The Unlucky Lottery

‘I do recall that,’ he said. ‘He’s going to sacrifice his son in order to make the reality that is threatening everybody merely an illusion, isn’t that right? A world war becomes only a nightmare if he carries out that deed.’

‘Something like that,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘The question, of course, is whether we really do receive signs like that. And what happens if we ignore them. Break the agreement.’

Reinhart sat in silence for a while.

‘I never stood on the lid of a well during the whole of my childhood,’ he said.

‘That’s presumably why you’re still alive,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘How long to go?’

‘An hour,’ said Reinhart. ‘I have to say I’m still not at all sure what the devil Tarkovsky has to do with this trip. But I suspect you’re not going to tell me?’

‘You suspect correctly,’ said Van Veeteren, lighting a newly rolled cigarette. ‘That’s also part of the agreement.’

The taxi driver’s name was Paul Holt. It was Krause who had tracked him down, and Moreno met him in his yellow cab outside the Hotel Kraus. A slim man in his thirties. White shirt, tie and a neat pony-tail. Moreno sat down in the front passenger seat, and when he shook her hand and introduced himself she discerned a distinct smell of marijuana in his breath.

Ah well, she thought. He’s not going to be driving me anywhere.

‘It’s about that fare of yours a few months ago,’ she said. ‘Fru Leverkuhn in Kolderweg. How well do you remember it?’

‘Quite well,’ said Holt.

‘It wasn’t exactly yesterday,’ said Moreno.

‘No,’ said Holt.

‘You must have had hundreds of fares since then, surely?’

‘Thousands,’ said Holt. ‘But you remember the special ones. I can tell you in detail about an old man in spotted trousers I drove eight years ago, if you want me to. In detail.’

‘I understand,’ said Moreno. ‘And that trip with fru Leverkuhn – that was special, was it?’

Holt nodded.

‘In what way?’

Holt adjusted his hair ribbon and clasped his hands over the steering wheel.

‘You know that as well as I do,’ he said. ‘I mean, there were articles in all the newspapers about them. Mind you, I’d have remembered that trip in any case.’

‘Really?’

‘It was a bit unusual, and that’s the kind of thing you remember.’

‘So I gather,’ said Moreno. ‘Can you tell me where you drove to, and what she did?’

Holt wound down the side window a decimetre and lit an ordinary cigarette.

‘Well, it was more of a goods delivery than anything else. Both the back seat and the boot were full of suitcases and bags. I think I pointed out to her that there were delivery firms for jobs like that, but I’m not sure. I took it on, anyway. You do what you have to do.’

‘Where did you go?’

‘First to the charity shop in Windemeer,’ said Holt. ‘Dropped off quite a few of the bags. I waited outside while she sorted things out in the shop. Then we continued to the Central Station.’

‘The railway station?’

‘Yes, the Central Station. We carried in the rest of the stuff, I think there was a suitcase and two other bags – those big, soft-sided bags, you know the kind of thing. Yes, there were three of them. Heavy they were, as well. She locked them away in left-luggage lockers, and then we drove back to Kolderweg. She got out at the shopping centre. It was pissing down.’

Moreno thought for a while.

‘You have a good memory for details,’ she said.

He nodded, and drew on his cigarette.

‘I suppose so,’ he said. ‘But as I said, it’s not the first time I’ve thought about that trip. Once you’ve recalled something, it’s there. Sort of like a photo album. Don’t you find that as well?’

Yes, Ewa Moreno thought, after she had left the yellow taxi. He was right about that, surely? Surely there were things you never forgot, no matter how much you wished you could? That early morning four years ago, for instance, when she and Jung broke into a flat in Rozerplejn, and found a twenty-four-year-old immigrant woman with two small children in a large pool of blood on the kitchen floor. The letter informing her that she would be deported was lying on the table. She recalled that all right . . .

That remained in the photo album of her memory. And other scenes as well.

She checked her watch, and wondered if there was any point in driving back to the police station. Or in ringing and informing them about what Paul Holt had said. In the end she decided that it could wait until tomorrow. After all, everything seemed to confirm what they had guessed must be the facts. Marie-Louise Leverkuhn had used the Central Station as a storage depot for a few days, or a day or so at least, before finally disposing of the butchered caretaker’s wife in Weyler’s Woods. Simple and painless. A neat solution, as somebody had said.

Nevertheless, on the way home she stopped to check the buses leaving the Central Station. It fitted in. There was such a bus. Number sixteen. It ran every twenty minutes during working hours. Once an hour if you preferred to work under the cover of darkness. Nothing could have been simpler.