The Unlucky Lottery

Jung nodded. He had never heard Meusse being prepared to give an exact estimation, but on the other hand, he had never heard of Meusse ever guessing wrongly. If Meusse said that the head they had just been gaping at had belonged to a woman of about seventy who had been beaten to death with a blunt instrument hitting the crown of her head about two months ago, there were doubtless good reasons for believing that this was in fact the case.

And that the woman in question was Else Van Eck, and nobody else.

‘Hmm,’ said Rooth when they emerged from the Forensic Medicine Department and turned up their collars to keep out the driving drizzle. ‘That was a turn-up for the bloody books. Changes things quite a bit, I suspect.’

‘Maybe we ought to give Münster a ring,’ said Jung.

‘No doubt we should,’ said Rooth. ‘But I reckon we ought to get a bite to eat first. This is going to cause masses of work and trouble, I can feel it coming.’

‘I’m sure you’re right,’ said Jung. ‘It’s in the air.’

FOUR

30

He woke up and didn’t know who he was.

It took a second, or half of one, but it had been there. The moment of complete blankness in which no past existed. No memories. No defeats.

No falseness, no inadequacies.

Not even a name.

Half a second. Merely a drop in a large ocean of humanity. Then it came back.

‘Hmmm . . .’ mumbled the woman by his side. Turned over and buried her head more deeply in the pillow. Pressed herself closer to him.

Ah well, he thought. It could be worse. He looked at the clock. Half past seven. He remembered the date as well. The first of January! Good Lord, they hadn’t gone to bed until after two; and as they were in bed, then . . .

He smiled.

Noticed that he was smiling. There was an unusual twitching in his cheek muscles, but by Jove, it was a smile. Half past seven after two or three hours’ sleep! On the first day of the year.

He adjusted the pillows and observed her. Ulrike Fremdli. With chestnut-brown hair and one breast peeping out through a gap in the covers. A large and mature woman’s breast with a nipple that had served two children, and on a New Year’s morning like this it certainly seemed to be delivering a message of peace and goodwill. Of friendship and brotherhood and love between all people on earth, among all these drops in this ocean . . .

Good Lord, Van Veeteren thought. I’m losing the plot. Life is a symphony.

He stayed in bed and scarcely dared to breathe. As if the slightest movement would be enough to break this fragile moment.

I want to die at a moment like this, he thought.

Then a dream took possession of him again.

Remarkable. It was as if it had been sitting round the corner, waiting as the morning spun its treacherous web of illusory happiness: waiting to stab him as soon as he had lowered his guard a few decimetres. Wasn’t that just typical? Absolutely typical.

It was a peculiar dream.

A dark and gloomy old castle. With arches and staircases and large, dimly lit halls. Empty and cold, with restless flickering shadows flitting along rough stone walls. Night, evidently; and threatening voices in the distance, and adjacent rooms . . . And the piercing sound of iron against iron, or as if knives were being sharpened; and he is scurrying along through all this, from room to room, hunting for something, unclear what.

He comes to a cell: very small, next to one wall a diminutive altar with a Madonna-relief, carved out of the dark stone of the wall, it seems; next to another wall a man asleep on a wooden bed. A thick horsehair blanket is pulled up over his shoulders and head, but even so he knows that it’s Erich.

His son Erich.

His wayward and accident-prone Erich. He hesitates, and as he stands there in the narrow doorway, not knowing what to do nor what is expected of him, he hears the piercing sound of the knives getting louder, then suddenly, suddenly, he sees one of those daggers hovering in the room. Hanging in mid-air above the man sleeping on the bench. A big, heavy dagger, lit up by jagged beams, glistening, rotating slowly until the tip of its razor-sharp blade is pointing straight down at the man. At Erich, his son.

He hesitates again. Then moves carefully forward and takes away the blanket from the sleeping man’s head. And it’s not Erich lying there. It’s Münster.

Intendent Münster lying asleep on his side, at peace with his hands under his head, totally unaware, and Van Veeteren doesn’t understand what is happening. He puts the blanket back where it was, just as carefully, hears voices and heavy footsteps approaching, and before he has time to leave the room and reach safety, he wakes up.

‘It was like Macbeth. The funny thing is that I was so sure it was Erich lying there, but it turned out to be Münster.’

Ulrike Fremdli yawned and rested her head on her hands. Eyed him over the kitchen table with a look that was almost cross-eyed with exhaustion. Charmingly cross-eyed, he thought.

‘You’re a remarkable person,’ she said.

‘Rubbish,’ said Van Veeteren.