The interview room was not what Art had expected. No small cubicle with bare, white walls, no lamp on a desk to smack its glare into the suspect's face, and no large mirror at one side—but a generous, friendly meeting room with a large table and old prints of historical police uniforms on its walls.

Savage got up when Art entered. "Hello, Mr. Sharpe. Thanks for waiting. This is Mrs. Shellfish." He pointed at a small woman with short, gray hair sitting at the table behind a computer and a recorder. "She'll do the protocol."

Shellfish gave Art an almost-smile and a nod.

"Hi." Art nodded back.

"Please do have a seat. Coffee? Or tea?"

Art shook his head. "No thanks." He wanted to get this over with, and he sat down.

The inspector was tall even when sitting. He wasn't all bald—flaxen hair framed his head and almost blended with the tone of his skin.

"So, please tell us something about yourself. You're not from here, I understand."

The question was along the lines Art had expected, so he told Savage and Shellfish about himself. How he had arrived in this country five weeks ago to work as a postdoc at the city's University. That he was from San Francisco, and that this was his first time living abroad. He also emphasized that he loved the peace and order here, hoping that this would put Savage at ease and expedite the matter. He even produced his immigration papers and work permit, which he had grabbed in his apartment before leaving for the police van. Finally, he volunteered that it was not him who had found the apartment at Dumstreet 9, but that the University had organized it.

Savage nodded. "Yeah, the house..." He set his elbows on the table and rubbed his face with his hands. "Please, do tell me about your neighbors. What do you know about them?"

Art had feared this question because he hardly knew them and because he hated the idea of talking about them behind their backs—it felt like telling on them.

But there was little he could do about that, so he shrugged and began. "Well, there's Mrs. Meier. She lives on the ground floor. She's the janitor. I think she's divorced, or a widow. But you know about that, I'm sure. Her son, Ralph Meier, lives on the first floor. Alone. All of the apartments are rented out to singles. I think that the owner has a thing about single tenants being less trouble, that's something Mrs. Meier once mentioned."

Art paused, and Savage motioned for him to continue.

"The second apartment on the first floor is Adriana's. Couldn't tell you her family name, but I guess you know it."

Shellfish handed Savage a paper. He nodded. "Costello. Her name's Adriana Costello."

"I think she works at a radio, doing something in their music archive. On the second floor, there's me, and my neighbor is... was Mrs. Knooch. At the top floor, there's Rashid Pathan, a taxi driver, from Pakistan. And there's Monica, the waitress." Art stopped, wondering if Savage would elaborate on either of the two.

"Monica Marez, yeah." Savage nodded. "What do you know about her?"

Art shrugged. "Mrs. Meier has told me she's working as a waitress. I haven't talked to her until this morning. She's the one who discovered... the body."

"Yes, that was her." Savage took a breath. "You haven't seen her... or heard her the day before? Saturday?"

Why should he, wondered Art. "No," he said aloud.

 "What do you know about Gertrude Knooch?"

"Well, she was my next-door neighbor, but we didn't see much of each other. I think her husband died years ago. No children. She has a nephew in the city. He brings her groceries. I saw him once. His name's Jake, I think."

He remembered the handsome man's face. It was the day of the broken egg, yesterday. Jake had unlocked the front door himself.

The key!

"He has a key... a key to the house." Art was pleased with himself. "I saw him using it."

Savage exchanged a glance with Shellfish. "Yeah, that's already on record. We'll check that." Then he looked back at Art. "What else do you know about Mrs. Knooch? When did you see her the last time?"

Art had a sudden sense of déjà-vu. Such a common question in detective movies. A silly giggle started to rise in his throat, but he suppressed it, afraid that it would look suspicious. "Yesterday, when I was sweeping the staircase. Someone had dropped an egg there. It was me who cleaned up the mess." The act still gave him a strange sense of achievement.

He briefly considered telling Savage that Knooch had doorbelled him out of bed for that egg but decided against it—it would just make matters more complicated.

Savage rubbed his face again, then he looked back at Art. "Do you remember anything particular about her behavior yesterday? What did she say?"

"Hmm. We talked about the egg, I think that's all." He remembered her suspecting Rashid Pathan of the criminal egg dropping act, but he decided not to mention that. He liked Rashid, and the detail seemed irrelevant.

"Do you know of any disputes or quarrel between her and anyone else?"

"She was ... an old lady." Art first had wanted to say 'sweet old lady', but then he decided that she did not qualify for that. "I don't think she had much contact with the others. I'm not sure, though. I work all day, and it's usually late when I turn in."

"What did you do yesterday night?"

The words were heavy—like one of the judge's questions, at his divorce. When he had asked if Art had been faithful to his adultering wife. Art had been, but he had suddenly felt defensive, weak and threatened.

In this case, it was the question about the alibi. He had none, obviously. "I was at home. I watched something on Netflix and wrote some e-mails. I went to bed early."

His heart was pounding as he waited for Savage's reaction.

"Did you hear anything at night. Anything unusual?"

"No." Art shook his head. "I slept through it. I heard nothing. Sorry."

Savage took a deep breath and studied the list of names on the paper Shellfish had handed to him. He asked some more questions about them, and Art tried his best to answer, to provide the little morsels of information that he could contribute.

Finally, Savage handed the list back to Shellfish and gave Art a tired smile. "Thanks for your cooperation. That's all for the moment. Before you leave, we'll have to take fingerprints, DNA samples, and photographs. Mrs. Shellfish will show you the way to our fingerprinting office. Then you can go home. If we need you, we'll contact you." He nodded at Shellfish. "And... I must ask you not to leave the country for the time being. Or did you have any plans to do so?"

Not to leave the country?

Art's heart skipped a beat. It did make sense, of course. He took a breath. "Yeah, of course... And no, I didn't plan to leave the country anytime soon. I've just arrived, and my tenure is for at least two years."

Having his DNA sampled was anticlimactic. A woman wearing gloves, a white surgical mask, and a permanent frown told him to open his mouth, frowned some more at whatever she saw there, prodded the insides of his cheek with a cotton swab, and informed him he was done. Then, a colleague of hers scanned his fingerprints and took some photographs. She gave him a printout of one of his pictures, as a souvenir, she said. 

His smile on it looked forced.

Minutes later, Art found himself in front of the brick and geranium police station, wondering what to do next. The tram stop was right in front of it, but he was restless and decided to walk.

It was already turning dark. The pavements were, once more, wet. The fair morning weather had obviously lost its doomed fight against the country's rain mafia.

The country he now was trapped in.

He considered calling Wang or Sven, colleagues from the Institute, wondering if they might care for a beer. But he was too tired. Instead, he had dinner at a Kebab booth.

He was stalling. The idea of going home held little appeal.

Home? Some home.

A home with a fresh murder and suspect neighbors. One of them might be the killer. Or was it that Jake guy, the nephew with the keys?

It was around 7:30 p.m. when he opened the front door of Dumstreet 9, entered, and locked it behind him. The sound of the turning key didn't make him feel safe, though. And he did not look forward to the darkness and cold loneliness of his apartment.

As he reached the first floor, he hesitated at Adriana's door.

He could check on her, ask her how it went.

Adriana Costello, the little name tag beside the door frame said. He pushed the small knob above it.