“Now, what have we got here?” she heard the man with the moustache ask as he entered the bathroom. Schäfer amicably greeted the man, whom he called Oppermann, and Heloise could tell from the jargon he used that he was the medical examiner.

She took a step closer to the door just as Lisa Augustin stuck her head around the corner and looked at her.

Heloise jumped at the sight.

“Why don’t you just have a seat in the living room and wait until we’re done here?”

Heloise nodded reluctantly.

She walked into the living area and took a seat on the hard sofa, which sat by itself in the middle of the room. It wasn’t until most of the police folks and the medical examiner had left the apartment and Ulrich Andersson’s body had been cut down from the rope and taken away in a body bag that Schäfer and his young colleague came in to see her.

“Are you okay?” Schäfer asked, putting a cigarette between his lips without lighting it.

Heloise nodded.

“We’re going to stop by police headquarters now.”

“You need me to come too?” she asked.

“Yup.”

Heloise nodded again and stood up.

Heloise had been to police headquarters many times, but the closest she had ever come to sitting in an interrogation room was when she had been caught cheating on a test in high school and was sent to the principal’s office.

Now she was sitting at a table across from Schäfer and Sergeant Lisa Augustin in a stuffy, windowless room and was about to tell them about her conversation with Ulrich by the water the day before.

“As far as we know, you were the last one to see him alive, so your account of your meeting could be important to the investigation,” Lisa Augustin said. “I need to inform you that you are being formally questioned and that you have the rights of a suspect. That means that you are under no obligation to speak to the police and that you have the right to have an attorney present during the questioning if you want one. Do you understand?”

Heloise furrowed her brow. “The rights of a suspect?”

“Yes, of course you’re not a suspect at the moment, but we can’t rule out the possibility that you could become one, so anything you tell us today—if you choose to say anything—can only be used in court of law if we inform you of your rights. As I have just done.”

“I’m sorry, but aren’t we talking about a suicide here?” Heloise looked at each of them in turn.

Schäfer and Augustin said nothing, just eyed her expectantly.