I looked around for Vera’s handbag, hoping to find her door key so that I might let myself into her apartment and reclaim my business card. But her bag was gone. I wondered if the murderer had taken it. Probably the same man who had let himself into her apartment the previous night. I cursed myself for having taken the key off the cord. But for that I could have let myself in. Doubtless the police would find my card. And doubtless the neighbor who had seen me returning to her apartment wearing just my trousers and carrying a hockey stick would be able to give the police a good description. That would tally with the description from the woman who had seen me through Vera’s shop window just a few minutes earlier. There was no doubt about it. I was in a tight spot.

I switched the light out and went around the shop polishing everything I had touched with a pair of knickers. My fingerprints would be all over her apartment of course, but I saw no sense in leaving them at the scene of the crime. I opened the front door, cleaned the door handle, closed it, locked up again, and then drew down the blinds on the door and the display window. With any luck it might be a day or two before her body was found.

A back door led into a courtyard. I turned up the collar of my coat, pulled the brim of my hat about my eyes, picked up the holdall containing Vera’s money, and stepped quietly outside. It was getting dark now and I kept to the center of the courtyard, away from lighted windows and an early patch of moonlight. At the opposite end of the courtyard I passed down an alley and opened a door that led onto the street that intersected with Wasagasse. This was Horlgasse and, for some reason, this seemed to mean something to me. Horlgasse. Horlgasse.