Page 78 of The Bookshop of Forbidden Books

“I think so too,” Anna gushed. “Table Four,” she added, beaming, pointing to the one she’d picked out for him.

He obeyed, preparing himself to taste a dish for which he had no appetite. Anna sat down across from him, elbows on the table, her eyes fixed on the clock. She impatiently tapped her fingers on the tablecloth without saying a word. Seven minutes later, a black sedan pulled up and parked in front of the restaurant.

“Hmm, I was wrong. He’s late,” she said under her breath as she rose from her seat.

The inspector pushed open the door and made his way towards Anna. She stood her ground, proud, defiant and unflinching.

“I was with Mitch the night the prosecutor died,” she announced firmly. “You can spread all the rumours you want, investigate anything you want. I won’t change my testimony.”

Ignoring her completely, the inspector brushed past her and sat down at Table Four across from Mitch.

“I owe you an apology. We arrested the guilty party this afternoon.”

* * *

Some cases take months to crack. This one ended up being solved in a day.

“And what a day,” the inspector added, shaking his head like a metronome. His attitude had changed dramatically since the last time he’d seen them.

“This morning, a letter arrived at the station. We don’t normally pay much attention to anonymous tips,” he explained.

“Don’t you?” Mitch asked curtly.

The inspector cleared his throat, looking even more uncomfortable than when he’d arrived. “This one contained some very specific information. Enough to send me straight to the judge’s chambers and acquire an immediate search warrant.”

“What information?” Anna asked cautiously, sitting down between the men.

“It concerned the person who first steered me in your direction, the day after Salinas died,” he said, looking at Mitch. “We found the murder weapon at his residence, buried under a bush in his front garden. The soil was still fresh.”

“A weapon? I thought Salinas was poisoned,” Anna interjected.

“We found a leather pouch tied with cord. Inside were two glass vials and a pipette. It took the lab only an hour to identify the poison, a highly toxic mushroom extract. Six times more lethal than Amanita phalloides, apparently.”

“I never cook with mushrooms.” Anna shuddered. “It’s much too risky. You can never really be sure what you’re bringing home from the market.”

“Salinas didn’t ingest the poison with a meal. It was in a glass of port.”

“Who did it?” Mitch demanded, his voice shaking.

“The odds were against him. In seventy percent of cases, a person is killed by someone close to them. This time, it was his neighbour. A banker.”

“Salinas was killed over some dispute between neighbours?” Anna exclaimed in disbelief.

“In this case, it’s not about why. It’s for whom,” the inspector said grimly.

He turned to Mitch and stopped himself from reaching out to pat his hand in consolation.

“Only sons often have unhealthy relationships with their mothers. It’s not just a stereotype; it happens frequently. And this was certainly the case with the killer. He had some kind of sick, abusive power over his own mother.

“The seeds of the murder were planted years ago. One night, the killer – name’s Rony – surprises his mother coming home late. She tells him she’s joined a book club. The next week, he follows her to a bookshop. Yours, as it turns out. She goes into your shop with around a hundred students. Rony tries to follow, but the shutter goes down and the lights go out. He can’t see anything. So he waits. Two hours later, Madame Ateltow comes out on the arm of a man. Well, Rony doesn’t like that at all.

“The next day, he confronts her. She stands up to him, admits she never loved his father. She probably should’ve kept that bit to herself, because Rony goes over the edge. He decides to put an end to his mother’s relationship, and he can only see one way of doing that: eliminate this book club. You must have been very good friends with Madame Ateltow, because her son finds the key to your bookshop in her apartment, along with the alarm code, which she’s written on the key ring. A very careless thing to do, if you ask me. But that isn’t the problem – well, actually, yes, it is, because one night Rony lets himself into your shop, steals a book that was banned by law at the time, and hands it over to his neighbour, a powerful prosecutor. The case blows up. And you know the rest. You’re convicted and sent to prison. You were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

Mitch sat very still, trying to absorb these revelations. He exchanged a glance with Anna, who smiled warmly at him.

“But why did Rony kill Salinas, all these years later?” he asked the inspector.

“Still because of you,” came the answer.