Håkan Nesser - The Unlucky Lottery

But there again, perhaps there was just some kind of primitive and atavistic jealousy behind that judgement. He recalled that Reinhart once said it was perfectly normal to be jealous of every bloke who went around with a woman who was more or less attractive. Healthy and natural. And you could be sure that anybody who didn’t feel that way was definitely suffering from some nasty affliction or other. Constipation, for instance.

However, it wasn’t always easy to scrutinize your own putative emotional life. Especially with regard to women.

Or so Intendent Münster thought, attempting to be honest in a melancholy sort of way.

‘I understand,’ he said simply. ‘Is there anything I can do? You sound a bit grey, if you’ll pardon my saying so.’

She pulled a face.

‘I know,’ she said. ‘It’s not that I hate the man, and I don’t want him to lose control; I just want to be left in peace. It’s so damned difficult when the whole of my environment seems to be shedding its skin like this. I haven’t slept more than three hours a night for several weeks now.’

Münster leaned back in his chair.

‘The only things that can possibly help are time and coffee,’ he said. ‘Another cup?’

Moreno managed to produce a grimace that might have been intended to be a smile.

‘You know,’ she said, ‘I sometimes get the feeling that men are nothing more than overgrown boy scouts in disguise – and quite a lot isn’t in disguise, come to that.’

‘I’ve heard that before,’ said Münster. ‘But there is a female defect as well.’

Moreno had raised her cup, but paused.

‘Really? What?’

‘The incomprehensible tendency to fall for overgrown boy scouts,’ Münster said. ‘Not to mention overgrown little boys whose voices are breaking, and rowdies, and swine in general. If you can explain to me why you can put up with being beaten and humiliated and raped and tortured by these macho gorillas year in and year out, then we can get around to discussing boy scout morals and disguises afterwards!’

His anger struck without his having anticipated it, and he could see that Moreno had not been prepared for his attack.

‘Oh dear,’ she said. ‘But I suppose you have a point. Are there never any mature people at all?’

Münster sighed.

‘Occasionally, I suppose,’ he said. ‘It’s not easy being human. Especially when you are tired and overworked all the time… That’s when you become inhuman.’

‘Yes, I suppose so,’ said Moreno.

Jung stared down into the water.

He was standing on Doggers Bridge about fifty metres from Bonger’s houseboat, where he had just made his third – fruitless – visit. He’d had a third conversation with fru Jümpers as well – more of an exchange of opinions really – but nothing had emerged that could bring the disappearance of the old boat-owner any closer to a solution. Nothing at all. However, it was raining more heavily now: water was running down from his hair into both his face and the back of his neck, but it didn’t bother him any longer. There was a limit beyond which it was impossible to get any wetter, and he had passed it some time ago. Moreover something was beginning to nag away inside his head.

Something quite complicated.

A theory.

Suppose, he thought as he watched a duck paddling away in an attempt to progress upstream without moving from the spot – suppose that Leverkuhn and Bonger fall out as they walk back home from Freddy’s… There were witnesses who testified that they had been arguing on the pavement outside the entrance door before they set off.

Suppose also that the argument becomes more heated, and Bonger goes all the way home with Leverkuhn. Eventually Leverkuhn goes to bed, but simmering with anger and fuelled by alcohol, Bonger collects the carving knife and kills him.

Then Felix Bonger panics. He takes the knife with him, rushes out of the flat and away from Kolderweg (in so far as it’s possible to rush when you are that age), hurries home along the dark streets and alleys to Bertrandgraacht, but by the time he reaches Doggers Bridge the realization and horror of what he’s done gets through to him. Regret and remorse. He stands on the bridge and stares at his blood-soaked weapon and the dark water.

Suppose, finally, Jung’s fast-flowing stream of thought continued, that he stands on this very spot.

He paused and stared down at the canal. The duck finally gave in to another surge of current and turned round; a few seconds later it had disappeared into the shadows not far from Bonger’s houseboat.

He stands right here beside the cold, wet railings! In the middle of the night. Would it be all that strange if he decided to take the consequences of what he had done?

Jung nodded to himself. It wasn’t every day that he came up with a plausible theory.

And so – ergo! – there was without doubt quite a lot to suggest that they were both down there. In the mud at the bottom of the canal under this bridge.

Both the murder weapon and the murderer! Despite Heinemann’s pessimistic probability calculation.

Jung leaned over the railings and tried to gaze down through the coal-black water. Then he shook his head.

You’re out of your mind, he thought. You are a dilettante. Leave thinking to those whom God blessed with the gift of a brain instead!

He turned on his heel and walked off. Away from this murky canal and this murky speculation.

Mind you, he thought, when he had come to slightly drier ground under the colonnade in Van Kolmerstraat… It wouldn’t be totally out of place for him to try out his hypothesis on one of his colleagues. Rooth, for example. After all, it wasn’t entirely impossible that it had happened exactly in this way. There were no logical howlers, and, hey, you never know…

As they say.

Before Münster drew a line under this lugubrious working Monday, he ran through the witness testimonies with Krause. There was a little useful information. Not a lot, but a bit more than nothing, as Krause put it optimistically. A handful of people had seen Leverkuhn and Bonger outside Freddy’s, and at least two of them were convinced that they had not left together. There had evidently been a degree of animosity between the two old friends, and it seemed as if Bonger had simply abandoned his mate and set off home on his own. So far, however, nobody had come forward to say they had seen either of the two men after they had left the restaurant – on their way to Kolderweg and Bertrandgraacht respectively.

They had also drawn a blank regarding fru Leverkuhn’s walk to and from Entwick Plejn a few hours later.

But then – as Krause also pointed out – it was still only Monday: the case was less than two days old, and no doubt a lot of people hadn’t read about it yet.

So there was still hope.

For some obscure reason Münster had difficulty in sharing Krause’s apple-cheeked go-ahead spirit, and when he went down to his car in the underground car park he noticed to his surprise that he felt old.

Old and tired.

Things were not helped by the fact that Monday evening was when Synn attended her course in business French; or the fact that his son Bart had borrowed a saxophone from a classmate and devoted every second of the evening to practising.

In the end Münster locked the instrument in the boot of his car and explained that the ten-year-old was much too young for that sort of music.

Ten-year-olds should go to bed and keep quiet. It was half past ten.

For his own part he dropped off to sleep not long afterwards, nagged by a bad conscience and without Synn by his side.

‘I’m only staying until this evening,’ Mauritz Leverkuhn explained. ‘She doesn’t want us hanging around so why play the hypocrite?’