Bella Italia by Suzanne Vermeer Page A

and found his solace in the homeless world.”
    “Where he still managed to have quite a career,” Martuccia said with a real feeling of irony.
    “The only positive thing, yes,” Tardelli grumbled. “But anyway, did this conversation leave you with any new insights?”
    Martuccia shrugged his shoulders. “I’m not sure. It’s hard to explore someone else’s dark side. He may have been a very friendly man, but still he could also be …”
    “A child killer?” Tardelli added. “It is true that witnesses often say they didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary because the perpetrator was always very friendly, but how well did they really know the person? Most of the time, people don’t really know the person very well. Everyone lives in his own little bubble. But I have a very high regard for the Professor. He has been right in the past. Come on, let me bring you back to your own little cocoon.”

18
    Hans got up during the movie’s end credits. “I’m going to get another beer. Can I get you anything?”
    “No, thank you,” Petra answered from behind her laptop. The action movie Hans had picked tonight did not manage to hold her attention for much longer than thirty minutes. After that she had crawled behind her computer to do something for herself.
    Hans walked over to her first and put his hand on her shoulder. Out of the corner of his eye, he also looked at the laptop screen. Petra closed the page quickly.
    “Anything interesting?” he asked.
    She turned toward him, looked him dead in the eyes, and raised her eyebrows.
    “Ah, okay. I should mind my own business? Me, the nosy, beer-drinking, bad-action-movie watcher.”
    Petra clicked her tongue, but couldn’t hold back her laughter. “You have a way of hitting the nail right on the head. You got it exactly right.”
    Hans laughed and walked to the kitchen. They joked around with each other, but he had managed to see what Petra was reading before she’d closed the page. It was a page about traumas. He shook his head. This wasn’t good. He understood that Petra was constantly thinking about Niels, about everything he had been through and what he experienced, daily now. He suffered from the same problem. But Niels was in good hands with Irene, and he thought that they had become more honest with each other when they were having a difficult time with it all. At some point you have to find a moment of peace. It wasn’t good to be obsessing over Niels the entire day. He had tried to relax by watching a mindless and unpretentious action-hero movie.
    Gathering information about traumas didn’t exactly contribute to a relaxing evening, or so it seemed to him. That didn’t help you relax at all; in fact, it probably only added to your anxiety or made you worry even more. Unless … He had blindly assumed that Petra was searching for information relevant to Niels. But what if he was wrong? What if she was searching for herself?
    He took a sip of beer. He would have preferred to banish this question to the realm of fiction, but the idea stayed with him. The concept wasn’t all that strange. He only had to look at himself as an example. He was completely preoccupied with his son’s well-being all day. But at night the dreams would come. One night, he might sleep well but the next he would wake up in a cold sweat, with a feeling of real anguish. The feeling of loss. A prison. In his dreams he was the innocent suspect who lost his job and family. When he woke up it cost him a lot of effort to shake off the feelings of anguish. The nightmares were so real. Next to Niels’s health and safety, it had been his greatest concern. Apparently he wasn’t over it yet. But he knew he was innocent, and after they left, they had never heard from the Italian or Dutch authorities again. The chance that they still considered him to be a serious suspect was small.
    But still, the rational thoughts couldn’t drive away the bad feelings. The nightmares continued and