The Unlucky Lottery (19 page)

In the early stages everything was aimed at the six members of this jury: four men and two women, and as far as she could make out it was all intended to establish the irreproachable and impartial nature of their characters when it came to the trial that was about to start.

When they had all been approved, Judge Hart declared that proceedings could begin and handed over to the prosecutor, fru Grootner, a woman in late middle age wearing a beige costume and with a mouth so wide that it sometimes seemed to continue for some distance outside the face itself. She stood in front of her table on the other side of the central aisle, leaning back with her ample bosom as a counterbalance, and pleaded her cause for over forty-five minutes. As far as Marie-Louise Leverkuhn could understand it was based on the premise that in the early hours of 26 October she had stabbed to death Waldemar Leverkuhn with malice aforethought and in full control of her senses, so that the only crime she could possibly be accused of was first degree murder. And hence this was the count that she would have to answer for.

Does she really believe what she’s saying? Leverkuhn wondered to herself: but it was hard to judge what was hiding behind the torrent of words and the streamlined spectacles which, on closer examination, proved to have precisely the Cupid’s bow form that was missing from her lips.

When the prosecutor had finished, it was the defence’s turn. Bachmann stood up with all the dignity he could muster, stroked his right hand several times over his mahogany-brown hair, and then announced that the defence would contest the charge and instead plead guilty to manslaughter.

He elaborated on this forcefully and verbosely for almost as long as the wide-mouthed prosecutor had spouted forth, and Marie-Louise felt frequently as if her eyelids were closing down.

Perhaps she hadn’t slept as well as she’d thought last night?

Perhaps she was too old for this kind of thing. Would everything be over and done with more quickly if she were to plead guilty to murder?

When proceedings were suspended for the day shortly after four o’clock, she hadn’t needed to answer a single question. Or even utter a single word. Bachmann had already explained that this was how things would go on the first day, but even so she felt somewhat confused as she was led out by the lady in blue who had remained at her side all the time.

It’s like being at the dentist’s or in hospital, she thought with a mixture of relief and disappointment. One is beyond doubt the leading character, but doesn’t have a single word to say about it.

Still, that was presumably the norm in courts of law as well.

23

‘A longer racket,’ said Van Veeteren, feeling his back. ‘That’s what’s needed, dammit. I don’t understand why they don’t invent something of the sort.’

‘Why?’ said Münster.

‘So that you don’t need to bend such a bloody long way down for drop shots, of course. My back isn’t what it used to be. Never has been.’

Münster considered these words of wisdom and switched on the shower. He had won all three sets as usual, it was true, but the chief inspector – former chief inspector – had offered stiff opposition. 15–9, 15–11, 15–6 were the scores, which suggested that Van Veeteren was in better condition now than he had been before leaving the police station, rather than the opposite.

Nevertheless he surely can’t have much further to go before passing the sixty mark? Münster thought, trying to brush aside the possibility that the fairly even outcome of the match might have something to do with his own state at the moment.

‘Adenaar’s now?’ wondered Van Veeteren as they came up to the foyer. ‘I gather you need to get something else off your chest.’

Münster coughed a little self-consciously.

‘If you have time, Chief Inspector.’

‘Stop using those words, will you?’ grunted Van Veeteren.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Münster. ‘It takes time to get used to it.’

‘I know that only too well,’ said Van Veeteren, holding the door open.

‘I suppose it’s Leverkuhn that’s worrying you, is it?’

Münster looked out in the direction of the square, and took a deep breath.

‘Yes,’ he admitted. ‘The trial started this afternoon. I just can’t get it out of my head.’

Van Veeteren took out his unwieldy cigarette machine and started filling it with tobacco.

‘Those are the worst kind,’ he said. ‘The ones that don’t allow you to sleep at night.’

‘Exactly,’ said Münster. ‘I dream about this accursed case. I can’t make head nor tail of it, whether I’m awake or asleep. Despite the fact that I’ve been through it hundreds of times, both with Jung and Moreno. It doesn’t help.’

‘Reinhart?’ Van Veeteren asked.

‘On paternity leave,’ sighed Münster. ‘Playing with his daughter.’

