by Nele Neuhaus
“Nadia?”
No answer. Tobias hunched down to look out the tiny window by the bed. It took his breath away when he caught sight of the deep-blue sky, the snow, and the impressive mountain panorama in the distance. He had never been to the mountains; there had been no ski vacations in his childhood, just as there had been none to the sea. Suddenly he could hardly wait to touch the snow. He climbed down the ladder. The cabin was small and cozy, with wooden walls and ceiling, a corner bench with a table set for breakfast. It smelled like coffee, and logs crackled in the fireplace. Tobias smiled. He slipped on jeans, a sweater, jacket, and shoes, opened the door and stepped outside. For a moment he paused, blinded by the gleaming brightness. He inhaled the crystal-clear, icy air deep into his lungs. A snowball hit him right in the face.
“Good morning!” Nadia laughed, waving. She was standing a couple of yards below the steps, and her radiance competed with the snow and sunshine. He grinned, ran down the steps, and sank in up to his knees in powder snow. She came toward him, her cheeks red, her face more beautiful than ever under her fur-trimmed hood.
“Wow, is it great here!” he shouted enthusiastically.
“Do you like it?”
“Oh yeah! I’ve only seen something like this on TV.”
He trudged all the way around the cabin, which nestled against the steep slope with its A-frame roof. The four feet of snow squeaked under his shoes. Nadia grabbed his hand.
“Look,” she said. “Over there, those are the most famous peaks in the Bernese Alps: the Jungfrau, the Eiger, and the Mönch. I love the sight of them.”
Then she pointed down into the valley. Way down there, hardly visible to the naked eye, houses stood tightly packed together, and a little farther off a long lake glittered blue in the sun.
“How high up are we here?” he asked.
“Fifty-nine hundred feet. Above us are only glaciers and chamois.”
She laughed, threw her arms around his neck, and kissed him with her cold, soft lips. He held her tight and returned her kiss. He felt so light and free, as if he had left all the troubles of the past years somewhere far below, down in the valleys.
* * *
The case demanded so much of his attention that he had no time to worry about his own troubles. He was glad about that. For years Bodenstein had been confronted almost daily with the dark abysses of human nature, and for the first time he recognized parallels with himself that he had previously ignored. Daniela Lauterbach seemed to know as little about her husband as he knew about Cosima. It was shocking, but apparently it was possible to live with someone for twenty-five years, sleeping in the same bed and having children, without really knowing that person. Often enough there had been cases in which clueless relatives had lived with murderers, pedophiles, and rapists and were flabbergasted when they learned the awful truth.
Bodenstein drove past the Fröhlichs’ house and the rear entrance to the Sartorius farm to the turnaround at the end of Waldstrasse and continued up the drive of the Terlindens’ estate. A woman opened the front door. She had to be Christine Terlinden’s sister, although he couldn’t see much resemblance. The woman was tall and thin; the look she gave him testified to her self-confidence.
“Yes?” Her green eyes were direct and searching. Bodenstein introduced himself and told her that he wished to speak with Christine Terlinden.
“I’ll go get her,” said the woman. “I’m Heidi Brückner, by the way, Christine’s sister.”
She had to be at least ten years younger and, unlike her sister, seemed completely without pretensions. She wore her shiny brown hair in a braid, and her face, with the lovely complexion and high cheekbones, bore no trace of makeup. She let him in and closed the front door behind him.
“Please wait here.”
She left and was gone for quite a while. Bodenstein studied the paintings on the walls, which were doubtless also done by Thies. They resembled the pictures in Daniela Lauterbach’s office in their ghastly apocalyptic gloom: contorted faces, screaming mouths, chained hands, eyes full of fear and torment. Footsteps approached and he turned around. Perfectly coiffed blonde hair, a vacant smile on a face that showed no sign of her age.
“My deepest sympathy,” said Bodenstein, holding out his hand.
