The Wages of Sin: A Kidnap, a Crucifixion, a Murderer on the Loose

by Inge Löhnig

  ‘Now that we’re all here,’ Dühnfort began. Gina ended her phone call and sat down. ‘It’s time for an overview. Where are we with the investigation?’ He summarised the findings. They had an abysmal lack of evidence. He asked Buchholz about what they had found in the car park.

  ‘Lots of fingerprints on the bins. We’re running a comparison against the database. We’ll see what comes of it.’

  ‘So, we have to assume that Jakob was actually kidnapped for ransom. He is in good physical shape but not doing so well psychologically. He’s currently not capable of giving us any information, so we’ll have to make do with what’s available to us for now,’ Dühnfort said, flipping through the documents. ‘Jakob was pumped full of sleep-inducing medication. So much of it, in fact, that it was still detectable in his blood fourteen hours after he was found. According to Dr Weidenbach, he would have been asleep most of the time. What’s strange is that the active agent was midazolam. It’s used in emergency medicine. As a sleep aid, it’s administered in tablet form. As an anaesthetic, it has to be injected. Intravenously, the effects kick in very quickly. Intramuscularly, it takes up to half an hour before it starts working. Jakob’s body has no needle marks. Based on that, we can assume that the drug was, in fact, administered in tablet form. Dissolved in the hot chocolate, presumably. The strange thing about it is that other, equally effective sleep-inducing drugs are easier to get. So why midazolam?’

  Buchholz ran his hand through his grey hair. ‘The report from the lab is finally here,’ he said and dug through a pile of paper in front of him. Eventually, he pulled out a fax. ‘The shard of glass we found near the climbing tree is actually a fragment from a vial. Midazolam residue was found on the surface,’ he said. ‘Which means that Jakob must have been given the drugs intravenously or intramuscularly.’

  It was strange. Dühnfort made a mental note to speak to Dr Weidenbach about it.

  ‘Either way, the kidnapper has access to the stuff,’ Gina said, ‘so he’s a doctor or works in medicine or he stole it.’

  ‘Look into Sonnberger’s sister again – the one that works at the hospital. And her husband, the pharmaceutical rep,’ Dühnfort said.

  Gina and Alois nodded.

  ‘Hopefully, the ransom note will get us somewhere.’ Dühnfort looked over at Buchholz.

  ‘It was probably written by an amateur,’ Gina said. ‘Who else would be stupid enough to give the location of the handover nearly twenty-four hours before it was due to happen? Goddammit,’ she swore. ‘If only Kölle had been a better look-out, we would’ve caught the guy at the handover.’

  Dühnfort agreed with her. But what made him decidedly angrier was the fact that Gabi Sonnberger hadn’t trusted him.

  Buchholz had finally got his papers in order. ‘The ransom note is a goldmine. Aside from fingerprints belonging to Jakob’s mother and grandmother, there is also a partial print of a right palm on the writing. But the best part is . . .’ Buchholz was beaming like a child with a Christmas gift. ‘There are fine deposits of cornflour on the letter.’ He looked expectantly at the group. It was clear from his expression that he had something else up his sleeve.

  ‘Cornflour?’ Gina said. ‘Like what you use for baking and cooking?’

  Buchholz put his notes back onto the pile and clasped his hands in front of his round stomach. ‘You also use it in printing shops.’

  ‘Aha,’ Dühnfort said, surprised.

  ‘I had some dealings with one a few years ago. That’s why I recognised it right away. The cornflour is mixed with drying agents and antistatic additives and used as a spacer. When the printed sheets come out of the press and pile up, the ink is still wet. A fine layer of powder is blown between the sheets of paper so that they don’t stick together. I found traces of the powder on the letter. So, the kidnapper works in a print shop or in distribution at the powder manufacturer.’ Buchholz leaned back and scratched his enormous skull.

  They had a concrete lead. They could be on the verge of a breakthrough. ‘Gina and Alois, you go through the business directories for Mariaseeon and neighbouring villages. What printers are there? Are any in financial trouble? Do any of the owners have a criminal record? Are there any employees with criminal records or money issues? The usual stuff,’ Dühnfort said.

