The Unlucky Lottery (17 page)

‘Synn, for goodness’ sake . . .’ he managed to utter in the end, but she had already turned her back on him.

He drank up his coffee and left the kitchen. As he crouched in the hall fastening his shoelaces, he could hear her messing about with the children upstairs.

She loves me even so, he thought hopefully. When all’s said and done, she still does.

‘I’ll be home by one at the latest!’ he shouted up the stairs. ‘I’ll do some shopping on the way back.’

‘Buy something!’

Marieke came sliding down the stairs.

‘Buy something! I want something! Wrapped up in paper!’

He lifted her up. Gave her a hug, buried his nose in her newly washed hair and decided he would buy no less than three presents. Something for Marieke, something for Bartje, something for Synn.

A hundred roses for Synn.

I must put a stop to this deterioration in our relationship, he thought. I really must.

But would roses be the right thing to fill the cracks? Well, that was something he would have to think long and hard about.

He put Marieke down and hurried out into the rain.

‘You’re looking well, Chief Inspector,’ said Münster.

Van Veeteren slurped the froth off his beer.

‘Kindly refrain from using those words, Münster,’ he said. ‘I’ve known you for long enough and said many times that we don’t need to use titles.’

‘Thank you,’ said Münster. ‘But in any case, you are looking well. That’s what I was trying to convey.’

Van Veeteren took a deep swig, and smacked his lips with pleasure.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I’ve had a word with the Good Lord, and we’ve agreed on seven good years after the wandering through the darkness. And I’ll be buggered if that isn’t what I deserve – when I’m sixty-five He can do whatever He likes with me.’

‘Really?’ said Münster. ‘I must say I’ve started feeling a bit on the old side . . . And Reinhart is off work just now, so things get a bit difficult at times.’

‘Don’t they have a new chief inspector up their sleeves?’

Münster shook his head.

‘I think they’re waiting for two things. To see if you come back . . .’

‘I’m not coming back,’ said Van Veeteren.

‘. . . and if you don’t, I reckon Heinemann has to retire first. Nobody can envisage him in that role, and he’s next in line, as it were.’

‘But Hiller became chief of police,’ Van Veeteren reminded him.

He picked up his tobacco pouch, placed a little cigarette machine on the table and started rolling.

‘I’ve given up toothpicks,’ he explained. ‘I was becoming addicted. And this rolling almost makes it a craft . . . Well, what the hell is it you want? We don’t need to sit around all day being as polite as a couple of Chinamen.’

Münster took a swig of his beer and looked out over the rainy square, where people were bustling from one stall to another. He wondered vaguely how many times he’d sat here at Adenaar’s with the chief inspector. Listening to his bad-tempered expositions and gloomy observations . . . and noting the absolutely clear and incorruptible spirit that was always present under the surface. No, it wasn’t difficult to understand why he had jumped off the bandwagon, Münster thought. He’d been on it for thirty-five years, after all.

And it was not surprising that the Good Lord had granted him seven good years. Münster would have done the same.

‘Well?’ Van Veeteren asked again.

‘Yes, there was something I wanted to ask you about, in fact.’

‘Leverkuhn?’

Münster nodded.

‘How could the chief . . . How did you know that?’

Van Veeteren lit his roll-up and inhaled as if he had just invented the first cigarette.

‘Five a day,’ he said. ‘This is number one. What did you say?’

‘You knew that I wanted to talk to you about Leverkuhn. How?’

‘I guessed,’ said Van Veeteren modestly. ‘It’s not the first time, after all. And I still read the newspapers.’

Münster nodded, somewhat embarrassed. It was true, in fact. On two previous occasions since Van Veeteren had left the stage, Münster had plucked up courage and discussed on-going investigations with him. The first time, nearly a year ago, he had been most reluctant to get him involved again, but he had soon realized that the old bloodhound instinct had not died out altogether. And that the chief inspector even derived a certain grim satisfaction from being consulted in this fashion.

But the fact that he would never admit as much for even a second was another matter, of course.