“Thank you. That’s very kind of you.” She seemed not to bear a grudge that the police had been holding her husband for days. Nor had the suicide of her son, the fire in the studio, or the discovery of Stefanie Schneeberger’s mummy left any visible traces. Astounding. Was she a master of repression or was she taking such strong tranquilizers that she hadn’t yet taken it all in?
“Thies has been missing from the hospital since this morning,” he said. “He didn’t happen to come home, did he?”
“No.” She sounded worried, but not excessively concerned. Bodenstein hadn’t yet told her about what he found so strange. He asked her to tell him more about Thies, and was taken downstairs to his basement room. Heidi Brückner followed at a distance, silent and wary.
Thies’s room was friendly and bright. Since the house was built on a slope, big picture windows gave him a great view of the village. There were books on the shelves and stuffed animals sitting on a couch. The bed was made and nothing had been left carelessly lying around. The room of a ten-year-old boy, not of a thirty-year-old man. Only the pictures on the walls were extraordinary. Thies had painted portraits of his family. And here it was evident what a wonderful artist he was. In the portraits he had captured not only the faces of the people but also their personality in a subtle way. Claudius Terlinden had a friendly smile at first glance, but his body language, the expression in his eyes, and the colors in the background lent the painting an ominous tone. His mother was painted rosy and bright, and at the same time flat and two-dimensional. A picture without depth for a woman with no real personality. Bodenstein thought the third picture was a self-portrait until he remembered that Lars was Thies’s twin brother. It was painted in a totally different style, almost blurred, and showed a young man with still unfinished features and uncertain eyes.
“He’s helpless,” Christine Terlinden replied to Bodenstein’s question of how Thies got along. “He can’t cope with the world on his own, and he never carries any money. He can’t drive a car either. Because of his illness he shouldn’t have a driver’s license, and it’s also better that way. He can’t assess danger.”
“And people?” Bodenstein looked at Christine Terlinden.
“How do you mean?” She smiled in bewilderment.
“Is he able to assess people? Can he tell who is sympathetic to him and who isn’t?”
“That … is not something I can judge. Thies doesn’t speak. He avoids contact with other people.”
“He knows very well who means him well and who doesn’t,” said Heidi Brückner from the doorway. “Thies is not mentally handicapped. Actually we don’t really know the full extent of his abilities.”
Bodenstein was surprised. Christine Terlinden didn’t answer. She was standing at the window looking out at the cloudy gray of the November day.
“Autism,” her sister went on, “can manifest itself in a wide range of ways. You simply stopped challenging him at some point, and instead stuffed him full of medications so that he’ll stay calm and not cause any problems.”
Christine Terlinden turned around. Her already motionless face now seemed completely frozen.
“Excuse me,” she said to Bodenstein. “I have to let the dogs out. It’s already eight thirty.”
She left the room, her heels clicking on the stairs.
“She’s escaping back to her everyday routines,” Heidi Brückner noted with a hint of resignation in her voice. “She’s always been like that. And she’ll probably never change.”
Bodenstein looked at her. There seemed to be little love lost between the two sisters. So why was she here?
“Come on,” she said. “I want to show you something.”
He followed her upstairs to the entry hal
l. Heidi Brückner stopped to make sure that her sister was nowhere to be seen, then strode over to the wardrobe and took out a purse that was hanging on a hook.
“I intended to give this to a pharmacist friend of mine,” she explained softly. “But under the circumstances it seems better that the police have it.”
“What is it?” Bodenstein asked curiously.
“A prescription.” She handed him a folded piece of paper. “They’ve made Thies take this stuff for years.”
* * *
Pia sat with a gloomy face at her desk typing the report about the interview with Pietsch, Dombrowski, and Richter into her computer. She was angry because she hadn’t been able to keep Claudius Terlinden in custody any longer. His lawyer had lodged another complaint, insisting on the immediate release of his client. After consulting with Commissioner Engel, Pia had finally had to let him go. Her telephone rang.
