by Inge Löhnig
She went to answer it. Bertram stood outside. ‘Can I talk to Albert?’
‘He’s not here.’
‘Then I’ll wait for him.’
‘I don’t know when he’s coming back.’
‘I have time.’
But I don’t, she wanted to say.
Bertram pushed past her into the apartment. ‘Sorry about the cabinet. I’ll pay for the damage. Yesterday I had an enquiry about designing a car park.’
For Bertram the world was measured in monetary terms. The notion that some things could not be replaced, like her collection of Murano glass, seemed unfamiliar to him. Besides, an enquiry was not a commission. But Babs was in no mood to fight. ‘Would you like some coffee?’ Once he’d drunk it she’d usher him out.
He stared at her, taken aback. ‘Yes, please.’ He hung up his coat himself. He wore black, as always: corduroys and a jumper. Raindrops glittered on his smooth, bald head. He followed her into the kitchen and sat down at the table, examining the sketches curiously as she fetched the coffee pot from the warming plate and poured a cup.
‘You’re working?’ he asked, as she placed the cup in front of him.
Babs slid the drawing board aside.
‘Nice desk.’ Bertram grinned. ‘Doesn’t your husband let you use his? Still territorial, eh?’
‘Why are you here?’
Bertram shrugged and reached for the cup. ‘You probably all think that Albert’s the only one mourning Dad . . . but I have good memories of him too. Most of them from when we were kids.’ He turned the cup on its saucer. ‘One time we went on a canoe trip together, just him and me. Down the Altmühl. We went paddling and swimming, and by the evening we were ridiculously sunburnt. We grilled potatoes in the campfire, and Dad told stories.’ Bertram took off his glasses, massaged the bridge of his nose and stared absently into his coffee. ‘At least we got through our last conversation without an argument.’ He looked up. Without his glasses, his face was unexpectedly open. ‘On the Sunday before the attack we had a barbecue. I’ll never forget the last thing he said to me. You’re damn right there, sonny. You’re more like me than I realised.’ Bertram laughed. ‘Imagine that. At least he admitted it once, and then . . .’ Bertram stared back into his cup.
‘What exactly did he mean by that?’
‘He disappointed his father. Just like I did.’
‘Oh.’
Bertram pushed the cup away. ‘You were never interested in him. Or did you know that his parents had a fabric shop in Passau that he was supposed to take over? They built it up through hard times and saw it through the war. But Dad was desperate to be a doctor. He and his father actually came to blows over it. After that he moved out and came to Munich. His mother secretly sent him money so that he could study, but he never spoke another word to his father. He did what mattered to him, in other words, just like I did. And that’s what we talked about at the barbecue on Sunday.’
Had Bertram’s eyes really misted? Babs scarcely believed him capable of such emotion.
‘Can I use your loo?’ He stood up.
‘Of course.’ Babs cleared away Bertram’s cup as he went to find the toilet. Then she started unloading the dishwasher, until she heard a beep from the bathroom. The dryer was finished. Going to take out the laundry, she bumped into Bertram in the hall, exiting not the loo but Albert’s study. What was he after in there?
Bertram jumped as if he’d been caught out, and pointed into the room behind him. ‘When I came out of the loo I heard something banging against the window. I thought it was a bird, so I went to look. But there’s nothing on the balcony. I’m probably just hearing things.’ He looked at his watch. ‘I should probably go. I’m sure you’ve got work to do. I’ll track down Albert later.’
Bertram took his coat off the hook, put it on, and thanked her again for the coffee before he left.
*
The wind buffeted the rain down Ettstraße in grey sheets; water ran down the trees along the pavement. Dühnfort hurried into the police station, glad to be out of the wet. He’d been to see Katja Rist. Not because he didn’t trust Alois, but because he didn’t want to overlook anything and preferred to glean his own impressions. Bertram’s ex-wife had confirmed his alibi. ‘I’ve got no reason to protect him. There’s nothing between us, emotional or financial. We’ve made a clean break, going our separate ways.’ Yet a glimmer of doubt remained.
In his office he took off his wet coat and hung it on a peg, then he fetched a mug of coffee and organised a replacement for Gina. He was assigned Sandra Gottwald, an experienced and hard-working investigator.
