Beate shook her head in incomprehension as she absorbed the pictures of the bank concourse where everything was temporarily quiet, and August Schulz, with shambling gait, was in mid-trek. 'So why did he do it?'
'He's a pro. Doesn't leave anything to chance. Stine Grette was doomed from this moment on.' Harry freeze-framed the moment when the robber had come in the door and scanned the room. 'When Lev Grette saw her and knew there was a chance he could be identified, he knew she had to die. So he might just as well use her as the hostage.'
'Ice cold.'
'Minus forty. The only thing I don't quite see is why he's prepared to go as far as murder to avoid recognition when he's already wanted for other bank jobs.'
Weber came in with a tray of coffees.
'Yes, but Lev Grette is not wanted for any robberies,' he said, balancing the tray until it was on the coffee table. The room looked as if it had been decorated once in the fifties and then remained untouched by human hand. The plush chairs, the piano and the dusty plants on the windowsill radiated an eerie stillness. Even the pendulum of the grandfather clock in the corner swung soundlessly. The white-haired woman with the beaming eyes in the framed glass on the mantelpiece laughed without sound. The stillness which seemed to have entered when Weber was widowed eight years ago had silenced everything around him; it would even be difficult to get a note out of the piano. The flat was on the ground floor of an old apartment block in Třyen, but the noise of the cars outside merely emphasised the silence. Weber sat down in one of the wing chairs, cautiously, as though it were a display item in a museum.
'We never found any concrete evidence that Grette had been involved in any of the robberies. No statement from witnesses, no grasses had anything on him, no fingerprints and no other forensic leads. The reports only confirm that he was a suspect.'
'Mm. So, provided Stine Grette didn't report him, he was a man with a clean sheet?'
'Right. Biscuit?'
Beate shook her head.
It was Weber's day off, but Harry had insisted on the telephone that they had to talk immediately. He knew Weber was reluctant to receive visitors at home, but that couldn't be helped.
'We talked to the duty officer at Krimteknisk to compare the prints on the Coca-Cola bottle with the prints from earlier raids Lev Grette was suspected of carrying out,' Beate said. 'Nothing.'
'As I said,' Weber said, checking the lid of the coffee pot was on properly, 'Lev Grette's prints were never found at a crime scene.'
Beate thumbed through her notes. 'Do you agree with Raskol that Lev Grette is our man?'
'Well, why not?' Weber started pouring the coffee.
'Because he never used violence in any of the raids where he was a suspect. And because she was his sister-in-law. Murdering because you might be recognised–isn't that a rather feeble motive for murder?'
Weber stopped pouring and looked at her. He glanced quizzically at Harry, who shrugged his shoulders.
'No,' he said. And continued to pour. Beate flushed a deep red.
'Weber comes from the classical school of detection,' Harry said almost apologetically. 'His opinion is that murder by definition excludes rational motives. There are just degrees of confused motives, which can at times resemble reason.'
'That's how it is,' Weber said, putting down the coffee pot.
'I wonder,' Harry said, 'why Lev Grette left the country if the police had nothing on him anyway.'
Weber brushed invisible dust off the arm of the chair. 'I don't know for sure.'
'For sure?'
Weber pressed the thin, fragile porcelain coffee-cup handle between a large, fat thumb and a nicotine-stained index finger. 'There was a rumour going round at the time. Nothing we had any faith in. Allegedly, he wasn't fleeing from the police. Someone had heard the last bank job hadn't gone according to plan. Grette had left his partner in the lurch.'
'In what way?' Beate asked.
'No one knew. Some thought Grette had been the getaway driver and had driven off when the police arrived, leaving the other man in the bank. Others said the raid had been a success, but Grette had cleared off abroad with all the money.' Weber took a sip and lowered the cup with care. 'The interesting side to the case we're talking about now is perhaps not the how, but the who. Who was this second person?'
Harry searched Weber's eyes. 'Do you mean it was…?'
The veteran forensics expert nodded. Beate and Harry exchanged glances.
'Fuck,' said Harry.
* * *
Beate kept an eye on the traffic to the left, waiting for a gap in the stream of cars from the right in Třyengata. The rain beat down on the roof. Harry closed his eyes. He knew if he concentrated he could make the swish of passing cars become waves beating against the bows of the ferry as he stood in the breeze gazing down at the white froth, holding his grandfather's hand. But he didn't have time.