The Unlucky Lottery

‘Okay, then let’s go,’ said Münster. ‘Inspector Moreno will stay behind and investigate a few things.’

Van Eck’s lower lip started trembling, and Moreno tapped him cautiously on the shoulder.

‘This will sort itself out, don’t worry,’ she said. ‘There’s bound to be a perfectly natural explanation.’

Presumably, Münster thought. So much seems to be natural nowadays.

18

Inspector Moreno checked out of Hotel Bender at about four o’clock on Thursday afternoon. The nose-ringed receptionist tried to make her pay for a second night, since she had occupied the room after twelve noon, but she refused. For the first time for ages (or maybe the first time ever? she asked herself) she chose to use her work status for her personal gain.

As it was only a matter of 140 euros, perhaps she could be excused.

‘I’m a detective inspector,’ she explained. ‘We needed the room in order to keep an eye on a certain transaction taking place in this hotel. That mission is now completed. Unless you want your name mentioned in less than flattering circumstances, I suggest you debit me for one night and no more.’

The young man, as thin as a rake, thought for a couple of seconds.

‘I understand,’ he said. ‘Let’s say just the one night, then.’

There was no Claus sitting outside her door when she got home, but she phoned him as soon as she had downed half a glass of wine.

She explained, without beating about the bush, or becoming emotional, that she had a demand to make. An ultimatum, if he liked. If there was going to be any possibility of repairing the relationship they used to have – and even as she spoke those words she understood that by doing so she was giving him false hope – she demanded two weeks without being disturbed.

No telephone calls, no greetings. No damned roses.

Two whole weeks. Fourteen days from today. Did he agree?

He did, he announced, after what seemed rather too long a silence. But only if he really could count on their meeting and discussing things properly once that time had run out. And neither of them would initiate anything else during those two weeks.

Initiate? Moreno thought. Anything else . . .?

She agreed to the discussion demand, and avoided the other by making no comment and hanging up.

Then she drank the remaining half-glass of wine. So there, she thought. I’ve delayed his execution by two weeks. Cowardly. But it feels good.

She curled up in a corner of the sofa with another glass of wine and the notes she had made at Kolderweg. Adjusted the cushions and switched on the reading lamp: the light it produced was so restricted that it almost felt like sitting inside a one-man tent, a tiny bright cone in the darkness where she could hide herself away, cut off from all the surroundings that she would rather forget. Men, darkness and so on.

At last, she thought. Time to concentrate on the case, and pay no attention to herself or the world around her.

Especially herself.

She had written down the tenants in Kolderweg 17 on the first page of her notebook. From the top down:

II.

Ruben Engel

Leonore Mathisen

I.

Waldemar Leverkuhn/

Tobose Menakdise/

Marie-Louise Leverkuhn

Filippa de Booning

Ground.

Arnold Van Eck/

Else Van Eck

Empty flat

The facts were first and foremost that Waldemar Leverkuhn was dead. She crossed his name out and continued.

Marie-Louise Leverkuhn? What was there to say about the widow?

Not a lot. She had returned from the charity shop soon after noon. Moreno had a short conversation with her, but in view of what the poor woman had already been through in terms of traumatic experiences and rigorous interviews, she restricted herself to what was absolutely necessary. Fru Leverkuhn said she had drunk coffee with Else Van Eck in the latter’s flat on Tuesday afternoon, had then bumped into her on the stairs the following morning (when she was on her way to the police station to talk to Intendent Münster), but apart from that, she claimed, she had neither seen nor heard anything of the caretaker’s wife.

Moreno wrote a tick after Marie-Louise Leverkuhn. And a question mark after Else Van Eck.

Herr Van Eck had returned from the police station at about half past one in a rather pathetic state, and Moreno ticked him as well.

That left the athletic lovers Menakdise and de Booning on the first floor, and herr Engel and fröken Mathisen on the second. Viewed dispassionately these four were not yet involved in the case. Neutral observers (question mark again) and possible witnesses.

She had started with the young couple.