The Unlucky Lottery

‘Let’s take the other stuff we know first,’ said Münster, ‘and then we can start speculating. We’ve spoken to quite a lot of people, mainly neighbours in the same building – there isn’t much in the way of relatives and friends – but to sum that up, it has to be said that we haven’t found out very much. Fru Van Eck disappeared during the evening of Wednesday, the 29th of October, while her husband was attending a course at the Riitmeeterska school. She was last seen shortly after six o’clock that evening, one of the neighbours thinks she heard her in the flat at around seven, but she wasn’t there when Arnold Van Eck got home at eight o’clock. No one has been able to tell us any more than that.’

‘Could it be one of them?’ wondered Reinhart. ‘The neighbours, I mean. And is it certain that she was the one in the flat at seven o’clock?’

‘It could have been one of the other people in the building, of course,’ said Münster. ‘Hypothetically, at least. I think it’s best to discuss that later, when we start looking at links with the other case – Waldemar Leverkuhn. But as for the person who was heard inside the flat, it could have been anybody at all.’

‘The murderer, for instance?’ said Reinhart.

‘For instance,’ said Münster.

‘These Leverkuhns?’ wondered Reinhart.

Münster sighed and turned over a page.

‘I don’t really know, to be honest,’ he said. ‘On the surface it all seems crystal clear . . .’

‘Some surfaces can be both crystal clear and paper thin,’ said Reinhart. ‘I’ve been following it to some extent in the newspapers, but we all know how they report things.’

‘Start from the beginning,’ said the chief of police.

‘Saturday, the 25th of October,’ said Münster. ‘That’s when it all begins. Fru Leverkuhn comes home and finds her husband stabbed to death in his bed. We launch an investigation, of course, and after ten days she phones us and confesses to having done it herself. In an attack of anger. We spend a week interrogating her thoroughly, and before long both we and the prosecutor think we have enough evidence. Anyway, things then follow the usual path, the trial begins in the middle of December and it’s over after three or four days. Nothing remarkable. The prosecutor presses for murder, the defence for manslaughter. While waiting for the verdict, on Sunday the 21st, she hangs herself in her cell . . . She plaits a rope from strips of blanket and manages to hook it onto a jutting-out piece of pipe in a corner of her cell. Obviously, quite a lot has been said about how that could come about, so perhaps we don’t need to go into it here. She’s left a suicide note as well, in which she wrote that she had decided to take her own life in view of the circumstances.’

‘The circumstances?’ said Reinhart. ‘What bloody circumstances?’

‘That she’d killed her husband, and had nothing to look forward to apart from several years behind bars,’ said Moreno.

‘It’s not exactly difficult to understand her motive,’ said Münster. ‘But what is difficult to explain is why she waited so long. Why she allowed herself to be arrested and charged and put on show in court before putting an end to it all.’

‘Didn’t she write anything about that in the letter?’ wondered Reinhart.

Münster shook his head.

‘No. It was just a few lines, and of course you can’t expect logical reasoning. She must have been pretty exhausted mentally, and a decision like that must take a lot of time to come to, I’d have thought.’

‘You’d think so,’ said Rooth.

Heinemann cleared his throat and put his glasses on the table.

‘I’ve spoken to a woman by the name of Regine Svendsen,’ he began pensively. ‘A former colleague of fru Leverkuhn’s. We spoke about precisely these psychological aspects. She seems to have known her quite well – until a few years ago, at least. It’s obviously risky to draw conclusions in cases like this, and she was careful to stress that—’

‘Well, what did she say?’ Rooth cut in. ‘If we cut out the crap.’

‘Hmm,’ said Heinemann. ‘You could sum up the gist by saying that fru Leverkuhn was a very strong woman. Quite capable of doing all kinds of things. There was a sort of incorruptibility about her, according to fru Svendsen. Or something of the sort, at least.’

‘Really?’ said Münster. ‘Well, obviously she has displayed an ability to take action in this case, there’s no denying that.’

‘Have you found any diaries?’ Heinemann asked.

‘Diaries?’ Münster repeated.

‘Yes,’ said Heinemann. ‘I spoke to this woman only yesterday – she’d been away, so I haven’t been able to report on it until now. Anyway, she claims that Marie-Louise Leverkuhn has kept a diary all her life, and if that’s the case and we could manage to take a look at it – or them – well, maybe we could get some insight into quite a lot of things . . .’

There was a moment’s silence, then Hiller cleared his throat.

‘Yes indeed,’ he said. ‘I suggest you go and look for these diaries – it shouldn’t be too difficult, surely?’

Münster looked at Moreno.