The Cure is Murder – Chapter 1

There was something naughtily exciting about breaking the rules, especially since they were just written on signs. 

Do not swim alone. Do not swim before 6am.

Breaking them could hardly be seen as a crime. 

It was so peaceful swimming in the dark, floating, almost going to sleep in the cool water. I closed my eyes, ducked my head under, came up and did some languid strokes before turning onto my back to float in the dark greying into day. Just ten more minutes in the pool that had welcomed me every day of the first week of the three I was to spend in the medical spa of Waidhofen/Ybbs, Lower Austria. 

We were six at table and I was lucky for the five in my meal group were a good mix though some were more withdrawn than others. Understandably, we didn´t talk about our ailments right off the mark, despite being at Spa Waldfriede because of them. I clicked straight away with two at my table. Trude. Trude would smile a secret smile whenever she went for seconds at lunch. Dessert only, of course. And Reinhold. Reinhold was a policeman. He offered to take Trude and me in his car to see the military museum in Rosenau, the next village. It was a privately run project covering 1914 to 1945, he said, and I was curious to see what they had on show. I´d done some research on Waidhofen, but one thing on Wikipedia puzzled me. It seems that right up to 2011 Adolf Hitler was still deemed a Citizen of Honour. And this was only revoked after a fuss was made about a similar citizenship of another neighbouring village, Amstetten. Remember Amstetten? The village where Fritzl kept his daughter captive in the family cellar? Ah, I knew that would ring a bell. It did, after all make international news. 

But back to my tablemates. There were two other women, Beate and Ellie, both blonde, a bit stiff, in their 50s, with Beate a bit botoxed judging by her chipmunk cheeks. There was also a tall portly man with a longish scar beneath his right eye. His name was Oskar, and we´d chatted a bit in the breakfast queue.  He seemed secretive and was surprised to hear that I was a foreigner, saying I should watch out and that times were changing. I didn´t understand but reckoned I still had a couple more weeks to find out. My tummy was rumbling, a sure sign that the lights would soon go on. And they did. 

It was 6 o´clock. Time to get out. I opened my eyes. Without my glasses I could only see the fuzzy outline of two figures at the side of the pool. I waved. A figure waved back. That must be Trude in her dark red one-piece. And then she screamed.

I hoisted myself up the stepladder out of the pool and grabbed my towel and glasses from the deckchair. The young man, who helped bring out the floats for our water exercises, was yelling into his mobile phone. I caught the word, Hilfe! Trude was pointing at the water. I turned to see what she was pointing at. The dark outline of a large male body lay inert at the bottom of the deep end. It was Oskar.