into all this? We’ve had enough of you snooping around, can’t you leave people in peace? Besides, I’m ill.’
‘I’ve noticed,’ said Rooth. ‘Did she keep a diary?’
For quite a while there was no sound other than Mauritz’s heavy breathing. Rooth realized he was wondering whether to hang up or not.
‘Listen here,’ he said in the end. ‘I’ve been in bed with flu for two days now. A thirty-nine degree temperature. I’ll be fucked if I want to talk to you any more. Both my father and mother are dead, I don’t understand why the police can’t find something better to do instead of pestering us.’
‘You’re taking penicillin, I assume?’ asked Rooth in a friendly tone, but the only answer he received was a clear and dismissive click.
Rooth hung up. Bastard, he thought. I hope you’re in bed for a few more weeks at least.
‘Do you really mean that?’ asked Heinemann. ‘That the police have been treating you improperly?’
‘What?’ said Ruben Engel.
‘That we’ve been bothering you unnecessarily. If so, you should make a complaint.’
‘Yes… er?’
‘There’s a special form you can fill in,’ Heinemann explained. ‘If you like I can arrange to have one sent to you.’
‘Eh? That’s not necessary,’ said Engel. ‘But for God’s sake hurry up and get this business sorted out, so that we can get some peace and quiet.’
‘It’s a bit tricky,’ said Heinemann, looking round the cluttered kitchen with his glasses perched on the end of his nose. ‘Murder investigations like this one are often more complicated than people in general can imagine. There’s an awful lot of aspects to take into account. An awful lot. What are you drinking?’
‘Eh?’ said Engel. ‘Oh, just a drop of wine toddy – to raise my body temperature a bit. It’s so damned draughty in this flat.’
‘I see. Anyway, I mustn’t disturb you any longer. Do you know if froken Mathisen next door is at home?’
Engel looked at the clock.
‘She usually comes home about five,’ he said. ‘So with a bit of luck…’
‘We shall see,’ said Heinemann. ‘Anyway, sorry to have disturbed you.’
‘No problem,’ said Ruben Engel. ‘The screwing machines are moving out, by the way.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘The couple downstairs. They must have found somewhere better. They’re moving out.’
‘Really?’ said Heinemann. ‘We didn’t know that. Thank you for telling us.’
‘You’re welcome.’
Marie-Louise Leverkuhn’s funeral took place in one of the side chapels in Keymerkyrkan. Apart from the vicar and the undertaker there were four people present, all of them women.
Closest to the coffin, a simple affair made of fibreboard and hardboard – but during the service covered by a green cloth that concealed the deficiencies – sat Ruth Leverkuhn in her capacity as next of kin. Behind her sat the other three: furthest to the left was Emmeline von Post; in the middle a pale woman of about the same age and, as far as Munster and Moreno could make out, identical with the Regine Svendsen who had supplied Heinemann with the information about the diaries; and on the right a quite tall, well-dressed woman about forty-five years of age – Munster and Moreno had no idea who she was.
They had placed themselves strategically in the nave: they were sitting in an austere, light-coloured pew, leafing furtively through their hymn books and keeping a discreet eye on the simple ritual taking place some fifteen metres away.
‘Who is the younger woman?’ whispered Munster.
Moreno shook her head.
‘I don’t know. Why isn’t the son here?’
‘He’s ill,’ said Munster. ‘Or says he is, in any case. Rooth spoke to him on the phone this morning.’
‘Hmm,’ said Moreno. ‘So you won’t be having a chat with him, then. Shall I try to grab that woman afterwards? She must have some sort of connection with the family.’
‘She could be one of those funeral hyenas, mind you,’ warned Munster. ‘It takes all sorts… But by all means, see what she has to say. I’ll try and have a word with the daughter.’
He noticed that he was enjoying sitting here, squeezed up close to Ewa Moreno in the cramped pew, whispering. Whispering so closely to her ear that he could feel her hair brushing against his skin.
Carry on talking, Mr Vicar, he thought. Make sure you spin the service out for as long as possible – it doesn’t matter if it takes all afternoon.
What the hell am I doing? he then thought. Despite the fact that he was sitting in church with a hymn book in his hand.
‘No problem,’ said the woman, whose name was Lene Bauer. ‘No problem at all – I intended to ring you several times, but never got round to it… But then, perhaps I don’t have all that much to tell you, when it comes to the nitty gritty.’
At Lene Bauer’s suggestion they had ensconced themselves in a screened booth in Ruger’s bar in Wiijsenweg, diagonally opposite the church. Moreno took an instant liking to the woman, who had apparently taken time off from her post at the library in Linzhuisen in order to attend the funeral. Her connection with Marie-Louise Leverkuhn was not especially strong: she and Lene’s mother had been cousins, but there had been no contact at all during the last twenty to twenty-five years.
However, Lene had followed what had happened in the papers and on the television: they had socialized quite a bit in the sixties.
‘Holidays by the sea,’ she explained. ‘A few weeks in Lejnice, Oosterbrugge and similar places. I assume it was cheaper if we all went together. My mother and Marie-Louise and us children. Me and Ruth, Irene and Mauritz… But I used to play mainly with Ruth, we are exactly the same age. Our fathers – my dad and Waldemar – only came to join us for an occasional evening or at the weekends… That’s about it, really.’
‘You haven’t kept in touch with the children either?’ asked Moreno.
‘No,’ said Lene, looking a bit guilty. ‘A few letters to Ruth at the beginning of the seventies, but I got married quite early and had other things to think about. My own children and so on. And for several years we lived down at Borghem as well.’
Moreno thought for a while. Sipped the wine they had ordered and tried to work out how best to continue. It certainly seemed as if this woman had something she wanted to say, but it might be something that wouldn’t be mentioned unless she was asked the right questions.
Or was it just imagination? Questionable female intuition? Hard to say.
‘Did you enjoy those summer holidays?’ she asked cautiously. ‘How many were there, incidentally?’
‘Three or four,’ said Lene. ‘I can’t remember, to be honest. Each of them several weeks. I was between ten and fifteen in any case. We used to listen to The Beatles – Ruth had a tape recorder. Yes, I enjoyed it – apart from with Mauritz.’
‘Really?’ said Moreno, and waited.
‘He was so terribly difficult to shake off,’ she said. ‘You had to feel sorry for him, of course – the only boy with three girls. And he was younger as well, but there seemed to be no limit to his determination to cling to his sisters, especially Irene. She didn’t have a second’s peace, and she never turned him away either. She mollycoddled him and built sandcastles for him, painted pictures and read him bedtime stories. For hours on end. Ruth and I kept well out of the way, as I recall it, only too glad to off-load the responsibility; but I know I found it extremely difficult to put up with Mauritz. They never said anything to him, and he never showed the slightest bit of gratitude. A cry- baby and a moaner, that’s what he was.’
‘Hmm,’ said Moreno. ‘This is what you wanted to tell me, isn’t it?’
Lene shrugged.
‘I don’t really know,’ she said. ‘I just started to think about them again when I heard about the terrible things that have happened. I simply couldn’t believe it was true.’
‘No,’ said Moreno. ‘I suppose it must have been a shock for you.’
‘Two,’ said Lene. ‘First the murder. Then the fact that she’d done it. She must have hated him.’
Moreno nodded.
‘Presumably. Did you have any idea of what their relationship was like? Then, thirty years ago, I mean.’
