Page 74 of Hidden in Memories
“I don’t have to give you a damned thing,” Daniel replies.
“Is it the same killer? Could the police have foreseen this?”
“Enough!”
Daniel is getting angry. Hanna knows the warning signs—the deep frown, the compressed lips.
“Do you really have no idea what’s happened?” the journalist almost shouts in his face.
“No comment.”
Daniel moves to the side to go around him, but the journalist steps sideways so that he is still blocking Daniel’s route.
“Shouldn’t the hotel have been closed after the first murder?”
He persists, ignoring the clear signals that he needs to stop. This could go badly wrong. Hanna realizes that Daniel is going to punch the guy if she doesn’t do something.
“Get out of my fucking way!” he bellows. “Can’t you see we’re working?”
He is about to lash out when Hanna steps between the two of them. She feels as if she is undermining her colleague, he ought to be perfectly capable of handling the situation himself, but she has been here before, she has seen him lose his temper in other contexts.
Although it’s been a while.
“Call our press office,” she snaps. “If you don’t stop this right now, I’ll have you removed by our colleagues.”
Somehow she manages to edge Daniel away from the journalist before he explodes. They stand outside the main door while he pulls himself together.
“Thanks,” he says after several long, silent seconds.
“What happened?” Hanna has to ask. “I thought you were going to hit him.”
Daniel looks both tense and resigned. She would like to give him a hug, but contents herself with a cautious pat on the arm.
“I can’t really explain it. That guy, he was so disrespectful. There’s a dead woman, strangled, only a few hundred yards away. It just sickened me.”
Hanna understands—she is shaken too. But she has a feeling there is more to tell. He is holding something back, something that seems even more difficult to talk about.
“He ...” Daniel pushes his hands deep into his pockets without looking at her. “He reminds me of my father.”
“Your father?”
She tries to catch his eye. Daniel has never said much about his father, even though they know each other pretty well by this stage. Of course she knows that his mother died in a road traffic accident, but his father is no more than a vague figure who disappeared from the picture when Daniel was little.
“There’s something about the way he acts.” Daniel sounds tortured. “It’s weird, the anger came from nowhere. I couldn’t control it.” He kicks out at a pile of snow, sending snow in all directions. “Shit!”
They ought to go inside and get on with the job, but Hanna can see he needs time to calm down first.
“I thought I was more professional than this! A year in therapy, and I haven’t learned a fucking thing!”
Hanna can’t hide her surprise.
“You’ve been seeing a psychologist? Why didn’t you say anything?” She tries to sound sympathetic, but she is shocked. She had no idea.
Daniel’s jaw has never been so tense. Beneath the tightly controlled surface, she senses powerful emotions that he is trying to keep in check. He never wants to appear weak, and yet she catches a glimpse of the unhappy child inside the man she cares about so deeply.
A short distance away they hear the hum of the tow lift, followed by a crack when a skier lets go of the loop, which flies up in the air.
“I guess I was embarrassed,” Daniel says eventually. He speaks quietly, his face turned away.
