‘So who was it then?’
Emma’s entire body was itching. She was desperate to scratch her arms, legs and tummy. Or even better, cast off this skin she no longer wanted to be in.
‘Who murdered those women if it wasn’t Philipp?’ she repeated her question.
‘Think about it, Emma,’ Konrad said, getting to his feet and picking up the photos of the dead women from the coffee table. He held them in his hands like a fan. ‘All these victims – look closely and then you’ll see the connection between them.’
Reluctantly her eyes wandered to the photos.
Yes, they look like me. They’ve got hair like I used to have.
‘They’re all Philipp’s type.’
‘Precisely, Emma,’ Konrad agreed. ‘But unlike you they’re prostitutes. High-end escorts. Your husband cheated on you. With every one of them.’
He shook the fan of photos in his hand.
‘And this infidelity is the motive. It points the way to the murderer.’
Emma couldn’t breathe until a tortured cough freed her passages.
‘What did you just say?’
‘Think about it, Emma. Who was so close to Philipp that he could discover his amorous escapades? Who was so hurt yet intelligent enough to forge a plan to remove from those women the very thing that had triggered Philipp’s desire?’
Their hair.
‘You’re crazy,’ Emma protested. ‘You must have totally lost your mind. Do you seriously believe that all these women…’
‘… your rivals in love!’
… were murdered by me? She wasn’t able to say this out loud.
‘Put yourself in his position, Emma. Philipp knows that the Hairdresser is after women who he’s had sex with. The killer taunts him by sending packages to your home with his trophies, as if trying to say, ‘Look what I’ve done to those women you sleep with.’ If your husband discloses this information and passes the evidence to the investigation team, it gets out that he’s been cheating on you. Which is the last thing he wants. So he has to take the matter in hand himself. In his laboratory he examines the pieces of evidence and undertakes research without knowing that the Hairdresser is someone close to him. Even though Philipp knows the women haven’t been raped he makes the mistake of looking for a man. And yet any child knows who uses poison, the weapon that that killed the escorts.’
The weaker sex. Women.
Emma crossed her arms behind her head. The scar for which she had Palandt to thank was throbbing and itching, but she resisted the urge to scratch her forehead.
‘So why did he show me the photos in the cellar? And behave as if there weren’t any hair? Was he trying to drive me mad?’
Konrad nodded. ‘I have to say that this is what most bothered me in preparation for our conversation. And it won’t be easy to convince the court that Philipp exploited your vulnerable mental state for his own purposes.’
‘Which purposes?’
‘I think he wanted to obtain a reservation of consent.’
‘Have me declared incapacitated?’
‘That’s another way of putting it.’
‘But that makes no sense,’ Emma protested. ‘Philipp was the one with the money, not me.’
‘For that very reason,’ Konrad said. ‘Your husband had the fortune and because there was no pre-nuptial contract he would have lost half of it if you got divorced. Unless as your guardian he had regained full access to it while you were legally committed to a psychiatric hospital.’
The motive. His cheating had brought it to light.
And yet…
‘Okay, you say that Philipp wasn’t the one who killed the women. He didn’t even rape them, but just slept with them. And someone else, the Hairdresser, shaved their hair and sent the trophies to Philipp to show him that they knew about him cheating on me. And you claim that Philipp then resorted to emotional blackmail to destroy me.’
Konrad nodded. ‘That’s about right.’
‘And you think that the Hairdresser…’
Emma let her words hang in the air and Konrad made a grab for them.
‘I think that only an extremely jealous person is capable of such acts. Someone who wants Philipp for herself and can’t stand the thought of having to share him.’
‘I didn’t know anything about Philipp’s infidelity,’ she told Konrad. ‘I didn’t know those prostitutes. So I didn’t kill them.’
‘You?’ Konrad asked, perplexed. In a gentle, conscience-stricken voice he said, ‘Oh my, Emma, I’m really sorry. You thought I was talking about you the whole time?’