The Body on the Beach

by Anna Johannsen

  ‘And I bet you’re right,’ Lena said, starting the engine.

  Quarter of an hour later, they were standing outside a three-storey apartment building. There was no answer to the buzzer, so Lena tried the other four on the panel. Eventually, a female voice replied, and Lena said, ‘Lorenzen, police. Will you open the door, please?’

  An elderly lady of around seventy met them in the stairwell. ‘Police? Do you have any ID?’

  ‘Right here, Frau Benzen.’

  The elderly lady studied Lena’s police pass. ‘The name sounds familiar,’ she said.

  ‘That’s because you were my German teacher in primary school.’

  Frau Benzen beamed at Lena. ‘Well I never! And here you are now with the police. I always thought you’d end up doing something with languages – you had such a knack, but look just how wrong I was. I expect this isn’t a social call?’

  ‘No, I’m afraid not. We need to speak with our colleague, Sergeant Reimers. He lives on the floor above you.’

  ‘Yes, he does. But Herr Reimers isn’t home at the moment. He dropped by with his key earlier on, because I always water his plants when he’s away and empty his letterbox so it doesn’t clog up.’

  ‘Did he say how long he’ll be away for?’

  ‘He said he didn’t know yet – work, apparently, and he might be gone a few weeks. He took a big suitcase when he left the house. I’m really sorry you came all the way for nothing.’

  ‘Can’t be helped, Frau Benzen.’ Lena gave her a card. ‘Would you please call me if Herr Reimers comes back in the next few days?’

  ‘Of course, Lena. What a lovely surprise to see you again after all these years.’

  Lena said goodbye to her old teacher and then she and Johann left the house.

  ‘Shall we get him tracked down?’ asked Johann.

  ‘On what grounds? I’m guessing he’ll call in sick and send in a medical certificate from some fancy clinic far away – burn-out or God knows what – and the doctor in charge won’t allow us to talk to him.’ Lena called the only number they had for Reimers, but it went straight to voicemail. She slammed her hand on the steering wheel in frustration. ‘Dammit. They got him out of the way.’

  ‘Nothing we can do in that case, I guess,’ Johann said. ‘We’ll have to wait for the medical certificate.’

  ‘Yep, the bird has flown.’

  ‘Herbert Bergendorf next?’

  ‘He’s slippery as an eel. What are we going to accuse him of? Talking to a policeman?’ Lena started the engine.

  ‘Is there any actual point in following that lead? Sure, Reimers has got something going on with the guy, but does it have anything to do with Bohlen’s death? Seems like two unrelated matters to me. We could get someone else to look into Bergendorf.’

  Lena turned the engine back off. ‘“Seems like” – you may well have picked the right words there. We still don’t know where Bohlen headed after he went to the supermarket or who he was meeting. If he was killed by a slow-acting poison, Bergendorf could be our man.’

  ‘But then he lied to his chatroom buddies.’

  ‘Well, he was running Bohlen for the group. What if Bohlen threatened to expose Bergendorf, and Bergendorf was afraid of his business partners? They don’t strike me as the kind of people to muck around. So then he decided to take matters into his own hands.’

  ‘Too many “might haves” for me,’ Johann said. ‘I think the other leads are a little more solid. Practically every woman at the children’s home has a motive.’

  ‘Don’t worry, we’ll keep on top of those too.’ Lena started the engine again and drove off. ‘Let’s go and visit Herr Bergendorf.’

  ‘Someone’s got plenty of dough,’ Johann commented as they pulled up outside Bergendorf’s house. They got out of the car, rang the bell and waited for over a minute before the owner opened the door.

  ‘More questions, DI Lorenzen? And you even brought a colleague along this time.’

  Lena introduced Johann. ‘Do you have a moment?’

  ‘Of course. My schedule isn’t so busy these days, since my retirement. Please, come on in.’ He stepped aside and waited for Lena and Johann to enter. ‘We can sit in the library again. Can I offer you a coffee or tea this time?’

  ‘No, thanks,’ Lena said, walking ahead.

  Herbert Bergendorf waited for the two detectives to take their seats before sitting down himself. ‘How can I be of assistance?’

