by Inge Löhnig
Dennis shook his head. ‘Just who can climb the highest,’ he said after a while and then shot a glance at his mother. ‘On the monkey bars in the garden.’
* * *
Dühnfort walked along Dorfstrasse to the village square, following the same route that Jakob had taken. Apart from the bakery, all the shops were closed at that hour in the morning, but that hadn’t been the case on the previous afternoon. And yet no one had seen the boy.
Cudheri-von-Isen-Strasse was at the bottom of the square, just before the point where Dorfstrasse’s two lanes merged together again. Dühnfort walked along it. There were farms on both sides, their barn roofs projecting out over tractors, manure-spreaders and other agricultural equipment. Dühnfort couldn’t identify a single spot along the route where in his opinion it would be possible for a child to disappear unnoticed on a weekday when people were out and about. He rang the bell beside the gate, which was locked. Gabi Sonnberger opened the front door, crossed the yard and let him in.
The striking blue eyes that had fascinated Dühnfort the day before were now dull and encircled by deep shadows. Individual strands hung out of her carelessly tied ponytail. She looked behind him, as if she expected to see Jakob there. Then she looked searchingly into his eyes.
‘I’m sorry,’ Dühnfort said.
‘Come in.’
He followed her into the kitchen. The telephone rang. She picked it up. A few seconds later, she hung up without a word. ‘These hounds from the press. It’s been like this since yesterday evening,’ she said. ‘But we aren’t talking to them. Beppo and I have decided not to. Please sit down.’ The breakfast table had been laid for three but remained untouched.
‘Is your husband in now?’ Dühnfort asked.
‘He’s in the barn, but he’ll be here soon.’ She sat down across from him.
‘Mrs Sonnberger, I have to ask . . . It’s standard police procedure . . .’
‘You want an alibi from me,’ she said.
He nodded.
‘Tuesday and Thursday we opened the farm shop from three to five. My husband helped me handle all the customers yesterday. It was pretty busy.’
‘I didn’t see a shop anywhere,’ Dühnfort said.
‘ “Shop” might be a bit of an exaggeration. It’s just a room next to the cowshed.’
‘There must be customers who can confirm you were there?’
She nodded and gave him a list of names. Dühnfort jotted them down.
‘Oh, before I forget: I made a list.’ She stood up and left the room.
What kind of list? Dühnfort wondered and looked around. A child’s drawing was hanging above the sideboard – a nest full of colourful Easter eggs. Jakob must have drawn it. Gabi Sonnberger returned with a folder.
‘Here.’ She sat down again, pulled some pages out of the folder and put them on the table. They were pictures of the individual articles of clothing that Jakob had been wearing. She’d cut them out of the mail-order catalogues that she’d bought them from. Trainers, a red Pokémon jumper, a T-shirt with a picture of Bob the Builder. Jakob was also wearing jeans from C&A, but she didn’t have a picture of them.
She handed him the pieces of paper. ‘And he also had Lulli with him, his teddy bear. He always has his bear with him. He’s not large, maybe twenty centimetres, and pretty well loved. He’s missing an eye.’
‘You’ve put in a lot of effort here. I’m sure it will help us with our investigations,’ Dühnfort said.
‘At least it was something I could do. It’s driving me mad not being able to do anything. That’s just how I am.’ She shrugged. ‘Waiting patiently has never been my strong point.’
So, the initial paralysing shock had been followed by the need to do something. ‘Jakob has never run away from home before? Maybe in anger or after a fight?’ Dühnfort asked.
She shook her head. ‘Jakob obeys our rules. He knows there are certain things he must never do alone – like go to the lake or climb a tree. And he’s absolutely not allowed to go into the woods by himself. He would never go anywhere with someone he doesn’t know. Never. He’s quite timid.’
‘Because you forbid him from doing everything,’ a voice said from the hallway. A broad-shouldered blond-haired man stepped into the kitchen. He was wearing wellies, blue work trousers and a white T-shirt. He reached out to shake hands with Dühnfort. ‘Sonnberger. So, you’re looking for our boy.’ Jakob’s father looked him over appraisingly.
