“Hello,” said the tall man as he peered around the door to the classroom. “Are you Cecelia Luth?”
“Why, yes I am,” said Luth. “May I ask who wants to know?”
“My name is Bejerot,” he replied and stepped into the room, “but not the famous one. Are you familiar with the name?”
“I really don’t know who you might mean,” Luth responded warily.
“You don’t know Nils Bejerot?”
“Should I?” Luth said, “The name seems familiar, but I can’t place it.”
“He coined the phrase ‘Stockholm Syndrome’,” he said. He pulled a photograph from his jacket, “after the attempted robbery of the Kreditbanken in Sweden. Jan-Erik Olsson held four people hostage, demanding the release of his jailed friend, Clark Olofsson. They refused to testify against their captor.”
“Ah yes,” Luth said, “I recall now. What does that have to do with me?”
“Well, Miss Luth,” said Bejerot, “I have evidence it involved you. That you were one of the putative hostages.”
He held out the photograph. She remembered it being taken by a photographer as the police led out the robbers and their captives.
“That’s you behind Enmark, isn’t it?” he pointed at a dark-haired woman. “The funny thing is, all the reports were of four hostages, yet here in this photograph we have five.”
“There is a similarity,” she said, “but this woman is older than me. She would be about sixty now and I am nothing like that age.”
“That’s the other thing,” Bejerot said as he reached into his pocket and pulled out another photograph, holding it out for Luth to see. “This is Clark Olofsson being led to trial in Belgium. He’s in the centre. On his right is a woman described as his fiancée, Rita Bran. It’s the same woman, except she hasn’t aged a day, despite it being over twenty years later.”
Luth stroked the photograph. She loved Olofsson with all her heart, but like all the others he grew old while she carried on ageless.
“It seems you have the makings of a case,” she said, and turned to face the blackboard, “how would you like to proceed?”
“Oh, that’s easy, Miss Luth,” he said. “I know Olofsson squirrelled away millions, but none of it was ever found. I believe you took it and I want a share. Fifty-fifty would be nice, I’m not greedy.”
She turned to him, her eyes ablaze, pointed teeth growing over her bottom lip, “I’m afraid I can’t do that, Mr Bejerot, you see there is a reason I don’t age and there is a reason people do what I ask without question.”
She was on him before he drew his gun, and it was all over in seconds.
Luth picked up his body and dragged it onto the school roof, where she hid it behind some ducting. It would be months before they found it, by which time she would be far, far away, her secret safe.