Raven Sisters (Franza Oberwieser Book 2) (11 page)

18

She had arrived at nine, as she always did when she was on the early shift. She opened up the café and switched on the coffee machine—the usual routine. Vasco had long since begun cooking in the kitchen. She threw a final glance over the tables to make sure everything was in order, checking that the sugar dispensers were filled and the flowers in the vases hadn’t wilted. She went outside to make sure everything was set up there, as the weather seemed good enough for patrons to prefer their morning coffee alfresco. It was only then that she noticed the frenzied activity in Gertrud’s pottery shop. People she had never seen before were going in and out.

She stopped, hands on her hips, a frown on her face. What was happening? The shop was supposed to be closed for another week!

She and Gertrud had spoken about it on the evening before her holiday. She’d said she was going away for a few days—to the black beach on Kos, where her father had a house.

“I need to relax,” she’d said. “Put everything to one side for a while. Without Christian, and without the children. Some me time, to get my act together. You know what I mean, Renate?”

“Of course,” Renate had said. “I certainly do! You should do it. Enjoy yourself. A few days away and you’ll be a new woman.” She leaned back and sighed. “I could do with something like that myself.”

Gertrud had nodded, and then started for the door. She hesitated, turned. “Why don’t you come with me? There’s plenty of room in the house.”

A smile. One of those rare open smiles she sometimes granted. “What do you think?”

Renate’s eyes had opened wide. What a wonderful idea! How tempting! But it wouldn’t work. She sighed.

“Wow! That would be lovely! Yes, I’d love it, no doubt about it. But I don’t have time. You see
. . .
” She waved a hand expressively around the café.

Gertrud nodded. “OK. It was only a spur-of-the-moment idea. But it’s obvious you can’t just drop everything and go. Would you keep an eye on the shop for me, please? I should be back next week. See you soon! After my holiday!”

She waved and crossed the street to her car. On a sudden impulse, Renate ran after her.

“Gertrud! Wait! Let me give you a hug! And wish you a lovely holiday.”

They laughed and Renate hugged her. She felt good, soft but firm, the scent of herbal shampoo in her hair.

Then she was gone. Renate stood there for a moment and thought of Greece, of Kos, of the sea and the black sand. She had sighed again and briefly closed her eyes before returning to the café.

And now?

What was going on?

Hardly a week had passed. She ran a quick calculation through her head—no, it was only a few days, and there were all those people across the road. Not Christian or Lilli or Gertrud’s parents, and no sign of Gertrud herself.

Ah well,
Renate thought, running a hand through her short black hair as she impulsively crossed the street to the pottery shop.

“Can you tell me what you’re doing here?” she asked, a little indignantly. The counter was full of papers, catalogs, and documents, which the men had clearly found in one of the cupboards. “Who are you? I’m going to call the police!”

She reached for her cell phone. The four men regarded her keenly. One of them came over to her. He looked young and dynamic and quite kind in fact, but she nevertheless took a step back. He raised his arms.

“It’s OK, it’s OK, don’t worry. You don’t need to call the police. We
are
the police. And you are?”

She froze. The police? What was going on? What had happened?

She gradually calmed down. “Can I see your ID?”

“Of course.” The young man got his ID from his pocket. “I’m sorry.”

Arthur Peterson, it said, but she forgot the name immediately in the face of what else she saw there, something far more important and, she slowly realized, horrific.

“What’s happened?” she asked. “Please tell me what’s happened. Has something happened to Gertrud?”

“Did you know her? Was she a friend?”

“A friend? Yes, yes. Sort of.” She thought of the invitation to Greece. “We work more or less next door to one another. I run the café across the street.”

She turned and pointed to the café. As she did so, she suddenly realized that he had spoken about Gertrud in the past tense.

Later they sat at one of the outdoor tables at the café. She had brought Arthur a coffee and a schnapps for herself. She sipped it now, and when customers approached, she said, “We’re closed. Bereavement.”

She thought of Gertrud and how they’d had little contact in recent years, only in the last few weeks—goodness knew why.

What would have happened if I’d said yes to Greece,
she thought.
If I’d
agreed to go, there and then. If I’d closed the café, switched off the coffee machine, and left Vasco to hold the fort for a few days. If I’d taken Gertrud up on her offer and we’d caught the next available flight? Would that have prevented her murder?

Renate sighed and wiped away the tears that fell relentlessly.
Who knows,
she thought.
Who knows? Perhaps she would have drowned in the sea off that black beach.

“I wanted to order some of those new cups she had,” she said suddenly, raising her cup. “The old ones are all chipped. Where am I going to get my new ones now?”

Yes,
thought Arthur,
this phenomenon.
It’s always the little things we miss first. The trip we planned but that never happened. The cups we’ll have to get from another pottery now. The vase we broke and never got chance to apologize about.

Arthur had not been on the team for long, only a little over two years, but he’d made that discovery quickly—when the pain began, it began with the little things. Was it because they were easier to grasp?

“You’ll work it out, I’m sure,” he said.

“Yes, you’re probably right. How silly of me to be thinking of something so trivial.”

She laid her hands across her eyes, and as she did so, she remembered the young man. The man who had come here for coffee two days in a row. He’d said he was visiting an acquaintance, and then he’d crossed the street and spoken to Gertrud. She’d looked shocked. So much so that it was visible from here, from across the street.

Was she guilty because she’d served Gertrud’s murderer? Had it happened because she’d not been observant enough, not drawn the right conclusions? But how were you supposed to draw conclusions about a murder?

“Of course not,” Arthur said, handing her a tissue. “No one would suspect anything of the sort. There’s no reason to feel guilty. In any case, it doesn’t necessarily mean anything. Could be sheer coincidence.”

He took a drink of his coffee. “What did he look like, this man?”

