by Nele Neuhaus
That only served to further ignite Amelie’s curiosity, since she hated nothing more than injustice, after being so often the victim of unfair accusations. She could understand how Tobias must have felt if his protestations of innocence were actually true. She was going to conduct more inquiries into the matter—although she didn’t know exactly how. First she had to get to know Tobias Sartorius.
* * *
Twenty past five. He had to hang out here on the train platform for another half hour before the other guys showed up; maybe they would take him along to the youth center for rehearsals. Nico Bender had made a point of skipping soccer practice so he wouldn’t miss the S-Bahn from Schwalbach at five to six. Although he was crazy about playing soccer, the guys and their band were much more important. They used to be friends, but since his parents had forced him to go to school in Königstein instead of Schwalbach, he didn’t really belong anymore. He was way cooler than Mark or Kevin, because he could play really good drums. Nico sighed and looked at the bearded man in the baseball cap who had been standing motionless at the other end of the platform for half an hour. In spite of the rain the man hadn’t come to join him in the covered waiting area. He didn’t seem to care if he got wet.
The S-Bahn from Frankfurt arrived. Eight cars on the commuter train. Would he be able to see the guys from where he stood? If they were in the first car, he might miss them. The doors slid open and people got out, putting up umbrellas and running with their heads down to the pedestrian bridge or past him to the underpass. His pals weren’t on the train. Nico stood up and walked slowly along the platform. Then he saw the man in the baseball cap again. He followed a woman in the direction of the bridge and spoke to her. She stopped but then seemed to be frightened, because she dropped her shopping bag and ran off. The man sprinted after her and grabbed her by the arm. She flailed at him with her other arm. Nico stood there as if mesmerized. It was like something out of a movie! The platform was empty again, the doors of the train slid shut, and the S-Bahn pulled out of the station. Then he saw the man and woman up on the pedestrian bridge. It looked like they were going to fight. All of a sudden the woman disappeared. Nico heard brakes squeal, then a thud, followed by the crash of metal and a splintering sound. The endless row of bright headlights on the other side of the tracks came to a stop. Stunned, Nico realized that he had just witnessed a crime. The man had pushed the woman over the railing of the bridge and onto the heavily trafficked Limesspange expressway! And now he was running right at Nico, head down, the woman’s purse in his hand. Nico’s heart was in his throat; he was terrified. If the guy knew that he’d been watching him, he wasn’t going to mess around. In panic Nico took off. Like a rabbit he raced into the underpass, running as fast as he could until he reached his bicycle, which he had left on the Bad Soden side of the tracks. He didn’t care about the guys in the band now, or the youth center. He jumped onto his bike and stomped on the pedals, puffing, panting as the man came up the stairs to the street and yelled something after him. Nico risked a glance over his shoulder and saw with relief that the guy wasn’t following him. Then he raced at top speed along the forested area of the Eichwald until he was safe at home.
* * *
The intersection at the Sulzbach North S-Bahn station was a picture of devastation. There had been a seven-car collision, and firemen were trying to extricate people from the twisted mass of metal using acetylene torches and heavy equipment and strewing sand in the pools of spilled gasoline. Several ambulances were lined up to take care of the injured. Despite the cold and the rain, rubberneckers had gathered behind the police cordon, watching the horrendous spectacle with ghoulish fascination. Bodenstein and Kirchhoff made their way through the uniforms over to Chief Detective Superintendent Hendrik Koch from the Eschborn district, who was one of the first on the scene of the accident.
“I’ve seen a lot of accidents in my day, but this is one of the worst.” Horror was written all over the face of the experienced police officer. He explained the situation to Bodenstein and Kirchhoff. A woman had fallen from the pedestrian bridge at 5:26 P.M., landing on the windshield of a BMW coming from the direction of Schwalbach. Without braking, the driver pulled sharply to the left and sped into the opposite lanes head-on. Multiple collisions on both sides of the highway had resulted. One driver, who had stopped at the red light in Sulzbach, said he had seen someone push the woman over the railing onto the road below.
