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had passed since the murder, there was no further time to be lost. Luckily the mass media had not published any names in their quite restrained coverage of the case, so he hoped that what he had to tell them would still be news.
    It was bad enough to have to be the bearer of bad tidings. Even worse if the bereaved had already been informed – and Münster had found himself in that position several times.
    In order to avoid any further delay he instructed Krause to make preliminary contact – not to pass on the message itself, but to prepare the way so that Münster himself could give them the melancholy details.
    After all, he had already accepted the fact that it was his duty to do so.
    Half an hour later he had the first of them on the line. Ruth Leverkuhn. Forty-four years old, living up in Wernice, over a hundred kilometres from Maardam. Despite the distance involved, as soon as Münster had explained that her father had been the victim of an accident, they arranged a private meeting: Ruth Leverkuhn preferred not to discuss serious matters on the telephone.
    But she was told that Waldemar Leverkuhn was dead, of course.
    And that Münster was a CID officer.
    So, the Rote Moor cafe in Salutorget. Since, for whatever reason, she preferred such a location rather than the police station.
    And at twelve noon. Since, for some other unknown reason, she preferred to talk to the police before visiting her mother in Bossingen.
    The son, Mauritz Leverkuhn, born 1958, rang barely ten minutes later. He lived even further north – in Frigge – and Münster didn’t beat about the bush. He came straight to the point.
    Your father is dead.
    During the night between Saturday and Sunday. In his bed. Murdered, it seemed. Stabbed with a knife.
    It ‘seemed’, Münster thought as he listened to the silence at the other end of the line. Talk about cautious prognoses . . .
    Then he heard – or at least, thought he could hear – the usual muted signs of shock in Mauritz Leverkuhn’s confused questions.
    ‘What time, did you say?’
    ‘Where was Mum?’
    ‘Where’s the body now?’
    ‘What was he wearing?’
    Münster filled him in on these points and more besides. And made sure he had Emmeline von Post’s telephone number so that he could contact his mother. Eventually he expressed his condolences and arranged a meeting on Tuesday morning.
    The son’s intention was to set off as soon as possible – no later than this evening – in order to be by his mother’s side.
    As far as the elder daughter was concerned, Irene Leverkuhn, Münster had already spoken to the Gellner Home, where she had been a resident for the last four years. A very confidence-inspiring welfare officer had listened and understood, and assured Münster that she personally would inform her patient about her father’s untimely death.
    In the most appropriate way, and as considerately as possible.
    Irene Leverkuhn was in a frail state.
    Münster decided to postpone a conversation with this daughter indefinitely. The welfare officer had indicated that in all probability it would not be productive, and there were things to do that were no doubt more important.
    He sat for a while wondering about what they might be. What more important things? There was still half an hour to go before the update meeting, and for want of anything better to do he took another look at the forensic scene-of-crime report, to which a few more pages had been added during the night. He also phoned and spoke to both the pathologists, Meusse and Mulder, at the lab, but neither of them was able to cast much light on the darkness. None at all, to be more precise.
    But there were still a few analyses left to do, so there was hope.
    It would be silly to throw in the towel too soon, Mulder pointed out, as was his wont. These things take time.
    Jung did not have a headache this Monday morning.
    But he was tired. Sophie had come home quite late on Sunday evening after being away for nearly two whole