  ‘Shouldn’t we talk to the press department?’ Alois asked. ‘We could ask the residents for help. On Sunday, people were out and about in Seeoner Forest. The Chapel of Our Lady is a popular destination, maybe someone noticed a car. And the road to Portenläng may not have been packed with traffic, but there would have been some vehicles at least. Maybe someone saw the car being parked.’

  Dühnfort agreed with Alois and asked him to take care of it. He ended the meeting and checked that his mobile phone was switched on. ‘I’m driving to Mariaseeon,’ he said to Gina. Ever since she’d mentioned yesterday that Melanie Berger was Jakob’s kindergarten teacher, Dühnfort had felt like he needed to talk to her. The usual fear that he’d overlooked something nagged at him.

  * * *

  The kindergarten was on the edge of the village, bordered by fields and meadows. It comprised two modern single-storey buildings that formed an L-shape and were surrounded by a large garden. The garden had a little mound, a slide, monkey bars and a large sandpit. Dühnfort parked in the car park, which was empty at that hour, and went to the front door. It was locked. He had to ring the bell. After a while, through the window he saw a woman approaching. She was short and thin. Her short hair stuck out of her head in all directions. She was wearing a colourful stripey T-shirt and jeans. She pulled a key ring out of her pocket and unlocked the door.

  ‘Good morning,’ she said. Dühnfort was thrown off by her deep, resonant voice. It seemed at odds with her appearance. He introduced himself and asked to speak to Ms Berger.

  ‘That’s me,’ she said and shut the door behind him. ‘We’ve been doing it this way ever since Jakob’s kidnapping,’ she explained. ‘We want to be sure that no unauthorised person enters the building.’ Melanie Berger led him into a small kitchen. He could hear soft singing from the adjacent room. ‘Please, sit down. I just have to let them know where I am, then I’ll be with you.’

  Dühnfort sat down. He heard her steps moving away and then a door opening. For a few seconds, the singing was louder. He looked around. Children’s drawings were everywhere: rainbows and frog kings and princesses and mushroom houses. There was a picture of a dinosaur on the wall next to the coffee machine. Jakob was written underneath in the scrawling handwriting of a child. His mother had said he’d be starting school in the autumn and at the thought of this, Dühnfort immediately felt as if a load had been lifted. Jakob would learn and grow. He stood up, went to the window and looked out into the garden. On the other side of the fence there was a grain field and he could see the edge of the forest behind it.

  The singing started again. He could hear Melanie Berger’s steps on the wooden floor as she came back to the kitchen.

  ‘So, now we can talk in peace,’ she said and smiled at him.

  ‘Will Jakob be coming back to kindergarten?’ Dühnfort asked. He sat down on a pale-coloured pinewood chair, facing her.

  ‘He’s coming back tomorrow or the day after. I spoke to Gabi this morning. To his mother, I mean. We’re friends. She told me he’s not speaking, and she hopes that being back with the group and his friends will change that.’

  ‘That would be grand,’ Dühnfort said. ‘If Jakob starts speaking again, will you let me know?’ He took out his wallet and handed Melanie Berger a business card.

  ‘Of course,’ she said and put the card in her pocket.

  ‘And any pictures that Jakob paints or draws, can you give me them, too?’

  ‘I can make copies for you,’ Melanie Berger said. ‘We have a colour copier here. But the children can only give the pictures away themselves. They are very particular.’

  ‘Copies would be just fine.’ If Jakob couldn’t talk about what he’d experienced, h
e might at least draw it. He had to process it somehow.

  ‘Is that why you came?’ Melanie Berger asked and tilted her head slightly.

  ‘One more thing,’ Dühnfort said. ‘I know my colleague has already spoken to you, but did you notice anything that might be connected to Jakob’s kidnapping?’

  ‘No. I already told Ms Angelucci. There was no one hanging around in front of the nursery. No one followed Jakob home, because he doesn’t go home by himself. All of the children are picked up by their parents. None of them are allowed to go home alone. They’re only allowed to do that when they start school.’

  ‘It doesn’t need to have been on the day of the kidnapping itself, or even the day before,’ Dühnfort said.

  Melanie Berger shook her head. ‘I’d really like to help you, but there was nothing. Everything was normal. Even on the days before.’

