Betty Bossi stared at Art's photograph in the file on Inspector Savage's cluttered desk. Photographed Art glowered back at her.

She shook her head and looked up at her boss. "And Adriana Costello pushed him from the bridge, just like that?"

He nodded. "That comes as a surprise, doesn't it?"

"I..." She hesitated, her finger moving first over Art's face, then along the tabs of the folder. With a last look at the picture, she turned the pages to the section labeled Jake Sander. Here, the photographer's victim smiled broadly but had his eyes half closed—sleepsmiling. "Jake Sander... he was the one who called us?"

"He called the emergency number," Savage answered. "They alerted the mountain patrol and the police."

"To be honest, I wouldn't have expected Adriana Costello to do something like that."

Savage shrugged. "Our kind of work is full of surprises." He reached for another binder and browsed its pages. "Here it is... her confession. She deposited the same day, to our colleagues in Ippenvale. She... admitted not only to pushing Arthur Sharpe... Art as she called him... from that bridge but also to killing Gertrude Knooch."

"Yeah, you've said so." Bossi pulled at her ponytail. "But why did she do that? And why is she confessing now? And what about all the evidence showing Monica Marez was the killer... the DNA and the gloves?"

Savage pushed the binder over to his assistant. "That's all in here. You haven't seen it yet. It contains the protocols of my interviews with Adriana Costello and Jake Sander. I interrogated them yesterday."

"I'm sorry to have missed that."

"No need to apologize." Savage held up a hand. "Everyone's entitled to their days off, even police officers... Do you want a summary?"

She nodded.

"Jake and Adriana..." he said, "they had a... thing going on. A secret affair. It had started some months before Knooch's murder. They had first met at Dumstreet 9 during one of his visits at his Aunt's. So one thing led to another... But with Jake married, they kept it secret. And there was another reason for keeping it secret... Jake was sure that Knooch wouldn't approve of him betraying his wife, in particular because Knooch never liked Adriana. And he was dependent on his Aunt's goodwill because she was giving him money... lots of money... for a project of his."

"Lots of money?" Bossi frowned. "But she didn't have much, we've checked her accounts."

"She did. We've missed that. Jake Sander has filled us in... now. You may remember that Knooch's husband was a mining specialist, and the couple had spent years in various parts of Latin America. At one of the mines he worked for... a diamond mine... he seemed to have struck some deal. Jake didn't know the details, but there was serious money involved... Our colleagues over at economic crime will need to have a closer look at that. Anyway, the deal left her with a stash of black funds in a number of places. All of it was hidden from the authorities. And the account documents, some cash... and even some raw diamonds... they were hoarded away under a loose floorboard in her apartment, where Jake found them."

She huffed. "A classical hiding place. Our people should have discovered it when they checked her rooms."

"Not necessarily," Savage said. "Our people did search the place, sure. But we had no real reason to expect secret stashes of money. She was the victim, not a suspect. So we didn't turn every stone... or floorboard, in that case."

"What did Jake need the money for? You've mentioned some project."

"Jake had bought a hotel in Oberippenberg. That's why these neighbors were up there, last weekend. Anyway, the hotel's in need of a major overhaul. Buying and renovating such a place is expensive. Jake's wife, as well as his Aunt, had contributed money to it. However, Jake's marriage hadn't been going strong for some time, and his wife wanted to get out of it. And, therefore, she also wanted to have her cash back. So Jake had serious problems... he knew his aunt wouldn't approve of a divorce and was unlikely to give him the money to pay his wife."

Bossi nodded. "So, Jake and Adriana decided to gain direct access to her fortune... unhindered by any moral standards the old lady might have."

"No." Savage took the folder and opened it at Adriana's page. He tapped a finger on the slightly blurry portrait in her file. "Apparently, it was her idea alone, and Jake didn't know about it. You see... she really loves that man..." He shrugged. "Anyway, she thought killing Knooch would solve all the problems. Jake would inherit the money, pay back his wife, get the divorce, and she could finally be with him without Knooch threatening to withdraw her financial support."

"And what about the evidence that we found... the evidence pointing to Monica Marez?"

"Adriana planned this carefully," Savage said. "She decided to frame one of the other tenants... Monica. And she was quite ingenious... Do you remember the broken egg?"

"Er..." She frowned. "Ah, yes, I had to query Arthur Sharpe about it."

"Right. Adriana knew that Knooch's washing day was Friday and that the woman usually left some clothes hanging to dry overnight in the common laundry room, to collect them early next morning. So, Adriana waited for her to go get her clothing, the Saturday morning before the murder. Once Knooch was downstairs, Adriana dropped the egg in the staircase, knowing it would give Knooch the fits. And it did."

Savage browsed the file and located the protocol of Adriana's interview. "Later that morning, Adriana rang Knooch's door, pretending to ask her for some flour for a cake she was baking. They started talking about the... egg incident, and Adriana told her she had seen Monica that morning, going upstairs with a torn shopping bag, muttering something about bloody eggs. She... Adriana... asked Knooch, though, not to tell Monica about that.