“What happened to the woman?” Kirchhoff asked.
“She’s alive,” replied Superintendent Koch and added, “for the time being. The EMT is working on her over there in one of the ambulances.”
“We got a report of one death.”
“The driver of the BMW suffered a fatal heart attack. Probably from fright. Attempts to resuscitate him failed.” Koch nodded toward the middle of the intersection. A body lay next to the completely demolished BMW. A pair of shoes stuck out from under a rain-spattered blanket. Over by the police cordon there was a sudden commotion. Two policemen were restraining a gray-haired woman who was trying to force her way inside the blocked-off area. Koch’s radio crackled and a voice squawked.
“That’s probably the wife of the BMW driver,” he said to the detectives in a tense voice. “Excuse me.”
He said something into his radio and set off across the battlefield. Pia didn’t envy him the task before him. Informing loved ones of someone’s death was one of the hardest parts of their job, and neither psychological training nor years of experience made it any easier.
“Don’t worry about the woman,” Bodenstein said. “I’ll go talk to the witness.”
Pia nodded and went over to the ambulance where the seriously injured were being treated. The rear door opened and the EMT stepped out. Pia recognized him from previous accident scenes.
“Ah, Ms. Kirchhoff,” he greeted her. “We’ve stabilized her and will be taking her to the hospital in Bad Soden. Several broken bones, facial lacerations, and probably some internal injuries. You can’t talk to her.”
“Was she able to tell you who she is?”
“She had a car key in her—” The medic stopped and took a step back as the ambulance began to move off, the siren making all conversation impossible. Pia spoke with him a bit more, then thanked him and went over to her colleague. In the jacket pocket of the injured woman they had found only the car key, nothing else. The woman, who was about fifty, had not been carrying a purse. A search of the bridge and train platform turned up only a bag of groceries. In the meantime Bodenstein had spoken to the driver who witnessed the woman’s fall from the bridge. He swore up and down that somebody had pushed the woman—a man, he was sure of that despite the darkness and the rain.
Bodenstein and Kirchhoff went up the stairs to the bridge.
“This is where she fell from.” Pia looked at the spot marked on the bridge. “How high is it, do you think?”
“Hmm,” Bodenstein said, looking over the railing, which came up to about his hip. “Fifteen or twenty feet, I’d say. I can hardly believe she survived the fall. The car she hit was going pretty fast.”
From up there the view was almost surreal: the wrecked cars, the blue and orange flashing lights, the rescue crew wearing reflective vests. Rain was blowing obliquely through the light cast by the floodlights. What must have gone through that woman’s mind as she lost her balance and knew that nothing could save her? Or did it happen so fast that she had no time to think at all?
“She had a guardian angel,” Pia said with a shudder. “I hope he doesn’t leave her in the lurch now.”
She turned and headed over to the train platform, followed by Bodenstein. Who was this woman? Where was she coming from and where was she headed? One moment she was sitting in the train, unsuspecting, and a few minutes later she was lying with shattered bones in an ambulance. That’s how fast it could happen. One false step, one wrong move with the wrong person—and nothing would ever be the same. What had the man wanted from her? Was he a robber? It almost looked t
hat way; Bodenstein found it odd that she hadn’t been carrying a purse.
“Every woman carries a purse,” he said to Pia. “She had just gone shopping, so she needed money, a wallet or something.”
“Do you really think that the man was trying to rob her on a crowded train platform at five thirty in the afternoon?” Pia scanned up and down the tracks.
“Maybe it was a crime of opportunity. In this weather everyone would want to get home fast. Maybe he followed her on the S-Bahn because he saw her taking money out of an ATM.”
“Hmm.” Pia pointed to the camera monitoring the platform. “Let’s take a look at the surveillance video. With a little luck the lens may have been wide-angle enough for us to see the bridge.”
