Page 15 of Views
“Probably Mali,” Yasira repeats.
“Correct.”
“Thank you.”
“Oh yeah. And Karsten lets you know that the beer bottles are ninety-nine percent certain to be Beck’s. He hasn’t found the crime scene. He said to tell you he’s still hiking.”
“Tell him to hike faster.”
“Will do.”
Yasira hangs up.
She sits down at her desk and opens the old MacBook. Of course it wants to know a password from her. She looks at her colleague.
“What’s the cat’s name?”
Michael thinks for a moment. “Minka,” he then says. He has an amazingly good memory for names.
Yasira types in “Minka” and the notebook actually unlocks.
“Bingo,” says Yasira.
“Why haven’t the village sheriffs taken the computer already?” asks Yasira.
“Because they’re village sheriffs,” says Michael.
Yasira nods. “The colleagues probably thought they were dealing with a runaway teenager. They didn’t know about the video.”
Yasira clicks around a bit on the computer. Opens the mail program. But there’s not much to find. A bit of school, a bit of Amazon. Lena doesn’t seem to have sent many emails. Is email the next medium to die out? Unfortunately, Lena hasn’t synchronized her photos and Messenger with her notebook. A thorough search of the computer would still take hours.
“Ask if we can take it with us...”
Michael leaves the room and returns shortly afterwards with a positive answer. Yasira has already packed the laptop. All in all, Lena seems to be a normal teenager.
They go back to the kitchen. For the entire half hour they’ve been here, Lena’s brother has been repeating the Prelude in E minor over and over again.
“Would it be possible to talk to Emil too?” asks Yasira.
Frank Palmer sighs. “He won’t talk to strangers since Lena disappeared. Your colleagues haven’t had any success either. Even before that, Emil was rather quiet. I’m sure he doesn’t know anything that could help you.”
“Can we try anyway?”
“I don’t think Emil...”
“I’ll be very careful. I promise.”
Frank Palmer hesitates. Then he shrugs his shoulders with a sigh and leads them both into the living room. Emil immediately stops playing the piano and looks at the intruders with wide eyes. But as his father had predicted, he remains silent when Yasira asks him a few questions about his sister and the day she disappeared. Only when Yasira points to the instrument and asks: “May I?” Emil nods, stands up, and lets her take the piano bench. Wordlessly, with a small gesture of her left hand, Yasira waves the two men out of the room. Then she turns to the sheet of music. Bumpily at first, but then more and more fluently, she plays the Prelude in E minor herself. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Emil smiling.
“Did your sister perhaps tell you where she was going on Saturday?” asks Yasira as she continues to play. Emil shakes his head.
“Did she often just disappear at the weekend?”
A nod.
“Did she ever tell you where she was going?”
Head shaking.
