by Nele Neuhaus
“Let’s go over to the grocery store and show the picture around,” Pia suggested. “Somehow I have a feeling that this attack had something to do with Tobias.”
Oliver nodded. Pia’s intuition was as good as his sister’s, and her hunches were often correct. He had thought about the conversation with Theresa all last evening and waited in vain for Cosima to tell him who she had been talking to on her cell outside the riding hall. Oliver had convinced himself that it was probably completely trivial, and that was why Cosima had already forgotten about it. She made a lot of calls and her colleagues also phoned her a lot, even on Sundays. This morning at breakfast he had decided not to attach much importance to the matter, especially since Cosima had behaved completely normally. She had been in a good mood and had cheerfully told him about her plans for the day: to work on the film in the cutting room, meet the voice-over guy, and have lunch with the team in Mainz. All quite normal. She had kissed him good-bye, as she had almost every morning for the past twenty-five years. He was obviously worrying for no reason.
The doorbell of the little grocery store jingled as they entered the shop. In one aisle a group of women with shopping baskets had their heads together, probably exchanging the latest village gossip.
“Your call, boss,” Pia said softly to Oliver, who usually had no problem wrapping most women around his little finger with his outrageous good looks and Cary Grant charm. But today Bodenstein didn’t seem up to par.
“No, you’d better do it,” he replied. Through an open door they could see into the courtyard, where a powerful-looking gray-haired man was unloading crates of fruit and vegetables from a delivery truck. Pia shrugged and headed straight for the group of women.
“Good morning.” She flashed her badge. “Hofheim Criminal Police.”
Suspicious and curious looks.
“On Friday afternoon the ex-wife of Hartmut Sartorius was the victim of a malicious attack.” Pia chose her words carefully, going for added drama. “I assume that you all know Rita Cramer?”
They nodded.
“We have here a photo of the man who pushed her off a bridge directly into the path of an oncoming vehicle.”
The lack of shocked reactions led her to believe that news of the accident had already made the rounds in the village. Pia took out the photo and held it out to the woman in the white smock, apparently the owner of the store.
“Do you recognize this man?”
The woman glanced at the photo, squinting her eyes, then looked up and shook her head.
“No,” she said, feigning regret. “I’m sorry. I’ve never seen him before.”
The other three women, at a loss, also shook their heads, but Pia didn’t miss the quick glance that one of them exchanged with the store owner.
“Are you quite sure? Take another look. The quality isn’t very good.”
“We don’t know this man.” The store owner handed the photo back to Pia and returned her gaze without batting an eyelash. She was lying. It was obvious.
“Too bad.” Pia smiled. “May I ask your name?”
“Richter. Margot Richter.”
At that moment the man from the back courtyard came stomping into the store carrying three crates of fruit and noisily set them down.
“Lutz, they’re from the criminal police,” Margot Richter told him, before Pia could even open her mouth. Her husband came closer. He was tall and corpulent, with a cheerful face, his nose swollen and red from the cold and exertion. The look he gave his wife betrayed the fact that he was totally under her thumb and wouldn’t have much to say. He grabbed the photo with his big paw, but before he could look at it, his wife plucked it out of his hand.
“My husband doesn’t know this guy either.”
Pia felt sorry for the husband, who must not have much to laugh about.
“Allow me.” She took the picture from Mrs. Richter and held it out to her husband before she could protest again. “Have you ever seen this man? On Friday he pushed your former neighbor in front of an oncoming car. Since then Rita Cramer has been in intensive care in an induced coma, and we still don’t know whether she’s going to survive.”
Richter hesitated briefly, seeming to weigh his answer. He wasn’t a good liar, but he was an obedient spouse. For an instant he glanced uncertainly at his wife.
“No,” he said at last. “I don’t know him.”
“All right then. Thank you very much.” Pia forced a smile. “Have a nice day.”
She left the store, followed by Bodenstein.
“They all knew him.”
