The bread slices popped up from the toaster with a clack. Pia spread salted butter on both pieces, then a good layer of Nutella, and slapped the two halves together. She was virtually addicted to this unconventional combination of salty and sweet, and she enjoyed every bite, licking the melted butter and Nutella mixture off her fingers before it dripped onto the newspaper lying open before her. Yesterday’s discovery of a skeleton at the site of the old airfield was mentioned in a five-line filler, while the Frankfurter Neue Presse devoted four columns in their local section to the eleventh day of the trial of Vera Kaltensee. Today at nine Pia had to go before the district court and make her statement about the incidents in Poland last summer.
Her thoughts wandered involuntarily to Henning. Yesterday the one cup of coffee they were going to have together had become three. He had talked to her more openly than he ever had during their sixteen years of marriage, but Pia had no advice on how to solve his current dilemma. Since the episode in Poland he had been together with Pia’s best friend Miriam Horowitz. Yet he had let himself be enticed—under circumstances he didn’t explain, to Pia’s regret—into climbing into bed with his ardent admirer, the prosecutor Valerie L?blich. Definitely a slipup, as Henning had insisted, but with dire consequences, because the L?blich woman was now pregnant. He was overwhelmed by the situation and toyed with the idea of fleeing to the United States. For years the University of Tennessee had been tempting him with the offer of a very lucrative position of great interest to a physician. As Pia pondered Henning’s problems and at the same time contemplated whether she should follow the first caloric overload with a second helping, Christoph emerged from the bathroom and sat down at the kitchen table across from her. His hair was still damp, and he smelled of aftershave.
“Do you think you could manage to come tonight?” he asked, pouring himself a cup of coffee. “Annika would love to see you.”
“If nothing comes up, it should be no problem.” Pia gave in to temptation and made herself another piece of toast. “I have to give a statement in court around nine, but otherwise we don’t have anything urgent.”
Christoph grinned in amusement at the Nutella and butter combination and bit into his sensible and healthy black bread with cottage cheese. The mere sight of him still caused a warm tingle in Pia’s belly. Those dark-brown caramel-candy eyes of his had captivated her on their first encounter and had never lost their attraction. Christoph Sander was an impressive man who felt no need to flaunt his strong points. Although he didn’t possess the uncompromising good looks of Pia’s boss, his features had something remarkable about them that made people take another look. Above all it was his smile, which started in his eyes and then spread across his whole face, that always triggered in Pia the almost irrepressible desire to throw herself into his arms.
She and Christoph had met two years earlier, when the investigation of a murder case had taken Pia to the Opel Zoo in Kronberg. Christoph, the director of the zoo, had fallen for her on the spot—the first man for whom she’d felt any attraction since breaking up with Henning. The feeling had been mutual. Unfortunately Oliver von Bodenstein had considered Christoph a prime suspect for quite a while. After the case was finally solved and Christoph absolved of all suspicion, their relationship had developed rapidly. From passionate infatuation love had eventually evolved, and they had been a couple for a good two years now. They had kept their separate residences, of course, but that was going to change soon because Christoph’s three daughters, whom he had raised by himself after the sudden death of his wife seventeen years ago, were about to leave the nest. Andrea, the eldest, had been working in Hamburg since the spring; Antonia, the youngest, was more or less living with her boyfriend, Lukas; and now Annika wanted to move in with her child’s father in Australia. Tonight was her farewell party at their father’s house, and tomorrow she would leave for Sydney.
Pia knew that Christoph was anything but happy about this. He didn’t trust Jared, the young man who had gotten Annika pregnant four years ago. In his defense, however, Annika hadn’t told him she was pregnant and instead had broken up with him. But in the long run everything had worked out. In the meantime Jared Gordon had earned a doctorate in marine biology and was working at a research station on an island in the Great Barrier Reef. So he was something of a professional colleague, and Christoph had given his daughter and her boyfriend his blessing, although reluctantly.
Since it was out of the question for Pia to give up Birkenhof, Christoph had rented out his house in Bad Soden as of January first. Annika’s farewell party this evening was also Christoph’s farewell to the house where he had lived for many years. His bags were already packed, and the movers would be coming for the furniture next Monday. Until the Frankfurt zoning department gave the green light for the planned remodeling and expansion of Pia’s little house, the larger pieces of furniture had to be put in storage temporarily. Yes, Pia was quite happy with the latest developments in her personal life.
* * *
Tobias had raised all the window shades and inspected the dismal state of the interior of the house by daylight. His father had gone out shopping, so he had started by cleaning the windows. Just as he was doing the window in the dining room, his father returned and walked past him, head down, into the kitchen. Tobias climbed down from the stepladder and followed him.
“What happened?” His gaze fell on the empty shopping basket.
“They wouldn’t wait on me,” Hartmut Sartorius replied softly. “It’s not that bad. I’ll go over to the supermarket in Bad Soden.”
“But you shopped at Richter’s yesterday, didn’t you?” Tobias asked. His father gave a feeble nod. Instantly making up his mind, Tobias took his jacket from the wardrobe, grabbed the basket with his father’s wallet in it, and left the house. He was shaking with anger. The Richters used to be good friends with his parents, but today the scrawny old crone had thrown his father out of the store. He wasn’t going to put up with that.
As Tobias was about to cross the street, out of the corner of his eye he noticed something red on the fa?ade of his father’s former restaurant and turned around. Someone had scrawled HERE LIVES A RUTHLESS KILLER in red spray paint on the wall of the building. For a few seconds Tobias stared mutely at the ugly graffiti, which had to be evident to every passerby. His heart was hammering against his ribcage, and the knot in his stomach clenched even tighter. Those bastards! What was the point of this? Were they trying to drive him out of his parents’ house? What were they going to do next, set it on fire? He counted to ten, then turned around and walked straight across the street to the Richters’ grocery store.
