by Inge Löhnig
Heckeroth had enjoyed exercising power over women all his life. He had tied them with scarves, ropes, ribbons, ties, straps and belts. Had all those women submitted to that voluntarily?
A beep from his mobile made Dühnfort jump. Probably Agnes had left a voicemail.
Drizzle had set in. Dühnfort started the car and switched on the wipers. Greasy dirt and water spread across the windscreen. Before pulling out of his parking spot, he had to pause and let another vehicle pass. It was Bertram’s orangey-red Porsche. He sped off, exhaust roaring, well over the limit in the traffic-calmed zone.
*
Caroline Heckeroth bit into a piece of confectionery shaped like a maple leaf. The bitter dark-chocolate shell crunched and the creamy filling melted onto her tongue, not too sweet, not too nutty, with exactly the hint of vanilla that made the taste explode in the mouth. ‘Simply perfect. If that’s not a bestseller, then I don’t know what we’ve done wrong.’
‘And if it’s a success, then that’s down to you.’ Gilles Winterboom, director of sales and marketing at Chocolaterie Jacques Kerity AG, rose from the armchair in Caroline’s office.
Caroline smiled and sat down at her laptop. The idea for an autumn collection had come to her on holiday last year. In the higher-price brackets, especially, there were problems with transportation and storage because of the heat. In any case, on hot days their customers preferred lighter treats, which wouldn’t melt in their shopping bags. When cooler days arrived, however, the sales curve never failed to pick up. Could they not take advantage of the moment with a premium product? Chocolaterie Jacques Kerity’s target demographic celebrated holidays whenever they got the chance. They bought expensive Graskaas cheese and German asparagus, and drank young Beaujolais as soon as it was bottled. Surely they’d buy luxurious autumn pralines too. Conducting a marketing analysis, Caroline had identified enormous potential, getting it past the board despite the opposition of sales manager Claus Henning.
The collection would come onto the market in less than eleven months. Product development was in full swing. By January, the name, packaging and advertising campaign had to be pinned down. If it all came off without a hitch, then Claus Henning had scant chance of becoming Gilles’s successor. True, over the last three years Henning had successfully expanded their branch network, but Gilles’s favourite was clearly Caroline. And that suited her just fine. Her appointment to the board would be an excellent step up on the career ladder. The only possible fly in the ointment, it seemed to Caroline, was the murder of her father. Brand management was very important at Kerity; nothing was allowed to sully its good name. Only last year, the head of HR had been given a golden handshake: his celebrity-whore wife had bared her inflated, near-bursting breasts for some gossip writer’s camera. The picture had ended up on the front page of a tabloid. Choccy Chantal’s Tasty Tits. In the five lines of text that accompanied the photograph, the name Kerity was mentioned. Not a week later, Choccy Chantal’s husband was clearing out his desk.
Caroline felt her shoulders tense. Bertram, that arsehole. If her name was mentioned in the same breath as a murder and her place of work was mentioned, then she could kiss goodbye to her career.
For a moment she was seized by doubt. Perhaps it had been robbery after all. But she didn’t really believe it. Bertram was unscrupulous, he was under pressure and he had a motive. It had to be him. Who else?
She needed a plan. If Bertram was splashed all over the papers for killing their father, her name mustn’t appear. Perhaps she should accept Marc’s proposal after all. How much notice did that sort of thing need? Four weeks? Could she pull it off? Caroline laughed. What a thought! She could hardly abuse Marc’s feelings in that way. And she was never going to marry; she’d taken that decision years ago. Her parents’ marriage was a large part of the reason why.
She massaged one tense shoulder, staring at her laptop. It was displaying a diagram of the budget for one of their product lines. Despite her bereavement, she had delivered the presentation that morning. Ever the professional. Still, Gilles Winterboom, after giving her his condolences, had asked whether she wanted to take any holiday. She’d thanked him for his kind words and explained that work made her happy and stopped her brooding too much. She could hardly tell him that her father’s murder barely upset her – it would have sounded heartless. And while being emotionless made men decent blokes, it would never be forgiven in a woman.