“No doubt about it.” Bodenstein looked down the main street. “Over there is a beauty shop. Let’s try there.”
They walked the few yards along the narrow sidewalk, but when they entered the small, old-fashioned salon the hairdresser was just hanging up the phone with a guilty look on her face.
“Good morning,” said Pia, nodding toward the telephone. “I’m sure that Mrs. Richter has already told you why we’re here. So I can probably skip the question.”
The woman gave them a clueless look, her gaze shifting from Pia to Oliver and stopping there. If Bodenstein had been feeling more himself today, the hairdresser wouldn’t have had a chance.
“What is it with you?” Pia asked Oliver, slightly miffed, when they were out on the sidewalk a minute later. “All you had to do was flash that hairdresser a smile and she would have melted and probably given us the name, address, and telephone number of our suspect.”
“I’m sorry,” Oliver said lamely. “I’m just not really with it today.”
A car rushed by down the narrow street, then a second one, then a truck. They had to step back against the wall of the building so as not to be hit by a side mirror.
“At any rate, this afternoon I’m going to requisition all the old files on the Sartorius case,” said Pia. “I swear, this is all connected.”
An inquiry in the florist’s shop was just as fruitless as those at the kindergarten and the office of the elementary school. Margot Richter had already disseminated her instructions. The whole community had closed ranks and was practicing a real Sicilian code of silence in order to protect one of their own.
* * *
Amelie was lying in the hammock that Thies had specially arranged for her between two potted palms. She was swaying from side to side. Outside the mullioned windows the rain was pouring down, drumming on the roof of the orangerie, which was hidden behind a large weeping willow on the spacious grounds of the Terlinden villa. In here it was warm and cozy. It smelled of oil paints and turpentine, because Thies used the long building as a studio as well as the winter refuge for the delicate Mediterranean plants from the park. Hundreds of painted canvases were lined up along the walls, arranged precisely by size. Dozens of brushes stood in old jam jars. In everything he did, Thies was compulsively orderly. All the potted plants—oleanders, palms, lantana, and dwarf lemon and orange trees—stood in rows, also arranged by size. Nothing was arbitrarily placed. The tools and equipment that Thies used in the summertime to take care of the large park hung on the wall or stood in rank and file on the floor. Sometimes Amelie would intentionally move something or leave a cigarette butt somewhere just to tease Thies. Each time he would correct this intolerable disturbance without delay. He also saw immediately if any of the plants had been moved.
“I think it’s totally exciting,” said Amelie. “I would love to find out more, but I don’t know how.”
She didn’t expect an answer, but still cast a quick glance at Thies. He was standing in front of his easel painting with great concentration. His pictures were largely abstract and done in somber colors—not the best choice for the home of anyone who was depressed, Amelie thought. At first sight Thies looked completely normal. If his expression weren’t so stony he would have been a rather handsome man, with that oval face, the narrow, straight nose, and the soft, full lips. It was easy to see the resemblance to his beautiful mother. He had inherited her dazzling blond hair, and big
Nordic blue eyes, and thick, dark eyelashes. But what Amelie liked the most were his hands. Thies had the sensitive, delicate hands of a pianist, and gardening work had not damaged them at all. When he was excited they would flutter here and there like startled birds in a cage. But right now he was quite calm, as he almost always was when he was painting.
“I keep asking myself,” Amelie went on with her musing, “what could Tobias have done with those two girls? Why didn’t he ever tell anyone? Then maybe he wouldn’t have had to stay in prison for so long. It’s weird. But for some reason I like him. He’s so different from the other guys in this dump.”
She clasped her hands behind her head, closed her eyes, and contentedly continued her morbid pondering. “Did he chop them up? Maybe he even encased them in concrete and buried them somewhere on his farm.”
Thies kept working, unfazed, mixing a dark green with a ruby red on his palette, then rejected the result after a brief scrutiny and added a little white to it. Amelie stopped the hammock from swaying.
