Free Promethea by M.M. Abougabal Page B

have been denying knowing anything about what had happened in the adjacent flat, probably that is what they would all claim .
                  Adam finished his phone call and stepped inside the apartment again as the officers moved to yet another doorstep, posing familiar questions at randomly common faces. The sight of the murdered young man did not get any easier; Adam still found it extremely hard to come to terms with the cruel scene. Delić looked as motionless and as static as one could ever be. His corpse laid on the floor in the strangest of postures; he was more of an abandoned puppet now than an actual human being. The warmth of life was replaced, not too long ago, by a grim bluish haze that plagued his stiff skin. It all added to an atmospheric sense of macabre that Adam found too hard to assimilate. There was nothing poetic about death. How did life once dwell within this decaying body? How was it ever a vessel for sustaining life? Is it because everyone felt immortal themselves? Adam had wondered.
                  He had always brushed aside the idea of his own demise. Never gave it much thought. How would he? He was the protagonist of his own world. From his perspective, the world started and ended with him… for a second there, I almost sounded like Hélène, he thought. She always had these sorts of vague conversations with him when they were together. She found refuge in wandering off, daydreaming and wondering about trivial useless things in life that sometimes he felt she had lost herself completely in her own imaginary world.
                  Schuster did not favour the long silence; he strode impatiently back and forth between the bedroom and Delić ripe bathroom trying to retrieve anything of value. He could not. He then glanced outside to see whether the officers, who were now questioning the sixth neighbour, had any better luck.
                  “It seems that we have to wait for forensics…” Schuster exclaimed irritably, looking increasingly desperate. He turned to the on-streak Frenchman, eager to hear the slightest trace of good news.
                  “If you were dying, what would be your last thoughts?” Adam asked Schuster who found the question exceptionally odd. He was hoping that philosophical quandaries were not all that troubled the Interpol agent’s mind in those past precious moments. “Loved ones? Family?” He answered impatiently.
                  It was a viable answer, but not quite what Adam was pitching for. He had a peculiar theory ever since he saw the festering flesh of the Bosnian young man littering his tiny apartment’s wooden floor. He was wondering if everyone had shared his approach to life and death, his foolish sense of immortality. What would his most prized possession be in this world? A wife, children, a house; he had none. His gadgets? His head was facing away from all of them. What would his last thoughts be? Adam contemplated. There was but one reasonable assumption to all of this.
                  “His leverage.“
                  Schuster looked at the body and projected where Delić’s last gaze was pointing. “This cheap coffee table? There is absolutely nothing on it.”
                  Adam moved towards the table hesitantly, hoping that his theory would be proven accurate. The laminate white table looked plain and ordinary, except for the wooden rims supporting its weight. Behind them, they masked an area large enough to conceal a small item. He stretched his right arm, reaching under the table and behind the rims, before exhibiting an ample, wide grin that take over his face. He had felt something taped carefully under the table. He reached for it, pulling it gently in an attempt not to damage it.
                  “Well! What is it?” Schuster’s curiosity had finally got the best of him.
                  “It’s a