Wauters and Leverkuhn. All of them regulars, I believe? It looks as if Leverkuhn has been murdered.’
This was evidently news to her, her jaw dropped so far that he could hear a slight clicking noise. Munster wondered if she could possibly have false teeth – she couldn’t be more than forty-five, surely? His own age, more or less.
‘Murdered?’
‘No doubt about it,’ said Munster, and paused.
‘Er… but why?’
‘We don’t know yet.’
She sat absolutely still for a few seconds. Then she removed the shawl and revealed a head of hair almost exactly the same shade of red. But not quite as grubby. A rather beautiful woman, Munster decided, somewhat to his surprise. Large, but beautiful. A good catch for the right man. She lit a cigarette.
‘Robbery, I expect?’
Munster made no reply.
‘Was he attacked on the way home?’
‘Not really. Can you tell me what time he left here?’
Elizabeth Gautiers thought for a moment.
‘Eleven, maybe a few minutes past,’ she said. ‘It had been a bit special,’ she added after a while.
‘Special?’
‘They got drunk. Leverkuhn fell under the table.’
‘Under the table?’
She laughed.
‘Yes, he really did. He dragged the tablecloth down with him, and there was a bit of a palaver. Still, we managed to stand them up and set them on their way… You mean he was killed on the way home?’
‘No,’ said Munster. ‘In his bed. Did they have an argument, these gentlemen, or anything of the sort?’
‘No more than usual.’
‘Did you see how they set off for home? Did you phone for a taxi, perhaps?’
‘That’s never necessary,’ said Gautiers, ‘there are always plenty of taxis just round the corner, in Megsje Plejn. Let me see, I think two of them took a taxi – I was watching through the window. But Leverkuhn and Bonger started walking.’
Munster nodded and made a note.
‘You know them pretty well, I take it?’
‘I certainly do. They sit here two evenings a week, at least. Bonger and Wauters more than that – four or five times. But they’re usually in the bar…’
‘How long have they been coming here?’
‘Ever since I’ve been working here, that’s eight years now.’
‘But yesterday they were in the restaurant?’
She stubbed out her cigarette and thought about that.
‘Yes, there was something special on last night, as I said. They seemed to be celebrating something. I think they had won some money.’
Munster wrote that down.
‘What makes you think that? How would they have won some money?’
‘I don’t know. Football pools or the lottery, I expect – they usually sit here filling in coupons on Wednesday nights. They try to keep it secret for some silly reason, they don’t speak aloud about it, but you catch on even so.’
‘Are you certain about this?’
She thought it over again.
‘No, not certain,’ she said. ‘But it can hardly have been anything else. They were dressed up as well. They ordered expensive wines and cognac. And they ate a la carte… But for God’s sake, why would they want to kill Leverkuhn? Poor old chap. Was he robbed?’
Munster shook his head.
‘No. Murdered. Somebody stabbed him to death with a knife.’
She stared at him in astonishment.
‘But who? I mean… why?’
The worst interrogations, Munster thought as he went out into the street, are the ones when the person being interviewed has nothing to say apart from repeating and confirming the questions you ask. As in this case.
‘But who?’
‘Why?’
Ah well, the concept of money had cropped up, and even if it was several years since Intendent Munster had flirted with Marxism, he still had the feeling that there was a crass financial side to practically everything. Especially when it was to do with his own speciality, of course. The shadowy side.
If they had in fact been lucky enough to pull off a win, and of course it wasn’t out of the question. People did win money now and again – it had never happened to him, but no doubt that was not entirely unconnected with the fact that he very rarely gambled.
He checked his watch and decided to walk back to the police station as well. The clouds of mist had begun to let through some spots of rain, but it felt mild and pleasant, and after all he was wearing an overcoat and gloves.
What he would actually do when he got back to the station he wasn’t at all sure – apart from trying to get hold of the son and daughter, of course. With a bit of luck, reports ought to have come in by now from the pathologist Meusse, and the scene-of-crime boys, which would no doubt provide other things that needed doing.
Moreover it was possible that Jung and Moreno had managed to get their claws into the other old codgers, although it was probably best not to invest too much hope in that. Both of them had looked more than acceptably weary when he had sent them out.
The best-case scenario, needless to say, would be a note on his desk to the effect that one of the oldies had broken down and confessed. Or that somebody else had, anybody. And then – in that case there would be nothing to stop him going home to Synn and the kids and spending the rest of the day with the family.
A lovely, grey Sunday, just right for sitting indoors. There was certainly something to be said for postponing a key interrogation until Monday morning. A softening-up day in the cells was usually enough to make most criminals confess to more or less anything you wanted them to.
He’d had plenty of experience of that in the past.
As for the chances of such a confession having been made… well, Intendent Munster thought it best not to think in any detail about that. It was better to allow himself to hope for a while. You never know. And if there was one thing about this damned job that you could be certain about, this was it.
That you can never know.
He turned up his collar to keep the rain out, put his hands into his pockets and allowed himself to feel some cautious optimism.
4
Jung had a headache.
There were reasons for that, but without saying a word about it to his colleagues he took the tram to Armastenplejn, where Palinski lived. Today was one of those days when there was no point in hurrying, he told himself, stressing that fact with pedagogical insistence.
The tram was practically empty at this ungodly time on a Sunday morning, and as he sat swaying from side to
