Snow White Must Die (Bodenstein & Kirchhoff, #4)(135)

“What’s wrong with you?” asked Dr. Daniela Lauterbach. “Why are you just standing around like this?”

The door opened all the way and bright light flooded into the hallway. Tobias managed to open the door of an office behind him just in time. He shoved Amelie into the dark and stood next to her, his heart pounding.

“Shit, what’s she doing here?” Amelie whispered in bewilderment. “She tried to kill me and Thies! And Terlinden knows that!”

Tobias nodded nervously. He was trying to figure out how he could stop the two. He had to prevent them from getting on that plane and disappearing forever. If he were alone he would have simply confronted them. But there was no way he was going to put Amelie in any danger. His eyes fell on the desk in the room.

“Hide under there,” he said softly. Amelie tried to protest, but Tobias insisted. He waited until she had crept under the desk, then he lifted the receiver of the telephone and pressed it to his ear. In the faint glow from the exterior lighting he could hardly see a thing. He pressed a button and hoped that it would get him an outside line. And it did. With shaking fingers he dialed the police.

* * *



Terlinden was standing in front of the open safe, absentmindedly massaging his sore neck with one hand and staring into space. He hadn’t really recovered from the accident at the hospital. He still felt like his heart was going to stop for a couple of beats. Could it be the result of having his supply of oxygen cut off for a few moments? Hartmut Sartorius had attacked him like a madman, choking him with unexpected power until he saw flashes of light before his eyes. For a few seconds he was sure that his last hour had come. He had never been physically attacked before, and the idea of being “scared to death” had been an empty cliché until today. But now he knew how it felt to look death in the eye. He couldn’t remember how he managed to escape from the viselike grip of that maniac, but suddenly Sartorius was lying on the floor in a pool of blood. It was horrible, absolutely horrible! Claudius Terlinden realized that he was still in shock.

His gaze fell on Daniela, who was kneeling under his desk and screwing the computer housing back together with an expression of concentration. The hard drive, which she had replaced with another one, was already in one of the suitcases. Daniela had insisted on doing this, although he thought it was unnecessary. He hadn’t saved anything on his computer that would interest the police. Everything was turning out differently than he had planned. In hindsight Claudius Terlinden had to acknowledge that the cover-up of Lars’s involvement in the murder of Laura Wagner had been a grave mistake. He hadn’t sufficiently considered what the consequences might be if he took the boy out of the line of fire. This single decision, which he’d thought so insignificant, had made dozens of others necessary. The web of lies had become so tangled and confused that it had resulted in regrettable but unavoidable collateral damage. If those stupid farmers had only listened to him instead of taking matters in their own hands, nothing would have happened. Then the tiny rip in the fabric that occurred after the return of Tobias Sartorius rapidly turned into a huge hole, a yawning black abyss. Terlinden’s whole life, his rules, the daily rituals that gave him security—all of it was swept along by this maelstrom of infernal events.

“What’s wrong with you? Why are you just standing there?”

Daniela’s voice tore him out of his musings. With a groan she got to her feet and looked him up and down with a contemptuous expression on her face. Claudius Terlinden noticed that he was still holding his throat, and he turned away. She must have realized long ago that everything might fall apart one day. Her escape plan was perfect and had been worked out to the tiniest detail. But it left him cold. New Zealand? What would he do there? This was the center of his life, here in this village, in this building, in this room. He didn’t want to leave Germany, even if the worst-case scenario meant he’d spend a couple of years in jail. The thought of sitting in some foreign country with a false identity made him uncomfortable, even afraid. Here he was somebody, people knew him and respected him, and he was sure that everything would eventually calm down. In New Zealand he would be a nothing, a nameless refugee, forever and ever.

He looked around the big room. Was he really seeing all this today for the last time? Never again to walk into his house, visit the graves of his parents and grandparents in the cemetery, look out at the familiar panorama of the Taunus? The prospect was unbearable and actually brought tears to his eyes. He had fought so hard to take the life work of his forefathers to even greater heights. Could he really leave it all behind and walk away?

“Come on, Claudius, let’s get out of here!” Daniela’s voice had a piercing sound. “It’s snowing even harder outside. We have to go.”

He shoved the documents that he wanted to leave into the safe. His hand happened to touch the box in which he kept the pistol.

I don’t want to leave, he thought. I’d rather kill myself.

He froze. Where had that thought come from? He had never understood how anyone could be so cowardly as to see suicide as the only way out. But everything was different now that death had grinned in his face.

“Is there anyone besides us in the building?” Daniela asked.

“No,” Terlinden croaked and took the box with the gun out of the safe.

“Then why is the outside line busy?” She bent over the telephone in the middle of his desk. “Extension twenty-three.”