“Whoop, whoop.” A colleague hurried past her to grab an IV bag from the cabinet. “And another one. Where are they all coming from?”

Helen smiled faintly. It was normal for one or two unscheduled operations to be fitted in between the planned ones, but this morning was remarkably busy. All the ORs were in use. Helen had already seen a C-section and an acute hernia go by, and just now, two traffic accident victims had been brought in. She hoped that would be all, but experience taught her that days like this tended to ramp up further and further.

Why now? She felt the tension grow in her neck and massaged the sides of her vertebrae with her fingertips. If it stayed this busy, she could forget about taking a lunch break.

3

3

“Then we’ll wait,” said Ralf’s mother. Her voice rang through the high-ceilinged, almost empty hall. She remained standing in front of the counter.

Behind it sat two officers in uniform. Neither of them looked particularly fit. The man had huge bags under his eyes, and the woman had spider veins on her cheeks. Both were preoccupied with their computers.

Ralf rocked from one foot to the other. It felt wrong to be here voluntarily; if a friend of his were to walk through the door right now, he would die of shame. Then again, Mikey wanted his money the day after tomorrow, and Ralf couldn’t offer him more than a 10 percent down payment. What if Mikey saw that as an insult? He wouldn’t let it go unpunished. Ralf pulled his cap down over his eyes and looked at the tiles on the floor. As shitty as it felt, his mother was right. This was too big. He couldn’t do it on his own.

Of course, he wasn’t about to tell them that the last time he’d seen Brian was at Werner Möhring’s house. He had his story ready, and he planned to stick to it: They’d spent Friday afternoon hanging out in the shed. Brian had been using a little—maybe slightly too much—and then he’d left without saying where he was going. He hadn’t been in his room when Ralf had gone to visit him the following day, and that was when he’d been waylaid by Mikey.

His mother cleared her throat and placed her hand on the counter. “Excuse me, sir?”

The man with the puffy eyes spoke without looking up from his screen. “Please take a seat, ma’am. Someone will be with you directly.”

“But I have to go to work soon.”

He made very brief eye contact. “We’re doing our best.”

Ralf shot him a dark look before following his mother across to a row of plastic chairs. She took off her denim jacket. “I Will Survive” was printed on the white fabric of her T-shirt. An appropriate outfit for a police station, Ralf thought.