The Unlucky Lottery by Håkan Nesser Page A

substantial knife. The blade was at least twenty centimetres long. Sharpened and sharp – presumably a carving knife pretty similar to the one fru Leverkuhn described, and which, according to the same source, disappeared from its place in the kitchen at some point on the evening of the murder . . .’
    ‘And which now,’ said Rooth, ‘is almost certainly lying at the bottom of one of the canals. I may be wrong, but a quick calculation suggests that we have about five thousand metres to choose from . . .’
    ‘Hmm,’ said Heinemann. ‘Interesting. Purely from the point of view of probability, that is. Three thousand drug addicts times five thousand metres of canal . . . That means that if we’re going to find both the killer and the murder weapon, the chances are . . . one in about fifteen million . . .’
    He leaned back in his chair and smoothed down his tie over his stomach.
    ‘How nice to see that we’re all so optimistic,’ said Moreno as Jung appeared in the doorway.
    ‘Sorry I’m late,’ he said. ‘But I was on official—’
    ‘Excellent,’ interrupted Rooth. ‘Sit down!’
    Münster cleared his throat. If only I could give all these comedy shows a miss, he thought. I’m not sufficiently arrogant yet, but no doubt that’ll come.
    ‘Regarding the time,’ he said, ‘we can assume that Leverkuhn was murdered at some time between a quarter past one and a quarter past two. When I pressed Meusse a bit, he leaned towards the later half-hour, in other words between a quarter to and a quarter past two.’
    ‘Hm,’ said Heinemann. ‘What time did his wife get home?’
    ‘Three or four minutes past,’ said Moreno.
    ‘That narrows things down, then,’ said Krause. ‘Assuming Meusse is right, that is.’
    ‘Meusse hasn’t got anything wrong for the past fifteen years,’ said Rooth. ‘So, between a quarter to two and two. She must have been pretty damned close to bumping into him. Have we checked if she noticed anybody?’
    ‘Yes,’ said Krause. ‘Negative.’
    ‘She could have been the one who did it, of course,’ Heinemann pointed out. ‘Perhaps we shouldn’t exclude that possibility. Sixty per cent of all men are murdered by their wives.’
    ‘What the hell are you saying?’ wondered Rooth. ‘Thank God I’m not married.’
    ‘What I mean is . . .’ said Heinemann.
    ‘We know what you mean,’ said Münster with a sigh. ‘We can discuss fru Leverkuhn’s credibility later, but we’ll take the report from the lab first.’
    He fished the relevant papers out of the folder.
    ‘There was a hell of a lot of blood,’ he continued, ‘both in the bed and on the floor. But they haven’t found any leads. No fingerprints, apart from the victim’s and a couple of old ones of the wife’s – and the only mark on the floor was also from her: a footprint she made when she went in and found him. They had separate bedrooms, as I said earlier.’
    ‘What about the rest of the flat?’ Moreno asked.
    ‘Only her fingerprints there as well.’
    ‘Excuse me,’ said Heinemann. ‘Did she really go right up to the bed? Surely that wasn’t necessary. She must have seen that he was dead before she entered the room. We’d better look into whether she really needed to rummage around at the scene of the crime like that—’
    Krause interrupted him.
    ‘It was dark when she went in, she claims. Then she realized something was wrong and went back to switch on the light.’
    ‘Aha,’ said Heinemann.
    ‘That fits in with the footprints in the blood,’ explained Münster. ‘You might think it seems odd that the murderer could flee the scene without leaving any trace, but Meusse says that wouldn’t be anything remarkable. There was an awful lot of blood, but it wasn’t spurting out: most of it apparently ran out when the attack was over and done with, as it were. Evidently it depends on which sort of artery you happen to hit first.’
    ‘An old man’s blood,’ said Rooth.