There stood Ann Kathrin Klaasen. He was so shocked that he staggered and fell. The bouquet of roses burst out of its paper wrapping.
‘Hello. My name is Ann Kathrin Klaasen. I’m a police detective. And who are you?’
She avoided the word ‘homicide’ because she didn’t want to cause any unnecessary panic.
Completely in contrast to his effusive entrance, Ingo Sutter now seemed stiff, old and befuddled. It took some effort for him to pull himself together. He was wearing a light, silver-grey summer suit that was woven through with thin red and blue threads, giving the fabric a rainbow-like sheen with every movement.
‘I’m . . . I just wanted . . . Well, why are you . . .? Where is . . .?’
He, the otherwise so articulate businessman, who was able to eloquently win over people and achieved nothing less than brilliance in motivating employees, was now stammering and looking for words.
Ann Kathrin helped him. ‘You’re married and now you’re worried that your wife will find out. But don’t worry: adultery isn’t any of our business. We have reason to believe that Mrs. Moers was kidnapped, and we hope that you can be of assistance in our search for her, Mr—’
‘Sutter. Ingo Sutter,’ he said, acting as if he had only just remembered his name. ‘What, kidnapped? When? By whom? What do the kidnappers want?’
Before he could bombard Ann Kathrin with additional questions, she wanted to know, ‘When was the last time you saw Mrs Moers?’
He acted as if he had to think. ‘She hasn’t answered my texts for two or three days. But that isn’t unusual. Sometimes she’s texting me constantly and then again . . .’ He showed his empty hands.
‘When did you last get a message from her?’
He looked at his phone. ‘On Wednesday at 4 p.m. That’s when she confirmed our date for today.’ He read aloud, ‘I’m looking forward to you, my wild stallion.’
*
Joachim Faust actually would have preferred to have a primetime show. He belonged in the evening slot, not in one of those dinky magazine programmes for an uneducated, lowbrow audience that was already bored on the sofa, zapping through the channels. But he had to take what he could get. For now!
In the end, this case would catapult him into the really important talk shows and the primetime slot. He’d been obliged to use the Whaleseum up north as the set. He should have gone into the studio in Hamburg, but the producer had immediately agreed that conducting the interview in the skeleton of a whale gave an unbeatable backdrop. She asked herself why none of her colleagues had thought of it. It looked good, gigantic, and it belonged on the coast, just like this whole story. So everything was in the right place right away. It was about death, and it was about East Frisia. This way everyone got it from the start. She was sure that her segment would be broadcast multiple times.
Faust had once had a brief affair with this producer. More gymnastics than sex. More wellness than passion.
It had been an amicable split. In the meantime she had married a department head, probably exactly three years too late, Faust thought. At any rate, she signalled to him that she’d have some time after the shoot.
Unfortunately Faust had to talk to a presenter whom he considered a complete idiot, because he was younger, looked better, and spoke German coloured by Oxford English, which was meant to communicate to the ladies that they were dealing with a cosmopolitan stud. Even though he’d only temped at the BBC for six months. Ever since then he acted as if he couldn’t speak proper German.
Faust would have preferred to have a blonde female to work with – preferably under thirty. But he had to grin and bear it. Faust felt old compared with the presenter, who was named Hinnerk or Henrik or something like that. Clumsy and fat. In short, unattractive. But he didn’t want to run for Mr Universe today, he wanted to demolish a monument: Ann Kathrin Klaasen. Her amateur investigations in two spectacular murder cases dealt him some trump cards.
Hinnerk or Henrik, or whatever the pompous twit was called, announced Joachim Faust as a ‘legendary journalist’ who had repeatedly gained attention with explosive reporting.
Sure, lay it on thick, Faust thought angrily. I’m essentially upgrading your show here. Later people will talk about how I was your guest, you cretin.
‘Today we’re proud to welcome the journalist Joachim Faust in this special setting up north. His bestselling interviews were in the top twenty several years ago. And yes, ladies and gentlemen, we are inside a whale skeleton.’ He knocked against the bones with his fist. ‘These are real bones from a fifteen-metre-long bull sperm whale. It was stranded off Norderney in 2003.’
