5

Helen felt the blood drain from her face. The trolleys were piled with boxes, and bags of laundry stood next to them. There were stacks of towels inside the open cupboard.

But no waste containers.

Not one.

She looked around in shock. Who was responsible for this? Was it a coincidence?

Or did it mean something?

Marjan?

Was this a trap?

She felt like she was suffocating. Opened her mouth and sucked in air. And again. It wasn’t enough. Her hands remained clamped around the handles of the bags as she greedily gasped for oxygen, her breaths coming more and more rapidly. Still it wasn’t enough. It felt like she was breathing through a straw. And then the sudden pressure on her chest as if someone or something were pushing down on it, hard. The pressure intensified, turning into pain. She inhaled desperately—panting, ragged breaths—and staggered forward, backward, as if she were blind drunk. The room revolved around her, and it seemed as if the walls and the ceiling were pulling away—or was it she that was shrinking? Cold. She was suddenly so cold. The bags slipped from her hands, and she slumped to the floor.

6

Ralf sat in silence in the living room. Had he really just heard that? His mother had stood up for him. She’d shown those cops the door with a sarcastic remark. More than that, she had lied to both their faces.

During their meeting with his old principal, his mother had refused to believe that Ralf was innocent—even though he had done nothing wrong. Now it was the other way around. The policemen had been right, of course: she did have a rose-tinted view of him—for now, at least. Not in her worst nightmares would she be able to imagine that he had been Brian’s accomplice in an armed robbery. The truth would break her heart. And there was no guarantee that it wouldn’t come out, since Brian wasn’t just missing—Brian had been murdered. He wasn’t coming back. It was only a matter of time before the police opened a serious investigation into his disappearance.

Ralf got up from his chair and stretched. If he was unlucky, he would probably get the blame for Brian’s disappearance too. He had a clear motive in the eyes of the law: Naomi. And if he explained—told the truth—then it would fall on deaf ears, just like when he used to hang out at the shopping mall. What was it his father always said? Being right and being believed are two different things.