“I think you know what I mean. Did he pick a fight with the wrong people? Does he owe anybody money?” Her dark eyes searched his face.

Ralf didn’t move a muscle. “Emily, if I knew what he was up to, I would tell you.”

7

7

The brightly painted, high-ceilinged room bustled with activity. Wherever you looked, there were people sitting, talking, and eating; their blue and white lab coats hung loosely over their clothes. Helen wasn’t hungry, but to keep up appearances, she poured a little tomato soup into a cup and picked up a cheese sandwich before joining the checkout line.

She had spent the whole morning imagining Marjan carrying out a detailed search of the waste room and ultimately landing on that single, hermetically sealed, blue plastic container—lifting it up, weighing it in her hands, and shaking it from side to side, before slowly realizing that there couldn’t be any clinical waste from the OR at that time of the morning. The labor ward was the only place where procedures were conducted twenty-four hours a day, and the waste that came from the delivery rooms was semifluid. The difference would be apparent the instant you picked up a container like that and shook it.

Helen had expected to be called away at any second. She pictured herself sitting in her manager’s office opposite a detective, answering questions about the contents of the container.

But the morning passed like any other.

“That’s three euros, please.”

Startled from her reverie, she opened the front compartment of her bag to hunt for her wallet. “Sorry, new bag,” she apologized, pushing a bunch of keys to one side.

“Don’t worry, I’ll get it.”

She looked up. “There’s no need.”

Lex pretended not to hear her. Helen watched as he pulled his wallet out of his pocket and chatted with the cashier. He radiated a sense of inner calm. She had never seen him look anxious—not even this morning, when he had nearly lost a patient. Against her will, she wondered how he would react if he were in her position. Or in Werner’s.

He walked over to a small table with a planter next to it. She sat down opposite him.

Lex unwrapped the paper napkin from his cutlery. “Man, what a morning.”

“She made it OK.”

“Thanks more to luck than to anything we did. It’s rare that people react like that.”

“You stayed calm.”

He grinned. “It’s funny I gave you that impression, because I felt anything but calm.”

“I wasn’t the only one who thought so.”

Helen had the feeling that somebody was watching her. When she looked up, she saw Marjan sitting at a large, round table. She seemed not to be participating in her colleagues’ conversation, and was looking directly at her instead.

Helen turned her head away and spooned up a mouthful of soup.

“I shouldn’t have called you,” he said.