Bodenstein nodded pensively. Would two families have to deal with bad news tonight just because some stranger tried to snatch a woman’s purse? Not that it would have changed anything about the tragic occurrence, yet to Bodenstein it seemed appalling that death and mutilation should result from such a random and ridiculous act. Two officers emerged from the underpass. They had found a red Honda Civic in the parking lot next to the rail embankment, and the key from the woman’s pocket fit. When they ran the plates they discovered that the owner lived in Neuenhain. Her name was Rita Cramer.
* * *
Bodenstein steered his BMW easily into a parking space in front of the ugly high-rise in the Neuenhain district of Bad Soden. Kirchhoff had to search for a while to find Rita Cramer’s name among the fifty listed next to the entrance intercom. She pressed the button, but no one answered. So Pia rang other residents until someone finally buzzed her in. The building, despite its ugly outward appearance, was very well maintained inside. On the fifth floor Bodenstein and Kirchhoff were met by an elderly woman who perused their IDs with a mixture of suspicion and curiosity. Pia glanced impatiently at her watch. Almost nine! She had promised Christoph that she would come to Annika’s party, and it was anybody’s guess how long all this would take. She was actually supposed to have the evening off. She silently cursed Hasse and Behnke for calling in sick.
The neighbor knew Rita Cramer and had a key to her apartment, which she got out without any fuss after the detectives had identified themselves and told her about the accident. Unfortunately the neighbor didn’t know whether Cramer had any relatives. She never had visitors, at any rate.
The apartment was certainly depressing. Spotlessly clean and recently tidied up, but only sparsely furnished. Nowhere was there any indication of Rita Cramer’s personality, no photos of loved ones, and the walls were decorated with pictures that you could buy for a couple of euros in home remodeling stores. Bodenstein and Kirchhoff went through the apartment, opening cabinet doors and drawers in the hope of finding a relative’s name or some reason for the assault. Nothing.
“As anonymous as a hotel room,” was Bodenstein’s assessment. “There’s not a thing to go on.”
Pia went into the kitchen. Her eyes fell on the blinking answering machine. She pressed the REWIND button. Unfortunately the caller had not left a message on the tape but simply hung up. Pia jotted down the number displayed on the phone. A prefix in Königstein. She took out her cell phone and punched in the number. After the third ring an answering machine picked up.
“A doctor’s office,” she said. “They’re closed.”
“Are there any other messages?” Bodenstein asked. Kirchhoff pressed REWIND again, then shook her head.
“Odd that somebody can live like this.” She replaced the phone and looked through the kitchen calendar, which was still showing the month of May. There was not a single thing written on it. On a corkboard hung a flyer from a pizza delivery service and the faded blue copy of a parking ticket from April. None of it signified a happy, contented life.
“Tomorrow we’ll call this doctor’s office,” Bodenstein decided. “There’s nothing else we can do today. I’ll drive by the hospital and check on Rita Cramer’s condition.”
They left the apartment and returned the key to the neighbor.
“Could you drop me at Christoph’s before you go to the hospital?” Pia asked as they took the elevator down. “It’s on the way.”
“Oh, right, the party.”
“How do you know about that?” She shoved open the glass door so vigorously that she almost struck a man in the back as he bent over to study the name labels.
“Excuse me,” she said. “I didn’t see you.”
Pia caught a fleeting glimpse of his face as she smiled her apology.
“No harm done,” said the man, and they went on.
Bodenstein turned up the collar of his coat. “I like to be well informed about my colleagues. But you know that.”
Pia remembered her conversation with Kathrin Fachinger that morning. This seemed the ideal opportunity.
“Well, then you also must know that our colleague Behnke is doing some moonlighting that would definitely not meet with official approval.”
Oliver frowned and gave her a quick look.
“No, until this morning I wasn’t aware of that,” he admitted. “Were you?”
“I’m probably the last person Behnke would confide in,” Pia replied with a snort of contempt. “He always makes such a secret of his private life, as if he were still in the Special Assignment Unit.”