Faust could hardly believe it. Now the pretty boy was going on about whale bulls! Perhaps he had made a mistake. Instead of making him look good and introducing him as something special, now the damn skeleton was stealing the show.
The producer was standing next to the second spotlight and was giving her presenter signals, motioning him to get to the point. Then she winked at Faust. He put on his famous cheesy grin and looked into the camera, so that the audience, and in particular the women in the audience, had the feeling he was looking them directly in the eye and talking to them personally.
Several tuned out, others felt spoken to. And that’s exactly what Faust was looking for.
‘In all modesty,’ he said with a smile, ‘it was the top ten, not the top twenty. And it wasn’t a collection of interviews, it was reportage about the rich and the beautiful in our republic.’
The presenter tried to take the reprimand as a joke. He knew there was nothing more disarming than humour.
‘The rich and beautiful? Well then, I’m sure not to be mentioned.’
‘That’s right,’ Joachim Faust grinned and deployed his most potent weapon: his Mr Irresistible smile. This label had been following him since his schooldays. ‘Now he has his Mr Irresistible smile on again.’
His classmates had a cocktail that tasted disgustingly sweet, but the girls liked. It got you drunk really fast and sometimes made you horny too, and that’s why it was called a ‘Mr Irresistible’. Faust thought he didn’t need such means. Instead, he poured on the charm and tried out his irresistible look, which had spread legs many a time.
The presenter, whose name appeared on the screen, and undoubtedly started with an ‘H’, knew he’d have lost if this conversation progressed from preliminary skirmish to duel, so he said, ‘You’re following a very hot case, Mr Faust. Tell us about it.’
Faust threw himself into a pose. ‘A psychopath is killing in East Frisia. He’s already decapitated two people and sent the heads to the police.’
You scumbag! Tell the truth! Not to the police, to Ubbo Heide. Psychopath? Do you want to make me into someone with an illness? Someone who can’t keep it together?
‘The juicy part is that both of the heads landed in the jurisdiction of the famous – or should I say infamous – detective Ann Kathrin Klaasen. Clearly someone wants to challenge her.’
‘You’ve been getting really close in the past few days. You’re a confidant of the police in East Frisia. How should we see people like that, Mr Faust?’ the presenter asked.
‘Well, I don’t think Klaasen’s been blinded by her success, but I fear it has narrowed her view, watered it down, if you will.’
‘I mean the perpetrator, not Ms. Klaasen. Have you had the chance to talk with profilers?’
Don’t confuse me, you jackass, Faust thought, and tried to communicate that to Hinnerk or Henning with a glance.
‘The perpetrator is mentally disturbed. Craves recognition. He’s not a typical sex offender. This isn’t about the gratification of sexual lust. He’s demanding attention, which explains the odd killing methods. For the perpetrator it’s like a piece of theatre. We’re all in the audience. At the moment we’re in the first act. He’s building the tension. Other exciting elements will follow soon.’
‘You mean murders?’
Faust shrugged his shoulders expressively, showe
d his empty hands, and pointed the corners of his mouth down, like taxi drivers are fond of doing when they say, ‘Sorry, I’m not free.’
‘I don’t know what this sick mind will come up with so we all need to keep a watch.’
Sick mind? Craving recognition? Demanding attention? Then you’re talking about yourself, you shithead! What are you thinking? Mocking me in public? Distracting from Ubbo Heide, from the Steffi Heymann case? What are you doing, damn it?
‘At any rate, Ms. Klaasen won’t solve this case quickly. Sure, there may have been a couple of serial killers who got caught in her web. But now someone’s killing innocent people and to me it seems like she doesn’t have a plan, is tired and maybe even burned out.’
Innocent people? What shitty journalism! You bastards! You goddamn bastards . . .
*
Weller parked in front of the vocational college. He had an appointment with Mr Feier, its director. Generally it was possible to go through unofficial channels, which might not be recommended, but were all the more effective for that.
His phone rang, playing the opening melody from Bettina Göschl’s song ‘Pirates Ahoy!’ Weller saw Ann Kathrin’s portrait on the screen, accepted the call, and settled himself in the driver’s seat as if he were in an easy chair.