  ‘Could there have been people in the nursery that aren’t normally here? Handymen, or substitute teachers or parents wanting to enrol their children?’

  Melanie Berger thought about it and then shook her head. ‘No, I’m sorry.’

  ‘Are you always here?’

  ‘We only have two nursery groups, both do half days. From 7.30 a.m. to 1 p.m. There are two teachers, two assistants and two students, so we don’t do shifts.’

  ‘Do any of the parents work in the print industry?’

  ‘In the print industry?’ Melanie Berger repeated. ‘Let me think about it.’

  Dühnfort could practically see her calling to mind each child, then their parents and then their professions. She looked funny, like a child herself, painstakingly working her way through the task. ‘No, there’s no one in printing.’

  Dühnfort stood up. ‘Thank you. Please call me if Jakob does any pictures. I’ll pick them up.’

  She accompanied him to the door and unlocked it.

  He noticed the large garden again. ‘This is all very nice.’

  ‘We use the garden a lot. Every year we plant flower and vegetable beds with the children. We spend a lot of time outdoors with them, especially in the summer.’ She paused and her gaze drifted off into the distance but returned almost immediately.

  ‘Ms Berger?’

  She looked at him and shook her head. ‘Oh, nothing.’

  ‘What were you thinking about?’ Dühnfort prodded.

  ‘It was almost a year ago,’ she said. ‘I’m sure it had nothing to do with Jakob’s kidnapping.’

  ‘Tell me anyway.’

  ‘Come with me,’ Melanie Berger said after considering it a moment. She locked the door again. He followed her through the hall to a large sliding-glass door. They went out through it and carefully climbed over the vegetable beds planted along the fence. There was a field of oats on the other side. Dühnfort followed and came to a stop alongside her.

  ‘In summer we put a paddling pool out here,’ Melanie Berger said and gestured to the large lawn that lay between the buildings and the vegetable beds. Then she turned to the field. ‘Last summer, corn was growing here. It was really tall.’ She gestured with her hand above her head. ‘Two metres at least.’

  Suddenly, Dühnfort had an idea of what she was going to tell him. ‘Someone hid in it and watched the children,’ he said softly, more to himself than to her.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Melanie Berger said. ‘That is, I don’t know if he was actually taking pictures of the children or not.’

  ‘Tell me what happened.’

  ‘It must have been mid-July last year, just before the holidays. It had been hot for weeks. We put out the paddling pool and the children spent most of the time outside. Some days, we even had snack time outdoors. Perhaps I should have called the police back then, but I actually believed him.’

  ‘Who did you believe, and about what?’

  ‘He said he was photographing the poppies and cornflowers that grew on the edge of the cornfield. He even showed me images on the display of his digital camera, but I still found it strange how he stood there in the cornfield as if he didn’t want to be seen.’ She tugged nervously at her earlobe. ‘But he gave a good explanation and showed me the pictures, so it all seemed plausible.’

  ‘Who, Ms Berger?’ Dühnfort asked.

  ‘My old teacher, Mr Kallweit.’

  * * *

  Dühnfort sat in the car and phoned Alois. ‘Have you looked into Kallweit’s alibi?’

  ‘Not yet. Dr Wiessner was away for the weekend and I didn’t get to it yesterday. Is there a problem?’

  ‘No,’ Dühnfort said. ‘I’ll do it now.’

  ‘Is there a connection to Jakob?’

  ‘There seems to be something in the rumours that Kallweit photographed children,’ Dühnfort said and told Alois what he had just found out.

  ‘He photographed Jakob?’

  ‘His teacher didn’t know,’ Dühnfort said. ‘There were two dozen children running around. We don’t have a direct connection to Jakob’s kidnapping. We don’t have a proper search warrant. Not for the kidnapping, anyway, and for the other stuff I need more.’

  ‘Isn’t that a waste of our energy?’ Alois responded. ‘I mean, we have a hot lead and that has to do with a print shop. And it’s about ransom money and not sexual abuse. Or is there a connection between Kallweit and a print shop?’

  ‘I have no idea if there is a connection,’ Dühnfort said. ‘But if you think I’m going to let a paedophile go just because I happen to be looking for a kidnapper, then you’re wrong.’

  ‘We can go after him later,’ Alois replied. ‘And besides, it’s not within our jurisdiction.’

