Your Perfect Year(14)
“You must be feeling lousy,” she said.
“Lousier than lousy,” he replied, again attempting a crooked grin. This time he succeeded. “So you’d better split before I come to my senses enough to realize what I’m offering.”
“Okay. I’ll give you a call when we’ve finished,” Hannah replied hurriedly.
“No, I’ll call you. Maybe I’ll sleep right through till tomorrow morning. I want to get back on my feet as soon as possible.”
Again, Hannah felt a brief flash of mistrust. Why didn’t he want her to call him? Did he actually have something to hide?
That was a stupid thought. One look at his pale face was enough to tell her that her boyfriend had nothing up his sleeve but a long sleep to help him recover.
Hannah quickly leaned down to him and kissed him goodbye. A second later she was out the door, sprinting down the stairs. Only twenty minutes left. She hoped Simon’s pride and joy would show her what it had under the hood.
7
Jonathan
Tuesday, January 2, 11:27 a.m.
Mr. Jonathan N. Grief
By email
Thank you for your New Year greetings. We hope you have had a good start to the new year.
We always welcome feedback from observant readers—among whom we have counted you for many years—pointing out the occasional error that sometimes escapes our notice in the daily, often hectic routines of the editorial office.
Regarding your query about the bag and diary, we are sorry to tell you that we don’t have a section for such matters in our newspaper. That said, you would of course be welcome to take out an ad at the usual rates. I am attaching the contact information for the advertising department, along with a price list. Personally, I would recommend you take the bag and diary to your local police station. I’m sure the relevant details will be easy to find.
Yours sincerely,
Gunda Probst
Reader Services, Hamburg News
Well, well. So the Hamburg News didn’t have a section “for such matters”? As he cast his eyes briefly over the clumsy wording, wondering about the best way to improve it, Jonathan’s fingers were itching to fire off a reply to that stupid woman, Gunda Probst, and ask her what exactly the slogan “By Hamburg people for Hamburg people” was supposed to mean if they weren’t prepared to concern themselves with the kind of situation he had described?
But he let it be and closed his email program, silently fuming. Take it to the police! What kind of dunce did this Gunda Blunder take him for? As if he hadn’t thought of that himself!
He snapped his laptop shut and gazed at the Filofax lying next to it on his desk. He opened the diary again.
That handwriting! Nicolino.
A thought occurred to him. An incredible thought. Outrageous, even.
He shut the diary again. Crazy! Why would his mother have hung the bag with the Filofax on his bicycle? After all those years of complete radio silence? It would mean that not only was she in Hamburg but that she must have been watching her son and lying in wait for him.
No, no. Completely crazy.
Jonathan N. Grief jerked his office chair back and stood. He had more important things to do. His CEO, Markus Bode, was expecting him at noon for a meeting.
Bode’s secretary had phoned that morning and made this “urgent appointment” with him. Jonathan wondered what could be so pressing—he had been in the office for the Christmas party less than four weeks ago. What on earth could have happened since then, with the holidays in between?
Punctual as ever, Jonathan entered the late nineteenth-century white villa by the Elbe, which had been in his family for generations and still housed Grief & Son Books, with its seventy or so employees.
This was where his great-great-grandfather Ernest Grief had founded the publishing house a century and a half ago. As always, when Jonathan climbed the sweeping blue-carpeted staircase to the second floor, he felt a combination of awe, pride, and unease wash over him.
This feeling usually reached its peak on the top landing, where the oil portraits of his ancestors hung on the wall: Ernest Grief; his great-grandfather Heinrich; his grandmother Emilie (they had been hoping for an “Emil” in the delivery room but proved flexible when the surprise arrived); and his father, Wolfgang. When he passed through the glass door on the left-hand side to the publisher’s (therefore, his) offices, he always felt a weight lifting from his shoulders.
“Happy New Year, Mr. Grief!” His secretary, Renate Krug, turned from the rubber tree she was busy dusting to greet him. Putting down her duster, she came to him and held out her right hand, raising her left to adjust her glasses on her nose before deftly smoothing her dark-brown suit and primping her snow-white hair. This was piled up in a neat bun, as usual, and even Renate Krug’s age—she had long since passed sixty—didn’t change the fact that she was an exceptionally beautiful woman.
“And the same to you, Frau Krug!” Jonathan replied with his friendliest smile, shaking her hand and giving a nod before disappearing into his office with a muttered “Send Herr Bode in.”
“I’ll let him know,” she called. Jonathan heard her pick up the receiver of the telephone on her desk.
Renate Krug had worked for his father for as long as he could remember—and that was quite some time. After his father retired, Jonathan had kept her on as his personal assistant, occasionally feeling a touch of remorse that she hardly had anything to do under him. Although she was now free to go on Friday afternoons and had a whole day off on Mondays, her twenty-eight-hour week was filled with about fifteen hours of actual work, if that.