doubt a lot of people hadn’t read about it yet.
So there was still hope.
For some obscure reason Munster had difficulty in sharing Krause’s apple-cheeked go-ahead spirit, and when he went down to his car in the underground car park he noticed to his surprise that he felt old.
Old and tired.
Things were not helped by the fact that Monday evening was when Synn attended her course in business French; or the fact that his son Bart had borrowed a saxophone from a classmate and devoted every second of the evening to practising.
In the end Munster locked the instrument in the boot of his car and explained that the ten-year-old was much too young for that sort of music.
Ten-year-olds should go to bed and keep quiet. It was half past ten.
For his own part he dropped off to sleep not long afterwards, nagged by a bad conscience and without Synn by his side.
13
‘I’m only staying until this evening,’ Mauritz Leverkuhn explained. ‘She doesn’t want us hanging around so why play the hypocrite?’
Yes, why indeed, Munster thought.
The man sitting opposite him on the visitor’s chair was big and heavy, with a receding hairline and the same ruddy complexion as his sister. There was something superficial, disengaged, in his way of speaking and behaving – as if he were not really with it – and Munster assumed, for the time being, that it had something to do with his profession.
Mauritz Leverkuhn worked as a salesman and distributor of paper cloths, serviettes and candle-rings to department stores and supermarkets.
‘I’d just like a few bits of information,’ said Munster. ‘So far we don’t have much to go on with regard to the murder of your father, so we need to follow up any leads we can manage to dig up.’
‘I understand,’ said Mauritz.
‘When did you last see him, for instance?’
Mauritz thought for a few moments.
‘A few months ago,’ he said. ‘I was here on a sales mission, and I called in on them briefly. Drank coffee. Gave Mum a bottle of cherry liqueur – it was her name day.’
‘So you didn’t have all that much contact with your parents, generally speaking?’
Mauritz cleared his throat and adjusted his yellow and blue striped tie.
‘No,’ he said. ‘We didn’t… We don’t have. None of us.’
‘Why?’
He shrugged.
‘Is it necessary?’
Munster refrained from responding.
‘Do you have any children?’
‘No.’
‘So there aren’t any grandchildren at all, then?’
Mauritz shook his head.
‘Are you married?’
‘No.’
‘Have you been?’
‘No.’
Munster waited a few seconds, but it was apparent that Mauritz had no intention of saying anything off his own bat.
‘What’s the relationship between you and your sisters?’ he asked. ‘Do you see much of each other?’
‘What has that got to do with it?’
He shifted his position on his chair, and fingered the crease of his trousers.
‘Nothing, I assume,’ said Munster. ‘It’s difficult to say what is relevant at this early stage. And what isn’t.’
We’ve got a right bloody bundle of fun here, he thought – and it struck him that the same applied to the family as a whole. None of them was likely to be the life and soul of any party: not the ones he’d been in contact with at least. Woodlice, as Reinhart used to call them.
But perhaps he was being unfair. He didn’t feel all that much of a livewire himself, come to that.
‘What about your elder sister?’ he asked. ‘She’s unwell, if I’m not mistaken.’
Mauritz suddenly looked positively hostile.
‘You have no reason to drag her into this,’ he said. ‘Our family has nothing to do with what has happened. Neither me nor my sisters. Nor my mother.’
‘How can you be so sure?’ said Munster.
‘What?’
‘How can you be so sure that none of them is involved? You don’t have any contact with them, after all.’
‘Shut your trap,’ said Mauritz.
Munster did as he was told. Then he pressed the intercom and asked froken Katz to serve them some coffee.
‘Tell me what you were doing last Saturday night.’
The coffee had induced a climate change for the better, but only marginally.
‘I was at home,’ said Mauritz sullenly, after a couple of seconds’ thought. ‘Watching the boxing on the telly.’
Munster wrote that down as a matter of routine.
‘What time was that?’
Mauritz shrugged.
‘Between nine and twelve, roughly speaking. Surely you don’t think that I drove here and murdered my father? Are you soft in the head?’
‘I don’t think anything,’ said Munster. ‘But I’d like you to be a bit more cooperative.’
‘Oh yes? And how do you think I’m going to be able to cooperate when I’ve got bugger all to say?’
I don’t know, Munster thought. How many years is it since you last smiled at anything?
‘But what do you think?’ he asked. ‘We have to try to find somebody who might have had a motive to kill your father. It’s possible of course that it was a pure act of madness, but that’s not certain. There might have been something behind it.’
‘What, for instance?’ Mauritz wondered.
‘That’s something we hoped you might be able to tip us off about.’
Mauritz snorted.
‘Do you really think I’d shut up about something like that, even if I knew anything?’
Munster paused, and checked the questions he had written down in advance.
‘When did they move to Kolderweg?’ he asked.
‘In 1976. Why do you want to know that?’
Munster ignored the question.
‘Why?’
‘They sold the house. We youngsters had moved out.’
Munster made a note of that.
‘He got a new job as well. He’d been out of work for a while.’
‘What kind of a job?’
‘Pixner Brewery. I’m sure you know about that already.’
‘Could be,’ said Munster. ‘And before that you lived down at Pampas, is that right?’
