The Unlucky Lottery

FOUR

30

He woke up and didn’t know who he was.

It took a second, or half of one, but it had been there. The moment of complete blankness in which no past existed. No memories. No defeats.

No falseness, no inadequacies.

Not even a name.

Half a second. Merely a drop in a large ocean of humanity. Then it came back.

‘Hmmm…’ mumbled the woman by his side. Turned over and buried her head more deeply in the pillow. Pressed herself closer to him.

Ah well, he thought. It could be worse. He looked at the clock. Half past seven. He remembered the date as well. The first of January! Good Lord, they hadn’t gone to bed until after two; and as they were in bed, then…

He smiled.

Noticed that he was smiling. There was an unusual twitching in his cheek muscles, but by Jove, it was a smile. Half past seven after two or three hours’ sleep! On the first day of the year.

He adjusted the pillows and observed her. Ulrike Fremdli. With chestnut-brown hair and one breast peeping out through a gap in the covers. A large and mature woman’s breast with a nipple that had served two children, and on a New Year’s morning like this it certainly seemed to be delivering a message of peace and goodwill. Of friendship and brotherhood and love between all people on earth, among all these drops in this ocean…

Good Lord, Van Veeteren thought. I’m losing the plot. Life is a symphony.

He stayed in bed and scarcely dared to breathe. As if the slightest movement would be enough to break this fragile moment.

I want to die at a moment like this, he thought.

Then a dream took possession of him again.

Remarkable. It was as if it had been sitting round the corner, waiting as the morning spun its treacherous web of illusory happiness: waiting to stab him as soon as he had lowered his guard a few decimetres. Wasn’t that just typical? Absolutely typical.

It was a peculiar dream.

A dark and gloomy old castle. With arches and staircases and large, dimly lit halls. Empty and cold, with restless flickering shadows flitting along rough stone walls. Night, evidently; and threatening voices in the distance, and adjacent rooms… And the piercing sound of iron against iron, or as if knives were being sharpened; and he is scurrying along through all this, from room to room, hunting for something, unclear what.

He comes to a cell: very small, next to one wall a diminutive altar with a Madonna-relief, carved out of the dark stone of the wall, it seems; next to another wall a man asleep on a wooden bed. A thick horsehair blanket is pulled up over his shoulders and head, but even so he knows that it’s Erich.

His son Erich.

His wayward and accident-prone Erich. He hesitates, and as he stands there in the narrow doorway, not knowing what to do nor what is expected of him, he hears the piercing sound of the knives getting louder, then suddenly, suddenly, he sees one of those daggers hovering in the room. Hanging in mid-air above the man sleeping on the bench. A big, heavy dagger, lit up by jagged beams, glistening, rotating slowly until the tip of its razor-sharp blade is pointing straight down at the man. At Erich, his son.

He hesitates again. Then moves carefully forward and takes away the blanket from the sleeping man’s head. And it’s not Erich lying there. It’s Munster.

Intendent Munster lying asleep on his side, at peace with his hands under his head, totally unaware, and Van Veeteren doesn’t understand what is happening. He puts the blanket back where it was, just as carefully, hears voices and heavy footsteps approaching, and before he has time to leave the room and reach safety, he wakes up.

‘It was like Macbeth. The funny thing is that I was so sure it was Erich lying there, but it turned out to be Munster.’

Ulrike Fremdli yawned and rested her head on her hands. Eyed him over the kitchen table with a look that was almost cross-eyed with exhaustion. Charmingly cross-eyed, he thought.

‘You’re a remarkable person,’ she said.

‘Rubbish,’ said Van Veeteren.

‘Not at all,’ said Ulrike, stroking her hair away from her face. ‘Curiouser and curiouser. The first time you turn up in my life it’s because you are trying to find out who murdered my husband. Then you wait for over a year before getting in touch again, and now you sit here in the morning of New Year’s Day and want me to interpret your dreams. Thank you for last night, by the way. It wasn’t too bad.’

‘Thank you,’ said Van Veeteren, and realized that he was smiling again. It was evidently beginning to be a habit. ‘Anyway, women are better at dreams,’ he said. ‘Some women, at any rate.’

‘I think so,’ said Ulrike. ‘I agree with you in general, that is, but you have a gift making you just as intuitive as I am. I’d always imagined that an old detective inspector would be much more resolute, but perhaps that’s just a prejudice?’

‘Hmm, yes,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘We know so little.’

‘Really?’

He cut a slice of cheese and chewed it thoughtfully. Ulrike stuck out her naked foot under the table and stroked his calf with it.

‘Hmm,’ said Van Veeteren again. ‘Only a tiny bit of all there is to know. And if we don’t have a keen ear, it’s a damned minuscule bit.’

‘Go on,’ said Ulrike.

‘Well,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘This is one of my private hobby horses, of course, but since you seem to be too tired to contradict me, maybe I can enlarge a bit on it…’

She stretched out the other foot as well.

‘Quite a humble little theory in fact,’ he said. ‘It ought to suit a clever woman like you. A woman with humble feet… no, carry on, please do. Anyway, let’s assume that there are an infinite number of connections and correspondences and patterns in the world, and that the cleverest of us might be able – and dare! – to comprehend… let’s say a hundredth part of them. The thickest of us might comprehend a thousandth, or a ten- thousandth. Let’s not go into how much I can grasp. Most of it comes to us in ways different from what the so- called western way of thinking is prepared to accept. The deductive terror. Despite the fact that this in no way contradicts it. Or threatens it. Quite the reverse, actually, for it must surely be easier to comprehend things than to comprehend how we comprehend them. Our knowledge of the world must always be greater than our knowledge of knowledge… Well, er, something like that. As I said.’

Ulrike thought for a moment.

‘It sounds plausible,’ she said. ‘But I’m not properly awake.’

‘There are so many patterns,’ Van Veeteren continued. ‘We get so much information that we generally just let it flash over our heads. A thousand kilos of stimuli every second. We don’t have time to work on them. This is all obvious, but all I really understand is obvious, I have to admit.’

‘Dreams?’ said Ulrike.

‘For example. But hell’s bells! A dagger hovering over Intendent Munster! You’re not going to tell me that that’s a coincidence? He’s in danger, obviously, even a child can understand that.’

‘You thought it was Erich,’ Ulrike pointed out.

Van Veeteren sighed.

‘Erich has been in the danger zone for as long as I can remember,’ he said. ‘That wouldn’t be anything new.’

‘How old is he?’