by Nele Neuhaus
“Put up with what? What are you referring to?” Bodenstein studied the doctor attentively. Daniela Lauterbach, with her calm, steady demeanor, seemed extremely personable. His own family doctor processed his patients as if on a conveyor belt. Every time Bodenstein had to pay him a visit, the pace of the examination was so frenetic that it made him nervous.
“Her son had to go to jail,” said Dr. Lauterbach with a sigh. “That was very hard for Rita. It’s probably the reason her marriage broke up.”
Bodenstein, who had been about to take a sip of coffee, stopped short.
“Mrs. Cramer’s son is in jail? What for?”
“He was in jail, but he was released two days ago. Ten years ago he murdered two girls.”
Bodenstein searched his memory, but he couldn’t recall any juvenile double murderer named Cramer.
“After her divorce Rita took her maiden name again, so that she wouldn’t be instantly associated with that horrible case,” Dr. Lauterbach explained, as if reading Bodenstein’s mind. “Her married name was Sartorius.”
* * *
Pia could hardly believe her eyes. She scanned the document written in sober officialese and printed on gray recycled paper. Her heart had leaped when she discovered the long-awaited letter from the zoning commission for the city of Frankfurt in her mailbox. But what she now read was totally unexpected. Since she and Christoph had decided to live together at Birkenhof, they’d been planning to remodel the house, which was a bit too small for two people, not to mention having room for guests. An architect friend had drawn up plans for the remodeling and a preliminary inquiry for construction. Pia had been waiting impatiently for a reply, because she really wanted to get started on the project. She read through the letter a second and third time, then put it aside, got up from the kitchen table, and went to take a quick shower. Afterward she wrapped a towel around her and sullenly looked at herself in the mirror. It was three thirty by the time she left the party, yet Pia had gotten up at seven to let the dogs out and feed the other animals. Then she had enjoyed a brief break in the rain to exercise the two young horses and muck out their stalls. She just couldn’t cope with late-night partying anymore. At forty-one it was harder to recover from all-nighters than it had been at twenty-one. Absently she brushed her shoulder-length blond hair and plaited it into two braids. Going back to sleep was unthinkable after getting such bad news anyway. She went through the kitchen, removing the unpleasant letter from the table, and continued into the bedroom.
“Hey, sweetie,” murmured Christoph, blinking away sleep in the bright light. “What time is it?”
“Quarter to ten.”
He sat up and massaged his temples with a groan. Contrary to habit he had heavily indulged in alcohol last night. “So when does Annika’s plane leave?”
“Around two. We still have plenty of time.”
“What’s that you have there?” he asked when he spied the letter in Pia’s hand.
“A catastrophe,” she said morosely. “The zoning office answered.”
“And?” Christoph was trying hard to wake up.
“It’s a demolition order!”
“What?”
“The previous owner built this house without a permit—imagine! And now our inquiry has awakened sleeping dogs. All that’s approved is a garden hut and a horse stall. I don’t get it.”
She sat down on the edge of the bed, shaking her head. “I’ve been registered at this address for a few years now; the garbagemen pick up the trash, I pay the water and sewer bills. Did they really think I’ve been living in a garden hut?”
“Let me see.” Christoph scratched his head as he read the official letter. “We’ll lodge a protest. It’s just not right. The next-door neighbor is building a huge house, and you can’t even remodel your little bungalow!”
The cell phone on the nightstand rang. Pia, who was on call that day, reluctantly picked it up. She listened for a few moments in silence.
“All right, I’ll be there,” she said, punched off the call, and tossed the cell on the bed. “Damn.”
“You have to go?”
“Yes, sorry. A young man in Niederhöchstadt who was on the train platform yesterday reported that he saw a man push a woman over the railing.”
Christoph put his arm around her shoulders and pulled her close. Pia gave a deep sigh. He kissed first her cheek, then her lips. Why couldn’t this youth have waited until this afternoon to report the incident? Pia simply didn’t feel like working right now. Actually, it was Behnke’s turn to be on call this weekend. But he was “sick,” after all. And Hasse was “sick” too. To hell with those idiots! Pia leaned back and cuddled up to Christoph’s body, warm with sleep. His hand slid under the bath towel and caressed her belly.
