Petra Weiland

Petra Weiland is 34 and a senior auditor at the firm Hollmann & Rieck, where she has worked since leaving university. She was born in Hanover, the daughter of a mathematics teacher and a pharmacist, studied accounting in Mannheim and passed the professional qualification exam on her first attempt, a fact she mentions once and never again. She has been on the Lumexa case for three years and knows the company's balance sheet better than her own garden.

She lives in a small apartment in Frankfurt, near the train station, with a big table where stacks of folders sit in date order, a shelf organized by color and an Italian coffee maker she uses three times a day. She travels for work almost every month and packs her suitcase in fifteen minutes. The neighbors say they have never seen her receive visitors, and she answers that her schedule leaves no room.

She has dark blond hair in a tight bun, an angular face, light freckles, thin black-framed glasses and the dark circles of someone who stayed up all night. She wears a charcoal blazer over a white blouse, a visitor badge hanging from her neck and a thick folder of documents under her arm, which she rarely lets go of. She is rigorous, dry, speaks in numbers and visibly gets irritated by any imprecision, even from someone who only wants to be kind.

About the case, her account is that of an exact technician: for the first time she asked the banks directly for confirmation, without going through the trusteetrustee A person or firm that holds and manages money or assets on behalf of someone else, under a legal agreement., and got the answer at two in the morning. Her firm has audited Lumexa for eleven years, and she repeats that until yesterday the numbers added up, and that this is what keeps her awake. She answers questions as if reading a trial balance, without pause and without adjective.

Petra knows that an auditor who got the diagnosis wrong loses more than her job. When the detective asks whether she signed the balance sheet knowing it was a lie, she says she refused to sign and that this is why the building stopped. It may be the indignation of a professional who did her duty. It may be that of someone weighing every sentence so as not to say too much. The detective will have to decide which.