The phone on her desk rang. It was Tanja Wiezorek, her secretary. ‘Reception’s just been on the line. A policewoman is on her way upstairs. Shall I send her straight in?’
‘If she’s good at her job, you won’t be able to stop her. But try anyway – maybe a cup of coffee. Two minutes to catch my breath would be nice.’
She had to decide. Should she tell the policewoman what she feared? The notion of accusing her brother gave her goosebumps. Perhaps she should let herself be guided by Dad’s maxim? A family must stick together. The picture had come in for a few knocks since Mum’s death. Frankly the colours had been fading for a while. Dad had taken up his paintbrush and tried to fix it, but he couldn’t. Personally she wasn’t going to bother. It was his picture, not hers, and she wasn’t about to restore it, not for all the tea in China.
She had never understood why Dad attached such exaggerated importance to the impression his family made. Certainly he’d never been the least bit concerned about what was hidden beneath the surface. Outside swank, inside rank. He’d been neither a loyal husband nor a loving father. Even as a child, Caroline had felt as though he never really noticed her. She’d heard a song once: I’m invisible, other people don’t see me . . . Yes! Exactly! That’s what it had been like. As far as Dad was concerned, only Albert seemed to matter, and he’d really taken Dad’s maxim about the picture-perfect Family Heckeroth to heart. He almost certainly wouldn’t have told the police that Bertram had borrowed more than a hundred thousand euros from them. And still his architectural studio had gone down the pan. It had only become clear to them later that Bertram had fiddled the books when asking for the loan. When they’d confronted him about it, he’d grinned and said he wouldn’t have got the money from them otherwise. The money that, since the divorce, he wasn’t getting from Katja. She must have wasted a fortune on his extravagant lifestyle. And what had she got in return? Caroline shuddered. Then there was all that tax business. Paying it back, plus interest and a fine, came to a hefty sum, all told. On the day of Mum’s funeral, of all days, Bertram had tried to scrounge off their father. Dad had thrown him out and called him a criminal. So much for the picture-perfect Family Heckeroth.
For Christ’s sake! Bertram, that idiot! Why didn’t he just sell the damn house? Then he’d be debt-free. But Caroline knew he couldn’t do it. That house was how he defined himself. How he showed people – himself above all – that he’d made it. It protected him like chain mail. It made him invulnerable to the slings and arrows of real life: rejected designs, cancelled contracts, unsuccessful competition entries, critical articles, sneering colleagues, the bankrupcy business. The house was a symbol of his success and losing it would be a testament to his failure. Apart from a dairy in Bavaria, it was the only thing he’d ever built. If he lost that house . . . Caroline didn’t know what he would do. But there was no point racking her brains over it now: Bertram had already solved his problem.
Suddenly she felt powerless. She closed the laptop and reflected. Her father’s death – murder, actually – hadn’t really hit her yet. Only four weeks after her mother. The whole rigmarole would be repeated. The obituary. Organising a coffin, flowers and music. Eulogy, burial. Relatives, neighbours and friends paying their respects. She’d done all that four weeks ago. At the thought, guilt surfaced.
Mum had believed she had a few months left to order her affairs, but she’d never got round to it. The cancer had worsened, unexpectedly and rapidly, during her final stay in hospital, and within three days she had passed away. Yet, in her final hours, she had made Caroline promise t
o do something. Her face was pale and sunken, the skin stretched like parchment over her forehead and cheekbones. Speaking cost all her strength. It was an effort to understand her. ‘Back of the bottom drawer . . . in my writing bureau. A box . . . a diary . . . and letters . . . burn them. Please . . . promise me.’ Mum had squeezed her hand, and Caroline had reassured her she would fulfil this last request. Mum’s last thoughts had been about that diary. She hadn’t wanted it to end up in Wolfram’s hands, and she probably wouldn’t want Albert to read it either, if he found it going through their father’s things. But after the funeral the next day, when she’d gone to look in the bureau, there was nothing there. She hadn’t kept the deathbed promise she’d made her mother, and she felt guilty. Caroline vowed to find that diary, even if she had to turn the whole apartment upside down.
