‘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.
‘When you arrived at the home, she had just finished a therapy session, isn’t that right? With a certain Clara Vermieten. You saw her immediately afterwards, and then… then she began talking about things from your childhood, and that you had no idea about. Concerning your father.’
Mauritz didn’t move a muscle.
‘Is it not the case,’ said Münster, ‘that on that Saturday afternoon you discovered circumstances you knew nothing about? Circumstances which, to some extent at least, explain the occurrence of Irene’s illness? Why she became the way she is now?’
‘You’re out of your mind,’ said Mauritz.
‘And isn’t it a fact that this news affected you so deeply that to a large extent you took leave of your senses?’
‘What the hell are you sitting there babbling on about?’ said Mauritz.
Münster paused.
‘What I’m talking about,’ he said eventually, as slowly and emphatically as he could, ‘is that you discovered that your father had been sexually abusing both your sisters throughout the whole of their childhood, and that as a result you got into your car, drove down to Maardam and killed him. That’s what I’m talking about.’