The Unlucky Lottery (32 page)

‘Thank you,’ said Clara.

‘Anyway,’ said Münster. ‘What I’m wondering is whether she – Irene, that is – can remain in that state . . . in those childhood experiences . . . even after you’ve concluded your conversation. Or do you have to return her to the present every time, as it were?’

A few seconds passed.

‘Do you understand what I’m getting at?’ Münster asked.

‘Of course,’ said Clara. ‘I was just thinking . . . Yes, she could well recall it, what we were talking about. For a while, at least . . . If somebody were to strike the right chord, so to speak.’

‘You’re sure about that?’

‘As sure as one can be. The soul isn’t a machine.’

‘Thank you,’ said Münster. ‘I now know what I need to know. But I’d like to talk to you again at some point, if that’s possible.’

He could hear her smiling as she replied.

‘You’ve got my number, Inspector. I have a brother in Maardam, incidentally.’

‘There’s just one detail left now,’ said Münster when deBuuijs returned. ‘You said that you keep a record of all visits received by the patients in this home. Could you please give me access to that information? I know I’m being a nuisance, but I promise to leave you in peace after this.’

‘No problem,’ said Hedda deBuuijs with her usual enthusiasm. ‘Would you like to follow me?’

They went into the reception area, where deBuuijs knocked on a little glass window. Before long she was handed two red ring binders which she passed on to the inspector.

‘Last year,’ she said. ‘If you need to go further back than that just knock on the glass window and tell one of the girls. There’s something I must see to now, if you’ll excuse me.’

‘Thank you,’ said Münster ‘These two will be fine. You have been very hospitable and of great help.’

‘No problem,’ said Hedda deBuuijs, leaving him again.

Münster sat down at a table and started thumbing through them.

Now, he thought. Now we shall see if everything falls into place. Or if it falls apart.

Five minutes later he knocked on the window and returned the files.

If somebody were to strike the right chord? he thought as he drove out of the car park. That’s what Clara Vermieten had said. It couldn’t be put any better.

‘What the hell do you mean?’ said Reinhart.

‘Don’t bother trying to comprehend what you don’t understand anyway,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘Tell me the situation instead!’

‘We’re nearly there,’ said Reinhart.

‘There?’

‘Listen carefully, my dear ex-chief inspector,’ said Reinhart. ‘Münster is up north, and things are going according to plan, if not better. I spoke to him on the phone half an hour ago, and he’d unearthed evidence that points clearly in a certain direction.’

‘Go on,’ said Van Veeteren.

Reinhart sighed and explained patiently what had happened for another two or three minutes until Van Veeteren interrupted him.

‘All right, that’s enough,’ he said. ‘We’ll drive there. You can tell me the rest in the car.’

‘Drive there? What the hell . . .?’ exclaimed Reinhart, but as he did so a warning light started blinking somewhere at the back of his mind. He thought for a moment. If there was a rule he had discovered that was worth following during the chief inspector’s time – just one single rule – it was this one.

Never ask questions when Van Veeteren makes a sudden and apparently incomprehensible decision.

Reinhart had done that a few times. At first. Queried the decision. He had always been proved wrong.

‘You can pick me up outside Adenaar’s five minutes from now,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘No, four minutes. Are you with me?’

‘Yes.’ Reinhart sighed. ‘I’m with you.’

When Münster had finished his dinner at a Chinese restaurant, he sensed once again how tired he was. He drank his usual two cups of strong black coffee as an antidote, and wondered how many years it would be before he had stomach ulcers. Five? Two?

Then he settled up, and tried to concentrate on work again.

On the case. The last act was looming now. About time too: he made a mental note to the effect that he would go to Hiller and demand a week off as soon as it was all over. Or on Monday. Two weeks, come to that.

Then he phoned Maardam from the car, to put them in the picture. He spent ten minutes relating the latest developments to Heinemann, the only person available. Heinemann concluded by urging him to be extremely careful, in his usual long-winded style.

