The Body on the Beach

by Anna Johannsen

  ‘The intent to kill was definitely there, though. Now we just need to get hold of her. No luck in locating her phone yet?’

  ‘No, but I’m in constant touch with the expert at the CID. The moment she switches on her phone we’ll know where she is – or at least where her phone is. The CSI will be on the first ferry in the morning to check the rooms over again. We can’t do anything more for the moment.’

  ‘Do you think she’s still on Amrum?’

  ‘I don’t know. Why didn’t she leave the island before? She could have quit, called in sick, whatever. Why hang around and wait for Bohlen’s death to be investigated? She’d achieved her goal.’

  ‘Hmm, you’re right. It does seem odd.’

  ‘Unless she’s not done. She wanted to punish Hein Bohlen for what happened to her brother. I think we can assume with reasonable certainty that Florian was sexually abused as a boy. Bearing that in mind, along with the chatroom transcript, I reckon we’re dealing with a child-trafficking ring.’

  ‘Which means Herbert Bergendorf is in danger – if Isabel Müller found out about him, that is.’

  Lena stood up. ‘You’re right. Let’s go.’ She grabbed her gun from the table.

  Outside, Johann headed towards his car.

  ‘Let’s go together,’ said Lena, crossing to her Passat.

  ‘I’ll be right there. I’m just getting something.’

  Climbing in next to Lena, he placed two bulletproof vests on the back seat. ‘You never know.’

  Meanwhile, Lena had put on the blue lights, switching the siren on once they reached the main road to warn other traffic and turning it off a little before Bergendorf’s house. All seemed quiet from the outside. They bent low as they ran towards the building. Lena listened at the door and shook her head after a few seconds.

  ‘Doorbell?’ whispered Johann.

  ‘It’d warn her if she’s inside.’

  Lena’s phone vibrated. A call. She picked up and listened, then hung up. ‘They located her phone. She’s right here.’

  Johann said nothing but handed Lena the second vest. He’d already put his on.

  Lena gestured to the right. ‘We’ll go around the back. We might see her through a window.’

  Johann nodded and followed her. The first window appeared to belong to the guest bathroom. Lena ducked forward to check, then leaned back again. ‘Nothing,’ she whispered and started to inch her way along, sticking close to the wall. Slowly, they made their way to the rear of the property, without finding any sign of life. Unlike the front of the house, which had been kept in Frisian style with small lattice windows, the living area had been modernised with huge floor-to-ceiling windows. The curtains were drawn and the detectives were unable to see inside.

  ‘How long for a special unit to get here?’ asked Johann.

  ‘Depends if there’s a helicopter available. An hour at least, probably more.’

  ‘What do we do?’

  Frantically, Lena ran over options for getting into the house. ‘The guest bathroom. I have a glass cutter in the car.’ Seeing the look on Johann’s face, she added, ‘I confiscated it a couple of weeks ago during a house search.’

  ‘Oh, OK. Worth a try.’

  Back at the front of the house, Lena scurried to her car, fetched the glass cutter from the boot and returned to the bathroom window. Carefully, she cut a hole in both panes of the double-glazing and gingerly reached inside to release the window catches. Climbing in with Johann’s assistance, she realised she wouldn’t have managed without him. Lena tiptoed to the door of the bathroom and peered out into the hallway. Everything seemed quiet. After listening a few seconds longer, she crept to the front door and tried the handle to let Johann in, but the door was locked with no key in sight. Lena texted Johann and asked him to call in the two island constables for support. She started moving quietly down the hallway, pausing to listen at each doorway. Finally, she heard something by the library and pressed her ear to the door, holding her breath. An aggressive female voice was barking out brief commands inside the room. Lena texted Johann again to say that she’d be sending him a message every three minutes from now on and set the timer on her phone as a reminder. Finally, with her gun in her right hand, she pressed down gently on the handle of the library door with her left. Feeling no resistance, she shoved the door open with her shoulder, yelling, ‘Police!’

  Sizing up the situation in an instant, she saw Herbert Bergendorf seated, his hands and feet taped to the chair, eyes wide with fear, beads of sweat on his brow. Next to him stood Isabel Müller with a long kitchen knife in her hand. The moment Lena entered the library, she held the knife against Bergendorf’s throat.

