Snow White Must Die (Bodenstein & Kirchhoff, #4)(12)
“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 * 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.”
* * *
Amelie had decided that research into the girls’ murders in Altenhain clearly took priority over school, so after third period she told the teacher she was sick. Now she was sitting at her desk at home in front of her laptop, entering the name of her neighbor’s son in Google. She got literally hundreds of hits. With increasing fascination she read the press accounts of events in the summer of 1997 and the course of the trial, at which Tobias Sartorius had been sentenced to ten years in prison. The prosecution’s case had been completely based on circumstantial evidence because the girls’ bodies were never found. That fact had been considered particularly damning, and Tobias’s silence had had a deleterious effect on the severity of the sentence.