Monday, November 24, 2008
“You wore this same shirt and tie yesterday,” Pia noted with a sharp look when Bodenstein joined her in the still empty conference room. “And you haven’t shaved.”
“Your powers of observation are truly phenomenal,” he replied dryly, heading for the coffee machine. “In my hasty departure I unfortunately couldn’t take my whole wardrobe with me.”
“Right.” Pia grinned. “I always took you for somebody who would put on fresh clothes every day, even in the trenches. Or did you happen to take my advice?”
“Please, let’s not jump to conclusions.” Bodenstein’s expression was unreadable as he poured milk in his coffee. Pia was just about to reply when Ostermann appeared in the doorway.
“What bad news do you have for us today, Mr. Detective Superintendent?” asked Bodenstein. Ostermann gave first his boss, then Pia an annoyed look. They just shrugged.
“Tobias Sartorius called his father last night. He’s in a hospital in Switzerland,” said Ostermann. “Still no news of Amelie, Thies, or Dr. Lauterbach.”
Behind him Kathrin Fachinger appeared, followed by Nicola Engel and Sven Jansen.
“Good morning,” said the commissioner. “I’m bringing the reinforcements I promised. DI Jansen will work temporarily with the K-11 team, Bodenstein. If you have no objections.”
“That’s fine.” Bodenstein nodded to their colleague from the burglary division. He had accompanied Pia yesterday to interview Terlinden. Everyone sat down at the table. Only Nicola Engel excused herself and headed for the door. There she turned around and said, “Could I have a word with you in private?”
Bodenstein got up, followed her out to the hall, and closed the door behind him.
“Behnke obtained a temporary court order appealing his suspension and at the same time reported in sick,” said Nicola Engel in a low voice. “His legal adviser is a lawyer from the firm of Dr. Anders. How can he afford that?”
“Anders will take a case like that pro bono,” said Bodenstein. “All he cares about are the headlines.”
“Okay, we’ll wait and see what happens.” Nicola Engel looked Bodenstein up and down. “I also learned something else this morning. Actually I wanted to tell you this at a better moment, but before you hear it from someone else through a leak…”
He gave her a wary look. It could be anything, beginning with his suspension to the news that she would be taking over leadership of the National Criminal Police. It was typical of Nicola never to show her cards too soon.
“Congratulations on your promotion,” she announced to him to his surprise. “First Chief Detective Inspector Oliver von Bodenstein. Including a raise in your pay grade. What do you say to that?”
She smiled at him expectantly.
“Does this mean that I’ve slept my way to the top?” he replied. The commissioner grinned, but then turned serious.
“Do you regret last night?” she wanted to know.
Bodenstein cocked his head. “I wouldn’t say that,” he answered. “What about you?”
“Me neither. Although I don’t usually care for reheated food.”
He grinned, and she turned to go.
“Oh, Ms. Commissioner…”
She stopped.
“Perhaps … we could repeat it occasionally?”
Then she grinned too.
“I’ll think it over, Mr. Chief Detective. See you later.”
He watched her go until she turned the corner, then reached for the door handle. Suddenly and unexpectedly he was filled with an almost painful feeling of happiness. Not because he had avenged himself by cheating on Cosima—and with his boss to boot, whom she despised with all her heart—but because at this moment he felt freer than he’d ever felt in his life. Last night his future had unfolded before him with breathtaking clarity, revealing undreamt-of possibilities, after he’d been trudging around for a week feeling deeply hurt and full of self-pity. Not that he had ever felt trapped at Cosima’s side, but now he sensed that even though his marriage had failed, it didn’t mean that his life was over. Quite the opposite. Not everyone at the age of fifty got another chance.
* * *
Amelie’s legs felt like they had frozen to ice, yet she was sweating all over. With all her might she tried to keep Thies’s head above water. The buoyancy of the water, which had now risen to a good sixteen inches above the top shelf, had made it possible for her to shift his body to a sitting position. Fortunately the bookshelf was screwed solidly into the wall, or it probably would have tipped over long ago. Gasping, Amelie inhaled and tried to ease her cramped muscles. With her right arm she held Thies tight while with her left she tried to touch the ceiling. A foot and a half of air was left, no more.
“Thies!” she whispered urgently, shaking him. “You have to wake up, Thies!”
He didn’t react. She couldn’t possibly move him higher, she wasn’t strong enough. But in a couple of hours his head would be underwater. Amelie was close to giving up. It was so cold! And she had such a terrifying fear of drowning. Images from Titanic kept popping up in her mind. She had seen that movie half a dozen times and had blubbered when Leonardo DiCaprio slipped off the plank and sank into the deep. The waters of the North Atlantic could hardly be any colder than this shit-brew here.
With quivering lips she kept talking to Thies, begging him, shaking him, pinching him on the arm. He simply had to wake up.
“I don’t want to die,” she sobbed, leaning her head against the wall in exhaustion. “I don’t want to die, damn it!”
The cold was paralyzing her movements and her thoughts. With the greatest effort she thrashed her legs up and down in the water. Eventually she wouldn’t be able to manage even that. She mustn’t fall asleep. If she let go of Thies, he would drown and she with him.
* * *
Claudius Terlinden looked reluctantly at the documents that lay before him on the desk, as his secretary escorted Oliver von Bodenstein and Pia Kirchhoff into his office.
“Have you found my son?” He didn’t get up from his chair and made no effort to conceal his displeasure. From close up Pia could see that the events of the past few days had left their mark on Terlinden, although he seemed emotionally unaffected. He was pale and had dark shadows under his eyes. Was he taking refuge in his daily routine in order to forget his worries?
