Kai Brandt

Kai Brandt is 23 and has worked for four weeks as a night-shift security guard at the museum. He was born in Berlin, the son of a bus driver and a supermarket cashier, dropped out of technical school in his second year and went through bicycle deliveries, a beverage depot and the door of a nightclub before putting on the navy-blue uniform. He says the job is good and quiet, Monday to Saturday, with Sundays off.

He lives in a rented room on the third floor of a brick building, a few train stops from the museum, with a mattress on the floor, a television too big for the wall and a row of white sneakers lined up along the baseboard like trophies. The fridge has little food and a lot of energy drink cans, which he takes in his backpack to get through the small hours. He says that one day he will live in a place with a balcony and a view of something.

He has brown hair shaved at the sides and longer on top, a sparse beard and the fair skin of someone who sleeps by day. He wears the navy-blue security uniform and new white sneakers, always clean, and walks with his hands in his pockets. Far too friendly, he talks fast, calls everyone boss and answers with details nobody asked for. He smiles at the wrong moments, as if the silence bothered him more than the question.

About the museum, his account is that of a newcomer: nobody steals a coin, he says, and then corrects himself, nobody used to. He says that officially only the security team stays at night, but that the light in the curator's office is on when he arrives, at ten, and still on when he leaves, at six. If the detective asks about the coin, he answers that if he knew where it was, he would be in Ibiza. With the museum next to the viaduct and the small hours empty, no one can say for certain where each person was at that hour.

Kai knows that the newest guard on the team is the first to be looked at when something goes missing. When the detective accuses him of opening the window for the thieves, the smile disappears: he says he is paid by the hour to watch a camera, not to open windows, and that without proof the detective is talking to the uniform, not to him. It may be the irritation of a young man who becomes a suspect just for being the last to arrive. It may be someone who talks too much so as to leave no room for another question. The detective will have to decide which.