  ‘We checked the phone records for the evening of the twenty-ninth of May and your number came up.’

  ‘Quite likely. I enjoy talking on the phone.’

  ‘Do you recall the conversation?’

  ‘What time was this exactly?’

  Lena looked at Johann, who was already leafing through his faithful notebook. At last he said, ‘It was nine minutes past eleven. The connection lasted seven minutes.’

  ‘That’s more than two weeks ago now. I’m afraid I don’t remember. As I said, I enjoy chats on the phone.’

  Johann cleared his throat. ‘Excuse me, Herr Bergendorf. May I just use your bathroom?’

  ‘Of course. Second door on the right.’

  Once Johann was out of the room, Herbert Bergendorf turned back to Lena. ‘Do you have any further questions?’

  ‘I’d rather wait for my colleague, if you don’t mind.’

  ‘No problem. Are you sure I can’t get you something to drink?’

  ‘I heard you’re a great supporter of institutions and charities on behalf of children and young people – residential children’s homes in particular,’ Lena said without replying to his question.

  ‘DI Lorenzen, I’ve been in retirement for over three years now. My bank offered financial support to a multitude of projects, no doubt including a good number in the youth sector.’

  ‘Oh, I must have got the wrong end of the stick: I’d got the distinct impression that you’d been personally involved.’ Johann returned to the library. ‘OK, let’s continue. On the twenty-ninth of May, Herr Bohlen had two . . . let’s call them appointments, but we don’t know who with.’

  ‘I told you before that I last saw Herr Bohlen at least four weeks ago.’

  ‘Yes, I know. But now we have a witness who claims to have seen you with Herr Bohlen on that very day.’

  For the first time, Herbert Bergendorf seemed irritated. He swallowed and took a deep breath. ‘A witness? And who’s that supposed to be? Whoever it is, they’re wrong.’

  ‘So you didn’t meet with Herr Bohlen that day?’ asked Lena.

  ‘No, as I already told you. Who’s this witness supposed to be?’

  ‘I’m sure you understand we can’t discuss the details of our investigation, but we believe our witness is one hundred per cent reliable.’

  ‘You can believe all you like, but that doesn’t change the fact that your witness made a mistake.’

  Studying Herbert Bergendorf’s every move and twitch, Lena felt certain that he was properly rattled. His eyes jumped from her to Johann and then back again, and his fingers thrummed on the desk.

  ‘Will that be all?’ he asked, rising to his feet.

  Lena and Johann followed suit. ‘For the meantime, yes. Please make sure we can get hold of you over the next few days. We may have more questions. We’re only at the very start of our investigation.’

  There was no reply from Herbert Bergendorf. The two detectives nodded in farewell and left the house. Once inside the car, Johann held up a small ziplock bag. ‘This might tell us more,’ he said, jiggling the hair in the bag. ‘Although we can’t use this officially either.’

  ‘Would you look at that? The boy is learning,’ Lena said with a smirk.

  ‘Did your mole in Flensburg not tell you my nickname?’

  ‘My mole? That’s a bit strong. But yes, my associate in Flensburg did tell me a thing or two about you. But don’t worry, they’ve called me worse.’

  Johann grinned. ‘I can imagine.’

  ‘Watch it – very th
in ice.’

  Johann was about to reply when his phone buzzed. He checked the display. ‘Could be an email about the homes Florian Müller was put in as a child.’ He opened the email and nodded. ‘Bullseye, but I need to double-check this against the list on my laptop.’

  ‘What now?’ asked Johann after he’d compared the lists back at the house. Shortly after Florian Müller was separated from his sister, he’d been placed in a home near Osnabrück – where Hein Bohlen was serving as deputy manager.

  ‘Does the home still exist?’ asked Lena.

  Johann searched online and soon found that the home had closed ten years ago. An article from the archive of a local newspaper in Osnabrück suggested there’d been irregularities.

  ‘Irregularities,’ Johann muttered. ‘Is that what you call it?’

  ‘We need to find out more. I suggest you go to Osnabrück and do a bit of digging. I’ll notify DSU Warnke right now so he can tell our colleagues in Lower Saxony that you’re on your way.’

