Snow White Must Die (Bodenstein & Kirchhoff, #4)(105)

He trudged all the way around the cabin, which nestled against the steep slope with its A-frame roof. The four feet of snow squeaked under his shoes. Nadia grabbed his hand.

“Look,” she said. “Over there, those are the most famous peaks in the Bernese Alps: the Jungfrau, the Eiger, and the M?nch. I love the sight of them.”

Then she pointed down into the valley. Way down there, hardly visible to the naked eye, houses stood tightly packed together, and a little farther off a long lake glittered blue in the sun.

“How high up are we here?” he asked.

“Fifty-nine hundred feet. Above us are only glaciers and chamois.”

She laughed, threw her arms around his neck, and kissed him with her cold, soft lips. He held her tight and returned her kiss. He felt so light and free, as if he had left all the troubles of the past years somewhere far below, down in the valleys.

* * *



The case demanded so much of his attention that he had no time to worry about his own troubles. He was glad about that. For years Bodenstein had been confronted almost daily with the dark abysses of human nature, and for the first time he recognized parallels with himself that he had previously ignored. Daniela Lauterbach seemed to know as little about her husband as he knew about Cosima. It was shocking, but apparently it was possible to live with someone for twenty-five years, sleeping in the same bed and having children, without really knowing that person. Often enough there had been cases in which clueless relatives had lived with murderers, pedophiles, and rapists and were flabbergasted when they learned the awful truth.

Bodenstein drove past the Fr?hlichs’ house and the rear entrance to the Sartorius farm to the turnaround at the end of Waldstrasse and continued up the drive of the Terlindens’ estate. A woman opened the front door. She had to be Christine Terlinden’s sister, although he couldn’t see much resemblance. The woman was tall and thin; the look she gave him testified to her self-confidence.

“Yes?” Her green eyes were direct and searching. Bodenstein introduced himself and told her that he wished to speak with Christine Terlinden.

“I’ll go get her,” said the woman. “I’m Heidi Brückner, by the way, Christine’s sister.”

She had to be at least ten years younger and, unlike her sister, seemed completely without pretensions. She wore her shiny brown hair in a braid, and her face, with the lovely complexion and high cheekbones, bore no trace of makeup. She let him in and closed the front door behind him.

“Please wait here.”

She left and was gone for quite a while. Bodenstein studied the paintings on the walls, which were doubtless also done by Thies. They resembled the pictures in Daniela Lauterbach’s office in their ghastly apocalyptic gloom: contorted faces, screaming mouths, chained hands, eyes full of fear and torment. Footsteps approached and he turned around. Perfectly coiffed blonde hair, a vacant smile on a face that showed no sign of her age.

“My deepest sympathy,” said Bodenstein, holding out his hand.

“Thank you. That’s very kind of you.” She seemed not to bear a grudge that the police had been holding her husband for days. Nor had the suicide of her son, the fire in the studio, or the discovery of Stefanie Schneeberger’s mummy left any visible traces. Astounding. Was she a master of repression or was she taking such strong tranquilizers that she hadn’t yet taken it all in?

“Thies has been missing from the hospital since this morning,” he said. “He didn’t happen to come home, did he?”

“No.” She sounded worried, but not excessively concerned. Bodenstein hadn’t yet told her about what he found so strange. He asked her to tell him more about Thies, and was taken downstairs to his basement room. Heidi Brückner followed at a distance, silent and wary.

Thies’s room was friendly and bright. Since the house was built on a slope, big picture windows gave him a great view of the village. There were books on the shelves and stuffed animals sitting on a couch. The bed was made and nothing had been left carelessly lying around. The room of a ten-year-old boy, not of a thirty-year-old man. Only the pictures on the walls were extraordinary. Thies had painted portraits of his family. And here it was evident what a wonderful artist he was. In the portraits he had captured not only the faces of the people but also their personality in a subtle way. Claudius Terlinden had a friendly smile at first glance, but his body language, the expression in his eyes, and the colors in the background lent the painting an ominous tone. His mother was painted rosy and bright, and at the same time flat and two-dimensional. A picture without depth for a woman with no real personality. Bodenstein thought the third picture was a self-portrait until he remembered that Lars was Thies’s twin brother. It was painted in a totally different style, almost blurred, and showed a young man with still unfinished features and uncertain eyes.

“He’s helpless,” Christine Terlinden replied to Bodenstein’s question of how Thies got along. “He can’t cope with the world on his own, and he never carries any money. He can’t drive a car either. Because of his illness he shouldn’t have a driver’s license, and it’s also better that way. He can’t assess danger.”

“And people?” Bodenstein looked at Christine Terlinden.

“How do you mean?” She smiled in bewilderment.

“Is he able to assess people? Can he tell who is sympathetic to him and who isn’t?”