He turned and started back towards the Kia. Raul looked small and shrunken in the passenger seat, watching him with an expression that was half curious, half dreading what Ben might have to tell him.
‘There’s nothing here for us,’ was all Ben said as he slipped into the car. He didn’t want to say too much for now. Although he feared it was simply delaying the inevitable, under the circumstances he felt he had to do as thorough a job as he could for Raul’s sake.
In the meantime, they had a long road trip ahead of them. They would be traversing Germany north — south, the reverse of Catalina’s last journey in her Porsche. Raul said nothing about taking turns at the wheel, and Ben didn’t raise the matter either. He was here now, and he had nothing else to do but sit and drive, smoke and think.
It was evening by the time they reached Munich. Raul had stayed quiet for nearly all of the seven-hour drive, as if the nervous energy that had kept him babbling on the flight was now completely expended, leaving only the sombre reality of what he was doing here so far from home.
Catalina Fuentes’ apartment was on the top floor of an upscale building in the fashionable district of Glockenbach, off Palmstrasse just a few blocks north of the River Isar. The area was Munich’s answer to Greenwich Village, a popular haunt for musicians and artists and writers and other left-leaning individuals of the creative variety who could somehow afford to live there and frequent its bohemian cafés and bars. Raul produced a key as they stepped out of the lift onto a broad landing that smelled of pine air freshener and new carpet, and led Ben to one of only two glossily varnished doors at opposite ends. He paused at the door and looked about to ring the buzzer, then drew back his hand and closed his eyes with a sigh. Then he inserted the key in the lock and pushed open the door as if his own death lay beyond it.
Ben followed Raul inside the apartment, and closed the door behind them. Raul strode along a short hallway with a gleaming parquet floor that opened up into a large modern open-plan space. He took off his jacket and slung it on the back of a white leather armchair, as if he’d done it a hundred times before and was at home in the place. He glanced around the room, and for a second Ben thought he was going to call his sister’s name, in case she might suddenly appear, smiling her perfect smile at this unexpected visit and wanting to be introduced to Raul’s interesting new friend. But Catalina Fuentes didn’t appear, and her brother turned to gaze heavily at Ben.
‘My parents want to sell this place, once all the craziness with the lawyers is settled,’ he said. ‘Can you believe that, so soon? I told them I wouldn’t let that happen, no way. It’s still her home, you know?’ He shivered. ‘It’s cold in here. You’d think the building manager would keep the heat on.’ Going over to a panel on the wall, he flipped open a cover and prodded small buttons. Ben couldn’t see radiators or pipes anywhere. Without them, the lines of the room looked clean and elegant. Electric heating, magically hidden under the gleaming wood floor.
Raul gazed around the big living room with a wistful frown. ‘It all looks just the way I remember it.’
‘When were you last here?’ Ben asked.
‘I know the exact number of days,’ Raul said. ‘Too many. It was last autumn. Our birthday, November third. I stayed here for a week.’ He thought for a few moments then added in an undertone, ‘In fact I hardly saw much of her. She was so busy with her work, some new thing she was working on that she was terribly excited about. I didn’t even ask her what it was.’
Raul’s voice trailed off as he lost himself in memories of the last time he’d seen his sister alive. In one corner, a gleaming classical guitar rested on a stand. He went over to it, gazed at the instrument for a moment and then softly drew his fingers across its six strings. Its sound was deep and sonorous. ‘Catalina’s guitar,’ he murmured.
Feeling he should say something, Ben was about to ask, ‘Did she play well?’ Too much past tense, he decided. Against his instincts, and to avoid hurting Raul, he said instead, ‘Does she play well?’
Raul smiled sadly. ‘I suppose so. She took it up years ago. But I never heard her play. She always kept it to herself.’
Too much past tense. Raul had snagged the emotional tripwire that Ben had managed to avoid. He began to droop as if his limbs and his head weighed nine hundred pounds, and lowered himself into the nearest armchair with his elbows on his knees, forehead cupped in both hands and his eyes screwed tight.
Ben walked slowly around the room. It was an elegant blend of modern and old that spoke of good taste and a fine eye. He paused at a heavy sideboard, brushed his fingertips along wood that felt like oiled silk, and snicked open one of its doors. His guess had been right: drinks cabinet. Catalina’s good taste extended to single malt scotch, nothing less than a fifteen-year-old Glenfiddich. He grabbed the bottle and two cut-crystal glasses, set them on the top and glugged out two generous measures. One for him, after the long drive. One for Raul, to take the raw edge off what he was feeling. Sooner or later they’d have to think about food, having eaten nothing since their sandwich before Rügen Island. Scotch would substitute fine for the moment.
Ben held out Raul’s drink. Raul opened one eye, then the other, reached out for the glass and downed most of its contents as if he could happily chug through the whole bottle that night. Ben didn’t intend to let him, not after what had happened last time.
‘Mind if I look around?’ he asked.
Raul just waved a hand at him. Ben thought he could trust him alone with the bottle for a few minutes while he had a quick reconnaissance of the apartment, sipping his whisky as he went from room to room. The kitchen was large and modern, spotless and gleaming and equipped with all the right accessories for someone who probably ate out most of the time but liked her kitchen to look the part. Ben checked the fridge and found two bottles of chilled 2011 vintage Chablis nestling on a rack inside. A couple of thin-crust pepperoni and anchovy pizzas were stacked in the freezer compartment above. Dinner was sorted, at least.
From the kitchen, he wandered down another passage to what looked like a home office, although it had to be the neatest and least-used home office in the world, entirely clutter-free and a few neat rows of abstruse-looking astrophysics and cosmology titles arrayed on the shelves. One wall displayed a blown-up framed still of Catalina pictured against the backdrop of an astonishingly resplendent Milky Way. Her face was aglow with enthusiasm, those big brown eyes as incandescent as the heavens. Ben presumed it must be an image from her TV astronomy series. Looking at it, it wasn’t hard to see what her public had loved in her. He gazed at it for a moment, then went on examining the room.
According to the police report, Catalina’s personal computer had been checked for suspicious emails or anything that could provide leads to contradict the suicide motive. Nothing having been found, the computer had been replaced, unplugged from the monitor on the desk. Ben was confident that the contents of drawers, her address book, phone records and general paperwork would have all been routinely examined, too, but he had a riffle through the desk just in case anything jumped out at him. It didn’t, although he wasn’t particularly sure what he was looking for. Sometimes you just had to go by instinct. And so far, his instincts weren’t feeding much back to him.
Of the three bedrooms in the big apartment, the first he looked into was a guest room with a huge empty wardrobe and a timber-framed bed piled high with silk cushions. The second was stripped bare and in the middle of being redecorated, a stepladder against one wall, paint pots, plastic sheeting on the floor. He found that potentially interesting. Suicidal people didn’t tend to care much about the state of their home decor. Then again, it wasn’t much to base a theory on.