  ‘Stay calm,’ Lena said, her eyes fixed on the hand with the knife so she could fire a shot at Isabel Müller if necessary.

  ‘Get out!’ the young woman shouted hysterically.

  ‘We can talk about this, Frau Müller.’

  ‘Like hell we can! Point your gun at this filthy pig instead so he opens his mouth.’

  ‘What do you want from him?’

  ‘To tell the truth. The whole truth about him and his dirty friends who rape little boys.’

  ‘Has he confessed?’

  Lena noticed the horror in Herbert Bergendorf’s eyes when the meaning of her words sank in.

  ‘Yes. Disgusting details from years of abusing innocent children.’

  ‘Children like your brother, Florian.’

  Isabel Müller swallowed and Lena saw her grip on the knife slacken, but the woman’s focus returned a moment later. ‘And so many more,’ Isabel said, punching Bergendorf in the head with her left hand. ‘Hear that, you filthy pig? How many little souls did you destroy?’ She hit him again, screaming, ‘How many?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Bergendorf whimpered. His breathing was shallow, his face contorted in fear.

  ‘How many?’

  ‘A hundred or more. A little more.’

  ‘Frau Müller, I’ve heard the confession of this monster now. I stand as your witness. Now let him go so we can arrest him, along with the rest of his so-called friends.’

  ‘You’d like that, wouldn’t you, slut? I know exactly how it goes. I’ll go down while the real crooks get away with it. I want names. I want to know everything now. Where it happened, when, how?’ She punched Bergendorf again and he cried out.

  Lena heard a noise behind her. Johann must have made it through the window. She only hoped he was a good shot and her plan wouldn’t end in disaster. ‘Frau Müller, I’m putting down my gun. See?’ She crouched down slowly, placed her gun on the ground and rose gently back up to her feet before raising her hands in the air. ‘I’m unarmed.’

  ‘Push it away from you,’ Isabel Müller hissed.

  Lena slid her gun aside with her foot as far as she could. ‘OK, now we can talk. You’ve done nothing wrong so far. On the contrary. You’ve done us a great favour and dragged a confession out of this bastard – we’d never have done it with our limited means. Once I’ve got him behind bars, it’s only a matter of time before he tells me every single name and detail. Trust me, I’ve got years of experience and I’ve solved all my cases so far and caught every crook.’

  ‘I don’t believe any of it. You’re lying.’

  ‘No, Frau Müller. Why do you think I’m here then? How did I know to find you here? He’s been on my radar for quite a while. I soon realised what your boss had going on. You know, I’m the CID’s expert in cases involving sexual abuse of children. I’ve put a whole heap of monsters like him behind bars and I’m truly grateful you helped me get to the bottom of this case.’

  ‘If what you’re saying is true, then why didn’t you say something before? You never said a word all this time!’

  ‘We can’t, Frau Müller. I’d lose my job if I did that. You do understand that, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes,’ the other woman said awkwardly. ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘You can rest assured we’re watching this gang. Each and every me
mber is going behind bars for many years – life, probably.’

  As the detective continued to speak soothingly with his assailant, Herbert Bergendorf gradually seemed to realise what they were saying. Lena could tell it was dawning on him that he and his associates might in fact now be brought to justice.

  ‘What the hell are you talking about?’ he burst out. ‘I’m the victim here. Do something, for Christ’s sake!’

  Isabel Müller flinched and Lena feared she’d use the knife.

  ‘You miserable piece of shit!’ she screamed at him. ‘You, a victim? You’ve murdered hundreds of little souls! You don’t deserve to live.’ She raised the knife.

  ‘Don’t do it,’ pleaded Lena, ‘or we’ll never find out who the others are.’

  ‘I don’t care,’ hissed Isabel Müller.

  Seeing that Isabel was about to bring down the knife, Lena yelled, ‘Now, Johann!’ and dropped to the floor. Johann appeared in the doorway, found his bearings in an instant and pointed his gun at Isabel Müller. Practically in the same second, Lena heard the shot ring out.

