It’s getting dark as I make my way across the city center towards the office, taking the long way round that will take me along the river for most of the way.
The river.
It could be central to this case, or a complete coincidence that all the victims were found on its bank. But it’s the only connection between the cases we have for now.
* * *
EVA
I was winded again before I even reached the Tri-bridge square by the Ljubljanica River, but I pushed on, and made it all the way to the bridge that leads to the main market, before I absolutely had to sit down at a table of one of the cafes this side of the river bank is covered with.
Night is falling fast and the temperature of the damp air rising from the river is dropping even faster, so there’s practically no one sitting here, but clumps of people, mostly tourists, are walking by regularly. A waiter wearing just a hoodie and a black vest appears next to me within moments.
I order a mint tea and a bottle of mineral water. That should settle my stomach enough to continue on. I want to see the site where David’s body was found, which is another five-hundred meters from here, and then I want to speak to the mother of Veronika Doler, the woman who was murdered the day before David was last November. She works at a drugstore near the office.
“Eva? Are you feeling all right?” Mark asks, suddenly appearing by my side.
Of course he’d notice I’m not feeling the best. He reads that kind of stuff right off my face.
“I’ve been better,” I tell him and indicate that he should take a seat beside me. “But also worse.”
“I thought you’d be back at the office, going over the reports,” he says as he pulls out the chair and sits, then clears his throat and adds, “Did you find anything?” in a calmer voice.
“The reports are too lifeless,” I say. “I went to speak with David Faber’s family. His aunt and his fiancée.”
The waiter arriving with my drinks prevents him from reacting to it right away.
“And did you find out anything significant?” he asks after he sends the waiter away with his own order of an espresso.
“David was a troubled man, but full of life. I got the sense that he was trying to outrun his mental health issues by living his life to the fullest,” I tell him. “He also had a temper and his fiancée thinks it’s possible he argued with someone on the riverbank that night.”
“So he wasn’t suicidal?” Mark asks.
“No,” I say. “Unless you consider his recklessness a form of self-destruction.”
“Ana was. Severely,” he says. “But her psychiatrist doesn’t think she wanted to kill herself that night.”
He proceeds to tell me everything he found out today.
“OK, so what we have now, as far as a connection goes, is young people with mental health problems who had been in therapy all their lives and weren’t coping well,” I summarize. “It will be interesting to see if this trend continues with the others.”
“It does with Tim Ban, the first victim and the one Sojer is so invested in,” Mark says. “He was suicidal as well.”
“You think the psychiatrist you spoke to today could have something to do with it?” I ask.
He shrugs. “I don’t want to jump to any conclusions, but him knowing so much about Ana’s case is a red flag. If he’s somehow connected to the other victims too, then it’ll become more than that. And then there’s the river.”
“So you agree that the river is somehow central to all of it?” I say, taking a sip of my tea. He’s already finished his espresso in one long swallow while he talked, but I can only drink hot tea very slowly.
“Ana viewed it as some sort of magical thing that could take all her problems away,” he says.
“But David apparently didn’t,” I add.
“Maybe the killer does,” he muses, but sounds very skeptical about it.
“As soon as I finish this tea I’d like to walk along it some more,” I say. “The spot where David’s body was found is just up ahead. Maybe it’ll jog some ideas.”
He narrows his eyes at me, and I can just hear his thoughts rumbling as he tries to find the right words to tell me it’s a bad idea. I ignore it and try to get the waiter’s attention so we can pay.