Chapter 13
It is dark in the storage area where Aada Kuus is sitting on the hard concrete floor, weeping.
She is below the hotel’s ground floor, where spare equipment is usually kept.
At the moment it is almost empty, and Aada has hidden herself in the far corner.
She ran down here when she saw the police officer cordoning off the Silver Suite, she had to find a safe space.
Her mind is whirling. She can’t stop shaking after the shock of hearing about last night’s murder.
Someone said it was Ivar from maintenance who found the body, and the police are going to question him. Then they will probably want to speak to all the staff. That means they will come looking for Aada too, ask her if she saw anything.
She clasps her hands tightly together in an attempt to stop them shaking. It doesn’t work.
Aada knows she should have raised the alarm last night when she realized that something terrible must have happened. Instead she rushed away as quickly as she dared.
She is so afraid, and doesn’t trust her memory. Did she really see a masked man holding a bloodstained knife emerge from the Silver Suite?
And did he see her?
He must have done. She remembers those burning eyes.
She lay awake all night, tossing and turning. When she came into work today, it was worse than she could have imagined. There were police officers everywhere. Her colleagues were deeply shaken when they explained what had gone on.
The guest in the Silver Suite, a woman, has been stabbed to death.
Aada lets out a sob. She is ashamed of herself for doing nothing, and at the same time, she is terrified that the murderer will come after her too.
The hairs on her arms stand up at the very thought.
A little voice says that she ought to go to her line manager and tell her what she saw, but she is scared to come forward. She is a foreigner and hardly speaks the language, why should they listen to her?
She knows from bitter experience that the police in her homeland cannot be trusted.
What if the police in Sweden are the same?
Who will protect her then?