The Unlucky Lottery by Håkan Nesser

– suppose that Leverkuhn and Bonger fall out as they walk back home from Freddy’s . . . There were witnesses who testified that they had been arguing on the pavement outside the entrance door before they set off.
    Suppose also that the argument becomes more heated, and Bonger goes all the way home with Leverkuhn. Eventually Leverkuhn goes to bed, but simmering with anger and fuelled by alcohol, Bonger collects the carving knife and kills him.
    Then Felix Bonger panics. He takes the knife with him, rushes out of the flat and away from Kolderweg (in so far as it’s possible to rush when you are that age), hurries home along the dark streets and alleys to Bertrandgraacht, but by the time he reaches Doggers Bridge the realization and horror of what he’s done gets through to him. Regret and remorse. He stands on the bridge and stares at his blood-soaked weapon and the dark water.
    Suppose, finally, Jung’s fast-flowing stream of thought continued, that he stands on this very spot.
    He paused and stared down at the canal. The duck finally gave in to another surge of current and turned round; a few seconds later it had disappeared into the shadows not far from Bonger’s houseboat.
    He stands right here beside the cold, wet railings! In the middle of the night. Would it be all that strange if he decided to take the consequences of what he had done?
    Jung nodded to himself. It wasn’t every day that he came up with a plausible theory.
    And so – ergo! – there was without doubt quite a lot to suggest that they were both down there. In the mud at the bottom of the canal under this bridge.
    Both the murder weapon and the murderer! Despite Heinemann’s pessimistic probability calculation.
    Jung leaned over the railings and tried to gaze down through the coal-black water. Then he shook his head.
    You’re out of your mind, he thought. You are a dilettante. Leave thinking to those whom God blessed with the gift of a brain instead!
    He turned on his heel and walked off. Away from this murky canal and this murky speculation.
    Mind you, he thought, when he had come to slightly drier ground under the colonnade in Van Kolmerstraat . . . It wouldn’t be totally out of place for him to try out his hypothesis on one of his colleagues. Rooth, for example. After all, it wasn’t entirely impossible that it had happened exactly in this way. There were no logical howlers, and, hey, you never know . . .
    As they say.
    Before Münster drew a line under this lugubrious working Monday, he ran through the witness testimonies with Krause. There was a little useful information. Not a lot, but a bit more than nothing, as Krause put it optimistically. A handful of people had seen Leverkuhn and Bonger outside Freddy’s, and at least two of them were convinced that they had not left together. There had evidently been a degree of animosity between the two old friends, and it seemed as if Bonger had simply abandoned his mate and set off home on his own. So far, however, nobody had come forward to say they had seen either of the two men after they had left the restaurant – on their way to Kolderweg and Bertrandgraacht respectively.
    They had also drawn a blank regarding fru Leverkuhn’s walk to and from Entwick Plejn a few hours later.
    But then – as Krause also pointed out – it was still only Monday: the case was less than two days old, and no doubt a lot of people hadn’t read about it yet.
    So there was still hope.
    For some obscure reason Münster had difficulty in sharing Krause’s apple-cheeked go-ahead spirit, and when he went down to his car in the underground car park he noticed to his surprise that he felt old.
    Old and tired.
    Things were not helped by the fact that Monday evening was when Synn attended her course in business French; or the fact that his son Bart had borrowed a saxophone from a classmate and devoted every second of the evening to practising.
    In the end Münster locked the instrument in the boot of his car and