There was a knock on the door and Alois came in, a small stack of files clamped under his arm. ‘I’ve got the addresses, all but one. Probably Gina’s right, and Rebecca Engelhardt is her professional name. Where is she, anyway?’
‘Gina? She’s picked up a stomach bug. She’ll probably be out of action today and tomorrow.’ Dühnfort didn’t like lying, but Gina had asked him to yesterday. ‘It’s probably a false alarm,’ she’d said. ‘I’d rather not broadcast it. My parents don’t know either. They think I’m at a seminar.’ Their internet search had unearthed plenty of benign bladder tumours whose symptoms were much worse than in Gina’s case. ‘Thanks for covering for me,’ she’d said as she left.
‘Yeah, there’s something going round.’ Alois closed the door behind him. ‘I’ll just update it.’ He pointed at the board with the photographs.
‘Sandra Gottwald’s going to help us. She can phone through Heckeroth’s address book. But first let’s pay these women a visit.’
‘For the time being we can only ask seven. Martina Rucker, the girl in the picture from the seventies, died in a traffic accident a few years ago.’ Alois tapped a picture in the top row.
If today’s interviews produced no relevant leads, they’d have to figure out the identities of the other women. But where to start? There were no addresses in the letters, and they were signed with nicknames. The women identified so far had all been in direct personal or professional contact with the Heckeroths. If revenge was the motive, could the motivating event really lie decades back? Dühnfort couldn’t imagine anyone holding onto a grudge that long.
He went over to the board and examined the photos. Out of thirty-six women, fourteen were bound with one or two belts. Four of the women already identified were among them, including Hannelore Graf, the last receptionist, and Sabine Groß, Caroline’s classmate, whose picture Gina had assigned to 1987, as well as Irene Schönhofer, the baker’s wife, and Sandra Bleylein, a receptionist. That photograph had been taken in Germering, before Heckeroth inherited his uncle’s building and moved his family and practice to Kurfürstenplatz. That information had been given them by Albert.
‘If this murder is an act of revenge, then tying up Heckeroth with belts wasn’t coincidental – they had a symbolic meaning.’ Dühnfort stuck his hands in his pockets and studied the images. The women looked so much alike. With their dark hair and plump figures, even down to their height, they could have been sisters.
‘It could be a coincidence, or a distraction tactic. Has there been anything new from forensics?’ asked Alois.
Dühnfort shook his head. ‘It’ll take a while for the DNA to be analysed. There were no fingerprint matches in the database. The ones they’ve identified so far have all belonged to family members.’
There was another knock at the door, and Sandra Gottwald entered. She was a lean woman with wide-spaced eyes and an angular face. Her permed curls, obstinately frizzy in damp weather, were shot through with a few streaks of grey. She tucked a curl behind her ear. ‘Reinforcements have arrived. What’s happened to Gina?’
‘Stomach bug,’ said Alois.
‘Ugh, hopefully we’ll be spared.’ She closed the door behind her. ‘What’s up?’
Dühnfort explained the case and handed her Heckeroth’s address book, asking her to phone all the numbers. Then he pointed at the evidence board. ‘First, however, we need you
r help interviewing some of these women. We want to know whether Heckeroth coerced them, or possibly even raped them. Maybe there were failed marriages or broken engagements. One of the women might be going through psychological fallout because of the relationship.’
Picking up the files, Alois handed Sandra and Dühnfort two each and kept the remaining three. ‘It’s all in there. Names, addresses, phone numbers and employers’ addresses, where available.’
‘Are there copies of those?’ asked Sandra, pointing at the board. ‘The women we’re interviewing might recognise the others.’
*
Around noon Dühnfort found himself sitting in the conservatory of an end-of-terrace house in the suburb of Waldperlach. Elisabeth van Arpen had taken a seat opposite him – the woman Albert had identified as the daughter of his mother’s best friend. She was forty-one years old, mother of two daughters aged eleven and thirteen, and married to a Dutch computer scientist who worked for Siemens. Wearing a pink jumper, pearls and jeans, she was still as plump as she’d been at eighteen, her dark hair swept back from her face with a wide hairband.