‘He’s only five,’ Gabi Sonnberger said.
Beppo Sonnberger’s gaze drifted over to his wife.
‘When I was five, I roamed around by myself and no one made an issue of it.’
‘That was almost thirty years ago. Times have changed,’ she replied. ‘You know that . . .’ She grabbed a roll and began to crumble it into small pieces.
Sonnberger sat down next to his wife and put his arm round her shoulders.
‘Jakob is fine, I can sense it, Gabi. You can always sense whether or not your own child is all right, can’t you?’ He looked at Dühnfort as if he were expecting an answer.
Dühnfort didn’t know and began to wonder if he ever would. ‘I have to rely on the facts,’ he finally replied. ‘We’re talking to everyone in the village. Someone must have noticed something. Then we’ll take it from there.’
He saw Gabi Sonnberger’s jawbone working, noticed her swallowing.
‘I never told you how rich I am.’ She looked him in the eyes. ‘I have a few million euros.’
‘Excuse me?’ Adrenaline shot through Dühnfort’s veins. Suddenly, he was wide awake. ‘Why are you only telling me this now?’
‘It only occurred to me last night that it might be about money.’
‘My wife came into the money before we were married. It came from her brother,’ Beppo Sonnberger explained. ‘But we don’t touch it because it wasn’t earned honestly.’
Not earned honestly. What was Sonnberger trying to say? Dühnfort wondered.
‘I’ll tell you where it came from.’ Sonnberger leaned back and told him how, when the construction boom had hit Munich and the surrounding areas, many villages had become commuter towns, making famers into millionaires. The farmers in Mariaseeon had also wanted a part of this and had sold their land. But Mariaseeon remained a farming community.
‘The farmers in Mariaseeon are clever. They pocketed their millions but never held up their end of the bargain. They wanted their village to remain as it was. And above all, they didn’t want any strangers coming here.’
‘How did they manage that?’ Dühnfort asked.
‘They were crafty,’ Sonnberger said. ‘It was essentially very easy. Authority over local planning and construction lies with the local council. Around here, the council is made up of farmers and that’s how they managed to get their hands on the money pot.’ Sonnberger explained how they chose a site for a commuter town, staged an architectural competition using tax revenues and then presented the winning models in the town hall. Big developers were invited along. They anticipated the usual large profits and purchased the land. But even many years on, the zoning area had still not been legally approved. Sonnberger leaned forward. ‘The town council is constantly rescheduling and shifting things around and they still haven’t even got through the planning stages. If you ask me, they never will.’
‘Your brother-in-law was part of this?’ Dühnfort asked.
‘No,’ Gabi Sonnberger answered. Her family was never involved in local politics. But the Münches’ land was within the planning areas and so they got involved that way. At the time, Gabi Sonnberger’s father had recently died and her brother had reluctantly taken over the farm. He had actually wanted to study, so the unexpected money came in handy. Even though it wasn’t required of him as heir to the farm, he gave his mother and sister each a third of the money.
‘You must have been a child at the time,’ Dühnfort said.
‘I was ten years old. My mother invested the money for me. There’s more e
very day. I have no idea how much it is at this point. Sometimes I don’t think about it for the entire year until we have to file our tax return.’
‘Then how did you finance this farm?’ Dühnfort asked.
‘The farm has been owned by my family for generations,’ Beppo Sonnberger said. ‘I took it over from my father. He made his living through honest hard work, just like his father and grandfather before him. And I’m doing the same. We’ve switched to organic production. It’s been paying off. We don’t need the money they swindled. It’s staying in the bank until Jakob grows up. Then he can decide what he wants to do with it. That’s what we agreed, Gabi and I. And we’re sticking to it.’
‘I don’t know if you can understand,’ Gabi Sonnberger said, ‘but the money doesn’t even seem real to me. We’ve just kept it completely out of our lives, and that’s why it only occurred to me last night that some bastard could have taken Jakob to get to the money. As far as I’m concerned, he can have all of it. I just want my boy back.’ She put her hand over her mouth.
‘But no one has made any demands?’ Dühnfort asked.
Gabi Sonnberger shook her head.
