Hour of the Wolf by Håkan Nesser

Author:Håkan Nesser [Nesser, Håkan]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
ISBN: 9780230761209
Publisher: Macmillan Publishers UK
Published: 2012-04-12T06:00:00+00:00

Jung had arranged to meet Liljana Milovic in a cafeteria at Gemejnte Hospital. She had no idea why he wanted to talk to her, and he had the less than uplifting task of informing her that her friend and colleague had unfortunately been murdered, and that was why she hadn’t turned up for work this gloomy Monday.

Liljana Milovic was beyond doubt a beautiful woman, and in different circumstances he would have had nothing against holding her in his arms and trying to control her fit of sobbing. Come to think of it, he had nothing against it even in these circumstances – and in fact he spent most of their meeting doing just that. She slung her arms around him and simply wept, that was all there was to it. Slid her chair next to his and hung onto his neck. He stroked her slightly awkwardly over her back and her long, black hair which smelt of honeysuckle, rosewater and God only knew what else.

‘Forgive me,’ she sniffled over and over again. ‘Forgive me, I can’t help it.’

Nor can I, thought Jung, noticing that he had a large lump in his throat as well. Her flow of tears eventually ebbed away and she began to get a grip of herself, but she didn’t break off bodily contact with him. Not completely.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Jung. ‘I thought they’d already told you.’

She shook her head and blew her nose. He noticed that the other cafeteria customers at nearby tables were glancing furtively at them. He wondered what they imagined was going on, and asked her if she’d prefer to move somewhere else.

‘No, no, it’s okay here.’

She had only a slight foreign accent, and he guessed she had emigrated from the Balkans when she was a teenager and her homeland was still called Yugoslavia.

‘Did you know Vera well?’

‘She was my best workmate.’

‘Did you meet outside working hours as well?’

She took a deep breath and looked sad. That made her even more beautiful. Under her high cheekbones were faint suggestions of shadow, something that always made Jung go weak at the knees for some reason. He bit his tongue and tried to become a police officer again.

‘Not so much,’ she said. ‘We’ve only been working on the same ward for a few months. Since August. What happened to her? In detail.’

She squeezed his hands tightly in anticipation of his answer.

‘Somebody hit her and killed her,’ he said. ‘We don’t know who.’

‘Murdered her?’

‘Yes, murdered her.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘Nor do we. But that’s how it is.’

She looked him straight in the eye, from fifteen centimetres away.

‘Why?’ she asked. ‘Why would anybody want to kill Vera? She was such a lovely person. What exactly happened?’

Jung looked away and decided to spare her the details.

‘It’s not quite clear,’ he said. ‘But we want to talk to everybody who knew her. Have you noticed at all that she seemed a bit worried lately in some way or other?’

Milovic thought for a while.

‘I don’t know, but these last few days perhaps .

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