  21

  Lena and Johann watched as the air ambulance took off towards Husum.

  ‘How far to the hospital?’ asked Johann.

  ‘By air? Around fifteen minutes at the most.’

  ‘Do you think they’ll make it?’

  ‘Not sure about him. I don’t think you need to worry about her, though. She didn’t seem too badly wounded.’

  ‘I didn’t have much time to think it through,’ he said, stricken with guilt.

  ‘Listen, you did everything right. That idiot should have kept his mouth shut, then he’d have been fine.’

  ‘How on earth did she still manage to stab him? I don’t get it.’

  Lena had been trying to reassure Johann ever since the emergency doctor had taken Isabel Müller under his care. After the initial shock, doubts had started to creep in, making him wonder if he could have acted differently: waited another second, shot her higher up the shoulder or in the arm, perhaps.

  ‘You couldn’t have done any better. Your shot was brilliant. Honestly, I don’t know if I could have acted as fast as you did.’

  ‘Do they have our number?’ asked Johann for the second time.

  Herbert Bergendorf had been taken to Husum on the first flight out. Lena had requested two constables from the local police there to keep a guard on his and Isabel’s rooms at the hospital. Isabel’s knife had left Bergendorf critically injured and Lena had struggled to stem the bleeding. Dr Neumann, who arrived a few minutes later, had bound the wound before handing Bergendorf over to the emergency doctor. Meanwhile, Isabel Müller was stabilised sufficiently to be taken off the island on a second flight.

  ‘Yes, they do,’ Lena said. ‘You OK to catch a ride back to the house with one of the constables? I need to speak with Warnke.’

  Johann nodded. ‘Yes, sure.’

  Lena pulled out her phone and watched as her young colleague walked over to one of the police cars.

  ‘Lena, hello,’ said Enno Eilts. ‘Any news?’

  Lena told her former boss about the events of the last few hours.

  When she had finished, he said, ‘Not the nicest thing to do, letting you walk straight into it.’

  ‘I think that must have been Warnke’s plan all along. Sending me here to make a lot of noise to frighten the gang into action. I assume there never was any poison and the Institute for Tropical Medicine in Hamburg was never likely to find any.’

  ‘Yes, I agree. When they found nothing suspicious during the post-mortem, Warnke thought up another way to utilise the situation. He must have had his eye on Bohlen for a while.’

  ‘Well, his plan worked out, I guess – partially, at least. I can only prove that the medication was swapped, though, and we don’t even know yet what Isabel Müller’s pills are. Hardly enough for a murder charge. I’m guessing Bergendorf put pressure on Bohlen and they met up on the day of his death – that has to be what finally triggered the heart attack. I’m hoping the DNA on Bohlen’s clothes will confirm that.’

  ‘Will Bergendorf live?’

  ‘The doctor couldn’t or wouldn’t say, but judging by what he said to the local GP here, it’s not looking good.’

  ‘Case closed?’

  Lena said nothing.

  ‘That’s a no then,’ Enno Eilts said. ‘Any idea how you might catch this gang of perverts?’

  ‘My expert tells me it’s impossible to track someone’s activities on the Dark Web, but I do know how to get into the chatroom. I could call a meeting.’

  ‘You want to set a trap?’

  ‘Yes, but I can only do so if I’m granted official access to Bergendorf’s laptop.’

  ‘Hmm, tricky. He is the victim here.’

  ‘And if I do it anyway?’

  ‘You’d be taking a huge risk,’ Enno Eilts replied. ‘Is it really worth it?’

  ‘It’s high time someone put a stop to these people. They’ve been at it for at least ten years now, from the sound of it.’

  ‘Warnke won’t back you up if the going gets rough.’

  ‘I know, but I don’t see any other way.’

  ‘Be careful, won’t you?’ Enno Eilts said at last, asking her to keep in touch.

  Next on Lena’s list of calls was Leon. ‘I’ve got his laptop. Can you call in a meeting? I’d be “Berg”.’

  ‘And where is this guy?’

  ‘On his way to hospital. He’s got other things to worry about right now.’

