The Unlucky Lottery Read Online Free PDF

books and magazines were strewn about haphazardly. Hanging from the ceiling were an electric bulb without a shade and a stuffed parrot on a perch. A broken concertina was lying on top of a low cupboard.
    The strongest impression, however, was the smell of dirt and ingrained damp. And of old man.
    No, Jung thought. This looks even worse than it did from the canal bank.
    When he came back up on deck the woman had disappeared into her own cabin. Jung hesitated; there were probably a question or two he ought to ask her, but as he felt his way cautiously across the gang-plank again, he decided that the urge for something to eat could not be resisted much longer.
    And he was starting to feel cold. If he took a slightly longer route back to the police station, he reckoned he would be able to nip into Kurmann’s for a fillet steak with fried potatoes and gravy. Nothing could be simpler.
    And a beer.
    It was nearly twelve o’clock, so there was no time for dilly-dallying.

5
    Marie-Louise Leverkuhn left the police station with Münster’s blessing shortly after one o’clock on Sunday. She was accompanied by Emmeline von Post, the friend with whom she had spent Saturday evening and who had been informed of the awful happening a few hours previously.
    And who said immediately without needing to be prompted that the newly widowed Marie-Louise was welcome to stay in her terraced house out at Bossingen.
    For the time being. Until things had calmed down a bit. In other words, for as long as it might be thought necessary.
    After all, they had known each other for fifty years. And been colleagues for twenty-five.
    Münster escorted the two ladies to the car park, and before they struggled into fröken von Post’s red Renault, he stressed once more how important it was to contact him the moment she recalled anything at all, no matter how apparently insignificant, that might possibly be of interest to the police in their work.
    Their work being to capture her husband’s murderer.
    ‘In any case we shall be in touch with you in a day or so,’ he added. ‘Thank you for volunteering to take care of her, fröken von Post.’
    ‘We humans have to help each other in our hour of need,’ said Marie-Louise’s short and plump friend, squeezing herself into the driving seat. ‘Where would we be if we didn’t?’
    Yes, where would we be indeed? Münster thought as he returned to his office on the third floor.
    Up the creek without a paddle, presumably. But wasn’t that where we were all heading for anyway?
    The forensic reports were ready half an hour later. While he sat chewing two frugal sandwiches from the automatic machine in the canteen, Münster worked his way through them.
    It was not especially uplifting reading.
    Waldemar Leverkuhn had been killed by several deep knife-wounds to his trunk and neck. The exact number of blows had been established at twenty-eight, but when the last ten or twelve were made he was most probably already dead.
    There had been no resistance, and the probable time of death was now narrowed down to between 01.15 and 02.15. But taking into account the widow’s evidence, that could be narrowed down further to 01.15–02.00, since she had arrived home soon after two.
    At the moment of death Leverkuhn had been wearing a white shirt, tie, underpants, trousers and one sock, and the alcohol content in his blood had been 1.76 per thousand.
    No weapon had been recovered, but there was no doubt that it must have been a large knife with a blade about twenty centimetres long – possibly identical with the carving knife reported missing by fru Leverkuhn.
    No fingerprints or any other clues had been found at the scene of the crime, but chemical analysis of textile fibres and other particles had yet to be carried out.
    All this was carefully noted on two densely typed pages, and Münster read through it twice.
    Then he phoned Synn and spoke to her for ten minutes.
    Then he put his feet up on his desk.
    Then he closed his