“Now stop worrying about this piece of paper,” he whispered, kissing her again. “We’ll figure it out. They’re not going to tear the house down tomorrow.”
“Nothing but problems, day in and day out,” Pia murmured, deciding that the kid could wait a while longer at the station in Niederhöchstadt.
* * *
Bodenstein sat in his car across from the hospital in Bad Soden and waited for his colleague to show up. Dr. Lauterbach had given him the address of Rita Cramer’s ex-husband in Altenhain, but before he could give the man the bad news he had wanted to stop by the hospital and get an update on her condition. She had survived the first night; after an operation she now lay in an induced coma in the ICU. It was eleven thirty when Kirchhoff pulled up next to him, got out, and made her way around the puddles to his car.
“The kid gave us a pretty good description of the man.” She plopped into the passenger seat and fastened her seatbelt. “If Kai can manage to get a decent photo off the surveillance video, we’ll have a picture to give to the press.”
“Excellent.” Bodenstein started the engine. He had asked Pia to ride with him to visit Rita Cramer’s ex-husband. On the short drive to Altenhain he told her about his conversation with Dr. Daniela Lauterbach. Pia had a hard time concentrating. She was still worried about the letter from the zoning office. Demolition order! That was the last thing she had expected. What if the city was serious and forced her to have the house torn down? Where would she and Christoph live then?
“Are you listening to me at all?” asked Oliver.
“Sure,” said Pia. “Sartorius. Neighbor. Altenhain. I’m sorry, but we didn’t get home till four in the morning.”
She yawned and closed her eyes. She was dead tired. Unfortunately she didn’t possess Oliver’s iron constitution. He never seemed the least bit tired even after all-night stakeouts and exhausting investigations. Had she ever seen him yawn?
“The case was all over the headlines eleven years ago,” she could hear her boss saying. “Tobias Sartorius got a maximum sentence for one count of murder and one count of manslaughter after a trial based solely on circumstantial evidence.”
“Ah yes,” she murmured. “Now I remember. Double homicide with no bodies. Is the guy still in prison?”
“No. Tobias Sartorius was released last Thursday. And he’s back in Altenhain, staying with his father.”
Pia thought about this for a few seconds, then opened her eyes.
“You mean there could be a connection between his release and the attack on his mother?”
Bodenstein cast an amused glance at her. “Unbelievable,” he said.
“What?”
“Your shrewd insight never fails even when you’re half asleep.”
“I’m wide awake,” said Pia, fighting off another yawn.
They passed the sign at the town limits of Altenhain and found the address on the main street that Dr. Lauterbach had written down. Bodenstein turned into the unpaved parking area in front of the former restaurant. A man was busy applying white paint to cover up some bright red graffiti on the façade. It said HERE LIVES A RUTHLESS KILLER. The red letters still shimmered through the white paint. On the sidewalk near the driveway stood three middle-aged women.<
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“You murderer!” Bodenstein and Kirchhoff heard one of them yell as they opened the car doors to climb out. “Get out of this town, you piece of crap! Or you’ll be in for it!”
She spat on the ground.
“What’s going on here?” Bodenstein asked, but the three women paid no attention to him and simply walked away. The man had totally ignored the taunts. Bodenstein greeted him politely and introduced himself and Kirchhoff.
“Why were those women yelling at you?” Pia asked with curiosity.
“You’d better ask them,” the man said brusquely. He gave her an indifferent look and went on with his work. Despite the cold he wore only a long-sleeved gray T-shirt, jeans, and work boots.
“We’d like to speak with Mr. Sartorius.”
Then the man turned around, and Pia thought she recognized him.
“Weren’t you at Mrs. Cramer’s apartment building in Neuenhain yesterday?” she asked. If the man was surprised, he didn’t show it. He stared at her with his extraordinary sea-blue eyes, without smiling, and she felt suddenly flushed.
“Yes, that’s right. Is there something wrong with that?”
