Snow White Must Die (Bodenstein & Kirchhoff, #4)(23)
* * *
As on every Sunday after church the usual suspects had gathered in the Black Horse. Drinking early in the day was a man’s prerogative; the women had to stay home and tend to the Sunday roast. This was one of the reasons that Amelie found Sundays in Altenhain to be the epitome of stuffy bourgeois life. Today even the boss was there in person. During the week Andreas Jagielski took care of his two high-end restaurants in Frankfurt and left the running of the Black Horse to his wife and brother-in-law; he only showed up himself on Sundays. Amelie didn’t particularly like him. Jagielski was a massive man with bulbous frog eyes and bulging lips. After the Wall came down he was one of the first former East Germans to move to Altenhain; Amelie had learned that from Roswitha. He had worked as a cook at the Golden Rooster but had scornfully deserted his employer at the first sign of the inn’s impending collapse, only to start up business across the street as a competitor with the Black Horse. Offering the exact same menu as Hartmut Sartorius, but with much more favorable prices and the luxury of a big parking lot, Jagielski had pulled the rug out from under his former boss and significantly contributed to the final demise of the Golden Rooster. Roswitha had loyally stuck it out with Sartorius to the very end and only reluctantly accepted the job with Jagielski.
In the morning Amelie got ready with great care, removing all her piercings, fixing her hair in two braids, and putting on less dramatic makeup. From her stepmother’s wardrobe she had borrowed a white blouse that was actually too small for her, and in her own wardrobe she had found a sexy plaid miniskirt. Black tights and calf-high Doc Martens completed the outfit. Standing in front of the mirror she had unbuttoned the blouse far enough so that the black bra and the swell of her breasts were visible. Jenny Jagielski had refrained from comment, merely giving Amelie a fleeting glance, but her husband had taken a good long look deep into her décolletage and then gave her a wink.
Now he was sitting at the round table fully occupied by the regulars in the middle of the room, in between Lutz Richter and Claudius Terlinden. The latter was a rarely seen guest at the Black Horse, but today he seemed affable and approachable. Even at the bar the men were sitting elbow to elbow, with Jenny and her brother drawing beers in tandem. Manfred Wagner had recovered, and he even seemed to have been to the barber, because his scraggly beard was gone and he looked reasonably civilized. As Amelie approached the table with another round of beer, she caught the name of Tobias Sartorius and pricked up her ears.
“… bold and arrogant just like before,” proclaimed Lutz Richter. “He’s got some nerve showing up here again.”
There was a murmur of agreement; only Terlinden and Jagielski kept quiet.
“If he keeps on like that, there’ll be trouble sooner or later,” someone else said.
“He won’t stay here for long,” said a third man. “We’ll make sure of that.”
It was Udo Pietsch, the roofer, who had said that, and the other men nodded and murmured in approval.
“Come on, boys, none of you is going to make sure of anything,” Claudius Terlinden intervened. “He has served his time, and now he can live here with his father as long as he doesn’t cause any trouble.”
Everyone at the table fell silent; no one dared contradict him, but Amelie saw some of the men exchanging furtive glances. Claudius Terlinden was mistaken if he thought he could put an end to a discussion about the collective animosity that people in Altenhain felt toward Tobias Sartorius.
“Eight beers for the gentlemen,” Amelie spoke up, finding the tray a bit heavy by now.
“Oh yes, thank you, Amelie.” Terlinden nodded to her benevolently, but his expression suddenly froze for a fraction of a second. He recovered at once and gave a rather forced smile. Amelie could tell that her altered appearance was the cause of his astonishment. She smiled back, cocked her head coquettishly and held his glance a bit longer than decent girls should, then she turned to clear off the neighboring table. She could feel him following her every movement with his eyes, and she couldn’t resist wiggling her hips a little as she walked back to the kitchen with the tray of dirty glasses. She hoped the men were really thirsty; she was dying to eavesdrop some more. Until now her interest in the whole story had arisen from the fact that there was an actual connection between herself and one of the murder victims. But after her encounter with Tobias Sartorius yesterday, there was a new motivation for her interest. She liked him.
* * *
Tobias Sartorius was speechless. When Nadia told him that she lived on Karpfenweg by the West Harbor in Frankfurt, he had envisioned a renovated old building in the Gutleut district, but what he now saw was something completely different. In the huge area of the former West Harbor a few blocks south of the main train station, a new and exclusive part of the city had sprouted with modern office buildings on the land side and twelve seven-story apartment blocks on the former pier, which had been given the name Karpfenweg. He parked his car at the side of the road and walked in amazement across the bridge over the former harbor basin carrying a bouquet of flowers. A few yachts were bobbing up and down in the black water by the boat docks. Late that afternoon Nadia had called and invited him to her place for dinner. Tobias hadn’t felt much desire to drive all the way into the city, but he owed Nadia something for the steadfast loyalty she had shown him over the past ten years. He had showered and left in his father’s car at seven thirty, with no idea what changes awaited him. It started with a brand-new traffic circle at Tengelmann supermarket in Bad Soden; the Main-Taunus shopping center had also grown. And in Frankfurt he couldn’t find his way at all. For someone who wasn’t used to driving, the city was a true nightmare. He was forty-five minutes late when he finally located the building with the right number.