‘Frank, you’ve done your share of fishing.’
‘Sure?’ He had no idea where she was headed.
‘When you catch an eel, how do you kill it?’
He’d trained himself not to ask why she wanted to know something. He simply assumed that she had a reason. ‘Fishermen are supposed to stun a fish before killing it, usually with a swift blow to the head. But it’s hard with eels, they’re such primordial creatures. They are difficult to kill, let alone stun. A stab to the heart works best, but most fishermen can’t find it. It’s tiny and the eel is squirming.’
‘So what do you do?’
‘Most people cut the head off – not really in accordance with etiquette – at least that’s what I always did as a boy, and so did the people I knew.’
‘That’s what I thought.’
He couldn’t hold back after all. ‘Why do you ask?’
‘And you chop a chicken’s head off as well. When I was a little girl and on holiday on a farm the farmer slaughtered a chicken by chopping off its head. I watched and never wanted to eat meat again.’
Frank Weller didn’t remind her that she hadn’t kept this resolution. Instead, he said, ‘And Ubbo Heide called Heymann and Stern an eel and a rooster in his book!’
‘Exactly. That’s why I called.’
She ended the conversation and for a moment Weller sat there, lost in thought. Then, just as he was about to get out, he received a WhatsApp message from Sylvia Hoppe with a link to a TV segment. He clicked on it and immediately Faust appeared on the screen.
Weller was immediately seething with rage and informed Ann Kathrin, but she had also received it from Sylvia Hoppe that same moment.
‘I even spoke to one of Ms. Klaasen’s neighbours because the police in East Frisia seem to have established a moratorium on speaking to the press. The guy was a hulk. Hands the size of oven mitts. A bricklayer. He confirmed that in East Frisia there is a “Praise Club”, as he called it. They stick together against outsiders and don’t say anything that could harm anyone in their club. Compared with the situation in East Frisia, the famous Cologne Clique seems like a birthday party for Christian Boy Scouts. Merely the fact that a married couple is investigating together is unbelievable.’ He demonstrably twisted his mouth in disgust. ‘When it comes down to it, they could even refuse to testify in court so as not to incriminate their spouse.’
Weller angrily made a fist. Then he sent a WhatsApp message to the group. ‘What a dick!’
The first answer came from Sylvia Hoppe and was a question. ‘What does that bastard want?’
‘I’ll take him to task,’ Weller promised and decorated his message with two symbolic steam clouds.
Rieke joined in. ‘This is bad news.’ And as if everyone had forgotten, she added, ‘I’m the press spokesperson.’
‘No one’s accusing you of anything,’ Sylvia Hoppe said. She wanted to immediately put herself in Rieke’s shoes and support her.
Then Ann Kathrin wrote. ‘Isn’t he basically right in everything he says?’
Weller exploded. ‘Right? Are you kidding? I’ll punch him in the face if I get my hands on him.’
Ann Kathrin reacted with an odd calmness, apparently unimpressed by Faust’s accusations. ‘His analysis of the perpetrator’s personality makes sense. The murderer is staging a kind of play, but not for the general public, as Faust believes, but for a select audience, for us. He wants to impress us.’
‘That means,’ Weller spelled out the consequences, ‘he’s on the inside?’
‘Yes,’ Sylvia Hoppe and Rieke Gersema immediately agreed, ‘he’s part of the firm.’
‘So Wilhelm Kaufmann after all?’ Sylvia Hoppe conjectured.
Rupert chimed in. ‘I only know one thing: it wasn’t me.’
*
Prosecutor Scherer reached for the telephone and called Martin Büscher. He didn’t waste time with an opening gambit or a polite greeting. He was direct in a way typical for East Frisia. He assumed that Büscher must have seen the segment already and that if he hadn’t, he was an uninformed moron who had been let down by his employees.
‘Mr Büscher, you have a problem. Take care of it, otherwise you won’t last in East Frisia, I can promise you that. Once people start talking about someone, then—’
‘Yes, damn it,’ Büscher blustered, ‘but what am I supposed to do? I can’t serve the guy with a gagging order!’
