Read The Unlucky Lottery for Free Online

apart from that knife.’
    ‘You don’t need to have a motive for killing anybody nowadays,’ said Jung. ‘All that’s needed is for you to feel a bit annoyed, or to think you’ve been slighted for one reason or another, and that gives you the green light to go ahead and throw your weight around. Would you like a few examples?’
    ‘No thank you,’ said Münster. ‘Motives are beginning to be a bit old-fashioned.’
    He leaned back and folded his hands behind his head. Moreno’s digital wristwatch produced a mournful chirruping sound.
    ‘Five o’clock,’ she said. ‘Was there anything else?’
    Münster leafed through the documents on his desk.
    ‘I don’t think so . . . Hang on, though: did any of the old boys say anything about having won some money?’
    Moreno looked at Jung and shook her head.
    ‘No,’ said Jung. ‘Why?’
    ‘Well, the people at Freddy’s had the impression that they were celebrating something last night, but I suppose they were just guessing. This fourth character . . . Bonger: we’d better make sure we find him, no matter what?’
    Jung nodded.
    ‘I’ll call in on him again on the way home,’ he said. ‘Otherwise it’ll be tomorrow. He doesn’t have a telephone; we’d have to contact him via his neighbour. Just think that there are still people like that about.’
    ‘What do you mean?’ asked Moreno.
    ‘People without a phone. In this day and age.’
    Münster stood up.
    ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Thank you for this Sunday. Let’s cross our fingers and hope that somebody confesses tomorrow morning.’
    ‘Yes, let’s hope,’ said Jung. ‘But I very much doubt if somebody who bumps off a poor old buffer the way that was done is going to start being bothered by pangs of conscience. Let’s face it, this is not a very pleasant story.’
    ‘Very nasty,’ said Moreno. ‘As usual.’
    On the way home Münster called in at the scene of the crime in Kolderweg. As he was the one in charge of the investigation, for the moment at least, it was of course about time he did so. He stayed for ten minutes and wandered around the little three-roomed flat. It looked more or less as he had imagined it. Quite run-down, but comparatively neat and tidy. A hotchpotch of bad taste on the walls, furniture of the cheap fifties and sixties style. Separate bedrooms, bookcases with no books, and an awful lot of dried blood in and around Leverkuhn’s sagging bed. The body had been taken away, as had the bedlinen: Münster was grateful for that. It would have been more than enough to examine the photographs during the course of the morning.
    And of course, what Moreno had said described the scene of the crime exactly.
    Very nasty.
    When he finally came home he could see that Synn had been crying.
    ‘What’s the matter?’ he asked, hugging her as gently as if she were made of dreams.
    ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I just don’t want life to be like this. We get up in the mornings and get ready for work, and send the children off to school. We see each other again after it’s dark, we eat and we go to sleep. It’s the same all week long . . . I know it has to be like this just at the moment, but what if we were to snuff it a month from now? Or even six months? It’s not what it should be like for human beings, there ought to be time to live as well.’
    ‘Just to live?’ Münster said.
    ‘Just to live,’ said Synn. ‘All right, I know there are people who are worse off than we are . . . Ninety-five per cent of humanity, if we want to be finicky.’
    ‘Ninety-eight,’ said Münster.
    He stroked her tenderly over the back of her neck and down her back.
    ‘Shall we go and take a look at the children sleeping?’
    ‘They’re not asleep yet,’ said Synn.
    ‘Then we’ll just have to be patient,’ said Münster.

6
    It was only when he entered the police station on Monday morning that Münster remembered he hadn’t yet contacted the Leverkuhns’ children. One and a half days