“I can tell you that quite a large quantity of material evidence has been collected.” He coughed significantly, knowing that his “quite a lot” had no basis whatsoever in reality. “We are waiting on the forensics. Everything suggests that what happened here was a complex act, requiring a complex investigation,” said Grgić and added that the investigation was now in the purview of the county attorney’s office, and he was confident the cases would be solved.
Sitting in the front row, Nora waved her hand in the air the whole time, and though he’d said at the outset that because of confidentiality concerns he would not be responding to questions from the press, as soon as he finished his last sentence and began putting papers into his briefcase, Nora spoke up in a loud, assertive voice.
“Can you at least say whether you suspect that the two murders might be linked in some way?” Grgić looked in her direction and said wearily: “Miss, you weren’t listening to what we said at the beginning . . .”
“I was, but this truly is in the public interest.” This time Nora was not backing down.
“For now we have no such indication,” he said, using a textbook phrase, hoping in the same breath to express his thanks and sidestep any further discussion.
“Has anybody requested police protection?” She quickly jumped in again.
“There have been no requests for police protection.” He punched each word, already irritated. The rest of them followed Nora’s example, and the questions came raining down one after another. Someone who’d watched one too many episodes of Midsomer Murders mentioned “the perfect murder,” which prompted thinly veiled irony in Grgić’s voice. He explained that hypothetically every murder which has as its goal the death of the victim is perfect as far as motivation is concerned, but the police believe there is no such thing as a perfect murder. After this he rose abruptly to his feet, nodded, and hurried out of the foyer. The journalists soon began to disperse, and Nora looked around, hoping Brigita still might turn up, although by then it was reasonably clear that she wouldn’t. Perhaps she’d known this already that morning; maybe she’d have left Nora in the lurch regardless. Soon Nora was alone; the room around her had emptied, the diligent waiters were already folding the chairs. Her mind was working at a mile a minute, but she hadn’t formed any conclusions. There was no obvious motive for either of the murders of the night before. A chill ran down her spine when she realized she’d been in the vicinity of the consulate just before the time of the murder, and somewhat later she’d been near the apartment of the murdered mayor. She rose slowly from her chair when she saw that the waiter was standing six feet from her, his arms discreetly crossed, waiting for her to get up so he could tidy the foyer. She decided to go back to her hotel room and take at least two hours to enter on her laptop all the reactions that were racing through her mind, and then arrange them in some sort of order that could help her organize her train of thought. She was taken with anxiety when she realized there were at least two separate files to think about—one for the schoolteacher and the other for the mayor. Although the first was her primary assignment and the reason she was here, she had almost no desire to go near it. But there was no way to avoid it; she’d have to take a deep breath and write what was expected of her. She walked back to the hotel, staring at the ground, concentrating on every detail she could remember having to do with the mayor’s case. The port? Everyone knew he was a wreck after the recording had been made public, and furthermore was politically dead, though he kept trying to play the victim. So why kill him physically as well? He no longer had any sway or power. On the other hand, at least according to what she’d been able find out, the murder was committed far too professionally for it to be a crime of passion. Those crimes were almost always gory and messy, and were the work of those closest to the murder victim. In them there was always love which had turned to hate. They weren’t deliberate, just as love itself is never deliberate, and that was why the killer always left such a mess behind, and why the people or things around them suffered the consequences. Occupied with those thoughts, she reached her room, but as she entered she took a step back to check on the brass number affixed to the doorframe. This must be the wrong room. She didn’t spot her things on the table and chair; they weren’t where she’d left them. When she’d made sense, after a couple of seconds, of what she was looking at, and when she saw that the number on her key and the number on the door were one and the same, she realized somebody had been there. Somebody had definitely been in her room. Someone had smashed the chair, overturned the desk, pushed one of the beds over, and flipped the other over on its side. Nora’s clothes were flung around the room, tossed over the bed and window, over the cupboard door, and on the floor. She reached for her things, but as she picked up each item of clothing, it fell to pieces. The sleeve fell off her T-shirt, the legs off her pants; all of her clothes had been sliced up
