‘I’ll be with you in two minutes,’ said Munster.
Reinhart was standing by the window, watching the sleet fall, when Munster arrived.
‘I seem to recall that the chief inspector thought January was the worst month of the year,’ he said. ‘I must say I agree with him. It’s only the sixth today, but it feels as if we’ve been at it for an eternity.’
‘It can’t have anything to do with the fact that you’ve only just started work again, can it?’ Munster wondered.
‘I shouldn’t think so,’ said Reinhart, lighting his pipe. ‘Anyway, I had just a few little theoretical questions.’
‘Good,’ said Munster. ‘I’m fed up with being practical all the time.’
Reinhart sat down behind his desk, turned his chair and put his feet up on the third shelf of the bookcase, where there was a space left for precisely this purpose.
‘Do you think she’s innocent?’ he asked.
Munster watched the wet snow falling for five seconds before replying.
‘Possibly,’ he said.
‘Why should she confess if she didn’t do it?’
‘There are various possibilities.’
‘Such as?’
Munster thought.
‘Well, one at any rate.’
‘One possibility?’ said Reinhart. ‘That’s what I call a multiplicity.’
‘Who cares?’ said Munster. ‘Perhaps it’s simplisticity, but it could be that she was protecting somebody… Or that she thought she was. But that’s just speculation, of course.’
‘Who might she have been protecting?’
The telephone rang, but Reinhart pressed a button and switched it off.
‘That’s obvious,’ said Munster, with irritation in his voice. ‘I’ve been wondering about that from the very start, but there’s no evidence to support it. None at all.’
Reinhart nodded and chewed at the stem of his pipe.
‘Then there’s fru Van Eck,’ Munster said. ‘And this damned Bonger. That complicates matters somewhat, don’t you think?’
‘Of course,’ said Reinhart. ‘Of course. I tried to talk to the poor widower at Majorna today. But there’s not much of a spark left in him, it seems… Ah well, what are you going to do now? In the way of positive action, I mean.’
Munster leaned back on his chair.
‘Follow up that simplistic thought,’ he said after consulting himself for a few seconds. ‘See if it holds water, at least. I need to get about a bit and chase things up. Only one of the siblings attended the funeral, so we didn’t get very far then. And it wasn’t exactly fun either, interrogating the mourners as soon as they left the church.’
‘No, it wouldn’t be,’ said Reinhart. ‘When are you setting off?’
‘Tomorrow,’ said Munster. ‘They live quite a long way up north, so it might well be a two-day job.’
Reinhart thought for a while. Then he removed his feet from the book shelf and put down his pipe.
‘It certainly is a bloody strange business, don’t you think?’ he said. ‘And unpleasant.’
‘Yes, indeed,’ said Munster. ‘I suppose they could be coincidences. It’s over two months now since it all started, but it’s only now that I’m beginning to sniff the possibility of a motive.’
‘Hmm,’ said Reinhart. ‘Does it include Else Van Eck?’
‘I’m not really sure. It’s only a very faint whiff at the moment.’
Reinhart’s face suddenly lit up.
‘Well, I’ll be damned!’ he said. ‘You’re beginning to sound like the chief inspector. Are you starting to get old?’
‘Ancient,’ said Munster. ‘My kids will start thinking I’m their grandad if I don’t get a week off soon.’
‘Time off, oh yes…’ said Reinhart with a sigh, and his eyes began to look dreamy. ‘No, sod this for a lark, it’s time to go home. I’ll see you in a few days’ time, then. Keep us informed.’
‘Of course,’ said Munster, opening the door for Intendent Reinhart.
34
He allowed himself an extra hour the next morning. Made the beds, did the washing up, took Marieke to nursery school and left Maardam by ten o’clock. Driving rain came lashing in from the sea, and he was relieved to be sitting in a car with a roof over his head.
His main travelling companion was oppressive exhaustion, and it was not until he had drunk two cups of black coffee at a service station by the motorway that he began to feel anything like awake and clear in the head. Van Veeteren used to say that there was nothing to compare with a long car journey – in solitary majesty – when it came to unravelling muddled thoughts, and when Munster set off he had cherished a vague hope that the same would apply to him as well.
For there was certainly quite a lot to get to grips with. And a lot of tangles to unravel.
First of all, Synn. His lovely Synn. He had hoped that they would have been able to have a heart-to-heart talk the previous evening after the children had gone to sleep, but that’s not how it had turned out. Quite the reverse, in fact. Synn had settled down on her side and turned out the light before he had even got ready for bed, and when he made tentative moves to try and make contact with her, she had already fallen asleep.
Or pretended to, he wasn’t sure which. He lay awake until turned two, and felt awful. When he finally dropped off, he dreamed instead of Ewa Moreno. Nothing seemed to be going right.
Is the relationship coming to an end? Munster wondered as he came to the hills around Wissbork. Is that what happened when two people started drifting away from each other? As they say.
He didn’t know. How the hell could he know?
All you can do is look after your own life, he thought. That is the only consideration. All comparisons are gratuitous and would-be-wise. Synn is unique, he is unique, and so are their family and their relationship. There are no guidelines, no pattern to follow. All you can do is rely on your feelings and intuition. Dammit all.
I don’t want to know, he suddenly realized. I don’t want to know how it’s going to turn out. It’s better to be blind, and to hope.
But Synn was right in one respect in any case, even a worn-out detective-intendent could understand that. Things couldn’t go on like this – no way. Not their lives, or other people’s for that matter. If they couldn’t succeed in changing the conditions, making some radical changes to the way things were at present, well… It was like sitting in a train that was slowly but inexorably approaching a terminus where there was no alternative but to get off and go their separate ways. Whether they wanted to or not.
Has she as bad a conscience as I have? he wondered in a sudden flash of insight.
Or was that aspect also infected by the sex roles? Perhaps that was another shield against a nagging conscience, he wondered now that he was looking more closely at the situation – that calm, female sense of certainty, which could evidently survive no matter what the circumstances, but which he could never understand.
But which he loved.
Hell’s bells, Munster thought. The more I think about it, the less I understand.
He had driven more than a hundred kilometres before he was able to concentrate his thoughts on his work and the investigation.
The Leverkuhn case.
Leverkuhn-Bonger-Van Eck.
He worked out that it was now over ten weeks since the whole thing began. And they had been standing still for most of that time, if he were to be honest: November and half of December while fru Leverkuhn had been on remand and they failed to find the slightest trace of Else Van Eck.
But then the investigation had exploded into action the week before Christmas. Marie-Louise Leverkuhn’s suicide and the discovery in Weyler’s Woods.
