The Unlucky Lottery

At last, Emmeline thought as she put an arm tenderly round Marie-Louise’s hunched shoulders. At last.

8

‘Any comments?’ said Münster, spreading the photographs out over the table so that all present could study them to their hearts’ content.

The variations were insignificant: Waldemar Leverkuhn’s mutilated body from a dozen different angles and distances. Blood. Crumpled bedclothes. Wounds in close-up. Pale skin covered in moles. An absurdly colourful tie sticking out from under the pillow. Blood. And more blood.

Moreno shook her head. Intendent Heinemann took off his glasses and began rubbing them clean with the aid of his own much more discreet tie. Rooth stopped chewing away at a chocolate biscuit and turned his back demonstratively on the table. Only young Krause continued perusing the macabre details, dutifully and with furrowed brow.

‘Take them away!’ said Rooth. ‘My digestive system demands an ounce of respect. And in any case, I was there and saw it all in real life.’

Life? Münster thought. Does he call this life? It’s a long time since I’ve seen anything so stone-cold dead. He sighed as he gathered up the photographs, leaving two of them lying there as a reminder of the subject of their discussions.

‘Let’s take the forensics to start with,’ he said. ‘Where’s Jung, by the way?’

‘He was going to speak to that Bonger character,’ said Moreno. ‘He’ll turn up shortly, no doubt.’

‘The forensics,’ said Münster again. ‘No further news, I’m afraid, just confirmation of what we know already. Waldemar Leverkuhn was killed by twenty-eight deep knife wounds in his stomach, chest and neck. Mainly in his stomach. Pretty accurate, it seems. But if you stab somebody as often as that, accuracy is neither here nor there, of course. Well, what does that suggest?’

‘A hot-headed type,’ said Krause with restrained enthusiasm. ‘Must be out of his mind – or was when he did it, at least.’

‘As high as a kite,’ said Rooth, swallowing the last of the chocolate biscuit. ‘A junkie who’d had a bad trip. There’s no limit to what they could do, dammit. What does Meusse have to say about the stab wounds?’

Münster agreed.

‘Yes, you could well be right. The wounds vary a lot. Some of them are deep – ten or fifteen centimetres – others superficial. Some caused not much more than scratches. The killer was right-handed, by the way – no doubt about that.’

‘Great,’ said Moreno. ‘A right-handed drug addict. We’ve only got about three thousand of those in this town. Can’t we hit upon a slightly more interesting theory? If there’s anything I hate about this glamorous job of ours, it’s having to spend time grubbing around among the drug addicts.’

Münster folded his hands and rested his chin on his knuckles.

‘We can’t always set the agenda,’ he said. ‘Unfortunately. But if we put off speculation until we’ve finished going through the facts, we can see where we’ve got to . . . Knowledge is the mother of guesses, as Reinhart usually says. We don’t know a lot, but we do know a bit.’

‘Let’s hear it, then,’ said Rooth. ‘But bollocks to poetry for the time being.’

‘The weapon . . .’ said Münster, refusing to react, ‘the weapon seems to have been a pretty substantial knife. The blade was at least twenty centimetres long. Sharpened and sharp – presumably a carving knife pretty similar to the one fru Leverkuhn described, and which, according to the same source, disappeared from its place in the kitchen at some point on the evening of the murder . . .’

‘And which now,’ said Rooth, ‘is almost certainly lying at the bottom of one of the canals. I may be wrong, but a quick calculation suggests that we have about five thousand metres to choose from . . .’

‘Hmm,’ said Heinemann. ‘Interesting. Purely from the point of view of probability, that is. Three thousand drug addicts times five thousand metres of canal . . . That means that if we’re going to find both the killer and the murder weapon, the chances are . . . one in about fifteen million . . .’

He leaned back in his chair and smoothed down his tie over his stomach.

‘How nice to see that we’re all so optimistic,’ said Moreno as Jung appeared in the doorway.

‘Sorry I’m late,’ he said. ‘But I was on official—’

‘Excellent,’ interrupted Rooth. ‘Sit down!’

Münster cleared his throat. If only I could give all these comedy shows a miss, he thought. I’m not sufficiently arrogant yet, but no doubt that’ll come.

‘Regarding the time,’ he said, ‘we can assume that Leverkuhn was murdered at some time between a quarter past one and a quarter past two. When I pressed Meusse a bit, he leaned towards the later half-hour, in other words between a quarter to and a quarter past two.’

‘Hm,’ said Heinemann. ‘What time did his wife get home?’

‘Three or four minutes past,’ said Moreno.

‘That narrows things down, then,’ said Krause. ‘Assuming Meusse is right, that is.’