Was a motive slowly emerging? Several millions that had been made in an underhand fashion. Did someone want to take revenge or get compensation for the lost profits on the purchased land? Or maybe an investor just wanted to get his money back?
Presumably not every farmer had profited from the scam. Maybe someone who’d been excluded now wanted a piece of the pie. But it was also possible that a kidnapper just wanted to get rich quick. Dühnfort pulled his mobile out of his pocket and asked Alois to set up telephone surveillance.
‘And what do you do when someone wants money?’ Gabi Sonnberger asked, clutching her right hand with her left.
‘No need to worry yourself unduly. We’re experienced at this. We’ll do the right thing.’ Dühnfort looked at Gabi and then Beppo Sonnberger. ‘We have the necessary technology, a well-coordinated team and trained psychologists. We won’t do anything that could put your child’s life in danger. It’s important that you cooperate with us and don’t try to do anything off your own bat. That usually goes wrong and inspires copycat crimes.’
* * *
Agnes raced her mountain bike down the road towards Mariaseeon. She passed a police search party. She tried not to think about Jakob, tried not to imagine what his parents were going through. She could not afford the luxury of being burdened with other people’s worries. I have become cold and hard-hearted, she thought, appalled at herself. But she only had enough strength to get from one day to the next. She had to put it all behind her. She had made a decision, an oath, to finally move on. No more looking at the pictures every night. They were like dead leaves floating on the brackish surface of a pond that had now finally sunk to the bottom and were slowly settling among the sediments of darkness and oblivion. And that was where they should stay.
The speedometer had got up to almost forty kilometres per hour; the heart-rate monitor blinked at one hundred and ninety and signalled that she had far exceeded the limit. She moistened her cracked lips with her tongue. Her water bottle was empty. Her stomach growled like a wild animal. After sixty kilometres, she’d earned her breakfast. Just like she did every morning, pushing herself until she calmed down, until the switch was flipped, until the endorphins flooded her brain and made her believe that everything was fine.
Agnes slowed down and turned onto Dorfstrasse. She decided to stop at the bakery and get herself a hearty breakfast. Police officers were swarming over the square near the church. Some of them had Alsatian dogs on leads. Police vans were parked along the street. On the bench near the fountain, Agnes saw a group of reporters with cameras who were dressed as if they were war correspondents. One of them was even wearing a neon-yellow waistcoat with the word PRESS written on it, just like ones Agnes had seen in TV footage from actual war zones.
This is no different, she thought bitterly. War. These vultures were all desperate to be the fastest ones to get the hottest photo, primed to prey on the most sensational bit of information. They would ruthlessly pounce on anything that could be assigned even the tiniest spark of meaning and then exploit it and flog it to death. Until something more sensational turned up. For them, the best outcome would be Jakob’s body, desperate parents, neighbours demanding the death penalty. It sold copies, it filled quotas.
She felt a cold pressure in her chest that almost made it hard to breathe. A piece of the past catapulted into the present: Mrs Gaudera. Just one question. Will you press charges against the landlord? Someone held out a microphone as she left the Department of Forensic Medicine. She wanted to banish the memory, but the image swirled up to the surface of the pond. Again, she saw the single strand of blond hair that strangely had remained unharmed. Again, she saw the last image of her daughter, which was etched into her memory. Tears welled up in her eyes. A man stepped out into the street. Startled, Agnes swung the handlebars round, lost her balance and fell, skidding across the rough asphalt. Her bike kept sliding. The speedometer jumped out of its holder. Tyres squealed behind her, a blue Golf stopped just before it hit her. Agnes broke down in tears. The driver – a young guy with delicate fuzz on his cheeks and a few spots on his face – got out, offered her his hand and helped her to her feet. ‘Are you OK?’ he asked with concern. The pedestrian hurried towards them.
‘Yes, thank you. I’m fine.’ Agnes wiped the tears away. ‘It was just the fright.’
‘But your knee. It’s all cut up. Let me get my first-aid kit,’ the driver said and went back to his car.
‘Excuse me. It was my mistake,’ the pedestrian said. ‘I was lost in thought.’ He had grey-green eyes. Grey-green like lichen on a tree.