  ‘OK!’ Johann picked up the ferry timetable. ‘If you take me over to Wittdün now, I’ll be in Osnabrück by tonight and back here by tomorrow afternoon. I’ll drop the hair sample in at the station in Husum on the way and ask them to send it off to Flensburg right away. With a bit of luck, we’ll have a result the day after tomorrow.’

  Lena grabbed the car keys. ‘Sounds good.’

  Lena returned to Norddorf early in the afternoon, dropped the car at the house and walked to the Strandhalle restaurant. She grabbed a bite to eat and hired a beach chair close to the water, then settled in with her laptop and the case files.

  She’d called Warnke on her drive back from Wittdün and asked him to inform the Osnabrück police station about Johann’s forthcoming visit.

  The tide was rising, the sun had been out since noon and temperatures were just above twenty degrees. Lena sank back in the beach chair and closed her eyes, replaying her conversation with Warnke in her head.

  ‘You’d stand a better chance if you could actually find a witness who saw Bergendorf with Bohlen at the time in question,’ he’d replied to Lena’s query about getting a search warrant for Bergendorf’s house. She hadn’t told him about the Dark Web chat or about her suspicion regarding child abuse. ‘You’re going to have to find another way,’ he’d said. ‘Bearing in mind these people hire the best lawyers, they’ll make sure we won’t be able to use any evidence you’ve come by off the record.’

  Warnke had never spoken so openly with her before and Lena understood more and more why he’d sent her to Amrum rather than anyone else. For some reason, her unconventional methods seemed to suit him just fine in this case, not to mention the fact that she was willing to take greater risks than her colleagues.

  When she’d asked him how far she could rely on him if push came to shove, he’d paused for a long moment before replying, ‘I’ll do everything in my power, but it might not be enough.’

  Had Hein Bohlen really been poisoned? Had the Institute for Tropical Medicine in Hamburg genuinely been charged with identifying a mysterious poison? Or was it all staged, an act designed to gain time? Did Bohlen die a natural death after all? Were they committing a huge injustice in suspecting the women at the home? Could it be coincidence that Florian Müller had lived at the same home Hein Bohlen had worked at? The circumstances surrounding Anna Bauer’s sudden resignation suggested it wasn’t. Perhaps they needed to rethink the whole case: that there was no poisoning. If it was indeed murder, it had been done in some other way that didn’t presuppose experience with handling poisons. Lena reached for her phone and called Luise Stahnke in Forensics.

  ‘Lena, hi. Still on the island?’

  ‘Hi, Luise. Yes, and it looks like I’ll be here for a while yet.’

  ‘What do you want to know?’

  Lena smiled. The pathologist in Kiel knew her better than to think she’d called for a chat. ‘I’ve gone off the poison theory.’

  ‘Hear, hear.’

  ‘But if it’s still murder, I need a different method. Is there any conceivable way someone might have given him something that caused the heart attack a few hours later? The man was known to have a heart condition, after all.’ Lena listed the medications Hein Bohlen had been taking.

  ‘Yes, they’re all typically prescribed in such a case. To answer your question, it’s possible in theory, but something like that is hard to come by and usually fast-acting. The dosage would have to be measured precisely for that person. Any doctors or pharmacists among your suspects?’

  ‘Not at this stage.’

  ‘Then I’d put this theory way at the bottom of your list.’

  ‘What would your advice be to a potential killer going down this route?’

  ‘To find a way to drop the beta blockers. Gradually, not all at once, as that would bring on immediate complications and the murderer would be in danger of being discovered right away. Blood pressure would slowly rise, and if the shit hit the fan – say if the victim got massively upset or stressed out, for example – you’d get your heart attack and it’d look completely natural. Still, it’d be the most unlikely way to finish someone off I’ve ever come across. But let’s assume for a moment someone actually put this crazy idea into practice, was your victim under a lot of pressure? Did he blow his top easily?’

  ‘Yes, basically he’d be just the right type for such a murder. I’d wondered before if someone might have swapped his pills, but I can’t see how anyone could produce fake blister packs with the original name and label of the medication.’