“The girl’s temple was definitely crushed by a blow with this tire iron,” said Henning Kirchhoff in a sepulchral voice, without bothering to say hello. “And we did find foreign DNA in her vagina. But it’ll take a while before we can narrow it down further.”
“Okay, great,” said Pia. “And what about the tire iron? Can you do another analysis of the traces left back then?”
“I’ll check to see how busy our lab is.” He paused briefly. “Pia…”
“Yes?”
“Did Miriam get in touch with you?”
“No. Why should she?”
“Because that stupid cow called her yesterday and told her I’d gotten her pregnant.”
“Oh, shit. Now what?”
“Well.” Henning heaved a sigh. “Miriam was completely calm. She asked me if that was possible. When I had to admit it was, she didn’t say another word. She just picked up her purse and left.”
Pia was careful not to give him a lecture about faithfulness and adultery. He didn’t sound like he could cope with that at the moment. Although it was none of her business, she did feel sorry for her ex-husband.
“Have you considered that this Löblich woman might be trying to take you for a ride?” she asked. “If I were you, I’d make inquiries. Is she really pregnant? And if so, couldn’t another man be involved?”
“That’s not the point,” he replied.
“What is the point then?”
Henning hesitated with his reply.
“I cheated on Miriam, fool that I am,” he said after a while. “And she’ll never forgive me for it.”
* * *
Bodenstein looked at the private prescription that Dr. Lauterbach had written for Thies, and glanced at the names of the drugs. Ritalin, droperidol, fluphenazine, fentanyl, and lorazepam. Even as a layman he knew that autism was not a disease that could be treated with psychopharmaceuticals and sedatives.
“It’s simply easier to solve problems with a chemical sledgehammer than via the difficult path of therapy.” Heidi Brückner spoke in a muted voice, but the fury in her words was unmistakable. “My sister has taken the path of least resistance all her life. When the twins were small, she preferred traveling with her husband to looking after the kids. Thies and Lars experienced extreme neglect in their early childhood. Housemaids who spoke not a word of German were hardly the correct substitute for a mother.”
“What are you trying to say?”
Heidi Brückner’s nostrils flared.
“That Thies’s problems were created at home,” she said. “It quickly became clear that he had difficulties. He was aggressive, had a tendency to angry outbursts, and didn’t obey. Until he was four or five he didn’t speak a word. But who would he speak to? His parents were practically never home. Claudius and Christine never tried to help the boy with therapies, they always relied on drugs. Thies would spend weeks completely sedated, just sitting around listlessly. As soon as they discontinued the medication he would flip out. They put him in the children’s psychiatric clinic and left him there for years. What a nightmare. The boy is sensitive and highly intelligent and was forced to live with mentally handicapped patients!”
“Why didn’t anyone intervene?” Bodenstein wanted to know.
“Who would have done that?” She sounded sarcastic. “Thies never had contact with normal people or with teachers who might have noticed what was wrong with him.”
“You mean, he’s not autistic after all?”
“No, he certainly is. But autism is not a clearly defined disease. It ranges from really serious mental handicaps to the mild manifestations of Asperger’s syndrome, where the patient is perfectly capable of living an independent, though limited life. Many autistic adults learn to cope with their idiosyncrasies.” She shook her head. “Thies is a victim of his egotistical parents. And Lars became one too.”
“Oh?”
“As a child and teenager Lars was extremely shy. He hardly dared open his mouth to speak. In addition he was deeply religious, and wanted to be a pastor,” said Heidi Brückner matter-of-factly. “Since Thies obviously couldn’t take over the firm, Claudius pinned all his hopes on Lars. He refused to let him study theology, sent him to England, and made him take a degree in business administration. Lars was never really happy. And now he’s dead.”
“Why didn’t you intervene, if you knew all this?” asked Bodenstein, disconcerted.
