Steeg pulls the file over. “Put a mark in the list of addresses next to the other bowling buddies. Wait . . . Egon Jansen, Günther Mahler, Ludwig Lüders, Karl Meerman, and Karl Holter.” He pushes the file back across the table. “I’ll get to work on them in the morning. If they’re still alive.”
Van Oss runs both hands through his hair. “This Lüders crops up everywhere. He was questioned the day after and knows nothing. How come he remembers, three days later, that he heard a strange car during the night?”
Böhm turns around. He wishes the storm would break. Anything to clear his head. “And two weeks later he buys part of the farm for a ridiculously low sum.”
“You’re thinking a false statement for a good price?” Steeg sits up.
“But we’ll never prove it while he’s alive.” Böhm yawns. “No, we won’t get anywhere with that old story. But we might find a motive.”
Steeg stands up and stretches, groaning. “Let’s call it a day for today. Maybe you’ll get something out of the daughter tomorrow, even if she was a bit funny on the phone.”
They walk to the parking lot together.
Van Oss points at the sky. “I don’t think this storm is going to come to anything. It’s moved on somewhere else.”
Böhm is on his way home when he remembers. The shoes! Magdalena Behrens didn’t have any shoes on either.
Chapter 34
He parks his car in front of the little Italian restaurant on the main road. He’s hungry for pasta, and Casa Roma is known for its homemade tortellini.
The restaurant is not crowded: two tables with two people at each.
The waiter hates customers. He growls out a “Good evening” from behind the bar, then ostentatiously buries himself in the newspaper.
Böhm sits in the corner at the very back of the room. Let the waiter walk a bit. Maybe it will improve his mood.
The waiter makes him wait for several minutes before he brings the menu. As if a button has been pressed, he turns on a condescending smile and simultaneously bows submissively. Böhm admires this act for a moment.
“Do you already know what you would like to drink?” His voice is, likewise, a masterpiece. Jovial and aggressive at the same time.
“I’d like a glass of your Bardolino.”
Another small, mechanical bow and he hurries over to the bar. His leather soles squeak assiduously on the tile floor.
Böhm watches him go. Waiters remind him of clowns. They dress the same, at any rate. Bright-green vest over black shirt. Apron to match the vest, reaching to the floor. Plus a red bow tie and black hair swept back with gel, like a shiny bicycle helmet. No, not a clown. A frog.
He comes back to the table, tray swinging from side to side as if the carafe and glass on it were glued to the surface, and pours a taste. He waits, looking at Böhm defiantly.
Böhm nods courteously.
“Are you ready to order?” His voice rumbles bad-temperedly.
“I’m going to go for the turbot with cheese tortellini.”
The frog forgets the bow. He picks up the menu and vanishes. A moment later he is buried in his newspaper again.
Böhm stares at the snow-white tablecloth. He has come here often with Brigitte in the last two years. They would ride out on their bikes and eat extremely well. The ride back was tiring on full stomachs.
Two days. He’s been waiting two days already.
He picks up his cell phone and enters “I’m at Casa Roma, waiting for you.” He finds Brigitte’s number and sends the message.
She has not responded to his previous text. She could at least show a sign of life, send him a short message to say she isn’t with another man.
He remembers Gerhard Lüders again. What did the priest say?
The waiter places the plate in front of Böhm, who is startled out of his reverie.
“Turbot with tortellini, sir. Guten Appetit.” He returns to the bar, as if he has won.
The food smells deliciously of cheese and tarragon.
He had nothing to do with it, Rudenau told him. And more: Herr Lüders doesn’t want any more visits from me. He said: God doesn’t take care of justice. He had to take care of it himself.
Böhm cuts a small piece of turbot with the fish knife. It melts on his tongue.
Tomorrow, when he gets back from Cologne, he will talk to Gerhard Lüders again.
Chapter 35
Tuesday, March 13, 2001
The cell phone on his bedside table shrills at 3:40 a.m. He is wide awake immediately. Brigitte! He looks at the clock, tries to orient himself. The display on the phone says Headquarters.