The assembled gossip mafia had seen him coming through the big plate-glass windows. When the bell on the door jingled they were all standing there as if in some tableau: Margot Richter standing like a queen behind the cash register, wiry and malevolent, with her spine ramrod straight, as always. Her burly husband had planted himself behind her, taking cover rather than exuding any sort of menace. With one glance Tobias took the measure of each of the other people present. He knew them all, the mothers of his childhood friends. In front stood Inge Dombrowski, the hairdresser and uncrowned queen of slanderous innuendo. Behind her Gerda Pietsch with her bulldog face, twice as fat as she used to be, and probably with a tongue twice as spiteful. Next to her Nadia’s mother Agnes Unger, careworn and now gray-haired. Unbelievable that she could have produced such a beautiful daughter.
“Good morning,” he said. An icy silence confronted him. But they didn’t try to stop him from approaching the shelves. The refrigerator motors were humming loudly in the tense silence. Tobias loaded everything into his basket that his father had jotted down on his shopping list. When he neared the checkout counter, everyone was still standing as if frozen in place. Showing no sign of emotion, Tobias set all the goods on the conveyor belt, but Margot Richter had her arms crossed over her chest and made no move to begin the checkout process. The bell on the door jingled again, and a delivery driver who had no idea what was going on came in. He noticed the tense mood and stopped in his tracks. Tobias didn’t budge an inch. It was a test of will, not only between him and Margot Richter, but between him and all of Altenhain.
“Let him pay.” Lutz Richter relented after a couple of minutes. Her teeth clenched, his wife obeyed and mutely punched Tobias’s purchases into the cash register.
“Forty-two seventy.”
Tobias gave her a fifty-euro bill, and she reluctantly handed him his change without uttering a word. The look she gave him could have frozen the Mediterranean, but it didn’t bother Tobias. In the joint he had fought other power struggles and had come through the victor often enough.
“I’ve served my time and now I’m back.” He looked around him at the embarrassed faces and downcast eyes. “Whether you like it or not.”
* * *
Around eleven thirty Pia arrived at the police station in Hofheim, after giving her testimony in the trial of Vera Kaltensee in the Frankfurt district court. For the past few weeks no one had felt the desire to depart this life in a dubious manner, so there was relatively little to do at K-11, the police crime division. The skeleton from the underground tank at the airfield in Eschborn was the only current case. The results from the medical examiner were still not in, so Detective Inspector Kai Ostermann was going through the missing persons cases from the past year with no particular urgency. He was on his own. On Monday his colleague Frank Behnke had called in sick and would be out all week. When he fell off his bicycle he had reportedly suffered numerous facial injuries and bruises. The fact that DI Andreas Hasse was also sick surprised nobody. For years he had taken sick leave for weeks and months at a time. In K-11 they had gotten used to getting along without him, and nobody missed him. Pia ran into her youngest colleague, Kathrin Fachinger, at the coffee vending machine in the lobby, where she was having a chat with the secretary of Commissioner Nicola Engel. The days when Kathrin used to run around wearing frilly blouses and plaid pants were long gone. She had replaced her round owl glasses with a modern rectangular-style frame, and lately she’d taken to wearing skintight jeans, high-heeled boots, and a tight-fitting pullover that perfectly accentuated her enviably slim figure. Pia didn’t know the reason for this change, and once again she was astounded by how little she knew about the private lives of her colleagues. In any case the youngest member on the force had clearly gained self-confidence.
“Pia! Wait up!” Kathrin called, and Pia stopped.
“What’s up?”
Kathrin glanced conspiratorially around the lobby.
“Last night I was in Sachsenhausen with a few friends,” she said in a low voice. “You won’t believe who I saw over there.”
“Not Johnny Depp?” Pia teased her. Everyone in K-11 knew that Kathrin was a big fan.
“No, I saw Frank,” she went on, unfazed. “He’s working as a bartender at the Klapperkahn restaurant, and he’s not sick at all.”
“You’re kidding!”
“And now I don’t know what to do. I should really tell the boss, don’t you think?”
Pia frowned. If a police officer wanted to take a job on the side, he had to submit an application and wait for authorization. A job in a bar with a less than stellar reputation was definitely not something that would receive approval. If Kathrin was right, then Behnke risked a reprimand, a fine, or even disciplinary action.
“Maybe he was just filling in for one of his pals.” Pia wasn’t particularly fond of her colleague Frank Behnke, but she didn’t feel good about the consequences that might result from an official condemnation.
“No, he wasn’t,” said Kathrin with a shake of her head. “He spotted me and went right for my jugular. He accused me of spying on him. What a load of crap! And then the asshole had the nerve to say I’d be in big trouble if I reported him.”
Understandably, Kathrin was both deeply upset and furious. Pia didn’t doubt her account for a second. That sounded just like her colleague. Behnke was about as diplomatic as a pit bull.
“Did you say anything to Schneider yet?” Pia quizzed her.
“No,” Kathrin said, shaking her head. “Although I really wanted to. I’m so pissed off.”
“That’s understandable. Frank has a real talent for getting someone’s goat. Let me talk to the boss. Maybe we can resolve this matter discreetly.”
“Why bother?” Kathrin replied, infuriated. “Why does everyone stick up for that shithead? He always gets away with everything, venting his foul mood on the rest of us, and never having to pay for it.”
She was saying exactly what Pia felt. For some reason Frank Behnke possessed a fool’s license to do whatever he wanted. At that moment Bodenstein, their boss, entered the lobby.
Pia looked at Kathrin. “Make sure you know what you’re doing,” she said.
“I do,” replied Kathrin, walking determinedly over to Bodenstein. “I need to have a short talk with you, boss. In private.”
* * *