Snow White Must Die (Bodenstein & Kirchhoff, #4)(122)

“At some point Stefanie got pissed off. She had probably imagined everything being much more romantic and finally saw what a timid creep her wonderful lover really was. She suggested getting his wife to help him look for the keys. Of course it was meant as a joke, but Lauterbach was beyond joking. Stefanie probably thought she had the situation under control. She kept on teasing him and threatened to tell everyone about their affair, until he finally flipped out. As they were leaving the barn he grabbed her. Then they really started fighting. She spit in his face and he slapped her. Stefanie got mad and Lauterbach caught on that she was actually going to do it—march right over to his wife and tell her everything. He grabbed the nearest thing he could get his hands on and hit her with it. Three times.”

Pia nodded. The mummy of Stefanie Schneeberger exhibited three skull fractures. But that wasn’t enough to prove Nadia’s innocence, because she could also have been an accessory.

“Then he ran off as if he’d been stung by a scorpion. Wearing a green T-shirt, by the way. He’d taken off his cool denim shirt when they were f*cking. I found the key ring. And when I came out of the barn Thies was kneeling on the ground beside Stefanie. I told him, ‘Take good care of your dear Snow White,’ and then I left. I tossed the tire iron into Lauterbach’s garbage can. That’s exactly what happened. Swear to God.”

“So you knew that Tobias didn’t kill either Laura or Stefanie,” Pia said. “How could you let him go to prison if you loved him so much?”

Nadia von Bredow didn’t answer right away. She sat stock still, her fingers fidgeting with one of the photocopies.

“At that time I was totally pissed at him,” she said softly at last. “For years I’d had to listen to him telling me what he’d said to this girl or that one, how much in love he was or wasn’t anymore. He asked for my advice on the best way to get his chicks into bed or how to dump them. I was his best friend, ha!”

She gave a bitter laugh.

“As a girl I was uninteresting. I was someone he took for granted. Then he started dating Laura, and she didn’t want me to come along when they went to the movies or the swimming pool or to parties. I was the third wheel, and Tobi never even noticed!”

Nadia von Bredow pressed her lips together and her eyes were swimming in tears. Suddenly she was once again the hurt, jealous girl, the stopgap, who as the confidante of the coolest guy in town had no prospect of winning him for herself. Despite all the success she’d had since then, those disappointments had left scars on her soul that she would carry for the rest of her life.

“And all of a sudden that stupid Stefanie came to town.” Her voice was toneless, but her fingers, which had ripped one of the photos to tiny shreds, showed what was going on inside her. “She forced her way into our clique and snapped up Tobi. Everything was suddenly different. And then she also turned Lauterbach’s head and got the Snow White role that he had promised to me. There was no talking to Tobi anymore. He didn’t want to hear anything from anybody, because for him there was only Stefanie, Stefanie, Stefanie!”

Nadia’s face was distorted with hatred and she shook her head.

“None of us could have foreseen that the police would be so stupid and that Tobi would really have to do time. I thought a couple of weeks in juvie would have served him right. By the time I realized that he was really going to trial it was far too late to say anything. We had all lied and kept silent for too long. But I never left him in the lurch. I wrote him regularly and I waited for him. I wanted to make up for everything he’d been through. I wanted to do everything for him. And keep him from going back to Altenhain, but he was so stubborn!”

“You didn’t want to keep him from going back,” Bodenstein noted, “you had to keep him from going back. Because it was possible that he’d seen through your role in this sad drama. And that couldn’t be allowed to happen. So you played the role of the faithful friend.”

Nadia von Bredow smiled frostily and said nothing.

“But Tobias went back to his father’s house,” Bodenstein went on. “You couldn’t stop him. And then Amelie Fr?hlich showed up, who bears a fateful resemblance to Stefanie Schneeberger.”

“That stupid little bitch stuck her nose into things that are none of her f*cking business.” Nadia ground her teeth angrily. “Tobi and I could have started a new life anywhere in the world. I have enough money. Someplace where Altenhain was only a bad memory.”

“And you would have never told him the truth.” Pia shook her head. “What a crazy basis for a relationship.”

Nadia didn’t even deign to look at her.

“You saw Amelie as a threat,” Bodenstein said. “So you wrote the anonymous letters and e-mails to Lauterbach. Because you could count on him to do something to protect himself.”

Nadia von Bredow shrugged.

“By doing that you set terrible events in motion.”

“I wanted to prevent Tobias from being hurt again,” she said. “He has suffered enough, and I—”

“Bullshit!” Bodenstein interrupted her. He came over to the table and sat down facing her so that she’d have to look at him. “You wanted to stop him from finding out what you had done in 1997—or to put it more precisely: what you didn’t do! You were the only one who could have spared him the conviction and kept him out of prison, but you didn’t. Because of injured pride and childish jealousy. You watched as his family was humiliated and destroyed, you stole ten years of your great love’s life out of pure selfishness, only so that one day he would belong to you completely. That has got to be the lowest motive I’ve come across in a long time.”