Blood Ties

by Alexander Hartung

  Nina stopped tidying away the dishes for a moment and looked at her son. His face was still childlike and his short black hair had been combed to one side. Just like every other day, he was wearing a white T-shirt under a dark grey jumper with dark blue jeans. She would have loved more than anything to get a glimpse at his world; to understand what moved him, what worried him and why he barely talked. Life wasn’t always easy with an autistic child, but it was full of beautiful moments as well. Quiet moments, like when he sat next to her on the couch, watching cartoons that would make the corners of his lips curl up, albeit only faintly.

  The kitchen clock said 7.55 a.m. Hannes jumped up abruptly, as if reacting to a silent alarm, put on his jacket and went outside with his mother. She beeped the car open while pulling on her coat, and closed the front door, locking it behind her. As she turned around, a tall man with a scar across his right cheek was standing directly in front of her. His right eye was rheumy and the right-hand side of his mouth drooped. The woman was transfixed for a moment by the disfigured features. The man took out a plastic yellow gun from his jacket pocket and pointed it at Nina.

  ‘I-I-I’m sorry,’ stammered the man remorsefully. And then came the pain.

  The vibrations from Nik’s mobile seemed to stab him in the temples. He opened his eyes and the room started spinning around him as if he was on a carousel. He could taste vomit in his mouth and last night’s alcohol lay precariously on his stomach. He closed his eyes and felt around the mattress for his phone.

  ‘Hello?’ he croaked.

  ‘Did I wake you?’ asked Jon, sounding confused. ‘It’s half ten.’

  ‘Was a long night.’

  ‘Another kid’s been kidnapped.’

  ‘Shit.’ Nik forced himself up and out of bed. ‘OK. I’m listening.’

  ‘His name’s Hannes Lepper. Lives in Trudering. Barely two hundred metres from the place where they sifted through your car yesterday.’

  ‘Right. No coincidence there then.’ Nik staggered into the kitchen and turned on the coffee machine. ‘How did it happen?’

  ‘At 7.56 a.m., Hannes and his mum were leaving to go to his therapy. That’s when the kidnapper pounced.’

  ‘Therapy?’

  ‘Hannes was diagnosed with autism as a young child. I’ve only skimmed over his medical history but it appears he has problems with social interaction and doesn’t talk. The only way he can communicate is with a word processor.’

  ‘Jesus,’ mumbled Nik. The coffee machine reverberated in the background. ‘Anyone hurt? Killed?’

  ‘Not all reports are online yet,’ explained Jon. ‘But going by the first entries, the whole thing was pretty tame.’ Nik could hear Jon’s keyboard clicking in the background. ‘As I mentioned, Hannes and his mother, Nina, were about to leave for therapy when our tall friend with a limp jumped out of his car and stunned the mother with a taser.’

  ‘Painful . . . but efficient,’ Nik remarked. ‘At least he didn’t shoot her like he shot Greta’s driver.’

  ‘According to Nina’s statement, the man even apologised before he did it,’ said Jon. ‘After that, he shoved the screaming child into his car and drove away. The CID have reasonable cause to believe it’s the same man who kidnapped Greta. Firstly, there was the description given by the mother, which matched the man. Secondly, his car was flashed only thirty metres down the road by a speed camera which got a razor-sharp image of him. And thirdly, the abduction location was a pretty stupid choice: the Lepper family live in a terraced house on a built-up estate so there were five other eyewitnesses.’

  Nik drank some coffee. It was going to take a while for the effects of yesterday’s escapades to diminish.

  ‘Look at your tablet,’ Jon continued. ‘I’ve sent you the picture from the traffic camera.’

  Nik picked up the tablet from the table and looked at the photo. The man seemed to be in his late thirties. He had short, shaved ginger hair and a slightly crooked nose. A flaky scar ran from his right ear down his cheek. His right eye was bloodshot and half shut. The right corner of his mouth hung downwards and he had slightly protruding lips. ‘Looks like a character from a horror film,’ Nik remarked.

  ‘As soon as the search is announced, people will be seeing him on every street corner.’