‘Must have been a great daydream.’ The young man came back with the bandages and looked at him reproachfully. ‘You very nearly caused a serious accident.’
‘More like a nightmare,’ the pedestrian said. ‘Dühnfort.’ He introduced himself to Agnes. ‘I hope you’re not too badly hurt.’
‘Everything is fine.’
The reporter with the neon-yellow waistcoat approached.
Agnes recognised him. He worked for a tabloid in Munich. After the disaster, he’d latched onto her like a leech and had even managed to get into her parents’ house. He looked as if he’d been up all night: straggly hair, black five o’clock shadow, dark circles under his eyes, his clothes wrinkled and stained. Great corporate image, Agnes thought. His grubby appearance matches the style of his newspaper perfectly.
‘If it isn’t Mrs Gaudera. Like a phoenix, risen from the ashes.’ He raised his camera and pushed the shutter button.
‘Spare me the tasteless humour,’ she hissed at him.
He grinned. ‘Have a nice day,’ he said and went back to his colleagues.
The driver had cut off a piece of bandage. He squinted as he watched the reporter walking away. ‘It would be better if I disinfected it.’ The boy pointed at the graze. He had a spray bottle in his hand. ‘May I?’
The reporter had looked at her just like he had back then. With a combination of pity and an eye for a sensational story. A defiant echo rang out from the past. Yvonne’s voice: But I want to! I want to, I want to, I want to! Agnes got caught in the memory as in the threads of a spider’s web. Panic welled up inside her.
‘May I?’ The young man repeated his question.
But I want to! I want to, I want to, I want to! The man with the grey-green eyes picked up her bike and pushed the speedometer back into the holder. ‘Thanks,’ Agnes said, then swung her leg over her bike and rode off. She pedalled all the way to the neighbouring village, where she finally stopped and went shopping for her breakfast.
Half an hour later, she was standing in her kitchen, sweaty from her bike ride, drinking a glass of water. She turned on the espresso machine and ate a soft pretzel out of the paper bag. Then she felt better. There was one advantage to the excessive amount of exercise she’d been doing over the past yea
r: she had lost twenty kilos and could eat as much as she wanted. She now had the body she had always dreamed of. But Rainer had loved her as a round dumpling. He liked her curves and vetoed her every attempt at dieting.
She remembered the last time. Just after Christmas, she’d bought a diet book so she could at least try and lose a few of the extra kilos she’d gained. Rainer found out and wrapped his arms round her. His hands wandered down her back to her bum, over her tight-fitting jeans. ‘It’s all mine.’ With a strong jerk, he’d pulled her closer. ‘It might not be what most men like, but I think you’re perfect just like this,’ he said.
Agnes sat down at the kitchen table. As she ate her way through a croissant and a raisin bun, she read the paper. The local section already had a piece on Jakob’s disappearance. She looked at the photo. Jakob was baring his teeth like the plastic dinosaur he was holding up to the camera. He was the only child of a wealthy family. But there had still been no ransom demand by the time the paper went to print. The police hadn’t ruled out it being either an accident or a criminal act. Agnes didn’t want to imagine what the parents were going through now. But at least they had hope.
* * *
Dühnfort stood next to his car and studied the tree from a distance. Gina had called him fifteen minutes earlier. The bookseller had seen Jakob walk past when she was redoing her shop window at around half past three. He had turned onto the footpath that led out of the village and into the woods. She had spent the night in Munich and only found out that Jakob was missing in the morning. She immediately called the police. Jakob had also crossed paths with an old woman about ten minutes later, when the village was already some way behind him.
‘Towards the woods,’ Dühnfort had said. ‘There’s really no shortage of them round here.’
‘The path leads to a tree that the village boys like climbing. According to the bookshop owner, it’s hard to miss. A beech standing on its own on the edge of the forest,’ Gina had replied.
And now they were there. Gina sat in the car making phone calls. Dühnfort sat on a bench at a fork in the road beneath a wayside cross, dialled Alois’s number and asked him to check out the parents’ alibis. He gave him a list of names and then hung up.
