday afternoon you discovered circumstances you knew nothing about? Circumstances which, to some extent at least, explain the occurrence of Irene’s illness? Why she became the way she is now?’

  ‘You’re out of your mind,’ said Mauritz.

  ‘And isn’t it a fact that this news affected you so deeply that to a large extent you took leave of your senses?’

  ‘What the hell are you sitting there babbling on about?’ said Mauritz.

  Münster paused.

  ‘What I’m talking about,’ he said eventually, as slowly and emphatically as he could, ‘is that you discovered that your father had been sexually abusing both your sisters throughout the whole of their childhood, and that as a result you got into your car, drove down to Maardam and killed him. That’s what I’m talking about.’

  Mauritz was still sitting there motionless, with his hands clasped in his lap.

  ‘I can understand your reaction,’ Münster added. ‘I might well have done the same if I’d been in your shoes.’

  It’s possible that those were the words that made Mauritz change his tune. Or at least, to give way slightly. He sighed deeply, wiped the sweat off his brow and seemed to relax.

  ‘You can never prove this,’ he said. ‘You’re being ridiculous. My mother has admitted doing it. If it’s true what you say about my father, she had just as good a reason for doing it as I had. Don’t you think?’

  ‘Could be,’ said Münster. ‘But it wasn’t her that did it. It was you.’

  ‘It was her,’ said Mauritz.

  Münster shook his head.

  ‘Incidentally, why did you visit your sister on that particular Saturday?’ he asked. ‘Was it because your girlfriend had just left you? The timescale seems to fit, at least.’

  Mauritz didn’t reply, but Münster could see from his reaction that the guess was probably spot on. It was the same old story. Just as when a game of patience is about to be resolved, and the cards seem to turn up in a predictable order.

  ‘Shall I tell you what happened next?’ he asked.

  Mauritz stood up with difficulty.

  ‘No, thank you,’ he said. ‘I want you to leave immediately. You are coming out with a mass of sick fantasies, and I have no intention of listening to you any longer.’

  ‘I thought you had just agreed that Irene really did tell you this?’ Münster said.

  Mauritz stood there for a few seconds, swaying back and forth indecisively.

  ‘Your mother caught you in the act, didn’t she?’

  He didn’t answer.

  ‘Did she come home while you were stabbing him, or did you meet her on the way out?’

  I’d give a fortune for his thoughts just now, Münster thought. Surely he’ll give up now?

  ‘I suspect there are a few other things you don’t know about,’ said Münster. ‘About what happened next, that is.’

  Mauritz stared at him for a few blank seconds again. Then he sat down.

  ‘Such as what?’ he said.

  ‘Fru Van Eck, for instance,’ said Münster. ‘Did you see her that night, or was it just she who saw you?’

  Mauritz said nothing.

  ‘Have you any explanation for the murder of Else Van Eck? Did your mother tell you what happened? I’m asking because I don’t know.’

  ‘You know nothing,’ said Mauritz.

  ‘Then I’ll have to speculate,’ said Münster. ‘But it’s only of academic interest. Fru Van Eck saw you when you came to Kolderweg to kill your father. She told your mother she’d seen you a few days later: I’m not certain, but I assume she tried to use that knowledge to her own advantage. To earn money, in fact. Your mother reacted in a way she had never expected. She killed fru Van Eck.’

  He paused for a few seconds, but Mauritz had no comment to make. He knew about it, Münster thought.

  ‘She killed the caretaker’s wife. Then she needed a few days to butcher the body and get rid of it. Then, when all that was done, she confessed to the murder of your father, so that we would stop investigating and you would go free. A cold-blooded woman, your mother. Very cold-blooded.’

  ‘You’re out of your mind,’ said Mauritz for the second time.

  ‘Obviously she couldn’t confess to the murder of Else Van Eck as well because she wouldn’t have been able to give a motive. It all fits together, you see – I think you have to admit that. She commits one murder, but confesses to another one: perhaps there is some kind of moral balance there. I think that’s the way she thought about it.’

  Mauritz muttered something and scrutinized his hands. Münster watched him for a while without saying anything. Surely he’ll crack any minute now, he thought. I don’t have the strength to sit through all this again at the police station. I simply don’t have the strength.

  ‘I’m not sure either why she committed suicide in her cell,’ he said. ‘But it’s not difficult to sympathize with her. Perhaps it’s not difficult to understand anything of what she did. She was protecting you from being discovered as the murderer of your father, and she murdered another person in order to continue protecting you. She did a lot for your sake, herr Leverkuhn.’

  ‘She owed a debt.’

  Münster waited, but there was no continuation.

  ‘A debt for what your father did to your sisters, d’you mean? For allowing it to happen?’

  Mauritz suddenly clenched his fists and thumped them down on the arms of the chair.

  ‘Hell and damnation!’ he said. ‘He made Irene ill and she didn’t do anything to stop him! Can’t you understand that he wasn’t worth having a natural death? The bastard! I’d do it again if I could. I was prepared to accept responsibility for it as well. I was going to do so, and that’s why . . .’

  He fell silent.

  ‘Why she committed suicide?’ asked Münster. ‘Because you were thinking of confessing?’<
br />
  Mauritz stiffened, then seemed to crumple, and nodded weakly. Münster took a deep breath and closed his eyes. Opened them again and looked at the hunched-up figure slumped in the chair opposite him: he tried to decide what he really felt about him.

  One of those losers, he thought. Yet another one.

  He must have been damaged by his childhood, he as well, even if it didn’t make itself felt as dreadfully as in his beloved sister.

  Those accursed, inescapable birth marks which could never be operated away. Which could never be glossed over or come to terms with.

  And that accursed, pointless evil, Münster thought. Which kept on asserting itself, over and over again. Yes, he felt sorry for him. He would never have believed it even an hour ago, but he did now.

  ‘Are you going to arrest me now?’ said Mauritz.

  ‘They’re waiting for us at the police station,’ said Münster.

  ‘I don’t regret a thing. I’d do it again, can you understand that?’

  Münster nodded. He wanted comfort and understanding now. Mün-ster recognized the situation. Very often it wasn’t confirmation of a justified crime that would provide the release the perpetrator was longing for, but words. Being able to talk about it afterwards. The ability to explain his actions face to face with another person. A person who understood, and a face that could tolerate the reflection of his desperation.

  Oh yes, it had happened before.

  ‘It would be wrong for a bastard like him to complete his life without being punished . . . To get away with something like that.’

  ‘Let’s go now,’ said Münster. ‘We’ll take the rest down at the station.’

  Mauritz stood up. Wiped the sweat off his brow again, and breathed deeply.

  ‘Can I just go to the kitchen and take another pill?’

  Münster nodded.

  He left the room, and Münster heard him dropping a tablet into a glass and then filling it with water. Thank God, he thought. It’s all over now. I can wash my hands of this awful business.

  It was too late when Münster realized that the passive resignation displayed by Mauritz Leverkuhn for the past few minutes was not quite what it had seemed. And too late when he realized that the carving knife they had spent so much time looking for in October and the beginning of November had not in fact been thrown into a canal or a rubbish bin. It was in Mauritz Leverkuhn’s hand now, just as it had been during the night between the 25th and 26th of October. He discovered that fact via the corner of his eye looking over his right shoulder, felt for his pistol in its holster, but that was as far as he got. The knife blade entered his midriff from behind: he felt an agonizing stab of pain, then he fell headfirst to the floor without breaking the fall with his hands.