“Böhm.” His voice has no strength.
“Beek here. Peter, a body’s been found in Merklen.”
He throws the bedclothes back, perches on the edge of the bed, and puts on his glasses. “What?” Beek’s words are gradually making their way to the part of his brain where they will be understood.
“Lembach and Bongartz are on their way. Shall I call Steeg and Van Oss?”
“Yes, of course. Where, exactly?”
Böhm runs into the bathroom, clutching the phone between his shoulder and his ear, and pulls on some jeans.
“Sommerweg, just below the Behrens farm.”
“Who?”
“Based on a preliminary identification, Lüders. Ludwig Lüders.”
“I’m on my way.”
He goes back into the bedroom, pulls on a long-sleeved turtleneck sweater, and grabs a leather jacket and the car keys in the hall.
Lüders!
Outside, he is greeted by a surprisingly cold morning. Why didn’t we anticipate this? He starts the car and backs out of the driveway. Why did we assume, all along, that we were looking at a single murder? He rubs his unshaven chin. It makes a noise like fine sandpaper on wood. I should have considered this possibility, at least when I learned the story of the Behrenses. Once on the main road, he steps on the gas. Like an airplane’s vapor trail, the road stretches out straight among the fields and meadows.
What do you have in mind, for God’s sake?
The windshield clouds up on the inside. He turns the defogger on full blast. A newspaper! He picks up his phone and calls Steeg.
“Achim, where are you?”
“Hey, I’m on my way, but I have to go all the way across town.”
“That’s not what I meant. I’m not there yet either. Will you be passing an open gas station?”
“Don’t tell me you’ve run out of gas.”
“No, buy a newspaper. Buy today’s paper.”
Böhm reaches Merklen. There are red memorial candles burning at the foot of the crucifix shrine. He turns left into Sommerweg. Lembach and his team have set up powerful floodlights on two tripods below the Behrens farm. A roadblock is set up a good hundred yards before the crime scene.
A young officer in uniform approaches his car. “Sorry, but you can’t go through here.”
Böhm searches his jacket pocket. His ID is on the sideboard in the hall. “My name is Böhm. I’m head of Homicide Division.”
The young man, barely twenty years old, smiles at him. “Sure you are, but that’s an old press trick.”
Böhm stares at him. Headlights appear behind him. He sighs with relief, gets out of his car, and waves Van Oss over. “I don’t have my ID with me. He won’t let me through.”
Van Oss grumbles. He always grumbles when they get him out of bed in the middle of the night. He goes over the officer and identifies himself. “And that’s my boss. And if you don’t let us through, we’ll both go home and you can clean up this shit by yourself.”
Böhm shakes his head. “Joop, he doesn’t know me. He did the right thing.”
Van Oss looks at the officer, who is looking at the ground sheepishly. “Sorry. No offense.”
He turns back to Böhm. “Why didn’t it enter our heads that he might do it again?”
“Because we didn’t have a hint of a motive until a few hours ago. And because our killer is d
amned quick. Gietmann hasn’t been dead three days.” Böhm gets into his car.
Objectively speaking, he has told Van Oss the truth. No one could have foreseen this. And yet there’s a dead man lying here now. A dead man because he, Böhm, wasn’t quick enough. A dead man because he didn’t think far enough ahead. He parks his car behind the van from Forensics.
Lembach is standing by the sliding door in his white full-body condom, rummaging about in a small case on the floor. “Our instincts weren’t deceiving us.” He is writing on small labels and entering numbers on a list.
“What do you mean?” Böhm shoves his hands into his jacket pockets. A cold wind blows in his face.
“That he’s crazy. He’s just getting going. Go and have a look at Lüders.”
“Who found him?”
“His son.”
“Which one?”
Lembach pulls on some fresh gloves. “Does he have more than one?”
Böhm walks along the marked path. Van Oss is at the scene, talking to Bongartz.
