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I turn back to the little old lady who is still standing in her doorway, looking very confused and more than a little bit frightened.
“Who else in this building might have seen something last night?”
Given how loudly the younger woman was talking, I’d expect all the neighbors to be out here by now, eager to tell us their version of events, but it’s still only us.
“It’s just me and my grandma living here now. They’re trying to sell the building from right under us, but we won’t let them, oh, no,” the woman says in her carrying, loud voice. “Why? Don’t you believe what I told you?”
Great, all I need now is for her to get confrontational. Luckily, my phone starts ringing, the noise echoing terribly in the cavernous hallway. Picking up saves me the need to respond to her.
“Boss, we have something,” Dino says breathlessly and proceeds to tell me where.
I hang up, ask the two women to give their details to one of the officers then tell Eva to follow me. I try to walk as slowly as she is, but it’s hard.
Dino didn’t say what they found. But he sounded like it’s something significant. And I hope it proves to be the thing that will lead us to the end of this investigation. Tonight, if possible.
* * *
EVA
The night has somehow grown colder while we were inside that old, damp mansion, which smelled like it spent some time fully submerged in river water and never dried properly. Not that it had, because the banks of the Ljubljanica River are too deep for it to flood the city, so I guess it’s just the proximity of the house to it.
Dino is waiting for us at the mouth of a steep alleyway which leads from Križanke Square to the riverbank, which is very wide here and fashioned into a sort of promenade. We emerge in by the oldest restaurant in this city, called simply The Knight. It’s been in operation for close to five hundred years.
The two police officers are standing guard behind Dino’s back, and in the distance, I can already see three forensic techs approaching us from the direction of the crime scene. They’re all covered head to toe in white coveralls, which they’re wearing over their coats, but I’m pretty sure Ida is one of them, since I recognize her gait.
“This,” Dino says, and points the flashlight of his phone at a piece of black cloth on the ground. It’s lying just inside the mouth of the alley.
“What is that?” I ask and bend over as best I can with my huge belly. “A glove?”
“Yes, looks that way,” Mark says. “And it looks like it’s been soaked in something.”
“Blood,” I say and straighten up.
“Let’s hope so,” Mark says. “And let’s hope there are fingerprints and DNA on it too.”
“Clear the area, please,” Ida says breathlessly as she reaches us. The other two techs with her are still a couple meters behind her.
I follow Mark out of the alley, where I find him looking up and down the street.
“There are lots of stores and restaurants here,” he says. “We need the CCTV of all of them. Sooner rather than later.”
“I’ll get on it first thing,” Dino says.
Sojer is walking towards us from the direction of the antique store where David’s girlfriend works. The two officers who accompanied him are not with him.
“There are no other signs of him passing,” he says. “And the paths diverge in about ten different ways. He could’ve gone anywhere.”
“Or she,” I mutter, though the glove Ida is now lifting carefully and placing in an evidence bag is huge and looks like a man’s.
“We should go to the monastery and see if Father Ignatius is there,” I add.
“I’ll do that,” Dino suggests, glancing at Mark, who I am sure was trying really hard to find a way to say no to me going.
“Hurry,” I say and Dino nods and leaves.
“And I’ll do the same with Kline and Lap,” Sojer says and motions for the two officers who had accompanied us into the mansion to follow him as he strides in the direction of the crime scene and the cars, soon catching up with Dino.
“This glove is soaked in blood,” Ida says, walking up to us with it safely stowed in a clear evidence bag, the sides of which are streaked with blood. “Perhaps some it of it is the killers. Though I’ll probably be able to get some DNA from the epithelials inside it, even if it isn’t. Leather is nice to work with because it’s so porous.”