“Do you think I look better when I take out my piercings?”
Thies said nothing. Amelie climbed carefully out of the swinging hammock and went over to him. She peered over his shoulder at the canvas. Her mouth fell open when she recognized what he’d been painting for the past two hours.
“Whoa,” she said, simultaneously impressed and astonished. “That’s so cool.”
* * *
Fourteen well-worn file folders had been borrowed from the archives of Frankfurt police headquarters and were now in boxes next to Pia Kirchhoff’s desk. In 1997 the Division of Violent Crimes in the Main-Taunus region didn’t exist yet. In cases of homicide, rape, and manslaughter, Division K-11 in Frankfurt had been in charge until the reform of the Hesse state police a few years ago. But studying the documents would have to wait. Dr. Nicola Engel had called one of the useless team meetings that she loved so much, set to begin at four o’clock.
It was hot and sticky in the conference room. Since there was nothing spectacular on the day’s agenda, the mood of the participants ranged from sleepy to bored. Outside the windows the rain was pouring down from an overcast sky, and it was already getting dark.
“The surveillance photo of the unknown man is being released to the press today,” said the commissioner. “Somebody is bound to recognize him and call in.”
Andreas Hasse, who had shown up for work this morning, pale and taciturn, sneezed.
“Why don’t you just stay home instead of spreading your cold to the rest of us?” said Kai Ostermann irritably. He was sitting right next to Hasse, who didn’t answer.
“Is there anything else?” Dr. Nicola Engel’s attentive gaze moved from one person to the next, but her subordinates wisely avoided direct eye contact. She always seemed able to look right into their heads. With her seismographic senses she had been noticing the subliminal tension in the air for some time, and now she was trying to pinpoint the cause.
“I’ve gotten hold of the documents in the Sartorius case,” said Kirchhoff. “Somehow I have the feeling that the attack on Mrs. Cramer might be directly connected to the release of Tobias Sartorius. The people we talked to in Altenhain today recognized the man in the photo, but they all denied it. They’re trying to protect him.”
“Is that your view of things too?” asked Dr. Engel, turning to Bodenstein, who had been staring into space the whole time.
“That is entirely possible.” He nodded. “Their reaction did seem odd.”
“Good.” Dr. Engel looked at Kirchhoff. “Look through the documents, but don’t spend too much time on it. We’re also expecting to get the results on the skeleton from forensics, and that case takes precedence.”
“They hate Tobias Sartorius in Altenhain,” said Kirchhoff. “They’ve painted graffiti on his father’s house, and when we got there on Saturday to report the news of the accident, three women were standing across the street hurling curses at him.”
“I met that guy once.” Hasse cleared his throat a couple of times. “This Sartorius was a cold-blooded killer. An arrogant, smug pretty boy who wanted everybody to believe that he’d suffered a blackout and couldn’t remember a thing. But the evidence was clear. He kept lying all the way to the slammer.”
“But he’s served his time. He has a right to rejoin society,” Kirchhoff countered. “And the attitude of the townspeople makes me mad. Why are they lying? Who are they protecting?”
“You think you’ll be able to figure that out from reading the old files?” Hasse shook his head. “The guy killed his girlfriend when she broke up with him, and because his former girlfriend witnessed it, she had to die too.”
Pia wondered about this unusual display of fervor from her colleague, who was normally rather indifferent.
“That’s possible,” she said. “And he did ten years for it. But maybe the old records of the trial will tell me who pushed Rita Cramer off that bridge.”
“Do you really want to—” Hasse began, but Dr. Engel put a firm stop to the discussion.
“Ms. Kirchhoff will look through the documents until we have the facts about the skeleton.”
Since there was nothing else to discuss, the meeting was adjourned. Dr. Engel went back to her office, and the rest of K-11 dispersed.
“I have to go home,” said Oliver out of the blue, after glancing at his watch. Pia decided to drive home too, taking some of the files with her. Nothing of any importance was going to be happening here.