Oliver studied Pia in the pallid glow of the streetlight.
“He has some fairly major problems,” he said. “His wife left him a year ago. He couldn’t keep up with the mortgage payments and ended up losing the house.”
Pia stopped and stared at him speechless for a moment. So that was the reason for Behnke’s behavior, for his constant irritability, his foul moods, his aggressiveness. And yet she felt no sympathy for him, only annoyance.
“You’re going to take his side again, aren’t you? What is it between you two? Why do you always make allowances for him?”
“I’m not making allowances for him,” Oliver countered.
“And how come he gets to keep making mistakes and neglect his job without suffering any consequences?”
“I suppose I hoped he’d manage to straighten out his life somehow if I didn’t pressure him too much.” Bodenstein shrugged. “But if he really is moonlighting in an unauthorized job, then I can’t do anything more for him.”
“So you’re going to report it to Dr. Engel?”
“I’m afraid I have to.” He sighed and started walking again. “But I’ll have a talk with Frank first.”
Saturday, November 8, 2008
“Oh my God.” Dr. Daniela Lauterbach reacted with genuine horror when Bodenstein told her how he happened to get her telephone number. She turned pale beneath her suntan. “Rita is a good friend of mine. We were neighbors until she got divorced last year.”
“A witness said he saw someone push Mrs. Cramer over the railing of the pedestrian bridge,” said Bodenstein. “That’s why we’re investigating the case as a possible attempted murder.”
“That’s appalling! Poor Rita! How is she doing?”
“Not well. She’s in critical condition.”
Dr. Lauterbach clasped her hands as if in prayer and shook her head in dismay. Bodenstein estimated that she was about his age, late forties or early fifties. She had a very feminine figure and her shiny dark hair was pulled back in a simple bun. With her warm brown eyes that were surrounded by laugh lines she radiated good humor and a motherly concern. She was obviously a doctor who took enough time for her patients and their troubles. Her extensive practice was located on the pedestrian street in Königstein above a jewelry store: big bright rooms with high ceilings and parquet floors.
“Let’s step into my office,” the doctor suggested. Bodenstein followed her into a very large room dominated by a massive, old-fashioned desk. On the walls were large expressionist paintings in somber colors that presented an unusual but intriguing contrast to the otherwise pleasant decor.
“May I offer you some coffee?”
“Oh yes, please,” said Bodenste
in with a smile and a nod. “I haven’t had time for any today.”
“You’re certainly on the job early.” Dr. Lauterbach set a cup under the automatic espresso machine sitting on a sideboard next to all sorts of medical literature and pressed a button. The coffee grinder started up, and the appetizing aroma of freshly ground coffee filled the room.
“So are you,” Bodenstein replied. “And on a Saturday too.”
Late the night before he had left a message on the office answering machine, and she had called back at eight thirty this morning.
“I make house calls on Saturday mornings.” She handed him a cup of coffee, and he declined milk and sugar. “And then I usually try to catch up on paperwork. It just keeps piling up these days. I’d rather spend the time with my patients.”
She motioned him toward her desk, and Bodenstein sat down in one of the visitors’ chairs. The window behind her desk offered a wonderful view across the grounds of the nearby spa to the ruins of Königstein Castle on the hilltop.
“So, how can I help you?” Dr. Lauterbach asked after taking a sip of her coffee.
“In Mrs. Cramer’s apartment we found not a single reference to any relatives,” Bodenstein replied. “But there must be someone we should inform about the accident.”
“Rita still has a good relationship with her ex-husband,” said the doctor. “I’m sure that he would like to know.” Again she shook her head in concern. “Who could have done this?” She fixed her brown eyes on Bodenstein, giving him a pensive look.
“That’s what we want to know too. Does she have any enemies?”
“Rita? Good God, no! She’s such a sweet person and she’s had to put up with a lot in her life. But she has never been bitter.”
