‘I found them in the cupboard under the sink,’ Palandt said, smiling one second, then with watery eyes behind his glasses the next. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, sniffling. ‘I always get sentimental when I think of my mother. She’s so far away now.’
He raised his hands and wiggled his fingers in the surgical gloves. ‘Mother always used them to dye her wigs.’
Emma felt like screaming, but fear has its own fingers, which at that moment were slithering around her neck and cutting off her air.
‘Unlike me she likes wearing these hairy things.’
Palandt strode down the hallway to the chipboard chest of drawers, on top of which was the bag. His raincoat crumpled with every step.
Emma recoiled, her hands pressed defensively to her chest, beneath which her heart was galloping with wild hoofbeats. As Palandt was now blocking her way out the front door, she scanned her surroundings for other escape possibilities. Or for weapons to defend against the attack she was anticipating. The coatrack? Too heavy and anyway it was screwed to the wall. The polystyrene head? Useless – too light.
The door ahead on the left? With a bit of luck and legs that weren’t so paralysed by fear she might make it to the kitchen, but what guarantee did she have that she’d find a knife block she could reach before Palandt grabbed her by the hair? It was now long enough for a man’s fist to grasp hold of it.
‘Would you hold this for a sec?’
Emma flinched.
In her hand she felt a piece of flexible plastic, a small bag. Palandt had given her the freezer bag and turned back to the chest of drawers. He opened the top drawer.
A few seconds later he turned around with a smile of satisfaction on his dry lips. And Emma’s mobile in his hand.
‘Here it is.’
He gave her a nod of encouragement. Clearly he misconstrued Emma’s expression, for he said, ‘Yes, I know. The gloves are probably unnecessary, but at least there won’t be any new fingerprints on it. May I?’
He pointed to her hand.
Emma looked at her fingers that were holding the freezer bag.
Palandt asked her to hold the bag so he could put the phone inside it.
‘That’s how you handle evidence, isn’t it?’ he said, then paused. ‘When will he be able to examine it?’
Emma blinked nervously and bit her lower lip, which had started to tremble uncontrollably.
Panic was like an invisible night-time monster. Even if you’d checked that it wasn’t hiding in the cupboard or under the bed, you would still lie there for a while in the darkness, your heart pounding, unable to trust the tranquillity.
‘Examine?’ asked Emma, who’d momentarily forgotten the lie she’d served up. Her face was bathed in sweat, but even with his thick glasses Palandt seemed not to notice, or he thought it was the rest of the snow melting on Emma’s forehead.
‘The special function,’ he reminded her. ‘That lets you find out who the phone belongs to…’
He fell silent and flinched, as if he’d received an electric shock. This involuntary reaction matched the electric buzzing and the flash in his right hand.
The mobile.
Illuminated all of a sudden, the device vibrated in Palandt’s latex fingers and it took him a while to realise what he was seeing on the display: an image of two people. A man. A woman. Sitting snug side by side. Secretly photographed in a restaurant as the two of them, in an affectionate pose, are forking a potato cake. The potato cake photo signalling a call from Philipp!