Böhm stops and looks around. Again, this calm—this dense, black silence that wants to keep all secrets forever. The oaks, which extend in two rows along the driveway from the farm and then around the hill to the left and right, are at least sixty feet tall here. There is a smell of soil and damp, of earth that never really dries out.
Lüders has his arms tied behind him around the trunk of a tree. His head is hanging forward. He is sitting on the ground. His feet are attached to a pair of wooden stakes, nearly five feet apart, with wide black adhesive tape. The same black tape appears on his neck and the back of his head. Böhm cannot see it from here, but he knows it goes over his mouth at the front.
The trousers and underpants have been cut open at the front. His genitals lie on the ground in front of him, between his knees. The earth is sodden with blood. The man is sitting there, mourning his sexual organs.
Böhm waits for Lüders’s shoulders to start shaking, to hear sobs and see tears drop onto the perpetually damp earth.
The wind brings the metallic scent of blood to his nostrils. He walks around the body in a wide arc and looks at it from the other side. The head lies slightly to one side; from this angle it is facing him. The tape runs over the mouth and nose. Here it seems narrower, crumpled together. Lüders must have tried to free himself.
Böhm pushes his glasses up and rubs his face with both hands.
Who are you? How many more are there on your list? Gietmann and Lüders, you wanted those two. Who else? You’re in a hell of a hurry, aren’t you? This was no botched job. Gietmann was supposed to bleed to death slowly, wasn’t he? And what did Lüders do? Why did you cut off his genitals? Do we have another three days now? Does three days have some significance?
Shoes!
Böhm looks at the widely separated feet. Black leather shoes, neatly laced.
He walks back to his car along the marked path. Bongartz offers him a plastic cup of hot coffee.
“Where did you get this?”
Bongartz pulls up the zipper of his overalls. “Lembach has electricity, Lembach has coffee.”
“Thanks.” Suddenly, Böhm feels infinitely weary, the kind of weariness that no amount of sleep can overcome. He sits down on the floor of the van.
Bongartz places his hand on Böhm’s shoulder. “Everything all right?”
Böhm takes a sip of coffee and shakes his head. “Nothing is all right. We weren’t fast enough. He’s moving along, and all we can do is chase after him.”
Bongartz crushes his empty cup and tosses it into the trash bag. Lembach installs a “staff trash bag” at every crime scene before he even starts work. Anything his colleagues throw away belongs in this bag. Two years ago, while investigating the murder of a young woman, he spent days working on a used tissue. When it turned out to belong to a member of his team, some of them had feared for their lives.
“Stop it, Peter. We didn’t even have three days. Be realistic; we’re all doing our best.” He pulls the zipper tight and places the hood over his bald head. “I’ll take care of things here and drive straight to the pathology lab. I’ll do the autopsy right away. You’ll have the results tomorrow.”
“Have you already looked? Did he bleed to death?”
“Don’t think so. Asphyxiated, more like. Don’t hold me to it, but I can say one thing for sure. When his nuts were cut off, he was still alive.” Bongartz picks up his case. “Ah yes, Steeg and Van Oss are up at the farm. They asked me to give you this.” He holds out a newspaper. “Read here. The guy’s sick. Off the scale sick.” Bongartz disappears in the direction of the crime scene.
Böhm skims the open page of the newspaper. He finds it in the middle.
Life comes to an end, but memory is forever.
Ludwig Lüders left us on March 12, 2001.
Chapter 36
Too many pills. Eight milligrams at five o’clock, but then seven o’clock came around and still no effect. It was damp and cold on the ground. Take some more. Another five mil. Then it was there, that crystal-clear alertness, that combination of certainty and strength that helps you do the right thing, that raises you above everyone else.
The trees lit up. Despite the darkness engulfing the world, the trees started radiating light in all directions.
The gas station is open twenty-four hours a day. The yellow neon sears your eyes, shooting through your pupils and into your brain. Agitation. Bleeding scratches on arms and legs. No pain. The sand-filled sock and his absurd stick in the sports bag.
“The newspaper too?” The cashier is tired.