She described him, and as she did so, she had a vague feeling that he reminded her of someone. But the more she racked her brain about it, the more the image slipped from her grasp. Perhaps it would occur to her again when she went to the police station to have a composite picture made.

“I’ll miss her,” she said as the young detective took his leave with a firm handshake. “She was a good person. Very reserved. Very quiet. You could say a little aloof, if you didn’t know her. Almost shy. She didn’t let people get too close too soon. But once you got to know her
. . .
”

Her voice shook. She ran a hand over her cheeks again.

“Yes,” she said quietly, “I’ll miss her.”

19

He had holed up in his grandfather’s apartment. He needed a new plan. There was a problem. A massive one. One that had not been foreseeable. He couldn’t have imagined a development like that. All the signs pointed to a storm breaking, and he was right in the middle of it. But he wouldn’t lose the game. Not him.

At night he lay awake for a long time, the image of the woman before his eyes. It was not a nice picture. The blood. Her outstretched hand. The sound of the knife as it hit the floor.

“Don’t go,” she had gasped, scarcely understandable. “Don’t leave me here like this! Please!”

Then
. . .
there was no comma anymore. Period.

He had fled out into the night, back into town to the apartment. Hunger gnawed at him, but there was nothing to eat, not even a slice of bread. The fridge was as empty as his head. He found the remains of a pizza from
before
, which he had devoured as soon as he got home. But he needed food: bread, cheese, butter. First, he needed a plan. A damned plan. But his stomach was growling. And his brain was on fire.

He had seen many dead bodies before, a lot of death—it was part of his job—but this had been something else. More appalling. It had happened so quickly. It had been completely unforeseen because it had simply happened. It was something he had been unable to prepare himself for. In the face of death at the hospital, you could close off your heart and your head beforehand—create a makeshift defense, but a defense nevertheless.

In his panic he thought of Kristin. They’d met six months ago at an exhibition he’d gone to by chance. She was standing with a group of people in the middle of the room, and he had recognized her at once. They sometimes rode the elevator together. He knew she was quite a big fish in the hospital administrative hierarchy, a lawyer, which, given her age, was quite impressive.

Well,
he thought as he watched her from his position of safety at the bar,
perhaps she simply slept her way to the top; she’s not bad-looking. Maybe she’s ready to sleep her way into a slightly lower bed. Let’s see how it goes. There’s always a chance.

She had recognized him, too.

“You’re the nurse who always gets out on the seventh floor,” she said when they sat down together half an hour later. He nodded, grinning to himself at how much she recalled.

“Will you order me a glass of wine?” she asked, raising her eyebrows slightly in a way he found quite bold. It moved him.

“Anything for you,” he said, waving the bartender over.

She was already a little tipsy, which excited him all the more. He wanted to match her, and so he downed three glasses of wine one after the other. Still, he knew he wouldn’t catch up to her, as he was able to hold his drink too well.

“You’re drinking too much,” she said primly. “I don’t want to be embarrassed by you. They all know me here.”

She giggled and he laughed, too. He stood and walked past the rows of pictures, pausing before each exhibit. They all left him cold. He wondered if Kristin felt the same way. It was possible, he thought. But even if it were true, she would probably never admit it.

“They’re crap, aren’t they?” she said as he returned to her. “The emperor’s new clothes!”

He was stunned, and when she laughed, chortling and squawking, it amused him all the more. She finally said, “Come on, let’s go to my place. I have a lovely apartment I want to show you.”

She smiled and twisted a lock of hair around her finger.

“Ah,” he said. “A beautiful apartment. Yes, I’d really love to see it.”

On the way she became serious, looking at him with blue eyes that had a certain depth, and pushing her hand into his.

At her apartment they drank some gin, and she opened a tin of caviar, which she spooned out for him as an accompaniment. He soon found himself licking the black delicacy from her navel.

They slept together, and she tasted just as she appeared: sober, objective, a little like the blue paper from the admin department, a little like a fake thousand-euro bill. But even a thousand-euro bill had its good side, there was no denying that.

Afterward, they lay quietly side by side and she said, “You’re sweet. Really. I’ve had my eye on you for a long time.”

During the next few weeks she stayed with him often. She liked his apartment, which had a chaotic, unfinished air about it. She enjoyed making him breakfast and even dinner—until Tonio ruined it all.

Kristin, Kristin, Kristin.
He rolled back and forth on the mattress.
Should I call you? Tell you everything? About the apartment, about all the things I’ve found, about this dreadful thing that’s happened?

Perhaps she could help him, perhaps she knew of a plan in her clearheaded legal brain, a plan to get him off, to deflect everything a little.

He looked at the clock. Three in the morning—a bad time for a call for help, especially from someone who had behaved like an incredible asshole. She probably already had her eye on someone else, probably had for a while now—the head surgeon, for example, or the manager of the corner supermarket who liked to stare at her silk-clad backside.

He thought of her sharp business suit and the hot lingerie she liked to wear underneath. As the recollection stirred his mind and his loins, he groaned and rubbed himself to release. Finally, he fell asleep.

20

They searched without knowing exactly what they were searching for.

“Red hair” had been the instruction. “Maybe you’ll find a red hair of some sort that belongs to neither Gertrud nor her daughter or her mother.”

So they searched. A needle in a haystack.

“Concentrate mainly on the kitchen, the crime scene. But not only there. She could have been anywhere in the house. We just don’t know.”

So they searched. Cursing a little. Slightly unmotivated. How could a needle be found in a haystack like this?

Difficult. Time-consuming. Demanding. But they were used to it. And then they found it. The needle. On a pillow. In the marriage bed. A red hair. An actual red hair. So she had been here. Hanna Umlauf. In Gertrud’s house. In Gertrud’s bed.