  ‘Great! When do you want it to happen?’

  ‘I’ve got a few things to sort out first. I’ll get back to you the moment I can.’

  Leon hung up and Lena called Warnke.

  ‘So what’s the situation?’

  Lena filled him in on what had happened. ‘Bergendorf and Isabel Müller are in hospital at Husum. Bergendorf’s fighting for his life but Frau Müller is stable.’

  ‘Dammit.’

  ‘I found incriminating evidence against Bergendorf in his house, though.’

  ‘Found?’

  ‘Lying openly on the table: explicit photographs of children. Very explicit. I need a search warrant for his house.’

  ‘Are you absolutely certain? You know we’ll have to present the evidence. Bergendorf is—’

  ‘I realise that, DSU Warnke, but we’re running out of time here.’

  Warnke said nothing.

  ‘I think it might be a good idea to get the warrant via Flensburg,’ Lena said. ‘Evidently, Bergendorf’s got friends in Kiel.’

  ‘Give me an hour.’

  ‘We also need to issue an information blackout regarding this afternoon’s events.’

  ‘That’s more difficult.’

  ‘I need forty-eight hours and an armed response unit on Amrum. Tomorrow lunchtime should be early enough.’

  ‘What’s your plan?’

  Lena took her time before replying. ‘Put it this way, you chose to keep one or two details about the case from me. You had your reasons. I trusted you and everything’s worked out OK so far. Now it’s your turn to trust me. I also have my reasons.’

  ‘How many men?’

  ‘Six. I’m in command.’

  ‘Don’t let me down!’ said Warnke and hung up.

  Lena breathed deeply before ringing Leon back. ‘We’re good to go. I can be online in ten minutes to call the gentlemen to a meeting.’

  ‘Time?’

  ‘Eight o’clock tonight. I’ll log on fifteen minutes early so you can show me the ropes.’

  ‘Just to get this straight, we’re actually dealing directly with these filthy bastards who rape little children?’

  ‘It looks that way, Leon.’

  ‘Later,’ he said and hung up.

  Lena couldn’t recall any form of goodbye from Leon in the past. He clearly harboured an intense personal hatred for people who viewed children as livestock and destroyed them mentally and physically. Whatever the case, he seemed intensely motivated.
>
  Lena picked up Bergendorf’s laptop and walked over to one of the two young local constables. She’d previously asked him to do as neat a job as possible on the window in the guest bathroom. He’d picked up a pane of glass of the right dimensions from the glazier, removed the remains of the damaged double-glazing, and used putty to fix the new pane in position. If you didn’t look too closely, it was hard to tell it apart from the other windows.

  ‘Great work, Constable. That’s all for today, thank you. And once again, not a word to anyone about this afternoon.’

  Lena had also sworn Dr Neumann to secrecy, telling him it was of the utmost importance for the success of her investigation.

  The young man nodded. ‘I know.’

  ‘To anyone – not even your nearest and dearest. Got it?’

  ‘Sergeant Reimers . . . ?’ he asked hesitantly. ‘I . . . We’ve been wondering what . . . ?’

  ‘I know, and I promise you’ll be fully informed in due course. It’s not possible just yet.’

  Lena locked the door and waited for the young policeman to drive off, then climbed into the Passat and headed back to the house on the beach.

  Johann was sitting in the kitchen with a glass of water, staring into space. Lena joined him.

  ‘So that was that then, I guess,’ Johann said after a while.

  ‘Was it your first time?’

  He nodded.

  ‘You did everything right. If Bergendorf had kept his trap shut, Isabel would have let him go. I had her all buttered up. It was my only chance.’

  ‘Any news from the hospital yet?’

  ‘I’ve just spoken with one of the local uniforms – they’re both in surgery still.’ Lena decided to add a little white lie. ‘The doctor said it’s looking good for Isabel, though.’

  ‘And Bergendorf?’

  ‘Might take a while, but it’s not looking too bad now.’

  ‘Are we leaving today? I guess the case is pretty much closed. We can finish off the rest from home, can’t we? The internal investigations department will take care of Reimers. Isabel Müller will be off to court, and—’