Free The Trap by Melanie Raabe, Imogen Taylor Page A

wondered.
    ‘Now that I’m here, we might as well talk.’
    ‘I don’t know what to say.’ Jonas said with a sigh. ‘We’ll continue to gather all the evidence we can. We’ll take a very close look at what forensics say. We’ll talk to a great many people—we’ll do what we can. That’s our job.’
    ‘You’ll find the murderer,’ Sophie said. It was not a question.
    Jonas grimaced. What had he gone and promised her? He should have got a grip on himself. The scene of the crime was a forensic nightmare. Only a few nights before her death, Britta Peters, the murder victim, had hosted a birthday party in her flat for a friend—a party that had been attended by almost sixty people. Almost sixty people who’d left enormous quantities of fingerprints and traces of DNA all over the flat. If the identikit picture didn’t yield anything and the victim’s acquaintances couldn’t come up with any relevant evidence, it was going to be tricky.
    ‘We’ll do our best,’ said Jonas.
    Sophie nodded. She took a drag on her cigarette.
    ‘Something wasn’t right in Britta’s flat,’ she said. ‘I can’t work out what it was.’
    Jonas knew that feeling—like a low note that you hear not with your ears but with your belly.
    ‘Can I have one too?’ he asked. ‘A cigarette, I mean.’
    ‘This is my last. But you can have a drag.’
    Jonas took the lit cigarette that Sophie held out to him. Her fingertips brushed his. He took a deep drag and returned the cigarette. Sophie raised it to her mouth.
    ‘I think Britta was an accidental victim,’ she said.
    ‘May I ask why you think that?’
    ‘No one who knew her could have done a thing like that,’ Sophie said. ‘No one.’
    Jonas was silent. Again he accepted the cigarette that Sophie held out to him, took a drag, gave it back. Sophie stubbed it out in silence. She sat there beside him, staring into the darkness.
    ‘Can I tell you about Britta?’ she asked eventually.
    Jonas didn’t have the heart to say no. He nodded. Sophie was silent again, for a while, as if wondering where to begin.
    ‘Once, when Britta was five or six, we went up to town with our parents,’ she began at length. ‘We were walking along the street with ice-cream cones in our hands—it was summer; I remember it like yesterday. Sitting on the pavement was this homeless man, dressed in rags caked with dirt, a mangy dog beside him, and bottles in a shopping trolley. We’d never seen a homeless person. I was appalled, because he smelt so bad and looked so ill and because I was scared of his dog. But Britta was curious; she said something to him—“Hello, mister” or something—the kind of thing children say to strangers sometimes. The man grinned at her and said, “Hello, young lady.” My parents hurried us past him, but somehow Britta couldn’t get the man out of her head. She went on pestering my parents with her questions for hours afterwards. What was the matter with the man and why did he look so funny and why had he talked so funny and smelt so funny? My parents told her that the man was probably ill and didn’t have a home. From then on, whenever we went up to town with my parents, Britta would pack some food to take with her, and always looked out for him.’
    ‘Did she find him?’
    ‘No. But it wasn’t just that man, you know. I can’t begin to tell you how many injured animals Britta brought home for our parents to help nurse back to health. When Britta was twelve she started work as a volunteer in an animal refuge. Since moving into town she’s worked in a soup kitchen for the homeless. She never forgot that man, you see?’
    Jonas nodded. He tried to imagine her alive, the delicate blonde woman now lying in forensics, tried to imagine her running around, going about her everyday life, talking to her sister, laughing. But he couldn’t. He’d always found it impossible to imagine murder victims alive. He never got to know them in life, only ever in death, and with