by Nele Neuhaus
“I think you’re imagining things.” Pia shook her head in astonishment. “But after your performance today, she’s probably lost all interest in you.”
“I should be so lucky. She’ll probably be back here in an hour.”
Pia scrutinized her ex-husband.
“I bet that you lied to me,” she said.
“What do you mean?” he asked, feigning innocence.
“The little intermezzo last summer on the living room coffee table—that wasn’t the only time you cheated on me. Am I right?”
Kirchhoff suddenly looked guilty. But before he could say anything, Ronnie came back into the autopsy suite, and Henning switched instantly to his professional tone of voice.
“She was not raped. But she had oral sex before she died,” he explained. “Afterward, the other injuries were inflicted, and they were fatal. She bled to death.”
* * *
“Monika Krämer bled to death from the deep wounds she suffered from a knife with a hawkbill blade,” Pia reported to her colleagues an hour later in the conference room. “Traces of semen were found in her oral cavity and esophagus. Since we have Watkowiak’s DNA in our computer, we should know in a matter of days whether the semen is his. We’ll have to wait and see if the DNA of a third person is present in the traces, fibers, and hairs. Our colleagues in the crime lab are working at top speed.”
Bodenstein cast a quick glance at Chief Commissioner Nierhoff and hoped that his boss realized how extremely thin the evidence was so far. Downstairs, all the reporters had gathered, waiting to hear Nierhoff brag about how fast the police had solved the murders of Goldberg and Schneider.
“The man got rid of the woman because he’d told her earlier about the murders he’d committed.” Nierhoff got up. “Clear proof of his propensity to violence. Good work, colleagues. Bodenstein, remember that I want to see you at twelve o’clock in my office.”
Then he left the room, hurrying to the press conference without insisting that Bodenstein accompany him. For a moment, no one spoke.
“I wonder what he’s going to tell them downstairs,” said Ostermann.
“No idea.” Bodenstein had given up. “But at this point, a false report of progress won’t do any harm.”
“So you don’t think Watkowiak murdered Goldberg and Schneider?” asked Fachinger hesitantly.
“No,” Bodenstein replied. “He’s a habitual criminal but not a murderer. I also don’t think he killed Ms. Krämer.”
Fachinger and Ostermann looked at their boss in astonishment.
“I’m afraid that a third individual is involved. But somebody doesn’t want us to keep snooping around, so it’s important to find a suspect fast and pin the murders of Goldberg and Schneider on that person instead.”
“You’re thinking that the murder of Monika Krämer could be a hired job?” Ostermann raised his eyebrows.
“I’m assuming something like that,” said Bodenstein. “Given the professional MO and the use of a combat knife. The question is, Would Goldberg’s family really go that far? After all, inside of twenty-four hours they had mobilized the NCP, the Interior Ministry, the American general consul, the Frankfurt president of police, and the CIA in order to prevent a certain fact from being made public. But we had already figured it out—namely, that the murdered Goldberg was anything but a Jewish survivor of the Holocaust.” He gave his colleagues an urgent look. “One thing is clear: Somebody who has a lot to lose will stop at nothing. That’s why we have to be very, very careful not to endanger any more innocent people while conducting this investigation.”
“Then it may be a good thing that Nierhoff is announcing that we’ve found the perp,” Ostermann opined, and Bodenstein nodded.
“Precisely. That’s why I’m not trying to stop him. Whoever ordered the murder of Monika Krämer will think that he’s safe.”
“By the way, we found several old text messages on Watkowiak’s cell phone,” Pia said. “All in uppercase and lowercase, and not once did he call Monika “sweetheart.” The texts we found weren’t from him. Somebody bought a cell phone, probably a prepaid one, under a false name and sent the texts to Monika Krämer in order to divert suspicion and place it on Watkowiak.”
Everyone understood the implications of this theory, and for a moment there was silence in the room. Watkowiak, with his lengthy rap sheet, was a highly plausible murder suspect.