“No, of course not. But what were you doing there?”
“Visiting my mother. We had agreed to meet at a certain time, but she never showed up. I was worried.”
“Oh, so you must be Tobias Sartorius.”
He raised his eyebrows and his lips twitched derisively.
“Yes, that’s me. The killer of young girls.”
He was quite attractive in an unsettling way. The narrow white scar that ran from his left ear to his chin made a well-chiseled face more interesting instead of disfiguring it. Something in the way he looked at her prompted a strange feeling in Pia, and she wondered what might be the cause.
“Your mother had a serious accident yesterday afternoon,” Bodenstein said. “She was operated on last night and is now in intensive care. She’s in critical condition.”
Pia saw how Tobias Sartorius’s nostrils flared for a moment, and he pressed his lips together to a tight line. Then he carelessly tossed the paint roller into the paint can and went to the gate of the farmyard. The detectives exchanged a brief glance and followed him. The yard looked like a rubbish heap. Suddenly Oliver uttered a suppressed cry and abruptly stopped. Pia turned to her boss.
“What is it?” she asked in astonishment.
“A rat!” Oliver gasped. He had turned white as chalk. “The thing ran right over my foot!”
“No wonder, with all the filth in here.” Pia shrugged and wanted to keep going, but Oliver stood there like a pillar of salt.
“I hate rats more than anything,” he said, his voice quavering.
“But you grew up on a farm,” Pia countered. “There must have been an occasional rat there.”
“That’s exactly why.”
Pia shook her head in disbelief. She never would have thought her boss would have such a phobia.
“Come on,” she said. “They’ll run away when they see us. Garbage rats are shy. My girlfriend used to have two tame rats. But that was different. We used to—”
“I don’t want to hear it!” Oliver took a deep breath. “You go first.”
“Okay, okay, no problem.” Pia smirked as Oliver followed on her heels. Ready to flee at any moment, he suspiciously eyed the heaps of trash on both sides of the narrow path that led to the house.
“Yikes, there’s another one! And a fat one at that,” said Pia, stopping short. Oliver ran into her and looked around in a panic. His usual composure was gone.
“Just kidding,” Pia said with a grin, but Oliver didn’t see anything to laugh about.
“You do that again and you’ll be walking home,” he threatened. “You almost gave me a heart attack!”
They moved on. Tobias Sartorius had gone inside, but the front door was standing open. Oliver caught up with Pia at the stairs and climbed the three steps to the door like a hiker relieved to have solid ground underfoot after slogging through a swamp. An elderly man with stooped shoulders appeared in the doorway. He was wearing worn-out slippers, stained gray pants, and a threadbare knit cardigan that hung loose around his skinny body.
“Are you Hartmut Sartorius?” asked Pia, and the man nodded. He seemed just as run-down as his farm. Deep furrows were etched into his long, narrow face, and the only similarity with Tobias was his unusually blue eyes, although they had lost all brightness.
“My son tells me it’s about my ex-wife.” His voice was feeble.
“Yes,” said Pia with a nod. “She had a serious accident yesterday.”
“Please come in.” He led them down a narrow, dim hall into a kitchen that could have been cozy if it weren’t so dirty. Tobias stood by the window with his arms crossed.
“Dr. Lauterbach gave us your address,” Bodenstein began. He had rapidly regained his composure. “According to witnesses, late yesterday afternoon your ex-wife was shoved over the railing of the pedestrian bridge at the Sulzbach North S-Bahn station, directly into the path of an oncoming car.”
“Good Lord.” All color drained out of the older man’s gaunt face, and he grabbed for the back of a chair. “But … but who would do such a thing?”
“That’s what we want to find out,” said Bodenstein.”Do you have any idea who might have done this? Did your ex-wife have any enemies?”
“My mother didn’t,” said Tobias Sartorius from the background. “But I do. Just about everybody in this damned town hates me.”
His voice sounded bitter.
“Do you have anyone particular in mind?” asked Kirchhoff.
“No,” Hartmut Sartorius replied quickly. “No, I don’t believe anyone would be capable of something so terrible.”
