The Unlucky Lottery

‘We’ve . . . Obviously we’ve searched Leverkuhn’s flat,’ said Moreno. ‘But we weren’t looking for diaries.’

‘According to fru Svendsen there should be eight to ten of them,’ said Heinemann. ‘She’s seen them, but never read them, of course. Ordinary notebooks with black oilcloth covers, apparently. Each one covering three or four years. Just short notes, presumably.’

‘That would cover no more than about thirty years,’ said Reinhart. ‘I thought she was older than that?’

Heinemann shrugged.

‘Don’t ask me,’ he said. ‘But I thought it was worth mentioning, anyway.’

Münster made a note and thought about it, but hadn’t reached any conclusion before the chief of police once again took command.

‘Go there and start looking!’ he said. ‘Search the whole damned flat, and dig them out. The place is still under guard, I take it? That wouldn’t be unusual, surely?’

‘Not unusual at all,’ said Münster with a sigh. ‘Obviously. I don’t think she had a notebook with her while she was under arrest in any case – but she might have stopped keeping a diary in her old age, perhaps. How long is it since this Regine Svendsen was last in touch with her?’

‘About five years,’ said Heinemann. ‘They worked together at Lippmann’s.’

Reinhart had been filling his pipe for several minutes, under Hiller’s stern gaze. Now he put it in his mouth, leaned back on his chair and clasped his hands behind his head.

‘The link, what about that detail?’ he said. ‘And wasn’t there somebody else who came to grief?’

Münster sighed again.

‘Absolutely right,’ he said. ‘We have a certain Felix Bonger who’s disappeared as well. One of Leverkuhn’s mates. He hasn’t been seen since the night Leverkuhn was killed.’

But now Chief of Police Hiller had had enough. He stopped observing Reinhart’s tobacco activities and tapped demonstratively on the table with his Ballograph.

‘Now listen here,’ he said. ‘You must damned well make up your minds whether these cases are linked or not – I thought we’d already done that, as a matter of fact. Is there anything – anything at all! – to suggest that Leverkuhn’s and fru Van Eck’s deaths are connected in any way?’

‘Well,’ said Münster, ‘one has to say it’s not all that usual for two people living in the same building to be murdered within only a few days of each other, and—’

‘I regard the Leverkuhn case as finished and done with!’ interrupted Hiller. ‘At least as long as nothing completely new comes to light. What we have to do now is to find out who murdered Else Van Eck. Mind you, if it was fru Leverkuhn who did her in as well, that would suit me down to the ground.’

‘A neat solution,’ said Reinhart. ‘The chief of police ought to have become a police officer.’

That put Hiller off for a moment, but then he continued with undiminished authority:

‘As for this Bonger character, he’s disappeared, and I take it for granted that we shall pursue the same procedures as we would for any other similar case – routine missing person procedures, that is.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Incidentally, I have a meeting in five minutes.’

‘Perhaps we should have a smoking break,’ said Reinhart. ‘We’re about due for one.’

‘Does anybody else wish to say anything?’ asked Münster diplomatically.

‘Personally, I could do with a cup of coffee,’ said Rooth.

‘You look a bit tired,’ said Moreno, closing the door.

‘That’s probably because I am a bit tired,’ said Münster. ‘I was supposed to be off for seven days over the holidays: I was actually off for two and a half.’

‘Not much fun when you have a family, I suppose.’

Münster pulled a face,

‘Yes, having a family is great. It’s all this bloody work that isn’t so great. It makes you lose heart.’

Moreno sat down opposite him, and waited for him to continue.

‘How are things with you?’ Münster said instead.

‘Odd,’ said Moreno after a short pause.

‘Odd?’

She laughed.

‘Yes, odd. But okay, basically. Does a heartless intendent have the strength to listen? It’ll only take half a minute.’

Münster nodded.

‘Well, Claus came home from New York, despite everything,’ Moreno said, while trying to scrape a little coffee stain off her pale yellow jumper with a fingernail. ‘It struck me straight away that he had changed somehow . . . I think I said this, didn’t I? I couldn’t put my finger on it, but it finally came out yesterday. He’s found somebody else.’

‘What?’ said Münster. ‘What the hell . . .?’

‘Yes. A month ago he was ready to take his own life for my sake, but now he has a flourishing new relationship. He met her in a restaurant in Greenwich Village, they flew home on the same plane, and they’ve evidently found one another. Her name’s Brigitte, and she’s a script girl with a television company. Huh, men . . .’

‘Enough of that,’ said Münster. ‘Don’t tar everybody with the same brush, for Christ’s sake! I refuse to associate myself with this kind of . . . of boy scout behaviour.’

Moreno smiled. Stopped scraping and contemplated the stain, which was still there.