The Ludwig Conspiracy(21)

“We can go up to my office and call from there,” Steven suggested. “The best thing will be if we . . .”

“And what are you planning to tell the police?” Sara asked sharply. “That you were looking for a seventeenth-century book about deciphering secret writing, and you just happened to kill the Hulk here with an iron bar in the process?”

“It was self-defense. You said so yourself. He was going to kill that other guy.”

Sara looked around and shrugged. “What other guy? I don’t see anyone else here.”

“But . . .”

“Herr Lukas,” she said in a mollifying tone, “this story is complicated enough as it is. What were the two of us doing down here in your stockroom so late at night? Who was the man who ran away? What does it all have to do with that book? Trust me, I know the cops. They aren’t just going to pat us on the back and let us go. They’ll take us into custody, and then the questioning will start.” She took a deep breath before going on. “I’ll tell you what we’re going to do. We’ll wipe your fingerprints off that iron bar, we’ll go home like good little kids, and we’ll act as if we were never here. And tomorrow some neighbor will discover the break-in and an unfortunate thief who got killed fighting over the loot. What do you think of that?”

Steven stared at the art detective incredulously. Her ruthlessness was troubling him more and more.

“You want me to sneak away like a criminal?” he asked, baffled.

Sara’s eyebrows shot up. “Could you cut the drama? I’m only trying to help you. Both of us.”

Steven massaged his temples. Once again, his eyes traveled over the corpse lying in the bright red puddle of blood. The sight was surreal among the white pages of the books.

Like spilled red ink, he thought. Or melted red sealing wax. Blood sticking to my fingers.

He took a deep breath. “Okay,” he said quietly. “We’ll play it your way. I have enough problems right now, anyway. I don’t need a horde of suspicious police officers after me.”

“Glad to hear it. Believe me, you’ll thank me yet.”

Sara knelt down, her face briefly contorting in a painful grimace. She peered behind the bookshelves until at last she found the bloodstained iron bar. Fishing the murder weapon out from between two crates, she carefully wiped it down with a handkerchief.

“Here we are.” Sara gingerly placed the bar beside the body, stopped for a moment and finally took the pistol from the giant’s lifeless fingers. With a practiced hand, she secured the trigger-guard and put the gun in her jacket pocket.

“I have a feeling we may be able to use this,” she said, turning back to Steven. “Now let’s go look for that decoding book.”

As if in a trance, the bookseller nodded. He had entirely forgotten what they were really here for. At last he clambered cautiously over the puddle of blood, to rummage around in the back part of his archive, where he stored scientific books from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. His hands shook; he thought every little sound was someone on the stairs—maybe the other intruder? He imagined that the dead man might rise from the floor any moment like a zombie and strangle him with his strong hands.

“Damn it, how long is this going to take?” Sara asked. “That hoodie character may call the police himself, and then we’re screwed.”

“I . . . just one second . . .”

Steven went along the rows of books arranged alphabetically by their authors’ last names. At last he found Shelton’s Tachygraphy on the top-right shelf of a bookcase. It was an inconspicuous, fat volume with a leather binding. He took it out and stowed it under his cord jacket as if he were shoplifting it.

“Finally. Now let’s get out of here,” Sara said, already on her way up the stairs. “We can say a prayer for Hulk in the car, okay?”





A GOOD HOUR LATER, clad only in sweatpants and a washed-out woolen sweater, Steven sat in Sara’s office, sipping a cup of black tea.

The art detective had convinced him that his own apartment wasn’t safe at the moment. If the men in tracksuit jackets had found his bookshop, they’d have no difficulty in tracking down his home address as well. Steven was too worked up to sleep anyway; the past twenty-four hours had completely upended his life. So, gritting his teeth, he had agreed to stop off at Sara’s office, even if only for a cup of tea and some clean clothes.

Steven bit his lip. He couldn’t get the body in his bookshop out of his head. Even though it had been in self-defense, he had killed a man, and this woman who called herself an art detective carried on as if nothing had happened. It was true that Sara was affected to some extent—she had already put back her second whisky—but all things considered, she seemed to take the incident in the cellar pretty much in her stride. Who was this woman really?