“So who even knows that we’re considering Watkowiak as the perp?” Fachinger asked. Bodenstein and Kirchhoff exchanged a quick glance. That was a good question. No, it was the question that had to be answered in the event Watkowiak was not the person who had first blinded and then literally butchered Monika Krämer.
“Vera Kaltensee and her son Siegbert know,” said Pia, breaking the silence. She was thinking about the security men in the black uniforms at Mühlenhof. “And probably the rest of the Kaltensee family, as well.”
Bodenstein disagreed with her. “I don’t believe that Vera Kaltensee had anything to do with this. Something like that doesn’t seem to fit her demeanor.”
“Just because she’s a big philanthropist doesn’t mean she’s an angel, too,” Pia retorted. She was the only one who knew why her boss was trying to see the old woman in a good light. Due to his work, Bodenstein was familiar with all levels of society, from the dregs all the way to the upper class, and yet he was still inevitably tied to the class consciousness of his upbringing. His whole family belonged to the aristocracy, just as the former baroness of Zeydlitz-Lauenburg did.
“Is anyone interested in the lab results?” Ostermann patted the file folder lying in front of him.
“Of course.” Bodenstein leaned forward. “Is there anything about the murder weapon?”
“Yes.” Ostermann opened the folder. “It was definitely the same weapon. The ammunition is quite special: in both cases, a nine-by-nineteen-millimeter parabellum round, manufactured sometime between 1939 and 1942. The lab was able to determine this from the alloy, because it hasn’t been used since then in this particular combination.”
“So our killer uses a nine-millimeter weapon and ammunition from World War Two,” Pia said. “Where would someone get hold of something like that?”
“You can order such things on the Internet,” said Hasse. “Or get them at gun shows. I don’t think it’s as unusual as it seems.”
“Okay, okay,” said Bodenstein, cutting off the discussion. “What else have we got, Ostermann?”
“Schneider’s signatures on the checks were genuine. And the graphologist says the mysterious number was printed by the same person. The DNA on the wineglass in Goldberg’s living room belongs to a woman, but no match was found for the DNA or the fingerprints. The lipstick is nothing special—a common product by Maybelline—but besides the lipstick, traces of acyclovir were found.”
“And what’s that?” asked Fachinger.
“A medication that combats herpes, or cold sores, on the lips. It’s one of the ingredients in Zovirax.”
“Well, that’s certainly news,” Hasse grumbled. “The murderer was found guilty because of herpes. I can just imagine the headline.”
Bodenstein couldn’t help smiling, but his smile vanished with Pia’s next words.
“Vera Kaltensee had a Band-Aid on her lip. Of course she’d put lipstick over it, but I noticed it. Remember, boss?”
Bodenstein frowned and gave Pia a dubious look.
“Possibly. But I couldn’t swear to it.”
At that moment, there was a knock on the door, and the chief commissioner’s secretary stuck her head in.
“The chief commissioner is back from the press conference and is expecting you, Mr. Chief Inspector,” she announced. “Urgently.”
* * *
There was no question about what his assignment entailed. He absolutely had to locate the chest. Why was not an issue. He wasn’t being paid to speculate about motives. He had never had scruples about following an order. That was his job. It took an hour and a half before
Ritter finally left the ugly yellow-painted apartment house in which he’d been living since his fall from grace. The man watched with spiteful satisfaction as Ritter crossed the street to the S-Bahn stop at Schwarzwaldstrasse with a laptop case slung over his shoulder and a cell phone pressed to his ear. The days of being chauffeured around were over for this arrogant guy.
He waited until Ritter had vanished from sight; then he got out and went into the building. Ritter’s apartment was on the fourth floor. It took the man exactly twenty-two seconds to breach the ridiculous safety devices on the apartment door. It was child’s play. He pulled on some gloves and looked around. How would someone like Thomas Ritter, who was used to a life of luxury, feel in a dump like this? A room with a view of the building next door, a bathroom with a shower and toilet and no daylight, a tiny entryway, and a kitchen that made a mockery of the name. He opened the doors of the only wardrobe and worked his way systematically through stacks of clean and less clean clothes, underwear, socks, and shoes. Nothing. No sign of a chest or any reference to the family. The bed looked as if it hadn’t been used in a while; it wasn’t even made up. Next, he turned to the desk. There was no permanent Internet connection or any answering machine that might provide a clue. To his disappointment, he found only uninteresting junk on the desk, old newspapers and cheap porn magazines. He took one with him. Some inspirational reading for all the boring hours he spent waiting in the car couldn’t do any harm.
