‘No bag,’ he said. ‘Both the suitcase and the shopping bag are in the wardrobe as usual. And she hasn’t been down into the storeroom in the basement. And what’s more, I know she came back home after doing her shopping – she has put things into the fridge and the larder. Milk and potatoes and a few tins of stuff. And other odds and ends. Diegermann’s caviar for instance – we always buy that, the unsmoked variety. With dill.’
‘It’s pretty good,’ said Münster.
‘Have you mentioned this to any of the neighbours?’ Moreno asked.
‘No,’ said Van Eck, squirming in his chair.
‘Any acquaintances?’
‘No. I don’t want this to come out, I mean, if it’s nothing important… I mean…’
He said nothing more. Münster and Moreno exchanged glances, and she was evidently on the same wavelength – she gestured with her head, then nodded. Münster cleared his throat.
‘Well, herr Van Eck,’ he said. ‘I think it would be best if you came to the police station with us. We can go through it all properly, and write a report.’
Van Eck took a deep breath.
‘I agree,’ he said, and it was obvious that he was not in complete control of his voice. ‘Can I go to the bathroom first? My stomach’s a bit upset, thanks to all this.’
‘Please do,’ said Moreno.
While they were waiting they took the opportunity of looking round the cramped two-roomed flat. It contained nothing that surprised them. A bedroom with an old-fashioned double bed with a teak headboard, and net curtains in light blue and white. Living room with television set, glass-fronted display cupboard and a drab three-piece suite in hard-wearing polyester. No books apart from a reference work in ten bright red volumes – but lots of magazines and a mass of landscape reproductions on the walls, and hand-painted porcelain vases on bureaux and tables. The kitchen where they had been sitting was barely big enough for three people: refrigerator, cooker and sink from the late fifties, by the looks of it, and the potted plants on the windowsills seemed to have grown and multiplied of their own accord. The artificial flower on the table looked much more natural. All the floors were covered in carpets of different styles, colours and qualities, and the only thing that Münster could possibly interpret as an expression of personal taste was a stuffed giraffe’s head over the hat shelf in the hall – but that was probably because he had never seen a detached giraffe’s head before.
Moreno shrugged, with a sigh of resignation, and they went back to the kitchen.
‘What about the neighbours?’ she said. ‘Should I stay here and listen to whatever they have to say? I suppose it would be helpful if we could establish when she was last seen.’
Münster nodded.
‘Yes, good thinking,’ he said. ‘Shall I send Krause or somebody to help?’
‘In an hour from now,’ said Moreno. ‘Then at least I won’t need to walk back to the station.’
She checked her watch. Van Eck’s stomach was evidently taking its time.
‘What do you think?’ she said. ‘I must say I haven’t a clue. Why on earth should this woman go and disappear?’
‘Search me,’ said Münster. ‘It must mean something, of course, and I have the feeling we need to take it seriously. Even if it all seems like a farce.’
He leaned back on his chair and looked out of the window. The melancholy weather was persisting. Heavy clouds were scudding in from the sea, and the pane was dappled in damp and fuzzy, even though it wasn’t actually raining.
Gloom, Münster thought. Who would not want to vanish in weather like this?
There was the sound of the lavatory flushing. Van Eck came out.
‘I’ve finished,’ he said, as if he were a three-year-old at a potty-training camp.
‘Okay, then let’s go,’ said Münster. ‘Inspector Moreno will stay behind and investigate a few things.’
Van Eck’s lower lip started trembling, and Moreno tapped him cautiously on the shoulder.
‘This will sort itself out, don’t worry,’ she said. ‘There’s bound to be a perfectly natural explanation.’
Presumably, Münster thought. So much seems to be natural nowadays.
18
Inspector Moreno checked out of Hotel Bender at about four o’clock on Thursday afternoon. The nose-ringed receptionist tried to make her pay for a second night, since she had occupied the room after twelve noon, but she refused. For the first time for ages (or maybe the first time ever? she asked herself) she chose to use her work status for her personal gain.
As it was only a matter of 140 euros, perhaps she could be excused.
‘I’m a detective inspector,’ she explained. ‘We needed the room in order to keep an eye on a certain transaction taking place in this hotel. That mission is now completed. Unless you want your name mentioned in less than flattering circumstances, I suggest you debit me for one night and no more.’
The young man, as thin as a rake, thought for a couple of seconds.
‘I understand,’ he said. ‘Let’s say just the one night, then.’
There was no Claus sitting outside her door when she got home, but she phoned him as soon as she had downed half a glass of wine.
She explained, without beating about the bush, or becoming emotional, that she had a demand to make. An ultimatum, if he liked. If there was going to be any possibility of repairing the relationship they used to have – and even as she spoke those words she understood that by doing so she was giving him false hope – she demanded two weeks without being disturbed.
No telephone calls, no greetings. No damned roses.
Two whole weeks. Fourteen days from today. Did he agree?
He did, he announced, after what seemed rather too long a silence. But only if he really could count on their meeting and discussing things properly once that time had run out. And neither of them would initiate anything else during those two weeks.
Initiate? Moreno thought. Anything else…?
She agreed to the discussion demand, and avoided the other by making no comment and hanging up.
Then she drank the remaining half-glass of wine. So there, she thought. I’ve delayed his execution by two weeks. Cowardly. But it feels good.
She curled up in a corner of the sofa with another glass of wine and the notes she had made at Kolderweg. Adjusted the cushions and switched on the reading lamp: the light it produced was so restricted that it almost felt like sitting inside a one-man tent, a tiny bright cone in the darkness where she could hide herself away, cut off from all the surroundings that she would rather forget. Men, darkness and so on.
At last, she thought. Time to concentrate on the case, and pay no attention to herself or the world around her.
Especially herself.
She had written down the tenants in Kolderweg 17 on the first page of her notebook. From the top down:
II. Ruben Engel Leonore Mathisen
I. Waldemar Leverkuhn/ Tobose Menakdise/
Marie-Louise Leverkuhn Filippa de Booning
Ground. Arnold Van Eck/
Else Van Eck Empty flat
The facts were first and foremost that Waldemar Leverkuhn was dead. She crossed his name out and continued.
Marie-Louise Leverkuhn? What was there to say about the widow?
Not a lot. She had returned from the charity shop soon after noon. Moreno had a short conversation with her, but in view of what the poor woman had already been through in terms of traumatic experiences and rigorous interviews, she restricted herself to what was absolutely necessary. Fru Leverkuhn said she had drunk coffee with Else Van Eck in the latter’s flat on Tuesday afternoon, had then bumped into her on the stairs the following morning (when she was on her way to the police station to talk to Intendent Münster), but apart from that, she claimed, she had neither seen nor heard anything of the caretaker’s wife.