‘Ah, yes, of course,’ said Van Veeteren, pressing down the lid of the machine so that a rolled cigarette fell onto the table. With a contented expression on his face he placed the cigarette between his lips and lit it. Münster watched his activities in silence.

‘Do you think she didn’t do it?’ asked Van Veeteren after his first drag. ‘Or what’s the problem?’

Münster shrugged.

‘I don’t know,’ he admitted. ‘I suppose it must have been her, but that’s not the end of the case. We have fru Van Eck and that damned Bonger as well. Nobody’s seen any trace of either of them since they vanished, and that was over a month ago now.’

‘And fru Leverkuhn has nothing to do with them?’

‘Not a thing. If you can believe what she says, that is. We pressed her pretty hard once she’d confessed, but she didn’t give an inch. She owns up to stabbing her husband in a fit of anger, but she’s as innocent as a newborn babe as far as the others are concerned, she claims.’

‘Why did she kill her husband?’

‘Why indeed?’ said Münster glumly. ‘She just says it was the last straw.’

‘Hmm,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘What kind of a straw could that have been; was she more precise about it? If we assume that the camel’s back was full.’

‘That he’d won some money, but didn’t intend to give her a penny. She says she came home and found him lying in bed bragging about all the things he was going to buy, and after a while she’d had enough.’

Van Veeteren drew on his cigarette and thought for a moment.

‘I suppose it could happen like that,’ he said. ‘Is she the type?’

Münster scratched his head.

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘If we assume that she’s been leading that camel all her life – or throughout their marriage at any rate – well, I suppose it could be true; but it’s hard for an outsider to judge. That’s her story in any case – that she’s had to put up with this and that for what seemed to be for ever, and she simply couldn’t take it any more. Something snapped inside her, she says, and so she did it.’

Van Veeteren leaned back and stared up at the ceiling.

‘Theories?’ he said eventually. ‘Do you have any? What do you think? About the Van Eck woman, for instance?’

Münster suddenly looked almost unhappy.

‘I’ve no bloody idea,’ he said. ‘Not the slightest. As I said before, I find it difficult to believe that these three cases are not connected in some way. It seems pretty unlikely that Bonger, Leverkuhn and fru Van Eck would all kick the bucket in the same way purely by chance.’

‘You don’t know that Bonger and Van Eck are dead,’ Van Veeteren pointed out. ‘Or have I missed something?’

Münster sighed.

‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘But it doesn’t exactly make things any easier if they’ve simply gone missing.’

Van Veeteren said nothing for a few seconds.

‘Presumably not,’ he said eventually. ‘What have you done about it? From the point of view of the investigation, I mean. You presumably haven’t just wandered around thinking this?’

‘Not a lot,’ Münster admitted. ‘Since the prosecutor charged fru Leverkuhn, we’ve only been going through the routine motions as far as Bonger and fru Van Eck are concerned.’

‘Who’s in charge of the investigation?’ asked Van Veeteren.

‘I am,’ said Münster, taking another swig of beer. ‘But once fru Leverkuhn is sentenced Hiller is probably going to shelve the other cases. That will be next week. There are a few other things to keep us occupied.’

‘Really?’ said Van Veeteren.

He drained his glass and signalled for another. While waiting for it to be served, he sat in silence with his chin resting on his knuckles as he gazed out of the window at the traffic and the pigeons in Karlsplats. When the beer arrived he first siphoned off the froth, then almost emptied it in one enormous swig.

‘Very good!’ he announced. ‘All that exercise makes you thirsty. So why exactly did you want to speak to me?’

Münster suddenly looked embarrassed. He never learns, Van Veeteren thought. But then, perhaps it’s not a bad thing to have a few red cheeks in the police force. It makes things seem nice and peaceful.

‘Well?’

Münster cleared his throat.

‘All that stuff about intuition. I thought I’d ask the chief . . . ask you to do me a favour, to be frank.’

‘I’m all ears,’ said Van Veeteren.

Münster squirmed on his chair.

‘The trial,’ he said. ‘It would be good to get an idea of whether she really is as guilty and as innocent as she says. Fru Leverkuhn, that is. If somebody with an eye for such things could go and take a look at her. Whether she’s found guilty or not.’