When he had finished with Heinemann, Münster informed the local police authorities. Spoke to Inspector Malinowski, who had some difficulty in catching on at first: but he eventually seemed to have grasped the situation. He promised that everything would be on stand-by by the time he heard again from Intendent Müssner.

‘Münster,’ said Münster. ‘Not Müssner.’

‘Okay,’ said Malinowski. ‘I’ve made a note.’

He started the engine and set off. It was almost six o’clock, and darkness was beginning to settle over the deserted town. A strong wind had blown up again, but there still hadn’t been a drop of rain this long Thursday.

He parked a few minutes later. Remained seated for a while, composing himself. Then he checked he had both his gun and his mobile with him, and got out of the car.

39

‘There’s a film by Tarkovsky,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘His last one.
The Sacrifice
. That is what this is all about.’

Reinhart nodded. Then he shook his head.

‘Enlighten me,’ he said. ‘I’ve seen it, but it was several years ago.’

‘You should see Tarkovsky’s films several times, if you have the opportunity,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘There are so many layers of meaning. You don’t remember this one?’

‘Not off the top of my head.’

‘He poses a fundamental question in that film. We could put it like this: if you meet God in a dream and make him a promise, what do you do when you wake up?’

Reinhart put his pipe into his mouth.

‘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.

But she would wait until tomorrow before reporting this. Unless Intendent Münster got in touch during the evening: that would obviously present an opportunity to report then.

It could well be an advantage to have something concrete to talk about. She had begun to feel more and more clearly that she was standing with at least one foot on the wrong side of the border. That border you had to stake everything on not crossing – not least because all the roads over it were so definitely one way only. Once over it, there was no going back.

In the next life I’m going to be a lioness, Moreno thought, and made up her mind to sublimate all her desires and indeed the whole of the world by jumping into the bath and having a long soak in jujuba oil and lavender.

‘You again?’ said Mauritz Leverkuhn.

‘Me again,’ said Münster.

‘I don’t get the point of this,’ said Mauritz. ‘I’ve nothing more to talk to you about.’

‘But I have quite a lot to talk to you about,’ said Münster. ‘Are you going to let me in?’

Mauritz hesitated for a moment, then shrugged and went into the living room. Münster closed the door behind him and followed. It looked the same as it had done on his first visit. The same advertising leaflets were lying in the same place on the table, and the same glass was standing beside the easy chair in which Mauritz was now sitting.

But the television was on. A programme in which four colourfully dressed women were sitting on two sofas, laughing. Mauritz pressed a button on the remote control, and switched them off.

‘Yes, indeed,’ said Münster, ‘I have quite a lot to talk to you about. I’ve been talking to your sister this afternoon.’

‘Ruth?’

‘No, Irene.’

Mauritz made no reply, didn’t react.

‘I spent several hours at the Gellner Home, in fact,’ said Münster. ‘You’ve been lying to me.’

‘Lying?’ said Mauritz.

‘Did you not say yesterday that you hadn’t been to see her for over a year?’

Mauritz emptied his glass.

‘I forgot about that,’ he said. ‘I went to see her last autumn, I’m not sure when.’

‘Forgot?’ said Münster. ‘You were there on Saturday the 25th of October, the same day as your father was murdered.’

‘What the hell has that got to do with it?’

He still didn’t seem to have made up his mind what attitude to adopt, and Münster reckoned that his head must be spinning now. But surely he must have been expecting another visit? He must have known that Münster would return sooner or later. Or had the flu and the fever stopped his mind from working?

‘Can you tell me what you and Irene talked about last October?’

Mauritz snorted.

‘It’s not possible to talk to Irene about anything sensible. You must surely have noticed that if you’ve been visiting her?’

‘Maybe not in normal circumstances,’ said Münster. ‘But I don’t think she was in her normal state that Saturday.’

‘What the devil d’you mean by that?’

‘Do you want me to spell out what she told you?’

Mauritz shrugged.

‘Prattle on,’ he said. ‘You seem to have a screw loose. Have had all the time, come to that.’

Münster cleared his throat.