Snow White Must Die (Bodenstein & Kirchhoff, #4)(28)

She clasped her hands behind her head, closed her eyes, and contentedly continued her morbid pondering. “Did he chop them up? Maybe he even encased them in concrete and buried them somewhere on his farm.”

Thies kept working, unfazed, mixing a dark green with a ruby red on his palette, then rejected the result after a brief scrutiny and added a little white to it. Amelie stopped the hammock from swaying.

“Do you think I look better when I take out my piercings?”

Thies said nothing. Amelie climbed carefully out of the swinging hammock and went over to him. She peered over his shoulder at the canvas. Her mouth fell open when she recognized what he’d been painting for the past two hours.

“Whoa,” she said, simultaneously impressed and astonished. “That’s so cool.”

* * *



Fourteen well-worn file folders had been borrowed from the archives of Frankfurt police headquarters and were now in boxes next to Pia Kirchhoff’s desk. In 1997 the Division of Violent Crimes in the Main-Taunus region didn’t exist yet. In cases of homicide, rape, and manslaughter, Division K-11 in Frankfurt had been in charge until the reform of the Hesse state police a few years ago. But studying the documents would have to wait. Dr. Nicola Engel had called one of the useless team meetings that she loved so much, set to begin at four o’clock.

It was hot and sticky in the conference room. Since there was nothing spectacular on the day’s agenda, the mood of the participants ranged from sleepy to bored. Outside the windows the rain was pouring down from an overcast sky, and it was already getting dark.

“The surveillance photo of the unknown man is being released to the press today,” said the commissioner. “Somebody is bound to recognize him and call in.”

Andreas Hasse, who had shown up for work this morning, pale and taciturn, sneezed.

“Why don’t you just stay home instead of spreading your cold to the rest of us?” said Kai Ostermann irritably. He was sitting right next to Hasse, who didn’t answer.

“Is there anything else?” Dr. Nicola Engel’s attentive gaze moved from one person to the next, but her subordinates wisely avoided direct eye contact. She always seemed able to look right into their heads. With her seismographic senses she had been noticing the subliminal tension in the air for some time, and now she was trying to pinpoint the cause.

“I’ve gotten hold of the documents in the Sartorius case,” said Kirchhoff. “Somehow I have the feeling that the attack on Mrs. Cramer might be directly connected to the release of Tobias Sartorius. The people we talked to in Altenhain today recognized the man in the photo, but they all denied it. They’re trying to protect him.”

“Is that your view of things too?” asked Dr. Engel, turning to Bodenstein, who had been staring into space the whole time.

“That is entirely possible.” He nodded. “Their reaction did seem odd.”

“Good.” Dr. Engel looked at Kirchhoff. “Look through the documents, but don’t spend too much time on it. We’re also expecting to get the results on the skeleton from forensics, and that case takes precedence.”

“They hate Tobias Sartorius in Altenhain,” said Kirchhoff. “They’ve painted graffiti on his father’s house, and when we got there on Saturday to report the news of the accident, three women were standing across the street hurling curses at him.”

“I met that guy once.” Hasse cleared his throat a couple of times. “This Sartorius was a cold-blooded killer. An arrogant, smug pretty boy who wanted everybody to believe that he’d suffered a blackout and couldn’t remember a thing. But the evidence was clear. He kept lying all the way to the slammer.”

“But he’s served his time. He has a right to rejoin society,” Kirchhoff countered. “And the attitude of the townspeople makes me mad. Why are they lying? Who are they protecting?”

“You think you’ll be able to figure that out from reading the old files?” Hasse shook his head. “The guy killed his girlfriend when she broke up with him, and because his former girlfriend witnessed it, she had to die too.”

Pia wondered about this unusual display of fervor from her colleague, who was normally rather indifferent.

“That’s possible,” she said. “And he did ten years for it. But maybe the old records of the trial will tell me who pushed Rita Cramer off that bridge.”

“Do you really want to—” Hasse began, but Dr. Engel put a firm stop to the discussion.

“Ms. Kirchhoff will look through the documents until we have the facts about the skeleton.”

Since there was nothing else to discuss, the meeting was adjourned. Dr. Engel went back to her office, and the rest of K-11 dispersed.

“I have to go home,” said Oliver out of the blue, after glancing at his watch. Pia decided to drive home too, taking some of the files with her. Nothing of any importance was going to be happening here.

* * *



“Shall I carry the suitcase into the house, Minister?” asked the chauffeur, but Gregor Lauterbach shook his head.

“Never mind, I’ll get it.” He smiled. “You’d better be getting home now, Forthuber. I’ll need you at eight tomorrow morning.”

“Very good, sir. Good night, then, Minister.”

Lauterbach nodded and grabbed the small suitcase. He hadn’t been home in three days. First he’d had appointments in Berlin, then the cultural ministers’ conference in Stralsund where his colleagues from Baden-Württemberg and Nordrhein-Westfalen had squabbled fiercely about the establishment of guidelines to meet the need for teachers. He heard the telephone ring as he opened the front door and turned off the alarm with a flick of the wrist. The answering machine switched on, but the caller didn’t take the trouble to leave a message. Gregor Lauterbach set down his suitcase in front of the stairs, turned on the light, and went into the kitchen. He glanced at the mail piled on the kitchen table, neatly divided into two stacks by the housekeeper. Daniela wasn’t home yet. If he remembered correctly, tonight she was giving a speech at a physicians’ congress in Marburg. Lauterbach went farther into the living room and studied the bottles on the sideboard for a while before he decided on a forty-two-year-old Black Bowmore scotch. A gift from somebody who was trying to butter him up. He opened the bottle and poured a double shot into a glass. Since he’d become cultural minister in Wiesbaden, he and Daniela saw each other only by chance or to coordinate their appointment calendars. They hadn’t slept in the same bed for ten years. Lauterbach kept a secret apartment in Idstein, where he met a discreet lover once a week. He had made it crystal clear to her from the outset that he had no intention of ever divorcing Daniela, so the topic never came up when they were together. Whether Daniela had some sort of relationship going as well, he had no idea, and he wasn’t going to ask her about it. He loosened his tie, removed his suit jacket and tossed it over the back of the sofa, taking a sip of the whisky. The telephone rang again. Three times, then the answering machine went on.