‘I understand,’ said Münster. ‘Thank you for being willing to help. And listen. Anyway, of course it’s about Leverkuhn, no point in denying it.’

Van Veeteren emptied his glass.

‘I’ve read about it, as I said. It seems a bit special. If you buy me another beer it would no doubt improve my sense of hearing.’

There was a slight twitch in the muscles of one cheek. Münster drained his own glass, and went to the bar.

Two beers and forty-five minutes later, they had finished. Van Veeteren leaned back in his chair and nodded thoughtfully.

‘No, this certainly doesn’t seem to be a straightforward case,’ he said. ‘Things seem to be pulling in different directions. The threads seem to be unwinding instead of coming together.’

‘Exactly,’ said Münster. ‘Leverkuhn, Bonger and fru Van Eck. I’ve been thinking about it, and there seems to be just enough that links them together to suggest that their fates were connected – but yet not enough to suggest a motive.’

‘That could well be, yes,’ said Van Veeteren mysteriously. ‘But I think you should be careful not to take that jigsaw puzzle analogy too far. It can be so damned annoying to have a piece too many.’

‘Eh?’ said Münster. ‘What do you mean by that?’

Van Veeteren didn’t answer. Sat up in his chair, and began playing with his cigarette machine instead. Münster looked out of the window again. Another of those meaningless comments, he thought, and felt a little pang of irritation that was as familiar to him as a favourite jacket.

A piece too many? No, he decided that it was just an example of the chief inspector’s weakness for smokescreens and mystification, nothing more. But what was the point of that in a situation like this?

‘What about the wife?’ said Van Veeteren. ‘What do you make of her?’

Münster thought for a moment.

‘Introverted,’ he said eventually. ‘She seems to have a lot buttoned up inside her that she’s reluctant to let come out. Although I don’t really know – there’s no such thing as normal reactions when you come home and find your husband murdered like that. Why do you ask?’

Van Veeteren ignored that question as well. Sat squeezing his newly rolled cigarette, seemingly lost in thought.

‘Anyway,’ said Münster. ‘I just wanted to talk it through. Thank you for listening.’

Van Veeteren lit the cigarette and blew smoke over a begonia that was probably just as dead as the chief of police’s acacias.

‘Tuesday afternoon,’ he said. ‘Give me a few days to think a few things over, and then maybe we can have a game of badminton. I need to get a bit of exercise. But don’t expect too much – regarding your case, that is,’ he added, tapping his brow with his knuckles. ‘I’m rather more focused on beauty and pleasure nowadays.’

‘Tuesday, then,’ said Münster, writing it down in his notebook. ‘Yes, I’d heard rumours about that – a new woman, is that right?’

Van Veeteren put the cigarette machine into his jacket pocket, and looked inscrutable.

The presents added up to nearly 500 euros, topped by a red dress for Synn costing 295. But what the hell? Münster thought. You only live once.

What had she said the other day?

What if we die soon?

He shuddered, and got into his car. However you looked at it, life was no more than the total of all these days, and at some point, of course, you start being more interested in the days that have passed rather than those yet to come.

But there are moments in life – let’s hope so in any case – when you have an opportunity to devote yourself to the here and now.

Such as a Saturday and Sunday in November like these.

Damn and blast, Intendent Münster thought. I wish to God I had one of those copper’s brains that you can switch on and off in accordance with working hours.

If there is such a thing, of course. He remembered an old conversation with the chief inspector – presumably at Adenaar’s as usual – about the concept of intuition.

The brain functions best when you leave it in peace, Van Veeteren had argued. Keep tucked away the questions and information you have, and think about something else. If there’s an answer, it will come tumbling out sooner or later.

Like hell it will! Münster thought pessimistically. I suppose there are brains and brains . . .

Whatever, after the conversation with the chief inspector and the shopping at the height of the Saturday rush hour, there was no doubt that he felt switched off – so he could let his brain work away undisturbed in the background, and see if anything came tumbling out.

He looked at his watch. Ten past one. It was a Saturday in November, it was raining, and he had nothing to do except devote himself to his family.

