The summer of ’89 flowed in front of him. Alga beach at sunset, the Cave of the Sea-Calves in the early morning, a game of pétanque, the teenagers dancing, the reception area at the campsite, the car park.

Noch 30 Sekunden, the radio announced.

Jakob frowned; something in the photograph intrigued him.

He didn’t hear the door of the bungalow slowly opening.

Noch 15 Sekunden.

Jakob, as if hypnotised, studied the few cars parked there, including, recognisable among all the others, the Idrissi family’s red Fuego. The one that would crash less than twenty-four hours later on the rocks of Petra Coda. 23 August 1989, said the caption on the photograph, but what intrigued the old German wasn’t the car, it was the teenager who was staring at it, with the look of someone who …

Noch 5 Sekunden.

… the look of someone who knew in advance what was going to happen.

Noch eine Sekunde.

Jakob closed his eyes, his thumb raised slightly, now concentrating entirely on the question that the presenter delivered at high speed, like the engine of an MG 08. Three seconds to answer.

Answer A) Mönchengladbach, B) Kaiserslautern, C) Hamburg, D) Cologne.

Ein.

Jakob knew the answer!

Zwei.

He had no doubt, even though he was cautious by nature. As if in a dream, he saw his finger resting on the screen, entering the right answer, the journalists contacting him, his name making the headlines of his local newspaper.

In the big corridor of the Neue Pinakothek, in bronze, his skull on display.

Drei.

It was the second-to-last image his brain ever registered.

Jakob would never reach the third level.

His thumb stopped a few millimetres from the touch screen, just at the moment when the case of Prestige Carbone 125 Demi-dure smashed into his right temple. Jakob collapsed to the ground, taking with him the table, the laptop, the telephone.

In the narrow sitting room of bungalow A31, drenched in blood, his skull shattered.

The German’s eyes, before they closed, drowned by the scarlet spring spurting from his forehead, fixed on one last image on the computer lying on the floor next to him, a few centimetres away from his face.

Still the same photograph, the one of the Fuego in the car park and the teenager staring at the vehicle as if he knew that the steering was going to fail that evening. The teenager that he knew, who he had bumped into that evening, whose hand he had shaken, who had even asked him why he wanted a wi-fi connection at such a late hour.

Cervone Spinello.

~

He waited for several minutes, far too long.

Getting rid of the photographs would be child’s play, he just had to delete them, go outside with the laptop and throw it into the nearest rubbish container, leaving not one trace, no proof. Getting rid of the pétanque balls wouldn’t be complicated either. They would never find the murder weapon.