‘Didn’t they teach you how to handle the press in Bremerhaven?’
‘I wasn’t hired to be a publicity manager!’ Büscher defended himself. ‘We’re living in a free country so we have to have a free press too.’
‘Exactly! Get them on your side. You’ll have better cards then. Anyone who has the press against them is done for fast. Every word from that man is correct. It’s just too bad that he had to draw the public’s attention to those words. Remedy those shortcomings!’
Büscher knocked against the phone and said with a disguised voice, ‘Mayday. Mayday. Spaceship to Earth. I didn’t make the problems on this planet, they were here when I arrived.’
Scherer hung up. Then he looked at the phone as if Büscher were standing in front of him. ‘You too,’ he said grumpily.
When he had woken up, he had already sensed today wasn’t his day. Why hadn’t that stupid presenter invited him onto the show? I could have told him exactly the same thing as that Faust, just more objectively and knowledgably. But unfortunately prosecutors didn’t have press agencies like rock stars, politicians or writers. It annoyed him that Ubbo Heide had written that book. He considered it an attack on the justice system, even an attack on himself.
Now he asked himself why Ubbo Heide hadn’t been a guest on the show. Was this trouble on his horizon? Did he have to expect to be publicly humiliated by that Aurich fossil?
No, he didn’t have to fear that because Ubbo Heide hadn’t mentioned him at all. That’s what upset Scherer the most. He didn’t even make an appearance in that damn pathetic piece of work. And that cast a completely false light on the work of the Kripo. They were depicted like heroes and the blame was passed on to the judicial machinery. Not a word about the separation of powers in our country.
Scherer was worried by Ubbo Heide’s new book, which was already being talked about, although it hadn’t yet got a title. He didn’t know what he was more afraid of: being mentioned in it or not being mentioned at all. Ubbo Heide hadn’t used real names before anyway, presumably to avoid getting sued. Many were simply given letters, Mr A, Mrs B. Those were minor figures. Others received proper names, usually from the animal kingdom. Mrs Fox. Mr Dog.
Scherer asked himself whether if he was mentioned at all, it would be just a one-letter existence: P
rosecutor X said; or if he would receive a real name. If so, what kind of animal would Ubbo Heide choose for him? A miniature pinscher? Cockatoo? Lion or Rhinoceros? Such names weren’t neutral. They already said something about the person and were supposed to reflect their nature.
For example, his wife, with whom he’d been getting along better recently, called him ‘my little golden hamster’. When she said that, it usually sounded very loving, although it was undoubtedly a reference to the fact that he liked to stuff too much in his mouth when he was eating. But he didn’t want to appear in Ubbo Heide’s book as Prosecutor Goldhamster.
*
Weller was greeted warmly by Mr Feier at the vocational college. Naturally, Feier noticed Weller’s fury; he could practically hear his stomach acids bubbling.
Weller spoke with a very gentle diplomat’s voice so he wouldn’t let his rage show. Mr Feier offered tea and biscuits, and Weller bit into the biscuits like a poisonous snake bit into a rat it wanted to kill and eat.
Feier knew Svenja Moers. She was a regular at the college and was always attending classes. Mr Feier had quickly printed out a list for Weller. In such an important case – when the life of Mrs Moers was possibly at stake – Feier wanted to be helpful.
Weller only skimmed over the names, but one of them seemed to stand out, waiting to be discovered. Weller suddenly only saw those letters: YVES STERN.
All the trouble with Faust was immediately forgotten. Weller asked, ‘Did this Stern chap attend any of your other classes?’
Feier looked on the computer. ‘That’ll be easy to check. But I believe . . . only one.’
Weller excused himself, saying he had to make a call.
Ann Kathrin immediately picked up. ‘Yes, Frank?’
‘Stern attended a cooking class with Svenja Moers.’
‘Yves Stern?’ Ann Kathrin asked, irritated.
‘Yep, Yves Stern.’ Weller turned to Feier. ‘Can you determine the last time Yves Stern and Svenja Moers were at the class?’
The Oath Page 19