  ‘This was a sloppy abduction. Not at all like Greta’s,’ remarked Nik. ‘If he’d been properly prepared, he would’ve never got caught speeding. And he would have chosen another place and another time. Not the middle of a housing estate when people are leaving for work.’

  ‘So what changed?’

  ‘Maybe it’s because of me,’ suggested Nik. ‘Maybe the kidnapper was afraid I was on to him so he pounced in a hurry.’

  ‘That’s one possibility.’

  ‘And what about Hannes’ social circle? What’s that like?’

  ‘I’ve only got the basics at the moment,’ replied Jon. ‘His father is a teacher at a high school and his mother’s a social worker. But she hasn’t worked since Hannes was adopted.’

  ‘Adopted?’

  ‘Yep. That’s our first similarity: Hannes was adopted, Greta too – in some way or another, and Simon lived with various foster parents.’

  ‘OK. That puts a new spin on things.’

  ‘Oh, it gets better,’ said Jon. ‘Greta and Hannes were born on 6 June 2003; and Simon on 7 June 2003. Hannes was born at 8.45 p.m. and Greta at 11.52 p.m. I don’t have any information on the time of day Simon was born. But I wouldn’t be surprised if it turns out it was early in the morning.’

  ‘So only a few hours between them then . . .’

  ‘And all three in the women’s clinic on Maistraße.’

  ‘Right. Well, the children are obviously connected in some way,’ said Nik. ‘We need to get the CID to include Simon in their search. Can you contact them anonymously and tell them about the birth date connections and the fact that all three children were born in the same hospital? And that Simon was seen talking to a man matching the kidnapper’s description. That should make them take an interest.’

  ‘Good point. I’ll do that next.’

  ‘Something strange must’ve happened around the time they were born.’

  ‘I’d love to be able to tell you what, but the hospital files aren’t on the server. Now, that might be because of the legal obligation to destroy information after ten years or . . . it might be because the files from 2003 were not fully digitalised. Whatever the case, I can’t get any information on births from 2003. But I might know how we can,’ said Jon enthusiastically.

  ‘Should I be scared?’ asked Nik, taking a sip of coffee.

  ‘There’s an archive in the hospital. There might still be paperwork in there.’

  ‘Uh-huh.’ Nik knew what was coming. ‘And since they’re not open to the public . . . ?’

  ‘. . . One of us will have to get in and have a look,’ Jon said matter-of-factly.

  ‘And when you say “one of us”, you don’t mean yourself or Balthasar, do you?’

  ‘Not if we actually want the plan to work.’

  Nik sighed. ‘I’ll need the staff rotas; shift changes are the best time to get in there without being noticed.’

  ‘Not a problem.’

  ‘I’ll also need scrubs and a name badge with the name of a fake doctor. I can’t afford any embarrassing moments so it has to be someone who doesn’t work in the clinic.’

  ‘OK. I know someone who manufactures work clothes. He’ll be able to help.’

  ‘Good. But before anything, I need a cold shower and a proper breakfast,’ said Nik. ‘After that, I’ll get my burglary gear together. With a bit of luck, we’ll find something on those kids. But I have to admit, I’ve got a horrible feeling about the whole thing.’

  Nik was wearing a white shirt, light blue jeans and his custom-made leather shoes. He walked into the hospital holding a bunch of flowers and a small plastic bag containing his scrubs. He smiled and waved to the porter as he entered. Once he was inside, he went
upstairs to the first floor and walked along the long corridor looking for a toilet. As he’d expected, there weren’t many visitors in the hospital at this time of day. The day patients had all gone home, and the shift change meant that employees had gone back into their offices and staff rooms. Nik put the flowers on a table and went into the men’s toilet, where he slipped the doctor’s coat on over his clothes, then he hastily left the bathroom and, finding a staff stairway, hurried down to the basement.

  The rooms upstairs had been flooded with light but down in the basement it was dark and forbidding. Thanks to the building plan that Jon had downloaded, Nik was quickly able to locate the archive room. The lock quality was mediocre and Nik only needed a few minutes to pick it.

