in the water, and in obvious need of a lick of paint and some maintenance. The deck was full of cans and drums, hawsers and old rubbish, and the living area in the cabin seemed to be mainly below water level.
Ugh! Jung thought and shuddered involuntarily in the rain. What a bloody shit-hole!
There was a narrow, slippery gang-plank between the quay and the rail, but Jung didn’t use it. Instead he pulled at the end of a rope running from the canal railing, over a tree root and to a bell fixed to the chimney. It rang twice, not very loudly, but aroused no reaction. He had the distinct impression that there was nobody at home. He tugged at the rope once again.
‘He’s not in!’
Jung turned round. The hoarse voice came from a heavily muffled-up woman who was just chaining a bicycle to a tree some ten metres further down the canal.
‘No smoke, no lanterns on,’ she explained. ‘That means he’s not at home. He’s very careful about always having a lantern on.’
‘I see,’ said Jung. ‘I take it you’re his neighbour.’
The woman picked up her two plastic carrier bags and heaved them over the railings onto another houseboat that seemed to be in rather better condition than Bonger’s – with red-striped curtains in the windows and plants growing in a little greenhouse on the cabin roof. Tomatoes, by the look of them.
‘Yes, I am,’ she said, climbing on board with surprising agility. ‘Assuming it’s Felix Bonger you’re looking for, that is.’
‘Exactly,’ said Jung. ‘You don’t happen to know where he is, do you?’
She shook her head.
‘He ought to be at home, but I rang shortly before I left to go shopping. I usually get a few items for him from the Kleinmarckt on Sundays… But he wasn’t in.’
‘Are you absolutely certain?’ Jung asked.
‘Climb aboard and take a look for yourself!’ snorted the woman. ‘Nobody locks doors around here.’
Jung did just that, walked down a few steps and peered in through the door. It was a rectangular room with a sofa-bed, a table with two chairs, an electric cooker, a refrigerator and a television set. Clothes were hanging from coat-hangers along the walls, and books and magazines were strewn about haphazardly. Hanging from the ceiling were an electric bulb without a shade and a stuffed parrot on a perch. A broken concertina was lying on top of a low cupboard.
The strongest impression, however, was the smell of dirt and ingrained damp. And of old man.
No, Jung thought. This looks even worse than it did from the canal bank.
When he came back up on deck the woman had disappeared into her own cabin. Jung hesitated; there were probably a question or two he ought to ask her, but as he felt his way cautiously across the gang-plank again, he decided that the urge for something to eat could not be resisted much longer.
And he was starting to feel cold. If he took a slightly longer route back to the police station, he reckoned he would be able to nip into Kurmann’s for a fillet steak with fried potatoes and gravy. Nothing could be simpler.
And a beer.
It was nearly twelve o’clock, so there was no time for dilly-dallying.
5
Marie-Louise Leverkuhn left the police station with Munster’s blessing shortly after one o’clock on Sunday. She was accompanied by Emmeline von Post, the friend with whom she had spent Saturday evening and who had been informed of the awful happening a few hours previously.
And who said immediately without needing to be prompted that the newly widowed Marie-Louise was welcome to stay in her terraced house out at Bossingen.
For the time being. Until things had calmed down a bit. In other words, for as long as it might be thought necessary.
After all, they had known each other for fifty years. And been colleagues for twenty-five.
Munster escorted the two ladies to the car park, and before they struggled into froken von Post’s red Renault, he stressed once more how important it was to contact him the moment she recalled anything at all, no matter how apparently insignificant, that might possibly be of interest to the police in their work.
Their work being to capture her husband’s murderer.
‘In any case we shall be in touch with you in a day or so,’ he added. ‘Thank you for volunteering to take care of her, froken von Post.’
‘We humans have to help each other in our hour of need,’ said Marie-Louise’s short and plump friend, squeezing herself into the driving seat. ‘Where would we be if we didn’t?’
Yes, where would we be indeed? Munster thought as he returned to his office on the third floor.
Up the creek without a paddle, presumably. But wasn’t that where we were all heading for anyway?
The forensic reports were ready half an hour later. While he sat chewing two frugal sandwiches from the automatic machine in the canteen, Munster worked his way through them.
It was not especially uplifting reading.
Waldemar Leverkuhn had been killed by several deep knife-wounds to his trunk and neck. The exact number of blows had been established at twenty-eight, but when the last ten or twelve were made he was most probably already dead.
There had been no resistance, and the probable time of death was now narrowed down to between 01.15 and 02.15. But taking into account the widow’s evidence, that could be narrowed down further to 01.15-02.00, since she had arrived home soon after two.
At the moment of death Leverkuhn had been wearing a white shirt, tie, underpants, trousers and one sock, and the alcohol content in his blood had been 1.76 per thousand.
No weapon had been recovered, but there was no doubt that it must have been a large knife with a blade about twenty centimetres long – possibly identical with the carving knife reported missing by fru Leverkuhn.
No fingerprints or any other clues had been found at the scene of the crime, but chemical analysis of textile fibres and other particles had yet to be carried out.
All this was carefully noted on two densely typed pages, and Munster read through it twice.
Then he phoned Synn and spoke to her for ten minutes.
Then he put his feet up on his desk.
Then he closed his eyes and tried to work out what Van Veeteren would have done in a situation like this.
That did not take very long to work out. He rang down to the duty officer and announced that he would like to see Inspector Jung and Inspector Moreno in his office at four o’clock.
Then he took the lift down to the basement and spent the next two hours in the sauna.
‘Nice weather today,’ said Jung.
‘We had sun yesterday,’ Munster pointed out.
‘I’m serious,’ said Jung. ‘I like these curtains of rain. The grey all around you sort of makes you want to look inside yourself instead. At the essentials of life, if you follow me… The internal landscape.’
Moreno frowned.
‘Sometimes, you know,’ she said, ‘sometimes an unassuming colleague can say things that are very sensible. Have you been on a course?’
‘The university of life,’ said Jung. ‘Who’s going to kick off?’
‘Ladies first,’ said Munster. ‘But I agree with you. There’s something special about black, wet tree trunks… But perhaps we ought to discuss that another day.’
Ewa Moreno opened her notebook and started things going.
‘Benjamin Wauters,’ she said. ‘Born 1925 in Frigge. Lived in Maardam since 1980. All over the place before that. He’s worked on the railways all his life – until he retired, that is. Confirmed bachelor… No relations at all – none that he wants to acknowledge, at least. Suffers from verbal diarrhoea, to be honest. Loquacious and lonely. The other old codgers he meets at Freddy’s are the only company he keeps, apart from his cat. Half angora, I
