Swordplay

part 6

After they showed their IDs to the janitor, he opened the door to Pete Huudien's flat even without a search warrant. The rooms were completely empty. Even the sofa, Semra and Madame Ardappelen had sat on, were gone. Only some traces in the dust indicated that there had been furniture a short while ago. Semra pressed her lips to a thin line. Wordlessly, she pushed the janitor down one set of stairs to the flat of Madame Ardappelen.

The door hardly opened, when she stormed inside. Moira asked the janitor to wait in the corridor before she followed Semra into the living room. It was just as empty as Huudien's except for a few cardboard boxes.

Semra clenched her fists. "Merde! The birds have flown."

"I don't think so." Moira entered the tiny kitchenette. "It looks as if she's still using this." She pointed to a couple of sturdy cardboard boxes covered with a tablecloth. Beside it, a second cardboard box had been used as a chair judging by the deformations. In the sink, dirty dished were piled up, and a Minidrac lay curled up in the oven-nest and snored.

"But what did she do with the furniture?" Semra wondered.

Moira shrugged. Then, she remembered something Madame Ardappelen had said about Pete Huudien's pay raise. "Maybe her fiancé has returned after all and they began to move. After all she said, they had planned this for quite a while."

"Let's have a look into the other rooms." Semra opened the door to the bath. On the rim of the basin stood a toothbrush and paste in a plastic mug, and a towel hung on a hook. Everything else was gone.

Moira went into the bedroom. It was stuffed with cardboard boxes, and the curtains were drawn. The light didn't come on when she used the switch, so she snaked past the boxes to let in the morning light.

"Ouch!" Pain shot through her foot. Carefully, she felt the obstacle she had hit her toe on. It was a wide bed standing in the middle of the room. Shaking her head, she proceeded to the window and opened the curtains. With the light streaming in, she noticed someone was lying in the bed. Hopefully it wasn't another corpse. Her knees shook but she went over to the person lying under the cover without moving. She reached out and touched the shoulder.

"Pete?" Rosina Ardappelen crawled out and sat up. When she recognized Moira and Semra, the hope left her face. "Go away." She fell back into the cushions and pulled the cover over her head again.

Semra pulled it off. "Get up. We've got some questions for you."

Instead of obeying, Rosina curled up and cried silently. Moira waved Semra out of the room. "I'll take care of her," she mouthed. Semra nodded but stopped in the door frame.

Moira sat on the rim of the bed and stroked Rosina's back until the crying subsided. "You can't imagine how glad I am that you're sill alive," she said. "All those vanished furniture made me fear the worst."

"I sold the stuff." Rosina's voice sounded hoarse from crying.

"Pete's too? In his flat is even less stuff left than in yours."

"It was the only way to get all that money."

Moira looked over to Semra and pulled up her eyebrows in an unspoken question. She wanted to know if the gendarma could hear Rosina. Semra answered with a nod and held up a portable dicta-nerl. Moira asked gently.

"What did you need the money for?"

With a jerk, Rosina sat up. Her eyes sparkled at Moira. "Why are you asking? You know what I value most in this world."

All of a sudden, Moira understood what Rosina couldn't tell them during their first talk. "Someone kidnapped Pete Huudien and blackmailed you?"

Rosina nodded. Tears ran down her cheeks. "The caller said, Pete would go free if I didn't contact the Gendarmerie and if I paid."