  Once inside, he paused for a moment, closing his eyes and focusing all attention on his ears. He couldn’t hear a sound and the light was off, so he assumed nobody else was in the archive. He took out his phone, attached the headset and called Jon. The reception was bad but it was enough to stay connected.

  ‘I’m inside.’ Nik took a small headlamp out of his trouser pocket and looked around. There were ten rows of shelves in front of him, each eight metres long and three metres high. ‘If we can’t narrow down the search somehow, I’ll be here for the week.’

  ‘OK. We could narrow it down to the prenatal centre but even then, the files could be in a number of areas.’

  Nik wiped the dust from the labels on the shelves, pushed some boxes around and tried to get to grips with the storage system. ‘Everything’s covered in dust,’ said Nik, rubbing his nose frustratedly. ‘I doubt anyone’s even been in here for ten years.’

  ‘Let’s hope not,’ said Jon. ‘That would be an advantage for us.’

  ‘I’ve found the birth registrations,’ said Nik after a while. ‘Starting in the 80s.’

  ‘We’re looking for June 2003.’

  Nik walked up the aisle until he came to 2003. ‘You’re fucking joking,’ he blurted out. A box was missing. ‘They only go up to April 2003. And then start again in September.’ He rubbed his finger along the empty space. ‘Hasn’t been gone long. There’s no dust in the space.’

  ‘Why are we always one step behind?’ said Jon, beginning to feel the frustration himself now.

  Nik leaned against the shelving and closed his eyes. ‘So, what do we do now?’

  ‘We could ask the clinic employees . . . ?’

  ‘About a case from fourteen years ago?’ Nik asked. ‘Ten children are born here every day. No doctor or nurse is going to remember that night.’

  ‘Yeah, but even if we don’t know why or how, we do know that night was different.’

  ‘That’s true . . . Might be a good starting point,’ said Nik pensively.

  ‘What is? To find out how it was different?’

  ‘Yeah . . . to find out what was so special about that night,’ Nik replied. ‘Did you look to see if anything out of the ordinary happened in or around the women’s clinic on 6 or 7 June?’

  ‘No, it didn’t occur to me to look,’ Jon admitted. ‘I’ll get on it straight away.’

  Nik took off the doctor’s coat and left the archive. ‘But before you start, give me the details on Hannes’ family.’

  ‘Not much to report, really. As I said, Rene Lepper is a teacher and his wife, Nina, is a social worker. It was a conscious decision to adopt a child with autism. And if you go by the reports from social services, the boy is really happy there. Of course, I tried to find links to the other cases but I didn’t get anything. No links to the Grohnerts, or to Simon. They even live too far away from one another to have just randomly become friends.’

  ‘So the only similarity is the time of birth.’

  ‘Right. So all in all, we’re looking at three deaths at least here and possibly three abductions. Then there’s Balthasar’s attack and the fact that someone broke into the hospital archive,’ said Jon. ‘What kind of birth causes such chaos? And not only that, causes it fourteen years later?’

  ‘Somebody wanted to get more information about that night. Why else would they steal the files?’

  ‘Maybe they wanted to prevent other people from getting the information?’

  ‘But why the abductions then? It would’ve been enough to just get rid of the files from 2003.’

  ‘Wait a second.’ Nik heard Jon tapping at his keyboard. ‘I don’t believe it. I’ve found something.’

  ‘What does it say?’

  ‘A nurse on night duty called the police at four in the morning because two men were making her give them information on a patient.’

  ‘Which patient?’

  ‘Doesn’t say, but by the time the police got there, the men were already gone.’

  ‘Any names?’

  ‘The call was made by an Ingrid Gassen. I don’t know if she still works in the hospital. But that doesn’t matter; if she’s still alive, you’ll have an address shortly.’

  ‘I’m going back to the car,’ said Nik. ‘Hopefully the woman can remember that night. I’ll pay her a visit tomorrow morning.’

  Chapter 9

  Ingrid Gassen stood by her vegetable patch, using a hoe to loosen the weeds. Her hair was tied back in a ponytail and she was wearing old jeans, a faded T-shirt and a green apron. She looked younger than her sixty-three years: she had very few wrinkles and wielded the hoe with ease. Even her stooped stance didn’t seem to bother her.