“Yes, please. The newspaper and the water.”
With Gietmann there had been fear. That idiotic trembling over such a little life. This time it was different. This time, the heat of strength flowing through your arteries. Hot strength, like a fever that brings on the cure instead of weakness.
It was audible from a distance. The sound of his stick striking the asphalt roared in your ears. It came closer and closer, destroying the peace of the evening. He didn’t even notice. The improvised bludgeon was light, light as a feather. The effort of dragging him to the right place and tying him up brought agreeable warmth.
He struggled when the cloth between his legs no longer covered his shriveled old genitals. A rattling growl could be heard from the depths of his throat. Not fearful, like Gietmann; no, more like the snarling of a dangerous dog.
Cutting his dick off was unexpectedly hard. He kept lifting his ass off the ground and dropping it back down, like a trapped bird throwing itself at the bars of its cage, again and again, and falling into the sand at the bottom. There was no panic in his eyes, only rage. Tears flowed down his face when the first cut drew blood, redder than any artist can paint.
And then joy. The heartfelt joy of having really done it. The moment that makes your soul dance. The moment that moves you as you stand absolutely still.
Now to tape up the nose, to be on the safe side.
Lights are flickering in the distance, like blue will-o’-the-wisps on the main road. First one, then more and more. The sound comes a bit later. That self-important up-and-down wail. The high-pitched sound drills into your chest and shoves your heart up into your throat. The light climbs through your pupils and into your head, bringing an agreeable feeling of light-headedness along with it. They race past.
That was quick. They’ve already found him.
Leaning against a pump, you glance at the newspaper. A little pleasure, a little pain. Didn’t quite manage the right date of death. But . . . they’ll understand anyway. It was too risky.
A Golf, tires squealing. A man jumps out and runs into the gas station. He jumps back into the car, now carrying a newspaper, and drives on.
The laughter starts deep in your belly. It spreads, and explodes in your throat.
Chapter 37
The heavy gray sky weighs down on the roofs of the houses around the market square. The little bakery on Rathausweg opens at six. Steeg has bought fresh sa
ndwiches and a pound of coffee; he places the receipts for that and the newspaper in plain sight on the table.
Van Oss picks up the receipts and hands them back to him. “You can deduct these and leave the rest in the coffee fund.” He helps himself to a cheese sandwich and bites into it with gusto.
“Are you kidding? I’m not paying for your food.”
“Don’t worry, you’re not. But you haven’t put anything into the coffee fund this month.” Van Oss does the sums out loud: “You’re short thirty marks. You’ve spent seventeen eighty. Twelve twenty left over.”
“But surely I don’t have to pay for the newspaper?”
Böhm is standing by the map. He has marked with pins the places where the two bodies were found. He reaches into his trouser pocket and places a one-mark coin on the desk. “Here, now go get at least three mugs from your office, and let’s get started.” He says it quite softly, quite slowly. This selfish pettiness in Steeg makes him angry.
The phone rings. He picks up the receiver. It is Liefers, the Skipper. Yesterday, Böhm reported to him on the status of the Gietmann investigation. Liefers said: You’ll manage. You’re leaving the press to me, right?”
Now he says, “It’s bad, Peter. I’ve run out of things to tell the press. Anything we can release?”
When Böhm took over Homicide, Liefers had said to him: I expect to be kept informed. In principle, I don’t get involved in the work of my departments, unless I come across gross errors or incompetence.
“They already made a huge deal out of the announcement on Monday. ‘Killer announces murder in newspaper.’ And now he’s done it again.”
“Yes. The Tagesblatt published it, even though we informed them about the background of the first one. I hope they write that too.”
Böhm can hear Liefers typing on his keyboard. “Your theory is that this is a campaign of revenge. It won’t do any harm to issue that. That kind of thing reassures people.”
“Yes, you can say that, at least.”
“I’m still looking for a couple of tidbits from your notes, though. It doesn’t have to be a secret that Gietmann bled to death. Do you know the cause of death for Lüders?”
To Clear the Air Page 10