* * *
“Shall I carry the suitcase into the house, Minister?” asked the chauffeur, but Gregor Lauterbach shook his head.
“Never mind, I’ll get it.” He smiled. “You’d better be getting home now, Forthuber. I’ll need you at eight tomorrow morning.”
“Very good, sir. Good night, then, Minister.”
Lauterbach nodded and grabbed the small suitcase. He hadn’t been home in three days. First he’d had appointments in Berlin, then the cultural ministers’ conference in Stralsund where his colleagues from Baden-Württemberg and Nordrhein-Westfalen had squabbled fiercely about the establishment of guidelines to meet the need for teachers. He heard the telephone ring as he opened the front door and turned off the alarm with a flick of the wrist. The answering machine switched on, but the caller didn’t take the trouble to leave a message. Gregor Lauterbach set down his suitcase in front of the stairs, turned on the light, and went into the kitchen. He glanced at the mail piled on the kitchen table, neatly divided into two stacks by the housekeeper. Daniela wasn’t home yet. If he remembered correctly, tonight she was giving a speech at a physicians’ congress in Marburg. Lauterbach went farther into the living room and studied the bottles on the sideboard for a while before he decided on a forty-two-year-old Black Bowmore scotch. A gift from somebody who was trying to butter him up. He opened the bottle and poured a double shot into a glass. Since he’d become cultural minister in Wiesbaden, he and Daniela saw each other only by chance or to coordinate their appointment calendars. They hadn’t slept in the same bed for ten years. Lauterbach kept a secret apartment in Idstein, where he met a discreet lover once a week. He had made it crystal clear to her from the outset that he had no intention of ever divorcing Daniela, so the topic never came up when they were together. Whether Daniela had some sort of relationship going as well, he had no idea, and he wasn’t going to ask her about it. He loosened his tie, removed his suit jacket and tossed it over the back of the sofa, taking a sip of the whisky. The telephone rang again. Three times, then the answering machine went on.
“Gregor.” The male voice had an urgent tone. “If you’re home, please pick up. It’s extremely important!”
Lauterbach hesitated for a moment. He knew that voice. Everything seemed to be extremely important all the time. But finally he sighed and picked up the receiver. The caller wasted no time in pleasantries. As Lauterbach listened, he could feel the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. He straightened up involuntarily. A feeling of foreboding attacked him as suddenl
y as a raptor.
“Thanks for calling,” he said in a hoarse voice and hung up. He stood there as if paralyzed in the dim light. A skeleton in Eschborn. Tobias Sartorius back in Altenhain. His mother had been pushed off a bridge by an unknown assailant. And a zealous officer from K-11 in Hofheim was rummaging through old files. Damn. The expensive whisky took on a bitter taste. He carelessly put down the glass and hurried upstairs to his bedroom. It might not mean anything. It could all be a coincidence, he tried to reassure himself. But in vain.
Lauterbach sat down on the bed, took off his shoes, and fell back onto the covers. A torrent of unwelcome images rushed through his head. How could a single insignificant error in judgment have produced such catastrophic repercussions? He closed his eyes. Exhaustion crept through his body. His thoughts slipped from the present along tangled paths into the world of dreams and memories. White as snow, red as blood, black as ebony …
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
“The skeleton is that of a girl who at the time of death was between fifteen and eighteen years old.” Dr. Henning Kirchhoff was in a hurry. He had to catch a plane to London, where he was expected to testify as an expert witness at a criminal trial. Bodenstein was sitting in a chair in front of the ME’s desk, listening as Dr. Kirchhoff packed the necessary documents in his briefcase and held forth on fused basilar sutures, partially fused iliac crests, and other indicators of aging.
“How long has she been inside the tank?” Bodenstein interrupted him at last.
“Ten to fifteen years max.” The medical examiner stepped over to the light box and tapped on one of the X-rays. “She once had a broken arm. You can clearly see a healed fracture here.”