"However, as Adriana expected, Knooch went straight to Monica, probably giving her a piece of her mind. And Monica... we've seen she's irascible... quick to get angry... She talked back, which ended in the altercation the Meiers and Adriana reported in their first interviews."

"I remember that." Bossi nodded. "It was one of the reasons why we looked at Monica Marez more closely... But what about the gloves, and the DNA?"

Savage held up a hand. "I was just coming to that. Adriana had bought the box of gloves, assuming their powder might be something that we... the police would track. She used them that night. Rang at Knooch's door, and when the woman opened, she killed her. Just like that, with her bare hands... er, with her gloved hands." He huffed.

"How could she do this?" Bossi looked at Adriana's photograph. "I know, physically, Knooch was a frail woman, while Adriana is young, tall and strong. But killing someone with your bare hands? Most people have mental barriers. Normal people don't go around doing things like that. She hasn't a criminal record, has she?"

"No," Savage replied, "no record, apart from some tickets for speeding and for parking where you shouldn't. A normal woman. But, she was in love with Jake, and she wanted to live her relationship with him. She knew Knooch would not like it and would withhold the money from Jake... or worse, she'd ask the money back from him. That's at least what Jake had told her."

"But what about him?"

"Jake? I'm not sure he wanted Adriana as much as she loved him."

"No, I mean..." Bossi tugged her ponytail again. "Was he really unaware of all of this?" She motioned at the paper cluttering the table. "Didn't he know Adriana killed his aunt?"

Savage sat back in his chair. "This is a good question. They both say he didn't, that it was all her planning and her doing alone, and she never told him."

"And... do you believe them?"

He nodded, slowly. "Yes, it rings true. According to what they told us, she had kept her silence until she had pushed Sharpe from that bridge. That was when she spilled it all to him... And she didn't get the reaction she had hoped for. She had expected him to cover her. But he was shocked and called the emergency number, thereby turning her in. If they had planned it together... from the start, or if he had wanted to cover her, they could have pretended that Sharpe's fall from the bridge was an accident, that he slipped in the snow... It would have been plausible. Jake, however, didn't want to cover this up." He sighed. "You've asked why she confessed... I think his betrayal broke her. After that, she didn't have the strength to deny her deeds, and she spilled it all... By the way, the officers in Ippenvale have run an alcohol test on Jake and Adriana. And at least Adriana's values were quite high. It seems they had some wine on their trip."

Bossi took a long breath and pulled her lips into a thin line while her eyes were on the window displaying a stone gray city under a steel gray sky. She shook her head and focussed her boss again. "Okay. And what about Monica's DNA we found on Knooch's body?"

Savage turned a page and perused the minutes of Adriana's interview. "Here it is..." He moved his finger along the lines as he cited from the protocol. "Monica always left a mess in the laundry room, she never cleaned the fluff filter, that... slut." He arched his eyebrows. "So, I went to scrape out the filter one Tuesday evening... that's her washing day. Then I doused the gloves with the stuff, and the dead woman's nightgown, too..."

Bossi shuddered. "Really, she did a lot of planning. And what about the box of gloves, how did it end up in Monica's attic? Wait..." She held up a finger. "I've been up there... cages enclosed by wooden bars, with gaps between the bars, and at the bottom. Adriana could have slipped the box through, or maybe underneath them, giving it a shove to make it end up against the roof wall in Monica's compartment, where we found it." She looked at Savage.

He nodded. "Exactly."

Betty Bossi rubbed her face with her hands. "And what made her push Arthur Sharpe from the bridge?"

"On that bridge, Sharpe harassed Jake with questions. He said he didn't believe that Monica Marez was the killer. He seemed to know... or to have concluded... that Jake had received lots money from Knooch and that we... the police didn't know about it. And that we should know about it because—"

"—because we would have had another look at Jake." Bossi's words were clipped. "A long, careful look."

"Absolutely." He nodded. "And then she panicked, and she pushed him... It was a long drop down for the poor man, more than ten meters. And, as I said, she was a bit drunk at that time."

"Yet still... How can people do these things...?" She motioned at the files cluttering the table. "All the pain they cause, just for money. I'll never get used to it." She rubbed her arms. "It gives me the shivers. I sometimes wonder if I'm in the right trade here."

Savage smiled as he shook his head. "It wasn't just for the money. It was for love. Love... and hate... are probably the strongest motives in most human beings. And as to getting used to it..." He sat back and looked at her. "As long as you don't get used to it, you're in the right place here. Over time, you'll start to accept what people do, you'll start to take such things for granted... you'll start to give up on humanity. I've seen it happen. That's the time when you should think about quitting."

——

A/N: Yeah, I know, not my funniest chapter. But policing isn't as funny as it might look from the outside.