The Unlucky Lottery by Hakan Nesser

Author:Hakan Nesser [Nesser, Hakan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, General, Mystery & Detective, Suspense, Thrillers
ISBN: 9780230760691
Google: CI2Amy2euTMC
Publisher: Pan MacMillan
Published: 2011-10-07T20:04:49+00:00

Fritz Engel wasn’t exactly smelling of violets today either, but he seemed to be sober and there was a half-finished crossword lying on the kitchen table.

‘For the little grey cells,’ he explained, standing up and pointing a dirty index finger at his forehead. ‘Welcome – and that’s a greeting I don’t extend to all police officers.’

Moreno took the compliment with a practised smile.

‘There are just a few things I’ve been thinking about,’ she said. ‘If you have time, that is.’

‘Of course.’

Engel hitched up his trousers, which had a tendency to fall floorwards, and indicated the vacant chair. She sat down and waited for a couple of seconds.

‘What is the link between Leverkuhn and fru Van Eck?’

‘Sorry?’ said Engel, sitting down.

She leaned forward over the table and braced herself.

‘Listen,’ she said. ‘What I mean is that there must be some sort of crucial link between these two events in the same building, some vital little factor which explains why it’s these two people who have been . . . been moved out of the way. It could be anything at all, but it’s almost impossible for an outsider to catch on. You have been living close to both of them for twenty years, herr Engel, so you ought to be just the person to come up with something. Can you recall anything at all where both Waldemar Leverkuhn and Else Van Eck had their fingers in the same pie, as it were?’

‘Are you suggesting they were having an affair?’

Moreno choked back a sigh.

‘Not at all. It doesn’t need to be anything as big as that, but it’s hard to be more precise when you don’t really know what you’re looking for.’

‘Yes,’ said Engel, ‘it is.’

He clamped his jaws together with a loud click, and she gathered that just now he was thinking of her in terms of a copper rather than a woman.

‘Are you worried at all that something might happen to you, herr Engel?’

Memories of his masculinity naturally got in the way of his giving her an honest answer to that question. He cleared his throat, straightened his back until it creaked, but she could see nevertheless that fear was coursing through his whole body.

Lay there ominously like dark water under one-night-old ice.

‘I’m not especially frightened, young lady,’ he claimed, trying to keep his gaze steady. ‘One learns to get by in the world we live in.’

‘Is there one of the neighbours you feel slightly less confident about?’ she insisted. ‘When you bump into them on the stairs, for instance?’

‘The neighbours? No, no, of course not!’

He burst out coughing, and as the attack slowly ebbed away Moreno sat there motionless, weighing up his final comment.

Was it really as clear a dismissal of any such thought as he tried to make it sound? Or?

Two hours later, as she slid down into a bubble-bath smelling of eucalyptus, she still hadn’t made up her mind about that.

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