So, the Rote Moor cafe in Salutorget. Since, for whatever reason, she preferred such a location rather than the police station.
And at twelve noon. Since, for some other unknown reason, she preferred to talk to the police before visiting her mother in Bossingen.
The son, Mauritz Leverkuhn, born 1958, rang barely ten minutes later. He lived even further north – in Frigge – and Munster didn’t beat about the bush. He came straight to the point.
Your father is dead.
During the night between Saturday and Sunday. In his bed. Murdered, it seemed. Stabbed with a knife.
It ‘seemed’, Munster thought as he listened to the silence at the other end of the line. Talk about cautious prognoses…
Then he heard – or at least, thought he could hear – the usual muted signs of shock in Mauritz Leverkuhn’s confused questions.
‘What time, did you say?’
‘Where was Mum?’
‘Where’s the body now?’
‘What was he wearing?’
Munster filled him in on these points and more besides. And made sure he had Emmeline von Post’s telephone number so that he could contact his mother. Eventually he expressed his condolences and arranged a meeting on Tuesday morning.
The son’s intention was to set off as soon as possible – no later than this evening – in order to be by his mother’s side.
As far as the elder daughter was concerned, Irene Leverkuhn, Munster had already spoken to the Gellner Home, where she had been a resident for the last four years. A very confidence-inspiring welfare officer had listened and understood, and assured Munster that she personally would inform her patient about her father’s untimely death.
In the most appropriate way, and as considerately as possible.
Irene Leverkuhn was in a frail state.
Munster decided to postpone a conversation with this daughter indefinitely. The welfare officer had indicated that in all probability it would not be productive, and there were things to do that were no doubt more important.
He sat for a while wondering about what they might be. What more important things? There was still half an hour to go before the update meeting, and for want of anything better to do he took another look at the forensic scene-of-crime report, to which a few more pages had been added during the night. He also phoned and spoke to both the pathologists, Meusse and Mulder, at the lab, but neither of them was able to cast much light on the darkness. None at all, to be more precise.
But there were still a few analyses left to do, so there was hope.
It would be silly to throw in the towel too soon, Mulder pointed out, as was his wont. These things take time.
Jung did not have a headache this Monday morning.
But he was tired. Sophie had come home quite late on Sunday evening after being away for nearly two whole days. Over tea and sandwiches and a bit of intimate small talk in the kitchen, it emerged that she had taken the opportunity of making her sexual debut on Saturday night.
About time, too: she was sixteen, well on the way to seventeen, and most of her girlfriends were way ahead of her in that respect. The unfortunate aspect was that she was not especially interested in the young boy in question – a certain Fritz Kummerle, a promising central midfielder with a shot like Beckenbauer’s and a future staked out on football pitches all over Europe and indeed the world – and that they had made no attempt to take precautions.
Plus that she had been somewhat intoxicated at the time. Due to red wine and other substances as well.
Obviously it was mainly up to Maureen to look after her sobbing daughter, but even so Jung was aware – with a dubious feeling of satisfaction as well as of being an outsider – of the trust displayed in him simply by the fact that he was allowed to be present during the discussions. To be sure, he had known Sophie for four or five years by now, but nevertheless, he was no more than a plastic father.
Perhaps it was not irrelevant that her real father was a shit father.
Whatever, neither Jung nor Maureen nor the unhappy debutante had gone to bed before half past one.
So he was a little on the tired side.
Bonger’s canal boat didn’t seem to be in any better condition. Just as dilapidated as it had looked the previous day, Jung decided. He tugged at the bell rope several times without success, and looked around to see if there was any sign of life elsewhere on the dark canal. The woman on the boat next door seemed to be at home: a thin, grey wisp of smoke was floating up out of the chimney, and the bicycle was locked to the railings under the lime tree, in the same place as she had parked it yesterday. Jung walked over to her boat, announced his presence with a cough and tapped his bunch of keys on the black-painted rail that ran around the whole boat. After a few seconds she appeared in the narrow doorway. She was wearing a thick woollen jumper that reached down as far as her knees, high rubber boots and a beret. In one hand she was holding the gutted body of an animal – a hare, as far as Jung could tell. In her other hand, a carving knife.
‘Sorry to disturb you,’ said Jung.
‘Huh,’ said the woman. ‘It’s you again.’
‘Yes,’ said Jung. ‘Perhaps I should explain myself… I’m a police officer. Detective Inspector Jung. I’m looking for herr Bonger, as I said…’
She nodded grumpily, and suddenly seemed to become aware of what she was holding in her hands.
‘Stew,’ she explained. ‘Andres bumped it off yesterday… My son, that is.’
She held up the carcass, and Jung tried to give the impression of looking at it with the eye of a connoisseur.
‘Very nice,’ he said. ‘We all end up like that eventually… But this Bonger – you don’t happen to have seen him, I suppose?’
She shook her head.
‘Not since Saturday.’
‘Didn’t he come home last night, then?’
‘I very much doubt it.’
She came up on deck and peered at Bonger’s boat.
‘No lights, no smoke,’ she said. ‘That means he’s not in, as I explained yesterday. Anything else you want to know?’
‘Does he often go away?’
She shrugged.
‘No,’ she said. ‘No, he isn’t often away for more than an hour or two. Why do you want to find him?’
‘Routine enquiries,’ said Jung.
‘And what the hell is that supposed to mean?’ said the woman. ‘I’m not an idiot, you know.’
‘We just want to ask him a few questions.’
‘What about?’
‘You don’t seem to be too fond of the police,’ said Jung.
‘Too right I’m not,’ said the woman.
Jung thought for a moment.
‘It’s about a death,’ he explained. ‘One of Bonger’s friends has been murdered. We think Bonger might have some information that could be useful for us.’
‘Murder?’ said the woman.
‘Yes,’ said Jung. ‘Pretty brutal. With something like that.’
He pointed at the carving knife. The woman frowned slightly, no more.
‘What’s your name, by the way?’ Jung asked, taking a notebook out of his pocket.
‘Jumpers,’ said the woman reluctantly. ‘Elizabeth Jumpers. And when is this murder supposed to have taken place?’
