think. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything so well groomed. I had the impression that they take their meals together. A very neat and tidy flat as well. Flowers on the window ledges and all that.’
‘What about last night?’ Munster interjected.
‘He didn’t have much to say about that,’ said Moreno. ‘Apparently they had a decent meal for once – they usually spend their time in the bar. They got a bit drunk, he admitted that. Leverkuhn fell under the table, and so they thought they ought to accept a walkover – that’s the way he put it. He’s sport mad, and a gambler, he made no attempt to conceal that. Anyway, that’s about it: but it took two hours with coffee and all his dirty jokes.’
‘No views about the murder?’
‘No views he’d thought through,’ said Moreno. ‘He was sure it must have been a madman, and pure coincidence. Nobody had any reason to bump Leverkuhn off, he maintained. A good mate and a real brick, even if he could be a bit cussed at times. To tell you the truth I tend to agree with him. At any rate it seems out of the question that any of these old codgers could have had anything to do with the murder.’
‘I agree,’ said Jung, and recapitulated his meeting with Palinski and his visit to Bonger’s canal boat.
Munster sighed.
‘A complete blank, then,’ he said. ‘Well, I suppose that was only to be expected.’
‘Were the doors unlocked, then?’ Jung asked. ‘At the Leverkuhns’, I mean.’
‘Apparently.’
‘So we only need some junkie as high as a kite to go past, sneak inside and find a poor old buffer fast asleep that he can take his revenge on. Then sneak out again the same way as he came in. Dead easy, don’t you think?’
‘Good thinking,’ said Moreno. ‘But how are we going to find him?’
Munster thought for a moment.
‘If that’s the answer,’ he said, ‘we’ll never find him.’
‘Unless he starts talking out of turn,’ said Jung. ‘And somebody is kind enough to tip us off.’
Munster sat in silence for a few seconds again, eyeing his colleagues one after the other.
‘Do you really think this is what happened?’
Jung shrugged and yawned. Moreno looked doubtful.
‘It’s very possible,’ she said. ‘As long as we don’t have the slightest hint of a motive, that could well be the answer. And nothing had been stolen from the flat – apart from that knife.’
‘You don’t need to have a motive for killing anybody nowadays,’ said Jung. ‘All that’s needed is for you to feel a bit annoyed, or to think you’ve been slighted for one reason or another, and that gives you the green light to go ahead and throw your weight around. Would you like a few examples?’
‘No thank you,’ said Munster. ‘Motives are beginning to be a bit old-fashioned.’
He leaned back and folded his hands behind his head. Moreno’s digital wristwatch produced a mournful chirruping sound.
‘Five o’clock,’ she said. ‘Was there anything else?’
Munster leafed through the documents on his desk.
‘I don’t think so… Hang on, though: did any of the old boys say anything about having won some money?’
Moreno looked at Jung and shook her head.
‘No,’ said Jung. ‘Why?’
‘Well, the people at Freddy’s had the impression that they were celebrating something last night, but I suppose they were just guessing. This fourth character… Bonger: we’d better make sure we find him, no matter what?’
Jung nodded.
‘I’ll call in on him again on the way home,’ he said. ‘Otherwise it’ll be tomorrow. He doesn’t have a telephone; we’d have to contact him via his neighbour. Just think that there are still people like that about.’
‘What do you mean?’ asked Moreno.
‘People without a phone. In this day and age.’
Munster stood up.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘Thank you for this Sunday. Let’s cross our fingers and hope that somebody confesses tomorrow morning.’
‘Yes, let’s hope,’ said Jung. ‘But I very much doubt if somebody who bumps off a poor old buffer the way that was done is going to start being bothered by pangs of conscience. Let’s face it, this is not a very pleasant story.’
‘Very nasty,’ said Moreno. ‘As usual.’
On the way home Munster called in at the scene of the crime in Kolderweg. As he was the one in charge of the investigation, for the moment at least, it was of course about time he did so. He stayed for ten minutes and wandered around the little three-roomed flat. It looked more or less as he had imagined it. Quite run-down, but comparatively neat and tidy. A hotchpotch of bad taste on the walls, furniture of the cheap fifties and sixties style. Separate bedrooms, bookcases with no books, and an awful lot of dried blood in and around Leverkuhn’s sagging bed. The body had been taken away, as had the bedlinen: Munster was grateful for that. It would have been more than enough to examine the photographs during the course of the morning.
And of course, what Moreno had said described the scene of the crime exactly.
Very nasty.
When he finally came home he could see that Synn had been crying.
‘What’s the matter?’ he asked, hugging her as gently as if she were made of dreams.
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I just don’t want life to be like this. We get up in the mornings and get ready for work, and send the children off to school. We see each other again after it’s dark, we eat and we go to sleep. It’s the same all week long… I know it has to be like this just at the moment, but what if we were to snuff it a month from now? Or even six months? It’s not what it should be like for human beings, there ought to be time to live as well.’
‘Just to live?’ Munster said.
‘Just to live,’ said Synn. ‘All right, I know there are people who are worse off than we are… Ninety-five per cent of humanity, if we want to be finicky.’
‘Ninety-eight,’ said Munster.
He stroked her tenderly over the back of her neck and down her back.
‘Shall we go and take a look at the children sleeping?’
‘They’re not asleep yet,’ said Synn.
‘Then we’ll just have to be patient,’ said Munster.
6
It was only when he entered the police station on Monday morning that Munster remembered he hadn’t yet contacted the Leverkuhns’ children. One and a half days had passed since the murder, there was no further time to be lost. Luckily the mass media had not published any names in their quite restrained coverage of the case, so he hoped that what he had to tell them would still be news.
It was bad enough to have to be the bearer of bad tidings. Even worse if the bereaved had already been informed – and Munster had found himself in that position several times.
In order to avoid any further delay he instructed Krause to make preliminary contact – not to pass on the message itself, but to prepare the way so that Munster himself could give them the melancholy details.
After all, he had already accepted the fact that it was his duty to do so.
Half an hour later he had the first of them on the line. Ruth Leverkuhn. Forty-four years old, living up in Wernice, over a hundred kilometres from Maardam. Despite the distance involved, as soon as Munster had explained that her father had been the victim of an accident, they arranged a private meeting: Ruth Leverkuhn preferred not to discuss serious matters on the telephone.
But she was told that Waldemar Leverkuhn was dead, of course.
And that Munster was a CID officer.
