promised to do her utmost to throw light on these sad circumstances.
Fritz Engel wasn’t exactly smelling of violets today either, but he seemed to be sober and there was a half- finished crossword lying on the kitchen table.
‘For the little grey cells,’ he explained, standing up and pointing a dirty index finger at his forehead. ‘Welcome – and that’s a greeting I don’t extend to all police officers.’
Moreno took the compliment with a practised smile.
‘There are just a few things I’ve been thinking about,’ she said. ‘If you have time, that is.’
‘Of course.’
Engel hitched up his trousers, which had a tendency to fall floorwards, and indicated the vacant chair. She sat down and waited for a couple of seconds.
‘What is the link between Leverkuhn and fru Van Eck?’
‘Sorry?’ said Engel, sitting down.
She leaned forward over the table and braced herself.
‘Listen,’ she said. ‘What I mean is that there must be some sort of crucial link between these two events in the same building, some vital little factor which explains why it’s these two people who have been… been moved out of the way. It could be anything at all, but it’s almost impossible for an outsider to catch on. You have been living close to both of them for twenty years, herr Engel, so you ought to be just the person to come up with something. Can you recall anything at all where both Waldemar Leverkuhn and Else Van Eck had their fingers in the same pie, as it were?’
‘Are you suggesting they were having an affair?’
Moreno choked back a sigh.
‘Not at all. It doesn’t need to be anything as big as that, but it’s hard to be more precise when you don’t really know what you’re looking for.’
‘Yes,’ said Engel, ‘it is.’
He clamped his jaws together with a loud click, and she gathered that just now he was thinking of her in terms of a copper rather than a woman.
‘Are you worried at all that something might happen to you, herr Engel?’
Memories of his masculinity naturally got in the way of his giving her an honest answer to that question. He cleared his throat, straightened his back until it creaked, but she could see nevertheless that fear was coursing through his whole body.
Lay there ominously like dark water under one-night-old ice.
‘I’m not especially frightened, young lady,’ he claimed, trying to keep his gaze steady. ‘One learns to get by in the world we live in.’
‘Is there one of the neighbours you feel slightly less confident about?’ she insisted. ‘When you bump into them on the stairs, for instance?’
‘The neighbours? No, no, of course not!’
He burst out coughing, and as the attack slowly ebbed away Moreno sat there motionless, weighing up his final comment.
Was it really as clear a dismissal of any such thought as he tried to make it sound? Or?
Two hours later, as she slid down into a bubble-bath smelling of eucalyptus, she still hadn’t made up her mind about that.
Inspector Ewa Moreno also slept soundly on Sunday night without waking up at all, and as she sat in the tram in the cold light of dawn the next morning, on her way to the police station, she felt that she had finally caught up with herself. The lack of sleep that had been building up had now been satisfied, and for the first time in weeks she felt eager to start work.
Ready to get to grips with whatever lay in store for her.
But she could hardly have been prepared for what Intendent Munster had to tell her when she entered his office.
‘Anything new?’ she asked.
‘You can say that again,’ said Munster, looking up from the pile of papers he was leafing through. ‘She’s confessed.’
‘What?’ said Moreno.
‘Fru Leverkuhn. She rang at a quarter past seven this morning and confessed that she had murdered her husband.’
Moreno sat down on a chair.
‘Well I’ll be damned!’ she said. ‘So it was her after all?’
‘That’s what she claims,’ said Munster.
THREE
22
The police spent three days with her, and then she was left more or less alone. From the second week onwards her visitors were restricted to a handful of people.
Her lawyer was called Bachmann, and came almost every day – in the beginning, at least. She had met him in connection with the first interrogation at the police station, and he hadn’t made a particularly good impression on her. A well-dressed, overweight man of about fifty with thick, wavy hair that he probably dyed. A large signet ring and strong, white teeth. He suggested from the very start that they should follow the manslaughter line, and she went along with that without really thinking about it.
She didn’t like the man, but reckoned that the more she let him have his own way, the less time she would need to spend discussing matters with him. In the middle of the month, he kept away several times for a few days on end; but in December, as the date of the trial approached, there was a lot to run through again. She didn’t really understand why, but never asked.
Get it over with quickly, she thought: and that was the only request she put to him. Don’t let it become one of those long-drawn-out affairs with special pleading and the cross-examination of witnesses and all the rest that she was used to from the telly.
And Bachmann put his hand on his heart, assuring her that he would do his best. Although there were several things that were unclear, and one simply can’t get away with anything at all in court.
Every time he pointed this out he gave her a quick smile, but she never responded with one of her own.
The chaplain was called Kolding, and was about her age. A low-key preacher who always brought with him a flask of tea and a tin of biscuits, and generally sat on the chair in her cell for half an hour or so, without saying very much. In connection with his first visit he explained that he didn’t want to harass her, but it was his intention to call in every two or three days. In case there was something she would like to take up with him.
There never was, but she had nothing against his sitting there. He was tall and thin, slightly stooping in view of his age, and he reminded her of the vicar who conducted her confirmation classes. She once asked him if they were relatives, but of course they were not.
However, he had worked for a while in the Maalwort parish in Pampas. This emerged from one of their sparse conversations, but as she had only been to church once or twice during all the years they had lived only a stone’s throw away, there was not much to say about this circumstance either.
Nevertheless, he would sit there in the corner several afternoons a week. And made himself available, as he had promised. Perhaps he was simply tired, and needed to rest for a while, she sometimes thought.
In so far as he had any effect on her at all, at least he did not annoy her.
Other people who took the trouble to come and visit her were her two children and the assiduous Emmeline von Post.