“I tried for many years.” She shrugged. “Since I couldn’t talk about it with my sister, I spoke to Claudius. It was 1994, I remember that very clearly, because I had just returned from Southeast Asia where I was working as a development aide. A lot had changed here. Wilhelm, my brother-in-law’s older brother, had died a couple of years earlier; Claudius had taken over the firm and moved into this gigantic box of a house. I would gladly have stayed for a while to help out Christine a little.”
She snorted contemptuously.
“Claudius didn’t think that was a good idea. He never could stand me, because he couldn’t intimidate and control me. I stayed two weeks and observed the whole scene. My sister would spend her days at one golf course after another, leaving the boys in the care of a housemaid from the village and this Daniela. One day Claudius and I got into an awful fight. Christine had gone to Mallorca, as she so often did. Fixing up the house there.” Heidi Brückner laughed contemptuously. “That was more important than her sons. I had gone for a walk and came back in the house through the downstairs. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I entered the living room and surprised my brother-in-law with the daughter of the housekeeper. The girl was no more than fourteen or fifteen…”
She broke off, shaking her head in disgust at the memory of this incident. Bodenstein was paying close attention. Her account jibed with what Claudius Terlinden himself had said—up to one decisive point.
“He had a full-blown erection when I came into the living room and screamed at him. The girl ran away. Claudius stood before me with his pants down, beet-red in the face. Denial was no longer possible. And suddenly Lars was standing there too. I’ll never in my life forget the expression on his face. You can imagine why I haven’t been welcome here since then. Christine never had the guts to rebel against her husband. She refused to believe me when I phoned her at once to tell her what I’d seen. She called me a liar and said I was just jealous. Today is the first time we’ve seen each other in fourteen years. And to be honest, I don’t plan to stay long.”
She heaved a sigh.
“I’ve always tried to make excuses for my sister,” she went on after a moment. “Maybe it was a way to ease my guilty conscience. I’ve always secretly feared that one day things would end in disaster, but I never expected anything like this.”
“And now?”
Heidi Brückner understood what Bodenstein meant.
“This morning I finally realized that having family ties to someone doesn’t mean you have to defend their actions. My sister leaves everything to that Daniela, as she always has. What good am I here?”
“You don’t like Dr. Lauterbach?” Bodenstein asked.
“No. I use
d to think there was something wrong with her. All that exaggerated concern for everyone. And the way she mothers her husband—I found that strange, almost sick.” Heidi Brückner swept a stray lock of hair out of her face. Bodenstein saw a wedding ring on her left hand. For an instant he felt disappointed and then wondered why he had such an absurd reaction. He didn’t know this woman at all, and after the investigation was over he would probably never see her again.
“After I saw those piles of medicines I thought even less of her,” Heidi Brückner went on. “I’m no pharmacist, but I’ve extensively researched Thies’s symptoms. That woman doesn’t have to tell me a thing.”
“Did you see her this morning?”
“Yes, she was here briefly to check on Christine.”
“When did you arrive?”
“Last night around nine thirty. I left home at once after Christine called and told me what had happened. It takes me an hour to drive here from Schotten.”
“You mean, Dr. Lauterbach wasn’t here all night?” Bodenstein asked in surprise.
“No. She arrived a little while ago, around seven thirty, stayed for a cup of coffee, and then left. Why?” Her green eyes were inquisitive, but Bodenstein didn’t reply. The pieces of the puzzle were falling into place as if by themselves. Daniela Lauterbach had lied to him. And certainly not for the first time.
“Here’s my number.” He handed her his business card. “And thank you so much for your candor. You’ve helped me a great deal.”
“You’re welcome.” Heidi Brückner nodded and held out her hand. Her handshake was warm and firm. Bodenstein hesitated.
“Oh, in case I have another question—how can I reach you?”
A tiny smile flitted across her serious face. She pulled out her wallet and took out a card for him.
“I probably won’t be here for much longer,” she said. “As soon as my brother-in-law comes home, he’ll undoubtedly throw me out.”