There was a knock. Tanja Wiezoreck entered. ‘The inspector’s here.’ The woman who followed her made Caroline think of a dessert. Dark cherry eyes, caramel-coloured hair, and skin like foamed milk with a pinch of cinnamon on top.
‘Gina Angelucci,’ the policewoman introduced herself. ‘If coffee’s still on offer,’ she said, turning to Tanja, ‘then I’d love one. Black with two sugars.’
‘Certainly.’ Tanja pulled the door closed behind her.
*
Gina knocked and went into the office. Five o’clock, time for a group catch-up. Dühnfort got up to close the window. A cold wind plucked the colourful leaves from the trees, whirling them down Löwengrube. Pedestrians hurried across the square, holding umbrellas over their stooped heads like shields.
Dühnfort didn’t like autumn. He who is alone shall remain alone, wake, read, write long letters, and wander the streets, uneasy as the scattered leaves. Agnes had a soft spot for poetry. Through her he’d discovered the beauty of poems he’d dismissed during his school years as sentimental rubbish. But that was all she shared with him, apart from his bed, of course. She excluded him from her life. And he didn’t want to grow old alone.
‘Everything OK, Tino?’
He tore himself away from the window and went over to the meeting table in the corner. ‘Of course.’
Gina sat down, tucked a few strands of hair behind her ear, reached for her papers and sorted them into a neat pile. ‘I’ve got a doctor’s appointment tomorrow. I might be a bit late. That’s not a problem, is it?’
‘Of course not.’ He didn’t want to pry, although Gina had seemed tense over the last few days.
‘Just a quick check-up.’ She smiled, but it wasn’t her usual smile. ‘I spoke to Caroline Heckeroth. An iceberg in a Chanel suit. Her father’s death doesn’t seem to have affected her much. On the Monday in question she was in Brussels. Incidentally, she has a doctorate in business management. Seems to run in the family. She had no idea who could have killed her father.’
Alois came in. He’d taken off his jacket. His white shirt and waistcoat looked fresh from the laundry, even at the end of a busy working day. He took his place at the table. ‘Still no sign of Heckeroth’s car. The divers are persevering, but the search team in the woods has finished. Nothing to report. Bank records have come through. Heckeroth’s last withdrawal he made himself: five hundred euros at his usual branch. That was the Thursday before the attack. Since then there’s been no activity on his account, no attempt to take money out of an ATM. The credit card hasn’t been used in months.’
Dühnfort leaned back. His gut instincts didn’t seem to have let him down. ‘Either it was too risky for the perpetrators to use the cards or they only took them so we’d think this was a robbery. What about the key?’
‘It’s not inside the cabin, and, as I said, it’s not in the woods either. Maybe it’s at the bottom of the lake, or they took it with them.’
‘Shall we continue to pursue the robbery theory?’ Alois hooked his thumbs into the pockets of his waistcoat.
‘For the moment it’s not top priority. We’ve got two new leads. Number one: Bertram has debts, and his house is about to be auctioned off. Can you check his alibi?’ Dühnfort gave Alois the information. ‘And take a closer look at him while you’re at it. Number two: I found this in Heckeroth’s apartment.’ Dühnfort put the album on the table.
Alois reached for it, turned it so that Gina could see it too, and began to leaf through the pages. Her lips pursed. Alois whistled softly through his teeth.
‘Heckeroth was tied up,’ said Dühnfort. ‘Maybe it’s a coincidence, maybe not. We should start with the most recent pictures and work backwards. Who are these women? Was Heckeroth violent towards them? Would anyone have reason to come looking for revenge? Bertram thinks his father convinced them to play along. He called him a master manipulator.’
‘They’re all pretty young,’ said Alois, sliding the album across to Gina.
Gina was chewing her bottom lip. Then she pointed at a white coat poking into one of the pictures. ‘Looks like countless receptionists have been immortalised in these.’
Dühnfort examined the photographs. ‘I’m sure Heckeroth’s children can identify some of these women. Did you get the phone records?’
Gina shook her head. ‘Tomorrow.’
‘And all the tenants in his building have been interviewed by now?’