21

During the night between Friday and Saturday Inspector Moreno slept for over twelve hours, and when she woke up at about half past ten on the Saturday morning, it was quite a while before she realized where she was.

And that she was alone.

That the five years with Claus Badher were at an end, and that from now on she only had herself to worry about. It felt strange. Not least the fact that a month had passed since she left him, but only now had the penny dropped that her fate was in her own hands.

As if to check whether those hands were strong enough to carry it, she took them out from under the warm bedcovers and examined them for a while. Didn’t think they looked up to much – but that’s the way it is with women’s hands. Underdeveloped and a bit childlike. There was an enormous difference between them and the large, sinewy equipment with which men were blessed. Usable and good to look at. Now that she came to think about it, she couldn’t recall ever having seen a woman with attractive hands. They were like a chicken’s wings, it struck her – dysfunctional and pathetic. Perhaps there was food for thought in this striking difference – the extent to which it typified something basic when it came to the difference between men and women?

An expression of essential differences? Their hands?

And never the twain shall meet, she thought: but then she suddenly saw in her mind’s eye a black man’s hand on a white woman’s breast, and she concluded that the twain can in fact meet.

By the time she entered the shower she had decided that the hand and the breast in the image she had conjured up were not in any way Claus’s and hers, but Tobose Menakdise’s and Filippa de Booning’s, and she was suddenly back in the middle of the investigation.

You talk about what fills the mind, she seemed to remember somebody saying. But so what? The more thoughts she devoted to the Leverkuhn case and the fewer to Claus, the better, no doubt.

And the healthier it would be for her maltreated spiritual life.

There was always the hope that there might be other alternatives with which to rack her brains. In that spirit she set out after breakfast on a long walk along Willemsgraacht – towards the Lauern lakes and Lohr. Strolled through the light rain and thought about all sorts of things, but mostly about her parents – and her brother in Rome, whom she hadn’t seen for over two years. Her parents lived not quite so far away, down in Groenstadt, but that contact was not everything it might have been either. It was easy to form opinions about the Leverkuhns’ family relationships, but to be honest, her own were not much better.

And then she had a sister, Maud. She had no idea where Maud was – in Hamburg at a guess – nor what state she was in.

Perhaps the anthropologists were right, she thought, and that when the northern European nuclear family had exhausted its role as an economic and social entity, it had also lost its emotional significance.

Emotions were no more than superstructure and empty show. Men and women met, had children, then wandered off in different directions. Heading for wherever it was they were going before they happened to meet, for their various goals. Yes, perhaps that was how you ought to look at it. In any case, there were plenty of examples of this in the animal world, and a human being is basically a biological being, after all.

This last point reminded her that she was also a female, and that this week she was in the middle of her monthly cycle and was going to find it difficult to do without a man. In the long run, at least. What a pity, she thought, what a pity that a human being should be so badly constructed that there was such a long way between brain, heart and sex at times. Or rather, usually.

Always?

The cafe at Czerpinski’s mill was open, and she decided to indulge herself in a cup of tea before returning home. But she would have to be quite quick about it: it was already a quarter to three, and no way did she want to be wandering around in the dark.

She had barely entered the premises before noticing that sitting at one of the tables in the circular room were Benjamin Wauters and Jan Palinski – they didn’t recognize her, or at least showed no indication of having done so, but she realized that it was a sign.

A sign to the effect that there was no point in trying to keep her work at a distance any more.

Nevertheless, she hung on for a bit longer. On Saturday evening she phoned both her brother and her parents, watched a French film from the sixties on the television, and hand-washed two jumpers. But when Sunday morning announced itself with a high, clear blue sky, she saw that it was all in vain. It was simply too urgent. The case. Her work. A few hours of private investigation without any great expectations. It was in the nature of things, and there was no point in pretending otherwise.

There is something deep down inside me, she thought, that makes me do this. A drive, an urge that I never acknowledge, but it actually steers my life. Or at least my professional life. I like poking my nose into things! I enjoy putting other people under a magnifying glass. Their motivation and their actions.