“Anyone following us?” Cate asked, struggling to keep Draco’s pace.
“Not that I could tell, but I’m not sticking around to let them catch up.”
For the next ten minutes, Draco guided them on a zigzagging path through the streets.
When Cate thought she couldn’t go any further, Draco finally slowed and led her through a hidden gate into a private garden.
“Why are we stopping here?” she asked.
“I spotted this gate yesterday. As far as I can tell, there were no cameras pointing at the gate, and from what I can see now, there aren’t any inside.” He led her through an ivy-clad arch to find that the garden was much larger than it appeared from the gate. At the far end was the back of the ruins of an old church or monastery. The grounds weren’t completely overgrown, indicating someone had been maintaining them recently. City lights reflected off the low-hanging clouds, lighting their path through the trees, bushes and arbors.
In one corner, a tree rose high over a stone wall. A wooden bench stood in the shadows beneath.
Cate sank onto the bench, leaving enough room for Draco to drop down beside her.
“Hopefully, we’re not being recorded here.” Draco turned until his knee touched hers. “Based on your attempt to follow him, I take it Brunner didn’t give you the name he said he would.”
Cate’s lips pressed into a tight line. “No, he didn’t.” She told him everything Brunner had said. “I think he was about to tell me the name of the foreign partner when he spotted whoever scared him.”
Draco frowned. “He thinks Calloway is dead?”
“No,” Cate said. “He thinks that, if he’s dead, it would not have been his wife, but the partner Calloway cheated.” She paused. “Although I didn’t get the name he was going to share, I didn’t come away empty-handed.” She uncurled her hand. “He pressed this into my palm before he ran and said, Remember one-five-seven.”
Draco activated the light on his cell phone and shone it down on a flat brass key with a pattern of notches. “A key?”
“To what?” Cate shook her head.
Draco took the key, turned it over, and studied it for a moment. “It’s a key to a safe deposit box. When he told you to remember one-five-seven, he was giving you the box number.”
“Do you think the box is in Brunner’s bank?” Cate asked.
“Probably, or he would’ve told you the name of another bank.”
Recalling how white Brunner’s face had turned, Cate shook her head. “Unless he was more worried about saving his own skin than filling me in on the details.”
“At least he owned up to the existence and the management of the account. Tomorrow, we should track him down and get him to tell us the rest of the story.”
Cate nodded, tired and dispirited. “In the meantime, we should call it a night.” She pushed to her feet, shoved the key into her pocket, and sighed. “We were so close. Just one more minute, and he’d have given me the name of the other partner.”
Draco slipped an arm around her waist as they walked back to the gate and left the garden.
They didn’t arrive back at Hotel Bieri until after eleven o’clock.
Draco was reaching for the doorknob when his cell phone chirped. He dug it out of his pocket and frowned down at the screen. “It’s Hammer.” He looked up, his gaze meeting Cate’s.
A chill slid down the back of her neck. “What happened?”
“Dmytro has a routine that tracks 117 calls to the Kantonspolizei. Someone placed a call about a body floating in the Limmat River.”
Cate’s eyes narrowed, her immediate thought going to Marcus Calloway. “Do they know who it was?”
Draco nodded, his jaw tightening. “Based on the wallet they found in his pocket, they identified him as Stefan Brunner.”
Cate gasped. “Brunner?” She shook her head from side to side, her brow knitting. “Did they determine the cause of death?”
Draco frowned down at the text message. “The investigating officer is calling it suicide.”
A cold, sick lump settled in the pit of Cate’s belly. “No way. He had too much to live for with a wife and two kids.”