Pia’s gaze fell on Tobias Sartorius, who was still standing by the window. With the backlight she couldn’t really see his expression, but from the way his eyebrows raised and his mouth twisted she could tell that he disagreed with his father. Pia could almost feel the angry vibes that seemed to emanate from his tense body. In his eyes blazed a long-suppressed fury like a tiny, dangerous flame that was waiting for a reason to flare up into a brushfire. Tobias Sartorius was definitely a ticking time bomb. His father, on the other hand, seemed tired and powerless like a very old man. The condition of the house and the farm spoke for itself. The man’s zest for living was extinguished, and he had barricaded himself behind the ruins of his life. Being the parent of a murderer was always horrible. But it must have been even worse for Hartmut Sartorius and his ex-wife, living in a village as small as Altenhain, with each day bringing a new gauntlet to run. Mrs. Sartorius hadn’t been able to take it anymore. She had left her husband behind, although undoubtedly with a guilty conscience. She hadn’t succeeded in getting a new start; the loveless void of her apartment clearly demonstrated that.
Pia looked over at Tobias Sartorius. He was gnawing absentmindedly on the knuckle of his thumb, staring into space. What was he plotting behind that blank expression of his? Was he upset about what he had done to his parents? Bodenstein handed Hartmut Sartorius his card, which the man glanced at and then put in the pocket of his cardigan.
“Maybe you and your son should go see your ex-wife. She’s really not doing very well.”
“Of course. We’ll drive over to the hospital right away.”
“And if you have any idea who might have done this, don’t hesitate to give me a call.”
Sartorius senior nodded, but his son didn’t react. Pia had a bad feeling. She hoped that Tobias Sartorius would not take it upon himself to search for the man who had attacked his mother.
* * *
Hartmut Sartorius drove his car into the garage. The visit with Rita had been dreadful. The doctor he spoke to refused to offer any sort of prognosis. She’d been lucky, he said, that her spinal column was virtually unscathed, but of the 206 bones in the human body about half of hers were broken. She had also suffered severe internal injuries when she fell onto the moving car. On the drive back hom
e Tobias hadn’t uttered a word, merely stared glumly into space. When they walked through the gate and approached the house, Tobias stopped by the steps to the front door and turned up the collar of his jacket.
“Where are you going?” Hartmut asked his son.
“I’m just going to get some fresh air.”
“Now? It’s almost eleven thirty. And the rain is coming down in buckets. You’ll get soaked in this terrible weather.”
“For the past ten years I haven’t had any weather at all,” said Tobias. “It doesn’t bother me to get wet. And at this time of night at least nobody will notice me.”
Hartmut hesitated, but then he put his hand on his son’s arm.
“Don’t do anything foolish, Tobi. Promise me that.”
“Of course not. Don’t worry about me.” He gave a brief smile, even though he didn’t feel like smiling at all, and waited until his father went inside. With his head down he walked through the darkness, past the empty stables and the barn. The sight of his mother lying in the ICU with her bones crushed, attached to all those tubes and other apparatus, had hit him harder than he’d expected. Was this attack on her somehow related to his release from prison? If she died, which the doctors had not ruled out as a possibility, then whoever had pushed her off the bridge would have a murder on his conscience.
Tobias stopped when he reached the rear gate to the farm. It was closed, overgrown with ivy and weeds. It probably hadn’t been opened at all in recent years. Tomorrow morning he would start cleaning up. After ten years he had a tremendous longing to breathe fresh air and do his own work.
After only three weeks in the joint he could tell that he’d turn into a zombie if he didn’t make an effort to use his mind. His lawyer had informed him that he had no chance for early release; an appeal had been denied. So Tobias had begun taking correspondence courses from Hagen University, studying to become a locksmith. Every day he had worked for eight hours; after an hour for exercise, he sat up half the night over his books, in order to distract himself and make the monotony of the days more bearable. Over the years he had become accustomed to the strict regulations, and the sudden lack of structure to his life now seemed threatening to him. Not that he was homesick for the joint, but it was going to take a while before he got used to freedom again.
