5th October, Missing Person Case
"So, you were working in the evening of 23rd of June?"
"Yes, ma'am," the young-ish man answered respectfully.
"Do you remember seeing this man?" I asked, giving him a picture of Hans to look at.
"Yes, I do. He was with a big group, Arandelle Corp., stuck out like a sore thumb," the man answered without hesitation.
"What do you mean?"
"Everyone in that group were so jolly, drinking and laughing. He seemed to be on a guard, hardly drinking any. I remember even offering him a drink on a house, to loosen him up a little. But he only looked at his phone, declined politely, and said he should leave soon. He had a ring on his finger, so I asked didn't his wife give him a free evening. He corrected me that he only had a fiancée, and that it was 'something like that'. Soon after he left."
This was on point of Mr. Larsson's version of the evening, but completely different than Hans' version. I still had to try to figure out about the woman, even though it seemed like at least their meeting was made up. "Did you see him talking to any woman, during the evening."
"No, ma'am. Of course, I didn't follow him the whole time, but he hardly seemed to interact with anyone. It was clear that the bar wasn't really his scene."
"Do you remember seeing any woman with dark brown hair that evening?"
"There probably were some, but I don't remember any specific woman with that description."
"I understand." I almost lost my hope, before remembering one thing. "Do you have video tapes from that night?"
"Umm. We have a camera outside at the front. I can't get those tapes, but I can call my boss and ask about them, if you want."
"I would love that." I smiled warmly at him. Maybe I could finally find something useful.
I had looked the tapes twice now. Nothing useful. The group went in at 22:45, Hans came out at 23:30. He called someone immediately after stepping out of the bar, stood outside talking with the person for two minutes before hailing a taxi and ending the call. Then he leaves, nothing special. No brunette women going in or coming out relatively near the time Hans spend inside the bar.
The only logical conclusion was that either Hans lied about how he met the woman, or the whole affair was made up. I was starting to lean towards the latter. In a way, the affair was genius scape goat. Omitting that information at first doesn't seem too suspicious, because people often lie about things like that. But it would also explain his multiple lies and the break up with Anna, and why she left so suddenly, and why no one looked for her.
So, if the affair wasn't true, what truth was vile enough to be wanted to bury under infidelity? It felt like every time I took a step closer the truth, I found myself taking two steps back. Hans was lying and lying and then lying some more, but I couldn't figure out what he was hiding. Did he do something to Anna, how about Elsa? He knew something, but what was it?
I was pulled out of my thoughts when the phone rang. I answered.
"Hello, detective." It was the head of the Police department. This was better to be good news. "We tracked down Anna's phone and credit card information. Her phone was last picked up by the phone pole at the side of the city, semi-rural area, in 17th of July. She has zero activity on her credit cards after Oaken's and no suspiciously large withdrawals. It doesn't seem like she intended to disappear, we are changing this to homicide investigation. We will arrest Hans Westergård as the suspect, you get to interrogate him for real now, detective."
"Thank you, Chief," I politely thanked him, voice void of any emotion. I ended the call.
I had very mixed feelings about this news. This would be groundbreaking for my investigation, and as a detective, I was enthralled. But this was also my cousin, my happy, bubbly cousin-Anna. This meant she was most likely dead, murdered. And now my job was to figure out if her fiancé killed her. And even worse, if her sister was involved in her disappearance.
"Oh, my dear cousins, what did you two get yourselves into?"