Munster shook his head.
‘Unanimous information? What the hell does that mean?’
Rooth blew his nose.
‘There are only six flats in the house. One is empty. Three – including the Leverkuhns’ – are occupied by pensioners. Sixty-five upwards. A fat woman in her forties lives in the fourth, and a young couple in the last one. They were all at home last night and they all heard the same thing.’
‘You don’t say. What?’
‘The young couple screwing away. The sound insulation seems to be bad, and they don’t have the best bed in the world, apparently.’
‘Three hours?’ said Munster.
Rooth took a bite at his sandwich and frowned.
‘Yes, and they admit it. The stallion isn’t exactly a bloody athlete either, by the looks of him. But then, he’s black, of course. It sometimes makes you wonder…’
‘Are you telling me that these old folk were lying awake listening to sexual gymnastics all the time between eleven and two?’
‘Not all the time, they dozed off now and again. There’s only one couple, by the way. Van Ecks on the ground floor. He’s the caretaker. The others are on their own… Herr Engel and froken Mathisen.’
‘I see,’ said Munster, thinking that information over. ‘But nobody heard anything from the Leverkuhns’ flat?’
‘Not even a fly’s fart,’ said Rooth, taking another bite. ‘Nobody noticed any visitors entering the premises, and nobody heard any suspicious sounds, apart from the screwing. But it seems that getting into the building is no problem. According to Van Eck you can open the outside door with a toothpick.’
Munster said nothing while Rooth finished off his sandwich.
‘What do you think?’ he asked in the end.
Rooth yawned.
‘Not a bloody thing,’ he said. ‘I’m a bit too tired to think. I assume somebody got in, stabbed the poor bastard to death, then left again. Or was sitting waiting for him when he came home. Take your pick.’
‘Twenty to thirty cuts?’ said Munster.
‘Two would have been enough,’ said Rooth. ‘A bloody madman, I assume.’
Munster stood up and walked over to the window. Forced apart a couple of slats in the Venetian blinds and peered out over the mist-covered town. It was nearly half past eight, but it was obvious that it was going to be one of those grey, rainy Sundays when it never became really light. One of those damp waiting rooms.
He let go of the blinds and turned round.
‘Why?’ he said. ‘Who the hell would want to stab to death a seventy-year-old man like this?’
Rooth said nothing.
‘What about the weapon?’
Rooth looked up from his coffee cup.
‘The only thing missing from the flat – according to the wife, at least – is a carving knife. Meusse says it could well have been that he used. The length seems to be about right, so that’s the assumption he’s making.’
‘Hm,’ said Munster. ‘What are you thinking of doing now, then?’
Rooth scratched his chin.
‘Going home and lying down for a bit. You are taking over as I understand it. I’ll be back on duty tomorrow if I’m still alive. There are a few people that need to be informed, by the way. I saved that for you. I hope you’ll forgive me, but you’re better at that kind of thing than I am. Besides, you can’t make phone calls like that at any old time in the morning.’
‘Thank you,’ said Munster. ‘Who needs to be informed?’
Rooth took a scrap of paper from his inside pocket.
‘A son and a daughter,’ he replied. ‘Neither of them lives here in Maardam. There is another daughter, but she’s in a psychiatric hospital somewhere or other, so I suppose that can wait.’
‘All right,’ said Munster, accepting the addresses. ‘Go home and go to bed, I’ll solve this little problem.’
‘Good,’ said Rooth. ‘If you’ve cracked it by tomorrow morning you’ll get a bar of chocolate.’
‘What a stingy old bastard you are,’ said Munster, lifting the receiver.
There was no reply from either of the numbers, and he wondered if he ought to hand the job over to Krause or one of the others. In any case, it was obvious that old fru Leverkuhn did not feel she was in a fit state to ring her children. To ring and tell them that somebody had just killed their father, that is, by stabbing him twenty to thirty times with the knife they had given him as a Christmas present fifteen years ago.
He could appreciate her point of view. He folded the scrap of paper and decided that this was one of those tasks he couldn’t simply delegate to somebody else. Duties, as they used to be called.
Instead he rang Synn. Explained that he would probably have to work all day, and could hear the disappointment in her silence and the words she didn’t speak. His own disappointment was no less heartfelt, and they hung up after less than a minute.
There were few things Intendent Munster liked better than spending a day in a damp waiting room with Synn. And their children. An unplanned, rainy Sunday.
He closed his eyes and leaned back in his desk chair.
Why, he thought listlessly.
Why did somebody have to go and kill an old man in this bestial fashion?
And why did he have to have a job which so often required him to spend rainy Sundays digging out answers to questions like this one, instead of being with his beloved family?
Why?
He sighed and looked at the clock. The morning had barely started.
3
He walked to Freddy’s. A grey mist hung over the canals and the deserted Sunday streets, but at least it had stopped raining for the moment. The little restaurant was in Weiskerstraat, on the corner of Langgraacht, and the entrance doors were not yet open.
Doing the cleaning, you could say.
‘Elizabeth Gautiers?’
She nodded and put a pile of plastic-laminated menus down on the bar counter. Munster looked around. The lighting was very low-key – he assumed this was connected with the level of cleanliness aimed at. Otherwise it looked much the same as any other similar establishment. Dark wooden panels, drab furnishings in brown, green and red. A cigarette machine and a television set. Another room at the back had tables with white cloths and was slightly more generously lit: evidently a somewhat posher dining area. Voices and the clattering of pots and pans could be heard from the kitchen: it was half past ten and they were starting to prepare for lunch.
‘Was it you who rang?’
Munster produced his ID and looked for a convenient place to sit down.
‘We can sit through there. Would you like anything?’
She pointed towards the white tablecloths and led the way through the saloon doors.
‘Coffee, please,’ said Munster, ignoring the fact that he had promised Synn to reduce his intake to four cups per day. This would be his third. ‘If it’s not too much trouble.’
It wasn’t. They sat down under the branches of a weeping fig made of cloth and plastic, and he took out his notebook.
‘As I said, it’s about that group of diners you had here last night…’ He checked the names. ‘Palinski, Bonger,
