Snow White Must Die (Bodenstein & Kirchhoff, #4)(140)

For a couple more minutes Terlinden tried to keep up the pretext, but Pia wouldn’t let up.

“You’re right,” he finally admitted. “We were going to run away together. The plane leaves at eleven forty-five tonight. If you hurry maybe you can catch her.”

“Where’s it going? Where did you want to fly to?” Pia had to control herself not to grab the man by the shoulders and give him a good shake. “You’d better start talking. That woman shot someone. That’s called murder. And if you don’t start telling the truth, I promise you’re going to be charged as an accomplice. So, which flight is Daniela Lauterbach planning to take? And under what name?”

“The one to S?o Paulo,” Terlinden whispered, closing his eyes. “As Consuela la Roca.”

* * *



“I’m going to the airport,” Bodenstein decided as they stood outside next to the police van. “You keep grilling Terlinden.”

Pia nodded. It really made her nervous that she hadn’t heard anything yet from their colleagues in Altenhain. What happened to Amelie? Had Lauterbach shot her too? She asked one of the patrol officers to find out about Amelie and then climbed back into the VW bus.

In the interrogation room at the station Pia asked, “How could you do such a thing? Daniela Lauterbach almost killed your son Thies, after she’d been pumping him full of drugs for years.”

Terlinden shut his eyes for a moment.

“You don’t understand the situation,” he replied wearily as he averted his eyes.

“Then explain it to me,” Pia said. “Tell me why Daniela Lauterbach mistreated Thies so badly and why she set fire to the orangerie.”

Claudius Terlinden opened his eyes and stared at Pia. A minute passed, then two.

“I fell in love with Daniela when my brother brought her to the house for the first time,” he said. “It was a Sunday, the fourteenth of June, 1976. It was love at first sight. But a year later she married my brother, even though they weren’t at all suitable for each other. They were absolutely miserable together. Daniela was very successful in her career, and she overshadowed my brother. He started hitting her more and more often, even in front of the servants. In the summer of 1977 she suffered a miscarriage, a year later another one, and then a third. My brother wanted an heir; he was furious and blamed her. When my wife had twin sons, that was the last straw.”

Pia listened in silence, careful not to interrupt.

“Eventually Daniela might have asked for a divorce, but a couple of years later my brother was diagnosed with cancer. Terminal. So she no longer wanted to leave him. He died in May 1985.”

“How convenient for the two of you,” Pia remarked sarcastically. “But that doesn’t explain why you wanted to help her escape. This is the woman who kidnapped Amelie and Thies and locked them in a cellar. If we hadn’t found them they would have drowned, because Lauterbach flooded the cellar.”

“What are you talking about?” Claudius Terlinden looked up in annoyance.

Suddenly it dawned on Pia that Terlinden really might not know what Daniela Lauterbach had done. Earlier in the day he had come to the hospital to visit his son, but the tragic death of Hartmut Sartorius may have postponed any further conversation. Besides, Thies probably wouldn’t have wanted to tell his father what happened. So Pia now told Claudius Terlinden in detail about Daniela Lauterbach’s devious attempt to murder Amelie and Thies.

“That can’t be true,” he kept whispering in growing bewilderment.

“Yes, it is. Daniela Lauterbach wanted to kill Thies because he was an eyewitness when her husband murdered Stefanie Schneeberger. And Amelie had to die because she had figured out the secret that Thies had kept all these years.”

“My God.” Terlinden buried his face in his hands.

“It seems to me that you didn’t know the love of your life very well if you actually wanted to flee with her.” Pia shook her head.

Terlinden was now staring into space.

“What an idiot I am. Everything is my fault! I was the one who offered that house to Albert Schneeberger.”

“What does Schneeberger have to do with it?”

“Stefanie totally turned Thies’s head. He was crazy about her, and then he happened to see how she and Gregor … well … you know. He had a fit of rage and attacked Gregor, and we had to put him in the psychiatric ward. A week before the girls died, he came back home. He was acting rationally again. The medications had worked wonders on him. And then Thies saw Gregor kill Stefanie.”

Pia caught her breath.

“Gregor wanted to run away, but suddenly Thies stood in front of him. The boy was just standing there, staring at him, not saying a word, as usual. Gregor ran home in a panic, howling like a baby.” Terlinden’s voice took on a scornful tone. “Daniela called me and we met at Sartorius’s barn. Thies was sitting next to the dead girl. At that moment it seemed best to hide the body somewhere, so I thought of the old bunker underneath the orangerie. But we couldn’t get Thies to leave. He refused to let go of Stefanie’s hand. Then Daniela had the idea of telling him that he should take care of Stefanie. It wasn’t an ideal situation, but it worked. For eleven years. Until Amelie showed up. That nosy little twit ruined everything.”

He and Daniela Lauterbach had known the truth about Laura and Stefanie all these years and never said a word. How could they have lived with such a terrible secret? Pia wondered.