“Hello, I’m at the pool with the children.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t come round to see you last night. All hell has broken loose.”
“It doesn’t matter. We’ll see each other later.”
“Did you miss me?”
“We had a long afternoon’s work, Reza and I. Then we drank a glass of wine, and I just passed out on the sofa.”
“That’s a pity.”
“What is?”
“Oh, everything.”
“What do you mean?”
“There’s so much work, I can’t get around to anything else. I’d love to see you. Touch you. But everything’s escalating.”
“Why, what’s going on?”
“I don’t want to bother you with this.”
“Oh, come on.”
“People are disappearing, Blum.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, people are disappearing without a trace. One after another and no one knows why.”
“Who’s disappeared?”
“Well, we’re still looking for Jaunig’s body. We’ve only found his car, it turned up just this side of the Italian border. But there’s still no sign of his body. No one knows anything, no one’s seen a thing.”
“That’s strange.”
“And then there was that photographer. The son of our parliamentary deputy. He’s disappeared into thin air. Now a well-known chef from Kitzbühel has gone missing. Again, he just vanished without a word, no good-byes, nothing.”
“So all these people have been reported missing?”
“Yes.”
“And you suspect the disappearances are connected?”
“I’m beginning to wonder whether you might have been right all along.”
“What do you mean?”
“About that woman you saw in the forensics lab.”
“What about her?”
“I promised you I’d look into it again.”
“Yes, so you did. And was she murdered?”
“She died of natural causes. But I’ve dug out the records from back when we interviewed her, and recent events cast a very different light on her story.”
“What do you mean?”
“She was talking about a priest, a photographer, and a cook.”
“So it’s beginning to make sense?”
“I don’t know, but I must look into it. It looks as though Mark was right to follow his hunch. Maybe he was right all along, and everything the woman told us was true.”
“What did she tell you?”
“You know that already, Blum.”
“How would I know?”
“Mark recorded his conversations, and you listened to them.”
“Oh—yes.”
“I can put two and two together, Blum.”
“But perhaps too late in the day.”
“I know I should have trusted your gut feeling.”
“So Mark was right.”
“It would seem so.”
“But what happened? Who killed the priest? Where are the missing people?”
“I don’t know, Blum, but someone is hell-bent on revenge.”
“Revenge?”
“Yes. You know what went on in that cellar. If what the woman said is true, then someone has their reasons.”
“But who would do something like that?”
“The woman.”
“Her name was Dunya.”
“Suppose she killed the three men and then committed suicide?”
“Is that what you think?”
“Can you think of another explanation?”
“No.”
“There’s something else, Blum.”
“What?”
“It’s possible that Mark’s death wasn’t an accident.”
“What do you mean? If it wasn’t an accident, what was it?”
“Murder. And you could be in danger.”
“Me?”
“You’d better be careful, Blum.”
“Meaning?”