“No,” Bodenstein said regretfully. “Unfortunately we haven’t. But we know who abducted him from the psychiatric ward.”
Claudius Terlinden gave him an inquisitive look.
“Gregor Lauterbach has confessed to the murder of Stefanie Schneeberger,” Bodenstein went on. “His wife kept silent about it in order to protect him and his career. She knew that Thies had been an eyewitness to the crime. She has consistently threatened your son and treated him for years with psychopharmaceuticals that he didn’t need at all. Because she feared that Amelie Fr?hlich and your son could be dangerous to her husband and herself, she decided to take action. We’re afraid that she may have done something to both of them.”
Terlinden stared at Bodenstein, his face was a mask of frozen surprise.
“Who did you think murdered Stefanie?” Pia asked. Claudius Terlinden took off his glasses and rubbed his hand over his face. He took a deep breath.
“I actually thought it was Tobias,” he admitted after a moment. “I assumed that he saw Gregor with the girl and then flipped out with jealousy. It was clear to me that my son Thies must have witnessed something, but since he never spoke I didn’t know what he saw. Now, of course, some things make more sense. That’s why Daniela was always so concerned about him. And that’s why Thies was so terrified of her.”
“She threatened to send him to an institution if he ever breathed a word,” Pia explained. “But even she didn’t know that Thies was keeping Stefanie’s body concealed in the cellar of the orangerie. She must have found that out from Amelie. Because of that, Dr. Lauterbach set the fire. It wasn’t the painting she wanted to destroy, but the mummy of Snow White.”
“Good Lord!” Terlinden got up from his chair, went over to the wall of windows, and looked out. Did he have any idea how thin the ice was under his feet? Oliver and Pia exchanged a glance behind his back. He would be held accountable for numerous offenses, not least for the extensive bribery incidents that Gregor Lauterbach had revealed in his cowardly attempt to clear his own name. Terlinden as yet knew nothing about that, but surely he realized what a gigantic burden of guilt he carried because of his policy of silence and cover-ups.
“Lutz Richter tried to commit suicide yesterday when our colleagues arrested his son,” Bodenstein said, breaking the silence. “Eleven years ago he established a sort of militia to hush up what really happened. Laura Wagner was still alive when Richter’s son and his friends threw her into the empty underground tank at the airfield in Eschborn. Richter knew that but he covered up the tank with dirt.”
“And when Tobias came back from prison, Richter took matters into his own hands and organized the attack on him,” Pia added. “Did you order him to do that?”
Terlinden turned around.
“No. In fact, I expressly forbade the assault,” he replied hoarsely.
“Manfred Wagner was the one who shoved Tobias’s mother off the bridge,” Pia went on. “If you hadn’t forced your son Lars to keep quiet about the truth, none of this would have happened. Your son might still be alive, the Sartorius family wouldn’t be destitute, and the Wagners would have learned what happened. Do you realize that you must bear the sole blame for the suffering these families have endured? Not to mention that because of your cowardice your own family has gone through hell!”
“Why me?” Terlinden shook his head, baffled. “I was only trying to contain the damage.”
Pia couldn’t believe her ears. Obviously Terlinden had found some sort of justification for his actions and omissions, and had been deluding himself for years.
“How could the damage have been any worse?” she asked sarcastically.
“The very fabric of the village community was threatening to break apart,” Terlinden replied. “My family has borne a great responsibility in this village for decades, if not centuries. I had to live up to it. The boys did something stupid when they were drunk, and the girl had provoked them.”
He had begun in an uncertain voice, but now he spoke in a tone of utter conviction.
“I thought that Tobias killed Stefanie. So he would be going to prison in any event. What did it matter if he was convicted of one crime or two? Because he kept his four friends out of trouble, I supported his family and always made sure that—”
“Now you shut up!” Bodenstein interrupted the man. “All you wanted was to keep your son Lars out of it! You were concerned solely with protecting your own name, which inevitably would have ended up in the newspapers if Lars had been connected to the murders. The young people and the villagers meant nothing to you. And it’s glaringly obvious how unimportant the Sartorius family was to you because you opened the Black Horse to compete with the Golden Rooster and even hired Sartorius’s cook to manage your restaurant.”
“In addition, you exploited the circumstances with ice-cold determination,” Pia took over. “Albert Schneeberger never wanted to sell you his company, but you put such massive pressure on him in this terrible situation that he finally did. Then, contrary to your agreement, you fired his employees and broke up the company. You are the only one who profited from the whole sad affair—in every respect!”
Claudius Terlinden glared daggers at Pia.
“But now everything has turned out very differently than you ever thought possible.” Pia refused to be intimidated. “The people in Altenhain didn’t wait for further orders from you, but decided to take action on their own. And then Amelie showed up and began investigating on her own initiative, putting half the village at risk. But your power had diminished to such an extent that you couldn’t stop the avalanche that was triggered by Tobias’s return.”
Terlinden’s expression darkened. Pia crossed her arms and returned his infuriated look without batting an eye. She had nailed his sore spot with absolute precision.
“If Amelie and Thies die,” she said with an ominous undertone, “you will bear sole responsibility for their deaths!”
“Where could those two be?” Bodenstein took over. “Where is Dr. Lauterbach?”
“I don’t know,” Claudius Terlinden said between clenched teeth. “God damn it, I really don’t know!”
* * *