‘All except Mrs Kiendel,’ replied Gina. ‘I haven’t managed to catch her. First she was at work, then probably with her daughter. The girl’s had an accident and she’s in hospital, a neighbour told me.’
‘Fine, that can wait until tomorrow too.’
The phone on Dühnfort’s desk rang. Buchholz was at the other end. He’d found out what caused the head wound. There were minute traces of blood and tissue on the coffee table, one grey hair stuck to them. ‘They belonged to Heckeroth. The man fell.’
*
Half an hour later, Dühnfort was heading home. He was in no mood to eat out, nor did he feel like cooking anything big. Something quick, then. In the food hall at the department store he bought some fresh tagliatelle, a few slices of smoked salmon, frozen spinach and a bar of chocolate for dessert. Black, eighty per cent cocoa.
As he was walking down Sendlinger Straße, it began to rain. Only individual drops at first, but within minutes it was pelting down. Shit. Turning up the collar of his coat, he quickened his pace. At Sendlinger Tor Platz he cut through the Underground station, resurfacing on the other side. Five minutes later he entered his apartment.
He was greeted by silence, as if suddenly cut off from the world. Putting his shopping on the kitchen table, he disappeared into the bathroom to take a hot shower. Then he slipped on fresh clothes and went into the kitchen. The floorboards creaked. In the apartment below, the TV was on. Dühnfort put a Dylan album into the CD player.
Dühnfort liked his apartment, with its view over the old graveyard. A life without the sight of graves overgrown with ivy, headstones gnawed by time and marble angels crumbling to bits was a life he didn’t want to think about. He was actually supposed to have moved out weeks ago, but his landlady’s daughter had changed her plans: she wasn’t going to be studying in Munich after all, opting for a year in America instead. And after that, who knew? He opened the door that led onto the tiny balcony and went outside. It had grown dark. There was always a smattering of lights flickering among the graves, and the wind blew among the trees as if trying to shake the last leaves from their branches. Dühnfort shivered and went back into the kitchen.
Uncorking a bottle of Pinot Grigio, he poured a glass and took a sip. A summer wine, really. But he wanted to resist the autumn somehow. While Bob Dylan sang about unrequited love, Dühnfort boiled water for the pasta, shoved the spinach into the microwave to defrost, and heated cream in a pan. Once the water had come to a boil he threw in the tagliatelle, stirred salt and pepper into the cream, added freshly grated Parmesan and a squirt of lemon juice. Then he cut the smoked salmon into strips, squeezed the spinach dry and tore it up. When the pasta was finished he heaped it onto a plate with the sauce, salmon and spinach. Ten minutes. His kind of fast
food.
He took the plate into the living room and sat down in front of the TV. The news was already over. The weatherman was announcing more showers and lower temperatures. Dühnfort emptied his glass and went into the kitchen to refill it. Not only was he out of shape, he drank too much. The pasta was delicious, the subtle flavour of the spinach and the powerful aromas of the smoked salmon and Parmesan complementing each other perfectly.
Relaxing, Dühnfort leaned back and switched the TV off. The chocolate was in the kitchen; he fetched it, bringing the bottle of wine back with him too.
Twenty-four hours. This time yesterday he’d been standing in Heckeroth’s bathroom. For a whole week nobody had any idea that behind the wooden walls of that seemingly deserted cabin a man was grappling with death. What motive could there be for such a terrible crime? The old man had suffered for days. At first he must have been angry, and probably also frightened. He would have tried to free himself, but the straps were too tight, the leather chafing his skin. The radiator was pressing sharply into his back. It was warm. He got thirsty. He had no idea whether it was day or night, or what time it was. He had nothing to cling to but the hope that somebody would find him before it was too late.
He was a doctor. He knew what was in store for him. First came the thirst, which would soon be excruciating, later the hunger, and then the desperation. He’d tugged at his bonds, he’d cried for help. Hour after hour. Over and over. Day after day. Until resignation finally set in. By the end he’d given up. He no longer wanted to live.
Who was capable of such a thing? How could the killer bear to know what had happened to the old man? Four long days and nights? Why hadn’t he been overcome with compassion or guilt and called the whole thing off?
