Snow White Must Die (Bodenstein & Kirchhoff, #4)(133)

* * *



The way the female police officer had knelt down in the huge pool of blood was a sight that Tobias would never forget. He had sensed that his father was dead even before anyone uttered those most final of words. As if turned to stone he had stood there, speechless and empty of all feeling, letting himself be pushed aside by doctors, medics, and police officers. In his heart there was no more room for emotion after so much horrible news. As in a ship that was filling up with water, the last protective bulkheads had closed to prevent the vessel from sinking.

Tobias left the hospital and took off walking. Nobody tried to stop him. He marched straight through the dark Eichwald, and the cold gradually cleared his thoughts. Nadia, J?rg, Felix, Papa. They had all left, betrayed, or disappointed him, and now he had no one else he could turn to. Mixed in with the paralyzing gray of his helplessness were mixed bright red sparks of anger. With each step he took his resentment grew toward the people who had destroyed his life, squeezing all the air out of him and leaving him to stop and gasp for breath. His heart cried out for revenge because of everything that they had done to him and his parents. Now he had nothing more to lose. In his mind more and more loose ends were coming together, and suddenly it all made sense. In a flash he realized that with his father’s death he was now the last person who knew the secret of Claudius Terlinden and Daniela Lauterbach. Tobias clenched his fists as he recalled what happened twenty years ago—an event that his father had helped the two of them conceal.

He had been seven or eight years old at the time, and had spent the evening in the side room of the restaurant, as he did so often. His mother wasn’t there, so nobody had thought about putting him to bed. At some point he woke up on the couch in the middle of the night. He got up, crept to the door, and overheard a conversation that he couldn’t understand. Only Claudius Terlinden and old Dr. Fuchsberger, who ate at the Golden Rooster almost every night, were still sitting at the bar. Tobias had seen drunks often enough to recognize that the honorable notary public Dr. Herbert Fuchsberger was completely plastered.

“So what’s the problem?” Claudius Terlinden said, giving Tobias’s father a sign to refill the notary’s glass. “My brother doesn’t give a damn. He’s dead.”

“I’ll be in deep shit,” Fuchsberger had muttered indistinctly, “if it ever gets out!”

“Why would it get out? Nobody knows that Willi changed his will.”

“No, no, no! I can’t do it,” Fuchsberger moaned.

“I’ll raise the fee,” Terlinden countered. “In fact, I’ll double it. A hundred thousand. How’s that?”

Tobias had seen how Terlinden motioned to his father for more drinks. Things went on like this for a while until the old man finally gave in.

“All right,” he said. “But you stay here. I don’t want anyone seeing you in my office.”

After that Tobias’s father had disappeared with Dr. Fuchsberger in tow while Claudius Terlinden remained sitting at the bar. Tobias would probably never have understood what went on that night if years later he hadn’t been searching for the car insurance papers in his father’s office and found a will in the safe. At the time he hadn’t given much thought to why Wilhelm Terlinden’s will would be in his father’s safe. Getting his very first car registered was much more important. And Tobias hadn’t thought about it since then, pushing the discovery aside and finally forgetting all about it. But the shock of his father’s death seemed to have opened a secret chamber in his brain, and suddenly it all came back to him.

“Where are we going?”

Amelie’s voice pulled Tobias out of his gloomy reveries. He looked at her, put his hand on hers, and it warmed his heart. Her dark eyes were full of genuine care for him. Without all that metal piercing her face and that crazy hairdo she was beautiful. Much more beautiful than Stefanie had ever been. Amelie hadn’t hesitated a second to sneak out of the hospital with him when he said that he still had a score to settle. Her gruff, prickly manner was only a fa?ade; he had seen that at their first meeting in front of the church. Since people had so often disappointed and betrayed Tobias, he was continually astounded at Amelie’s selfless honesty and lack of guile.

“First we’re driving to my house, and then I have to talk to Claudius Terlinden,” he now replied. “But you’ll have to wait in the car. I don’t want anything to happen to you.”

“I’m not leaving you alone with that f*cker,” she argued. “If we’re together he won’t dare do anything to you.”

In spite of everything Tobias had to smile. She was certainly brave enough. A tiny gleam of hope flickered inside him like a candle whose light was seeking a path through the fog and darkness. Maybe there would be a future for him when all of this was over.

* * *



Cosima hadn’t budged. She was still standing behind the easy chair and now watched Oliver open the suitcase and pack it with the contents of his wardrobe.

“This is your house,” she said after a while. “You don’t have to move out.”

“But I’m going to.” He didn’t look at her. “It was our house. I don’t want to live here anymore. I can use the apartment in the old carriage house at the estate, it’s been empty for a while. That’s the best solution. Then when you’re traveling, my parents or Quentin and Marie-Louise can take care of Sophia.”