  ‘I agree – seems practically impossible unless they have contacts with someone in the criminal underworld who happens to produce fake meds, including precisely the one the murderer needs. I’m sorry I can’t be of more help, but you did ask . . .’

  ‘I know, Luise. I needed your honest opinion.’

  ‘So to recap, your victim was under a lot of stress?’

  ‘Good question. He definitely changed in the weeks leading up to his death. Almost everyone we interviewed said so. He took out a shedload of cash from his account and we don’t know who or what for, but if my suspicions are correct, he stood to lose everything he’d been working for. The trouble is, I just can’t prove it.’

  ‘In that case, he may not have needed his medication to be tampered with to have a heart attack, which means no murder and no killer.’

  ‘That thought had crossed my mind, though there is evidence pointing to the contrary. Either way, you’ve helped me lots.’

  ‘Any time! Call me when you’re back in Kiel. We haven’t had a proper girls’ night out in ages.’

  Lena laughed. ‘Great, but only if we’ve got the next day off, or I might lose my job over alcohol abuse and you’ll miss some decisive clue in the hunt for your next villain.’

  ‘OK, why don’t we make it a Friday then. Call me?’

  Lena promised to be in touch as soon as she was back in the city and hung up.

  19

  Lena read carefully through every file and all of Johann’s detailed reports. She couldn’t shake off the sense that she was missing something – that some vital clue lay right there in front of her eyes and she simply wasn’t seeing it. Some crucial point that would move the whole investigation forward.

  She couldn’t find anything in the files. It must be something she’d come across on the margins of their investigation, or possibly entirely beyond the scope of the investigation itself. She closed the folder and her laptop.

  Johann had texted half an hour ago to say he was nearly in Osnabrück and had arranged to meet with a retired detective that evening.

  Lena called her aunt.

  ‘Hello, deern,’ the elderly lady said. ‘How are you?’

  ‘Hi, Beke. I’m not sure if I can make it today.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it. I imagine your job is keeping you on your toes.’

  ‘My colleague’s away until tomorrow. How about I take you out for breakfast in the morning?’

  ‘That s
ounds wonderful.’

  ‘Is eight too early?’

  ‘Child, I get up at six every day. Why should eight be too early?’

  ‘I’m sorry, Beke, I wasn’t thinking.’ Lena’s phone buzzed to show there was a call waiting. ‘I have to go now, Beke. Someone’s trying to call me. I’ll pick you up in the morning.’ She hung up and took the other call.

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Oh, hi, Erck. Take a guess!’ She held the phone up so he could hear the wind and the waves.

  ‘Sounds like you’ve invested in one of those gorgeous beach chairs. Got room for one more?’

  ‘If I just shift my laptop and papers . . .’

  ‘I’ll be there in ten,’ he said and hung up.

  ‘Well, that’s the end of my quiet evening,’ Lena muttered, curling into a corner. She’d brought a blanket from the house and now wrapped herself up in it. She’d been pushing thoughts of Erck aside all day, but now she was lost in the memories of last night. She’d enjoyed lying in his strong arms once more, listening to his deep voice and the beating of his heart. Had she really thought Erck would drop it after this single night together? She knew how persistent he could be when he wanted something. Maybe last night had been a fresh start rather than the long-overdue farewell?

  ‘What are you thinking about?’

  Lena opened her eyes to find Erck in front of her, a broad smile on his face and two steaming paper cups in his hands. ‘Beach chair service. Café latte, my lady?’ He sat down beside her and handed her a cup. ‘Freshly made.’

  ‘My hero! Thank you so much.’

  ‘That’s what you used to call me years ago. Remember?’

  ‘Did you think I’d forgotten about our time together?’

  He took a sip from his coffee. ‘No idea what I thought, really. I tried to block it out, in a way. It was the only way for me to cope with it.’

  ‘With it?’

  He sighed. ‘With the loss,’ he said at last. Then he added softly, ‘That’s how it was for me – as if you’d died. At least then I could have mourned you.’

  ‘And what do we do now?’

  ‘You tell me.’