  ‘I’ll check his alibi now and if it’s not watertight, I’ll nab him. And then it will definitely be within my jurisdiction.’ And if you want to stay on my team, you can stop being such an official arse and working so closely by the book. Shit, he thought. Why am I so angry all of a sudden? He took a deep breath.

  ‘You and Gina research everything to do with the print shops. I’ll take care of Kallweit. We can’t exclude the possibility that Jakob was abused with absolute certainty. There was no penetration, we know that, but maybe he was handled, maybe videos were made of him. And we know that a paedophile who secretly photographed children was in Jakob’s immediate vicinity.’

  ‘An alleged paedophile who allegedly photographed children,’ Alois said. ‘Besides, that was a year ago and not part of this job.’

  ‘It is absolutely our job to verify such alleged goings-on,’ Dühnfort responded and then he felt an eerie calm. He knew this calm; it was the calm before the storm. Another word from Alois and he would explode.

  * * *

  Agnes stood in front of the bookshop window and stared at Yvonne’s Children’s Bible. She had come from the town hall, where she had registered her address, just before they closed at noon. Of course, it wasn’t Yvonne’s actual Children’s Bible, which had been burned, but it was the same edition. On an impulse, Agnes went into the shop. A plump woman with rimless glasses on the tip of her nose stood behind a blond-wood sales counter. She looked up. ‘Oh, it’s you. Well, hello, Mrs . . .’ She thought about it for a moment. ‘Gaudera,’ she then said with a smile.

  I’m known all over the village, Agnes thought. At least she didn’t call me Mrs Angel, like the woman in the bakery. ‘I nearly said Angel.’ The woman came out from behind the counter and reached out to shake Agnes’s hand. ‘Roswitha Riedel. Are you looking for something in particular or do you just want to be left alone to browse?’

  ‘Both. I’m interested in the Children’s Bible.’

  ‘I just put it in the window yesterday,’ Roswitha Riedel said. ‘After Jakob so wondrously reappeared and the paper wrote about “the Miracle of Mariaseeon”, a few people actually started asking about religious literature, so I had a bit of a redesign.’

  She got the Children’s Bible from the shelf. ‘If you want to look through it a bit, there’s a reading corner back there.’ There was an old wingback chair next to a bistro table in the corner.
‘If you need anything, just let me know.’ Mrs Riedel disappeared behind the counter.

  Agnes started browsing the shelves. She quickly found it. This shop seemed to be a trove of her lost treasures. The Collected Works of Rainer Maria Rilke, which included all of his poems, printed on thin India paper. She also grabbed the book Poetry for the Memory by Ulla Hahn and took both of them with her to the reading corner.

  The Children’s Bible sat on top of the small pile. Yvonne had been given a puzzle with a Noah’s Ark theme for her fourth birthday. As Agnes couldn’t tell her the story of Noah’s Ark in detail, she bought her a copy of the Children’s Bible. Yvonne made her read it aloud over and over again. And suddenly Agnes knew what the scene in the forest had reminded her of: the story of Abraham and Isaac. She quickly flipped through the book and found the page right away. A colourful illustration showed Isaac, dressed only in a loincloth and tied up on top of a pile of brushwood. That was the image that had been haunting Agnes since Sunday. She almost knew the whole story by heart. Yvonne had developed a special fondness for it and Agnes had read it to her countless times. Abraham was to sacrifice his son Isaac. Having got over his initial doubts, he went with Isaac to Mount Moriah, tied him up on a pile of wood and was about to sacrifice him when God stopped him and sent him a sacrificial lamb instead. In the Children’s Bible, they never mentioned how Abraham planned to sacrifice his child. Agnes had looked into it: a sacrificial lamb had its throat slit. She was happy that Yvonne didn’t ask what the word ‘sacrifice’ really meant.

  ‘That was very mean of God,’ Yvonne said. ‘Poor Isaac must have been really scared. What a stupid God. Daddy wouldn’t follow him,’ she added indignantly. ‘Daddy is an amethyst, so he doesn’t have to.’ She had meant ‘atheist’. That was a topic for discussion back in the Catholic kindergarten she attended. Just like Rainer, Yvonne was not baptised.