Then he searched meticulously through the pile of handwritten notes and discovered that Ritter’s prose had deteriorated considerably. He deciphered the words rustling sheets, juicy pussies, and breathless cries of orgasm and had to smirk. So he’d sunk this far, the Dr. Ritter who had previously written highbrow speeches. Now he wrote dull short stories with pornographic content. The man paged further. He stopped short when he saw on a yellow Post-it a hastily jotted name, a cell phone number, and a word that instantly electrified him. With his digital camera, he photographed the piece of paper and then covered it with the other documents. His visit to Ritter’s apartment had not been a waste of time.
* * *
Katharina Ehrmann was standing in her slip and bra in her walk-in closet, trying to decide what to wear. She had never considered herself especially vain until after the sudden death of her husband. She had played the grieving widow and stopped using makeup for a while. Looking in the mirror had been a shock each time. A shock that she preferred to avoid, especially since she no longer had to live off the paltry salary of an office worker. Shortly before her fortieth birthday a couple of years ago, she had started taking measures to counteract her age. It started with hours at the fitness center, lymphatic drainage, and colonic cleansing. She had also opted for Botox treatments every three months and sinfully expensive wrinkle injections with collagen and hyaluronic acid. But it was worth it. She looked ten years younger than other women her age. Katharina smiled at her reflection in the mirror. A lot of wealthy people lived in Königstein, and discreet private clinics specializing in every sort of antiaging treatment were popping up like mushrooms.
But that wasn’t why she had returned to the small town in the Taunus. The reason for her return was far more pragmatic. She didn’t want to live in Frankfurt, but she needed a house close to the airport because she spent a lot of time in Zürich or at her finca on Mallorca. The purchase of the big house right in the middle of the Old Town in Königstein had been a triumph for her. It was only a couple of hundred yards from the hovel in which she had grown up as the daughter of a poor innkeeper. This was where the man who had driven her father into bankruptcy had lived. Now he was broke himself, and Katharina had acquired his house for a ludicrously cheap price. She smiled. What goes around comes around, she thought.
A shiver of anticipation ran down her spine as she thought about the day when Thomas Ritter had told her about his plan to write a biography of Vera Kaltensee. Overly confident about his own abilities, he had assumed that Vera would be enthusiastic about the idea, but the opposite had been the case. Vera hadn’t shilly-shallied long. She had fired him without notice after eighteen years. At a chance meeting with Katharina, Ritter had complained bitterly about this injustice, and then Katharina saw her opportunity to get revenge on Vera and the whole Kaltensee family. Ritter had greedily pounced on her offer.
Now, a year and a half later, after Ritter had indeed received a high-five-figure advance, he hadn’t put anything that even hinted at a best-seller on paper. Although Katharina occasionally slept with him, she had not let herself be fooled by his grandiose pronouncements and promises. After a sober analysis of what Ritter had turned in so far, she knew that his scribblings were miles away from the scandalous tell-all account that he had been promising her for months. The time had come to intervene.
As usual, she was well informed as far as the Kaltensee family went, because she maintained a friendly contact with Jutta, acting as though nothing had ever happened. Jutta, in her vanity, never doubted Katharina’s sincerity. Through Ritter, Katharina knew about the circumstances that had led to his termination without notice. A highly informative conversation with Vera’s not particularly loyal housekeeper had convinced her at last to contact Elard. She didn’t know for sure how helpful Jutta’s elder brother would be, but at least he had been present at the altercation last summer. As Katharina was still pondering this, her cell rang.
“Hello, Elard,” she said. “You must be a mind reader.”
Elard Kaltensee skipped the chitchat and got straight to the point.