She’d reacted with surprise to Dühnfort’s call. Of course she knew Wolfram Eberhard Heckeroth, and she’d heard about the murder from her mother. She hadn’t seen him in ages, though. ‘What picture?’ she’d asked, before answering the question herself. ‘Oh my God, not that one. Surely he didn’t keep it?’
Now she was sitting opposite Dühnfort on a rattan sofa beneath a ceiling-height yucca palm, explaining that Heckeroth had neither raped nor coerced her. She’d been in love with him. He was good-looking, and had turned her head. ‘I was pretty silly back then – I certainly wouldn’t want to be eighteen again. And I had all sorts of hang-ups. My lovely sister, slim and pretty as a model, used to tell me I was so fat and ugly I’d never get a man.’ Elisabeth van Arpen frowned. ‘So I was easy prey for a man like Wolfram. I was flattered when he told me he thought I was pretty and clever, when he flirted with me and took me out. He had a fancy sports car. My sister’s boyfriend, a spotty physics student, drove a Beetle. Wolfram invited me to expensive restaurants. My sister got visits to McDonald’s. It was just a shame I wasn’t allowed to gloat about it. Although it made our “great love” that much more romantic.’ Elisabeth van Arpen rolled her eyes. ‘As I said, I was stupid and naïve.’
‘So you voluntarily agreed to this photograph?’ Dühnfort pointed at the picture, which she’d turned face-down on the table.
‘Depends what you mean by “voluntarily”. At first Wolfram was considerate, but he was soon pushing me in a particular direction.’ A faint flush spread up her neck and into her face. ‘Is it really necessary for me to tell you this?’
‘Would you rather continue the interview with a female officer?’
Her curls bobbed as she shook her head energetically. ‘No. If I have to do it, I’d rather get it over with.’ She took a breath. ‘So. Wolfram pestered me about it. He told me it would be a great experience . . . that most women dreamed about . . . submitting, giving a man power over their body. At some point I gave in. But I found the whole thing repulsive, disgusting. I felt like dirt afterwards.’ Her hands had twisted together in her lap, and her eyes were fixed rigidly on the back of the photograph. ‘I only let him do it once. That’s when he took the photo. Shortly after that I ended the “relationship”. That’s all there is to say about it.’
‘So he never physically forced you?’
‘He wanted me to do it of my own accord. He was persuasive. It took some time, but he got me there in the end. I couldn’t imagine him getting violent. The power of the word, that was his thing. That’s what appealed to him.’
‘Do you know any other women he had relationships with?’ Dühnfort handed her the copies of the photographs.
She flicked through the pages. ‘So many.’ She shook her head in amazement. ‘I’m sorry, no.’
Dühnfort thanked her and took his leave. As he was getting into his car a light mizzle began to fall, although the clouds were gappy and blue sky peeped through the grey. He picked up the file with the information about Sabine Groß. She was unmarried, out of work and living on the dole. Dühnfort started the car and drove to Giesing, a once dodgy neighbourhood that had blossomed in recent years. The dreary postwar buildings had been renovated one by one, and the former railway station had become a cultural centre. Enormous supermarkets had mushroomed, yet small shops were holding their own.
Dühnfort pulled up outside a four-storey seventies block split into about twenty flats. The façade was newly renovated, painted pastel blue. He rang the bell and entered the building when the door buzzed. It was dark in the stairwell. Flyers advertising a pizza chain lay strewn across the floor. The smell of wet dog, old frying fat and cheesy trainers crept into his nose and mouth. There was no lift, so he climbed the stairs to the fourth floor. A little out of breath, he arrived at her door, which was ajar. He knocked.
‘Just leave the box in the corridor.’
Dühnfort stepped inside and looked around. A woman in a blue tracksuit and trainers was sitting smoking at the open window. Her feet were resting on the sill, and she was rocking back and forth in her chair.
‘Ms Groß?’
She turned round, the chair nearly slipping from underneath her. She caught it just in time, and her feet crashed onto the floor. ‘Bloody hell. Who are you?’
Dühnfort introduced himself. ‘It’s about an old man who was found dead in his holiday cabin a few days ago. You knew him. Wolfram Eberhard Heckeroth.’
She got up, stubbed out the cigarette in a half-empty yoghurt pot and offered Dühnfort a seat at the kitchen table. A loaf of bread, already cut open, lay beside a knife on a board. Next to it were an empty bottle of white wine, Müller Thurgau, and a half-full wine glass with a cigarette butt floating in it.
