Snow White Must Die (Bodenstein & Kirchhoff, #4)(18)

“You murderer!” Bodenstein and Kirchhoff heard one of them yell as they opened the car doors to climb out. “Get out of this town, you piece of crap! Or you’ll be in for it!”

She spat on the ground.

“What’s going on here?” Bodenstein asked, but the three women paid no attention to him and simply walked away. The man had totally ignored the taunts. Bodenstein greeted him politely and introduced himself and Kirchhoff.

“Why were those women yelling at you?” Pia asked with curiosity.

“You’d better ask them,” the man said brusquely. He gave her an indifferent look and went on with his work. Despite the cold he wore only a long-sleeved gray T-shirt, jeans, and work boots.

“We’d like to speak with Mr. Sartorius.”

Then the man turned around, and Pia thought she recognized him.

“Weren’t you at Mrs. Cramer’s apartment building in Neuenhain yesterday?” she asked. If the man was surprised, he didn’t show it. He stared at her with his extraordinary sea-blue eyes, without smiling, and she felt suddenly flushed.

“Yes, that’s right. Is there something wrong with that?”

“No, of course not. But what were you doing there?”

“Visiting my mother. We had agreed to meet at a certain time, but she never showed up. I was worried.”

“Oh, so you must be Tobias Sartorius.”

He raised his eyebrows and his lips twitched derisively.

“Yes, that’s me. The killer of young girls.”

He was quite attractive in an unsettling way. The narrow white scar that ran from his left ear to his chin made a well-chiseled face more interesting instead of disfiguring it. Something in the way he looked at her prompted a strange feeling in Pia, and she wondered what might be the cause.

“Your mother had a serious accident yesterday afternoon,” Bodenstein said. “She was operated on last night and is now in intensive care. She’s in critical condition.”

Pia saw how Tobias Sartorius’s nostrils flared for a moment, and he pressed his lips together to a tight line. Then he carelessly tossed the paint roller into the paint can and went to the gate of the farmyard. The detectives exchanged a brief glance and followed him. The yard looked like a rubbish heap. Suddenly Oliver uttered a suppressed cry and abruptly stopped. Pia turned to her boss.

“What is it?” she asked in astonishment.

“A rat!” Oliver gasped. He had turned white as chalk. “The thing ran right over my foot!”

“No wonder, with all the filth in here.” Pia shrugged and wanted to keep going, but Oliver stood there like a pillar of salt.

“I hate rats more than anything,” he said, his voice quavering.

“But you grew up on a farm,” Pia countered. “There must have been an occasional rat there.”

“That’s exactly why.”

Pia shook her head in disbelief. She never would have thought her boss would have such a phobia.

“Come on,” she said. “They’ll run away when they see us. Garbage rats are shy. My girlfriend used to have two tame rats. But that was different. We used to—”

“I don’t want to hear it!” Oliver took a deep breath. “You go first.”

“Okay, okay, no problem.” Pia smirked as Oliver followed on her heels. Ready to flee at any moment, he suspiciously eyed the heaps of trash on both sides of the narrow path that led to the house.

“Yikes, there’s another one! And a fat one at that,” said Pia, stopping short. Oliver ran into her and looked around in a panic. His usual composure was gone.

“Just kidding,” Pia said with a grin, but Oliver didn’t see anything to laugh about.

“You do that again and you’ll be walking home,” he threatened. “You almost gave me a heart attack!”

They moved on. Tobias Sartorius had gone inside, but the front door was standing open. Oliver caught up with Pia at the stairs and climbed the three steps to the door like a hiker relieved to have solid ground underfoot after slogging through a swamp. An elderly man with stooped shoulders appeared in the doorway. He was wearing worn-out slippers, stained gray pants, and a threadbare knit cardigan that hung loose around his skinny body.

“Are you Hartmut Sartorius?” asked Pia, and the man nodded. He seemed just as run-down as his farm. Deep furrows were etched into his long, narrow face, and the only similarity with Tobias was his unusually blue eyes, although they had lost all brightness.

“My son tells me it’s about my ex-wife.” His voice was feeble.

“Yes,” said Pia with a nod. “She had a serious accident yesterday.”

“Please come in.” He led them down a narrow, dim hall into a kitchen that could have been cozy if it weren’t so dirty. Tobias stood by the window with his arms crossed.

“Dr. Lauterbach gave us your address,” Bodenstein began. He had rapidly regained his composure. “According to witnesses, late yesterday afternoon your ex-wife was shoved over the railing of the pedestrian bridge at the Sulzbach North S-Bahn station, directly into the path of an oncoming car.”

“Good Lord.” All color drained out of the older man’s gaunt face, and he grabbed for the back of a chair. “But … but who would do such a thing?”

“That’s what we want to find out,” said Bodenstein.”Do you have any idea who might have done this? Did your ex-wife have any enemies?”