The presumed assailant.
The knife.
She could conjure up, even now, the mixture of smells in that narrow trenchlike room: cheap baby lotion and stale sweat, spent jism and fresh blood.
Before the man who had been holding the knife was taken away under police guard for treatment, Lynn had established his identity. Viktor Zoukas. Originally, he said, from Albania. The premises were licensed in his name.
Of the five female workers, two were local, two recently from Croatia, their legal status doubtful, one, a student, from Romania. Mostly they were frightened, unwilling to talk, in various stages of shock. One of the local women, Sally, a sometime stripper, some ten or fifteen years older than the rest, was paid extra to take bookings, collect the cash from the customers, keep a weather eye on the girls.
Lynn quickly separated her off from the rest.
"There's not much I can tell you," Sally said.
Lynn waited, patient, while the woman lit a cigarette.
She had heard voices raised, Sally told her, an argument between the dead girl and one of the customers-not unusual with the dead girl, Nina, especially. She'd been about to go and see what was happening when Viktor had stopped her. He wasn't that often on the premises, not that early, usually only came around to collect at the end of the night, but this time he was. He would go and sort things out, he said. The next thing she knew there was this awful screaming and one of the girls-Andreea Florescu, the Romanian-came running into the reception area, shouting that Nina was dead.
Pandemonium. Customers not able to get out fast enough. Which of them might have phoned the police, she'd no idea. Surprised, to be honest, that anyone did.
Viktor, Lynn had asked, Viktor Zoukas, when all this was going on, people leaving, shouting and screaming, where was he?
Sally didn't know. She hadn't seen him. Still in the room with Nina, perhaps? Who could say?
Lynn had talked then to the other women who worked there, several, she suspected, feigning a worse command of English than was actually the case, but she had got little from them. Andreea, who had raised the alarm, kept her eyes averted when Lynn spoke to her, head mostly angled away.
"Just tell me," Lynn said quietly. "Just tell me what you saw."
Andreea did look at her for a moment then, and the shadow of what she had seen passed across her eyes.
"It's okay," Lynn said. "Later. Not here." And briefly, she touched the back of the young woman's hand.
They met next morning in the Old Market Square, Andreea wearing a grey short-sleeved jacket over a yellow vest, blue jeans that bagged at the knees, white sneakers like old-fashioned school gym shoes, makeup heavy around her eyes.
Lynn took her to one of the few cafes in the city centre the coffee conglomerates had yet to take over. Somewhere anonymous where she thought they were less likely to be noticed or disturbed.
There were sauce bottles on the tables and small foil containers that had previously held pies and pasties serving as ashtrays: only a few months till the smoking ban came into force, and most of the customers were taking full advantage.
Lynn ordered tea, asked questions, listened.
Andreea lit one Marlboro from the butt of another.
Through the window Lynn could see the usual panoply of men and women walking past, talking into their mobile phones, some smartly, even fashionably dressed, others in the camouflage of cheap sportswear, young women who looked as if they should still be at school pushing prams or gripping unsteady toddlers by the hand.
"You?" Andreea said, following Lynn's gaze. "You have children?"
Lynn shook her head.
"I have little girl," Andreea said quietly. "Monica. She is three."
"Here?" Lynn asked, surprised.
"No, at home with my mother. In Romania. Constanta. It is on the sea. The Black Sea. Very beautiful."
She took a photograph from her purse and passed it across the table. Lynn saw a girl in a red and white dress with big, dark eyes and ribbons in her hair.
"She's lovely," Lynn said. "You must miss her a lot."
"Yes. Of course." Andreea wafted smoke away from her face. "I saw her last time at Christmas. When I went home for holiday. She has grown so big."
"It must have been hard to leave her," Lynn said.
"Of course. But there is no life for me there. I am making life here; then I will bring her. Now I am a student."
"A student?"
"Yes. I learn Tourism and Hospitality. And English. We have to learn English."
"Your English is very good."
"Thank you."
"And the job at the sauna?"
Andreea blushed and looked at the floor. "I have to earn money."
"There must be other ways."
"Yes, a few. I could work, maybe, at night in factory. Pork farm?"
"Pork farms, yes."
"Some of my friends, they do this."
"But not you."
"No, not me." She flicked ash from the end of her cigarette. "I try it once." She made a face. "The smell. You cannot get rid of the smell."
Lynn went to the counter and fetched a packet of biscuits and two more cups of tea. Aside from a few elderly people sitting alone, the cafe was more or less empty. The workmen-plasterers, electricians, labourers-who had been there when Lynn and Andreea had arrived had now gone.
"Tell me again," Lynn said, "what you saw when you went into the room."
Andreea stirred one and then a second spoonful of sugar into her tea. "Viktor, he was standing there, his hand like this"-she reached one hand across her chest-"holding his shoulder. He was bleeding."
"And Nina, where was she?"
"I think… I said… she was on the floor."
"You're not sure?"
"No, I am sure."
"She was on the floor?"
"Yes."
"Whereabouts on the floor?"
"I don't know, beside the bed. It must have been, yes, beside the bed."
Was she simply nervous, Lynn wondered, or lying? Something about her eyes, the way they would never focus on Lynn directly when she answered, that and the way she sat, fidgeting, restless. She was lying, Lynn thought, but she didn't know by how much or why.
"Sally says you came running into the reception area shouting that Nina was dead."
"I don't remember."
"You don't remember shouting, or-"
"I don't remember what I said."
"But was that what you thought? That she was dead?"
"Yes."
"How could you be sure?"
Andreea's voice was so low, Lynn had to strain to hear. "There was so much blood," she said.
Lynn leaned back and sipped her tea. She stripped the cellophane from around the biscuits and offered one to Andreea, who shook her head.
"Before you got to the room," Lynn said, "you didn't see anyone else? Someone running away?"
"A man, yes."
"The man who had been with her?"
"Yes, I think so."
"Can you describe him?"
"Yes. He was bald and with tattoos, here." She touched her fingers against the side of her neck.
"The left side?"
"Both, I think. I'm not sure, it was so quick."
"What was he wearing, can you remember?"
"A shirt, some kind of T-shirt, a football shirt, perhaps. And jeans."
"No coat? No jacket?"
Andreea thought. "No, I don't think. No, no."
"The shirt, can you remember the colour?"
"White. I think that it was white."
"An England shirt?"
"Maybe."
Andreea stubbed out her cigarette, drank some more tea.
"When you got to the room," Lynn said, "Viktor apart, was there anybody else there?"
"Only Nina."
"And the knife," Lynn said. "Where was the knife?"
"On the floor. Between them. On the floor."
"You're sure of that? Absolutely positive?"
"Oh, yes."
Lynn sat back and sighed. Earlier that morning, she had heard Viktor Zoukas's version of what happened. When he got to the room, he said, Nina and one of the customers were already fighting. A short man with a bald head, shaven. Viktor didn't think he'd seen him before. They were struggling for control of a knife. He thought Nina was already wounded, bleeding. When he tried to intervene, the man lashed out and stabbed him in the shoulder. He tried to get the knife from him, but fell and knocked his head against the wall. For a short while-seconds, maybe-he must have lost consciousness. When he came to, the man had gone and at first he thought Nina had, too. Then he saw her, underneath the bed, the knife close by. He picked up the knife and went back out into the corridor, and that was when the two policemen arrested him.