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I don’t know the first thing about fishing, but it sounds like she could be right.
“How well did you know the victim?” Eva asks. “Do you think she might have been suicidal?”
Mrs. Vitan gasps and looks at Eva with shocked eyes. “I didn’t know her well at all. We never spoke about anything but the books and sources I was interested in. She always struck me as a very sad girl, though. You know, she had those sad eyes, wounded eyes. She always seemed like she was about to burst into tears whenever I spoke to her. Do you think that’s how she died? Suicide?”
Eva shakes her head. “No. She was murdered.”
“The detective who visited me this morning asked me a lot of questions about the young man who found her. But I don’t think he is the killer,” Mrs. Vitan says. “He sounded so frightened when he called for help last night. So panicked and confused.”
“I don’t think he killed her either,” Eva mutters.
I ask Mrs. Vitan about who else in the building might have seen something, and she gives a few names, but generally tells me to try all the apartments on this side of the building, adding that a lot of them are probably won’t be home until later this afternoon.
“A lot of young families live here now,” she says. “It’s terrible that those children had to see what they saw this morning. But then again, death is a part of life and parents these days tend to be overly coddled.”
I guess her point of comparison here is the peasant children of a century ago when times were a lot harsher and a lot different. So it’s not much of a comparison. But I don’t say that. I just thank her for her time and let her know we might be back.
I deposit both mine and Eva’s cup of tea on the counter in the kitchen as she sees us out, then head for the elevator once we’re in the hallway again.
“I can walk down a flight of stairs, Novak,” Eva says, jokingly enough, but there’s a very serious undertone in her voice.
I don’t say anything, just follow her to the floor below, where no one answers and of the doors we ring at. Nor on the floor below that.
“I think we’ll have more luck if we come back in the evening,” I say when the same thing happens on the fifth and fourth floors too.
Her cheeks are flushed red and she’s been walking slower and slower down the stairs. It’s time she went home for a rest. If we had a home. Which we currently don’t.
“We’re here now,” she says defiantly and keeps on walking.
And if I’ve learned one thing in our relationship is that it’s better to stay out of her way when she’s determined like this. The best I can do is follow her and make sure she doesn’t get ahead of herself. Or put herself and the baby in too much danger.
* * *
EVA
We finally got someone to open the door for us on the ground floor, but it wasn’t the door we were ringing the bell at, the one with a balcony and windows that look straight onto the spot where Ana was killed. It was the door of the apartment opposite it, which has absolutely no view of the river at all.
The lady who opened it told us we won’t have any luck there because the occupant broke his leg recently and somehow made it worse yesterday, because he was taken away in an ambulance this morning. She did give us a name for him though. Janez Kastelic.
Then she wanted to gossip about what happened last night, but Mark nipped that in the bud.
He also wouldn’t hear of us going to the hospital in search of this Janez Kastelic.
It’s almost dark outside now and raining hard, the sheet of water covering the windshield making the multicolored, sparkling lights bleed into each other like oil on water. We’re driving back to the hotel, because he wouldn’t hear of going back to the office to speak with the other team members and begin poring over the evidence either.
“We can call them on the phone,” he says apologetically, because I just went very quiet after he told me we’re not going back to the office. “And Dino or someone can bring us all the files of the cases you requested to our room. Everything’s arrived.”
“Fine,” I say and continue looking out my side window.
This car he ended up buying after his old one was totaled last autumn is even more of a family car than that one was. He really is getting ready to check out from work. But I’m not. I need to solve this case and I don’t want to sit around in the hotel room just pretending to. There are people to interview and crime scenes to visit. The walk down those eight flights tired me, but it’s nothing a short rest won’t fix.
“My mother’s coming for a visit this weekend,” he says as we’re stopped at a red light, which is spilling all over the windshield and coloring his face and hands a pale pink.
I turn to him sharply, causing a pain in my neck that I ignore. “When did you find this out?”
He glances at me, the red traffic light reflected in his eyes for a moment, before the sheet of water falling against the glass wipe it away again.
“This morning. I can’t believe I forgot to tell you, but I did. It’s probably because I doubt she’ll actually show up.”