“How do you picture the handover?” he asked.
“From what you said, I gather that you have something for me in exchange,” replied Katharina. She was curious as to what Elard planned to offer her.
“I’ve got plenty,” said Elard. “And I want to get rid of the stuff. So?”
“Let’s meet at my place,” Katharina suggested.
“No. I’ll send over what I have by messenger. Tomorrow at noon.”
“Agreed. Where?”
“I’ll tell you then. Good-bye.”
And he hung up. Katharina smiled contentedly. Everything was going like clockwork.
* * *
Bodenstein buttoned his jacket and knocked on the door to his boss’s office before entering. To his surprise, he saw that Nierhoff had a redhead visiting. He was about to excuse himself, but the chief commissioner jumped up and came over. He seemed to be still under the intoxicating influence of what he regarded as a highly successful press conference.
“Come in, Bodenstein!” he exclaimed affably. “This may seem a bit unexpected, but I would like to introduce you to my successor.”
Then the woman turned around, and Bodenstein froze. What had started out as a bad day now raced with the speed of an InterCity Express train to its absolute blackest depths.
“Hello, Oliver.”
Her husky voice was unmistakable, as was the discomfort that her cool, calculating stare triggered inside him.
“Hello, Nicola.” He hoped she hadn’t noticed how his facial features had been derailed for a fraction of a second.
“What?” Nierhoff seemed disappointed. “You know each other?”
“We certainly do.” Nicola Engel got up and extended her hand to Bodenstein, which he shook briefly. In his mind, a movie of gloomy memories was playing, and a glance in Nicola’s eyes revealed that she hadn’t forgotten, either.
“We were at the Police Academy together,” she explained to the astonished chief commissioner.
“Aha” was all he said. “Please take a seat, Bodenstein.”
Bodenstein complied. He tried to recall his last meeting with the woman who was going to be his boss from now on.
“… had brought up your name several times,” the voice of the chief commissioner resounded in his ears. “But the Interior Ministry suggested we bring in someone from outside the Regional Criminal Unit. As far as I know, you’re not too keen on accepting a position to become the head of this office. Politics are not re
ally your forte.”
At these words, Bodenstein thought he noticed a mocking glint in Nicola’s eyes, and at that moment everything came back to him. It had happened about ten years ago. She’d been bogged down in a hopeless investigation of a series of grisly murders in the red-light district, which still remained unsolved. The whole K-11 office in Frankfurt had been under tremendous pressure. A snitch whom she’d persuaded to infiltrate one of the rival gangs had apparently been exposed by another snitch and was then shot to death on the street in broad daylight.
Bodenstein was certain to this day that the betrayal could be traced back to a grave mistake that Nicola had made. At the time, she’d been the head of another department inside K-11. Nicola, ambitious and ruthless, had wanted to pin the failure on Bodenstein’s people. The power struggle had finally ended with the direct intervention of the police president. Nicola had then transferred from Frankfurt to Würzburg and had subsequently risen to vice president of the police presidium of Lower Franconia. She was considered competent and incorruptible. Now she had been made commissioner, and as of June 1, she would be Bodenstein’s new boss. He had absolutely no idea what to make of this.
“Dr. Engel has already left her position in Würzburg, and I will be familiarizing her with our work here,” Nierhoff said, concluding his speech, although Bodenstein had caught only fragments of it. “I will be officially introducing her to the whole team on Monday.”
He looked at his department head expectantly, but Bodenstein offered no comments and asked no questions.
“Is that it?” he finally said, getting up. “I have to get back to my meeting.”
Nierhoff nodded in consternation.
“Our K-Eleven has just about wrapped up the investigations into two homicide cases,” he explained to his successor proudly, probably hoping that Bodenstein would support his claim.
Nicola Engel also got up and again held out her hand to Bodenstein.
“I look forward to working with you,” she said, but the look in her eyes belied this statement. From now on, a new wind would be blowing at the Regional Criminal Unit; that was clear to Bodenstein. It remained to be seen how much Dr. Nicola Engel would interfere with his work.