  Nik stood at the fence of her small garden and waved over to her with a friendly smile. Gassen straightened and leaned on the hoe. She took a pair of glasses out of her apron pocket and looked more closely at him.

  ‘Can I help you?’ she asked politely.

  Nik held up his fake badge. ‘My name is Nik Pohl. I work for the Munich CID. Do you perhaps have a couple of minutes for me?’

  ‘Did something happen?’ asked Gassen, the concern on her face growing as she walked over to the fence.

  ‘It’s about a case from 2003,’ Nik explained, shaking her hand. There was a layer of toughened skin on her fingers and she had a firm handshake.

  ‘I think you might be overestimating my memory, young man.’

  ‘Well, it was actually a case which you reported personally to the police.’

  Gassen frowned.

  ‘You were on the night shift and two men came into the maternity ward. They pressurised you into giving them the name of a patient.’

  ‘Yes. I remember.’ Gassen laid down her hoe at the side of the vegetable patch.

  ‘Would you be able to tell me what happened?’

  ‘OK. Well . . . it was early in the morning,’ she began. ‘It had been a busy night and I was using the lull to update some records when two men stormed into the ward. The first one grabbed me by the arm and showed me a photo of a young woman. They wanted to know if she was a patient. Then the second man took my file off me and flicked through the admissions.’

  ‘Did you know the woman in the photo?’

  ‘She’d given birth that night.’

  ‘Did you tell the men that?’

  ‘Of course not,’ she said, offended. ‘Brutes like them were forever coming into the clinic. Overeager dads who wanted to see their child and couldn’t understand that the mother wanted to be alone at such a difficult time.’

  ‘So what did you do?’

  ‘After I got over the initial shock, I told the men to go to the other end of the corridor. It was actually just a storage room down there. I used that minute to go into the staff room and call the police. I locked the door and waited. Thankfully there was a police car nearby and they were there in a matter of minutes.’

  ‘And the two men?’

  ‘When I came out of the staff room, they’d both disappeared. I gave the police a description, but never saw them again.’

  ‘Did one of the men happen to have a limp?’

  ‘No.’

  Nik took two photos out of his pocket. One was of Masannek and the other was the man with the scar. ‘Was it by any chance one of thes
e men?’ Gassen looked at the photos closely. ‘I’m sorry. I can’t be entirely sure.’

  ‘What do you know about the woman they were looking for?’ Nik put the photos back in his pocket.

  ‘Not very much. She’d staggered into the ward that evening with contractions. No suitcase, no sleeping bag, just the clothes she had on. She didn’t even have any ID on her or a health insurance card.’

  ‘And you took her in anyway?’

  ‘Of course! What do you take me for? I would never turn down a woman in need, even at full capacity.’

  Nik raised his palms to the woman. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to insinuate anything.’

  ‘You know, all kinds of women get pregnant. Homeless women . . . refugees without papers. Didn’t happen all that often, but they needed our help too sometimes,’ added Gassen.

  ‘Did the woman give a name?’

  ‘Yes,’ she continued, ‘but it’s always a fake in those kinds of cases.’

  ‘And how did the woman seem to you?’

  ‘Anxious . . . like she was in a hurry . . . but also confident. She had boundless strength, that girl. It was clear how much pain she was in; she was drowning in sweat. But she never screamed once during the labour.’

  ‘And why did you think she was in a rush?’

  ‘While we were pushing her into the delivery room, she looked at the door with this terrified look on her face.’ Gassen sighed. ‘Hours later, I understood why.’

  ‘Were you at the birth?’

  She shook her head. ‘One of my colleagues was assisting.’

  ‘And what happened afterwards?’ asked Nik. ‘Did you ask her why the men were looking for her?’

  ‘I was planning to, but she’d already gone. Child and all.’

  ‘So quickly after giving birth?’

  ‘Most mothers can’t even get out of bed without assistance. As I said: this woman was a fighter. When you’ve been bringing children into the world as long as I have, you know that when you see it.’