The Unlucky Lottery

Bachmann had stood up, but didn’t bother to protest. He had bags under his eyes, she noticed. Looked tired and somewhat resigned. She had the impression that his fee depended in some way on whether he won or lost the case, but she wasn’t sure. It wasn’t easy to know the ways of this strange world.

Not easy at all.

Nor did she know how common it was for the judge himself to ask questions, but when Bachmann had finished his rather pointless interrogation – all the time she found it difficult to understand what he was after and what he wanted her to say, and when he sat down he looked even more dispirited – the great man cleared his throat emphatically and announced that certain things needed clarifying.

But first he asked if she would like a little rest before he started questioning her.

No, she said that was not necessary.

‘Certain things need clarifying,’ Judge Hart said again, clasping his hairy hands on the Bible in front of him. A murmur ran through the public gallery and Prosecutor Grootner suddenly began scribbling away on her notepad. Bachmann stroked his hair and looked like a morose question mark.

‘What made you confess?’

He looked down on her from his slightly raised position with a sceptical frown between his bushy eyebrows.

‘My conscience,’ she said.

‘Your conscience?’

‘Yes.’

‘And what made your conscience stir after more than a week?’

Marie-Louise Leverkuhn was certainly ten years older than Judge Hart, but nevertheless there was suddenly an element of teacher and schoolgirl in the situation. A teenager caught smoking in the toilets and now summoned to the headmaster for a telling-off.

‘I don’t know,’ she said after a short pause for thought. ‘I thought about it for a few days and then decided it was wrong to carry on lying.’

‘What made you lie in the first place?’

‘Fear,’ she said without hesitation. ‘Of the consequences . . . court and prison and so on.’

‘Do you regret what you did?’

She examined her hands for a while.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Of course I regret it. It’s terrible, killing another human being. You have to take your punishment.’

Judge Hart leaned back.

‘Why didn’t you throw the knife into a canal instead of a dustbin?’

‘I didn’t think.’

‘Have you been asked that question before?’

‘Yes.’

‘But why bother to get rid of the knife in the first place? Wouldn’t it have been sufficient to rinse the blood off it and put it back in its place in the kitchen?’

Leverkuhn frowned briefly before answering.

‘I don’t remember what I was thinking,’ she said, ‘but I supposed people would realize that was the knife I’d used if they found it. I wasn’t thinking clearly.’

The judge nodded and looked mildly reproachful.

‘I’m sure you weren’t,’ he said. ‘But don’t you think it was rather odd that you immediately told the police that the knife was missing?’

She did not answer. Judge Hart pulled a hair out of his nostril and examined it for a moment before flicking it over his shoulder and continuing.

‘Did you meet fru Van Eck at all during the days before she disappeared?’

Bachmann started gesturing, but seemed to realize that it wasn’t appropriate to protest when it was the judge himself asking the questions. He moved his chair noisily and leaned back nonchalantly instead. Looked up at the ceiling. As if what was happening had nothing to do with him.

‘I had coffee with her and her husband one afternoon. They invited me.’

‘That was on the Tuesday, wasn’t it?’

She thought about it.

‘Yes, it must have been.’

‘And then she disappeared on the Wednesday?’

‘As far as I know, yes. Why are you asking about that?’

The judge made a vague gesture with his hands, as if to say that they might just as well chat about these events, seeing as they were all gathered together here.

‘Just one more little question,’ he said eventually. ‘It doesn’t happen to be the case that you needed this time – these seven days or however long it was – for some special purpose?’

‘I don’t understand what you mean,’ said Leverkuhn.

Judge Hart took out a large red handkerchief and blew his nose.

‘I think you do,’ he muttered. ‘But you may leave the dock now.’

Marie-Louise Leverkuhn thanked him and did as she had been told.

Judge Hart, Van Veeteren thought as he came out into the street and opened up his umbrella. What a terrific police officer the old distorter of the law would have made!

25

Moreno knocked and entered. Münster looked up from the reports he was reading.

‘Have a pew,’ he said. ‘How did it go?’

She flopped down on the chair without even unbuttoning her brown suede jacket. Shook her head a few times, and he noticed that she was on the verge of tears.

‘Not all that well,’ she said.

Münster put his pen in his breast pocket and slid the stack of files to one side. He waited for the continuation, but there wasn’t one.

‘I see,’ he said in the end. ‘Feel free to tell me about it.’

Ewa Moreno dug her hands into her pockets and took a deep breath. Münster noted that he did the opposite – held his breath.