‘Which she will be?’ said Van Veeteren.

‘I think so,’ said Münster.

Van Veeteren frowned and contemplated his cigarette machine.

‘All right,’ he said. ‘I’ll go there and take a look at her, then.’

‘Excellent,’ said Münster. ‘Many thanks. Room 4. But it’ll be all over by Friday, if I’m not much mistaken.’

‘I’ll go tomorrow,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘The eagle’s eye never sleeps.’

Huh, big chief him never wrong, Münster thought. But he said nothing.

24

‘Tell me about when you came home in the early hours of 26 October!’

Prosecutor Grootner pushed up her spectacles and waited. Marie-Louise Leverkuhn took a sip of water from the glass on the table in front of her. Cleared her throat and straightened her back.

‘I got home at about two o’clock,’ she said. ‘There had been a power cut on the railway line to Bossingen and Löhr. We were at a standstill for an hour. I’d been to visit a friend.’

She looked up at the public gallery, as if she were looking for a face. The prosecutor made no attempt to hurry her, and after a while she continued of her own accord.

‘My husband woke up as I came through the door into the bedroom, and started making abusive remarks.’

‘Abusive remarks?’ wondered the prosecutor.

‘Because I’d woken him up. He claimed I’d done it on purpose. Then he went on and on.’

‘How did he go on?’

‘He said he’d won some money, and that he was going to spend it so that he didn’t have to see me so often.’

‘Did he usually say things like that?’

‘It happened. When he’d been drinking.’

‘Was he drunk that evening?’

‘Yes.’

‘How drunk?’

‘He was pretty far gone. Slurring when he spoke.’

Short pause. The prosecutor nodded thoughtfully several times.

‘Please continue now, fru Leverkuhn.’

‘Well, I went out into the kitchen and saw the knife lying on the draining board. I’d used it when I’d been cutting up some ham that afternoon.’

‘What did you think when you saw the knife?’

‘Nothing. I think I just picked it up to wash it and put it back in the drawer.’

‘Is that what you did?’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Did you wash the knife, in fact?’

‘No.’

‘Tell us what you did instead.’

Leverkuhn brushed aside an annoying strand of hair and seemed to be hesitating about what to say next. The prosecutor eyed her without moving a muscle.

‘I was standing with the knife in my hand. And then my husband shouted something.’

‘What?’

‘I’d rather not say. It was a very rude insult.’

‘What did you do?’

‘I felt that I just couldn’t go on like this any longer. I don’t think I really understood what I was doing. I went into the bedroom, and then I stabbed him in the stomach.’

‘Did he try to defend himself?’

‘He didn’t have time.’

‘And then?’

‘I just carried on stabbing. It felt . . .’

‘Yes?’

‘It felt as if it wasn’t me holding the knife. As if it was someone else. It was very odd.’

Prosecutor Grootner paused again, then went for a little walk. When she returned to her starting point, a metre or so in front of the table, she first coughed into her hand, then turned her head so that she seemed to be speaking to a point somewhere diagonally above where the accused was sitting. As if she were actually talking to somebody else.

‘I find it a bit difficult to believe this,’ she said. ‘You have been married to your husband for over forty years. You have shared the same home and bed and endured the same hardships during a long life, but now you suddenly lose your head without any real reason. You said you were used to, er, exchanges of opinion like that, didn’t you?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Leverkuhn, looking down at the table. ‘It’s just that this was something extra . . .’

‘This wasn’t something you’d considered doing earlier?’

‘No.’

‘You’d never even given it a thought?’

‘No.’

‘Not earlier that evening, for instance?’

‘No.’

‘Are you suggesting that you didn’t know what you were doing when you murdered your husband?’

‘Objection!’ shouted Bachmann. ‘It has not been established that she murdered her husband.’

‘Sustained,’ muttered the judge without moving his mouth. The prosecutor shrugged, and her heavy bosom bobbed up and down.

‘Did you know what you were doing when you stabbed your husband?’ she said.

‘Yes, of course.’

A faint murmur ran through the gallery, and Judge Hart called for silence by raising his gaze half an inch.

‘What did you intend to do by stabbing him?’

‘To kill him, of course. To shut him up.’