‘Haven’t got round to cleaning up.’ Sabine Groß put the glass in the sink, where the dishes were piling up. ‘So the old sod who’s just popped his clogs at a holiday cabin was Heckeroth, eh?’ She sat down at the table. ‘What’s it got to do with me? Haven’t seen the bastard in twenty years.’
‘You were at university with his daughter. Was that how you knew him?’
Sabine Groß fished a packet of cigarettes out of her pocket, took one and lit it. ‘She invited me round a few times. A fine little lady from a fancy family.’
‘What kind of relationship did you have with Heckeroth? Were you his lover?’
She drew on her cigarette and surveyed him. ‘You could call it that.’
‘What would you call it?’
‘No idea.’ She picked a shred of tobacco from her tongue and smeared it on the table. Then she gathered up her thin hair and tossed it over her shoulder. The woman who sat in front of him had precious little in common with the plump girl in the photo. Her figure was emaciated, her face sunken. Maybe she had a problem with drugs or alcohol. ‘Look, what do you want from me? It’s ancient history. The prosecutor dropped the case.’
‘What case?’
‘Surely you know that already. The process was stopped at my request.’
‘So you reported him and then retracted the accusation?’
She leaned forward and rested her arms on the table. ‘You must have read the file. Otherwise why would you suspect me? I know you do. That’s why you’re here. Turning the victim into a criminal. You’re all bastards, the lot of you.’ She spoke calmly, but her eyes were narrow, her voice soft. The cigarette trembled in her hand.
‘We found this photo of you. Caroline Heckeroth recognised you.’ He placed the copy on the table.
She picked it up, and suddenly all colour drained from her face. ‘Where did you find this?’
‘In Heckeroth’s apartment.’
‘So there was a picture! The whole time! And they let that piece of shit get away scot-free and go on his merry way.’ Her voice faded, becoming a hoarse whisper. Hatred glowed in her dark eyes. ‘Because you tossers closed ranks, because women are just pi
eces of meat. And now you’re trying to pin this on me.’ She dropped the photo. Quick as lightning, her hand grabbed the breadknife and shot towards him. The shock of adrenaline jerked Dühnfort to his feet and sent the chair crashing to the floor; he snatched at the knife, catching the blade. Pain seared between his thumb and forefinger. He gripped her wrist and held it tightly as he moved, panting, round to her side of the table.
‘Fucking wanker!’
He twisted her arm behind her back until she let go of the knife. It skittered underneath the stove. As he grappled her to the floor, he got his mobile out of his pocket. Blood dripped onto the linoleum. She kicked and screamed. He made a call – Berentz picked up.
‘Get a squad car over here, pronto.’ He gave Berentz the address.
Finally she gave up and stopped struggling, lying still on the floor.
His heart raced. He was breathing hard. He was getting too old for this sort of thing. When he turned round, he realised there was a gun pointed straight at him.
‘Let her go, then get up slowly. And no funny stuff.’ The woman with the gun had the build of an athlete. She wore tracksuit bottoms, a black tank top and an unzipped hoodie.
‘Alex. Don’t, or you’ll end up in the shit too. He’s a cop, and there are more on the way.’ Sabine Groß tried again to wriggle out of his grip, while Alex slowly lowered the gun.
Dühnfort heard footsteps in the stairwell. Officers. ‘Put the gun on the table, or they’ll misunderstand and this might not end well.’
‘Ugh, fuck.’ Alex let the gun slip slowly onto the table. Dühnfort picked it up and tucked it into his waistband. ‘You’re under arrest. Both of you.’
*
Two hours later Dühnfort ended the interview with Alexandra Schimoni and Sabine Groß. He still wanted to speak to Groß’s doctor, and until then she’d have to wait in a cell. First, however, he was going to buy a sandwich in a nearby deli.
The cut was held closed with a Steristrip. It ached and throbbed, but he tried to ignore it. ‘That needs stitches,’ the pharmacist had said when he’d gone to buy antiseptic and a bandage. But Dühnfort had no time for that. ‘Then at least get a proper plaster,’ she’d replied, offering to patch him up. ‘What happened?’
