Snow White Must Die (Bodenstein & Kirchhoff, #4)(3)

Human bones were always being discovered at excavation sites. It was important to establish precisely how long the corpse had been buried there, since the statute of limitations on violent crimes, including murder, ran out after thirty years. It didn’t make any sense to check the missing persons files until they had determined the age of the victim at death and how long the skeleton had been in the ground. Air traffic at the old military airfield had ceased sometime in the fifties, and that was how long it had been since the tanks were last filled. The skeleton might belong to a female American soldier from the U.S. base located next to the airfield until October 1992, or it could have been a resident of the former home for asylum seekers on the other side of the rusty wire fence.

“Why don’t we go somewhere and get some coffee?” Henning took off his glasses and wiped them dry, then peeled off the wet coverall. Pia gave her ex-husband a surprised look. Café visits during working hours were simply not his style.

“Is something wrong?” she asked suspiciously.

He pursed his lips, then heaved a sigh.

“I’m really in a jam,” he admitted. “And I need your advice.”

* * *



The village huddled in the valley and looming over it were two tall, ugly monstrosities that were built in the seventies, back when every community worth its salt had approved construction of high-rise buildings. On the slope to the right was Millionaires’ Hill, as the old established families called the two streets where the few newcomers lived in villas on spacious grounds. He felt his heart pounding nervously the closer he came to his parents’ house. It was eleven years ago that he was here last. To the right stood the little half-timbered house belonging to Grandma Dombrowski. For ages it had looked as though it was still standing only because it was squeezed between two other houses. A little farther on was the judge’s farm with the barn. And diagonally across from it was the restaurant his father owned called the Golden Rooster. Tobias swallowed hard when Nadia stopped in front. In disbelief he surveyed the dilapidated fa?ade with the plaster flaking off, the blinds pulled down, and the gutters sagging along the eaves. Weeds had forced their way through the asphalt, and the gate hung crooked on its hinges. He almost asked Nadia to keep going—Quick, quick, just get out of here! But he resisted the temptation, said a curt thank-you, and climbed out, taking his suitcase from the back seat.

“If you need anything, just give me a call,” Nadia said in parting, then stepped on the gas and zoomed off. What had he expected? A cheerful reception? He stood alone in the small blacktop parking area in front of the building, which had once been the center of this dismal dump. The formerly white plaster was now weathered and crumbling, and the name Golden Rooster was barely visible. A sign hung behind the cracked milky glass pane in the front door. TEMPORARILY CLOSED, it said in faded letters. His father had told him that he’d given up the restaurant, citing his slipped disk as the reason, but Tobias had a feeling that something else had brought him to this difficult decision. Hartmut Sartorius had been a third-generation innkeeper who had put body and soul into the business. He had done the slaughtering and cooking himself, he pressed his own hard cider, and he never neglected the restaurant for a single day because of illness. No doubt the customers had simply stopped coming. Nobody wanted to eat dinner or celebrate a special occasion at an establishment run by the parents of a double murderer. Tobias took a deep breath and walked over to the courtyard gate. It took some effort just to get the gate open. The condition of the courtyard shocked him. In the summer, tables and chairs had once stood beneath the spreading branches of a mighty chestnut tree and a picturesque pergola covered with wild grapevines, and waitresses had bustled from one table to the next. Now a sad dilapidation reigned. Tobias’s gaze swept over piles of carelessly discarded refuse, broken furniture, and trash. The pergola had partially collapsed and the unruly grapevines had withered. No one had swept up the fallen leaves from the chestnut tree, and the trash can had apparently not been put out on the street for weeks, because trash bags were piled next to it in a stinking heap. How could his parents live like this? Tobias felt his last ounce of courage fade away. Slowly he made his way to the steps leading up to the front door, then reached out and pressed the doorbell. His heart was pounding in his throat when the door was hesitantly opened. The sight of his father brought tears to Tobias’s eyes, and at the same time a sense of rage was growing inside him, rage at himself and at the people who had left his parents in the lurch after he’d been sent to prison.

“Tobias!” A smile flitted over the sunken face of Hartmut Sartorius, who was only a shadow of the vital, self-confident man he had once been. His thick, dark hair had turned thin and gray, and his bent posture betrayed the weight of the burden that life had imposed on him.

“I … I really should have cleaned things up a bit, but I didn’t get any time off and—” He broke off, his smile gone. He merely stood there, a broken, shamefaced man, avoiding Tobias’s gaze, because he knew what his son was seeing.

It was more than Tobias could bear. He dropped his suitcase, spread his arms wide, and clumsily embraced this emaciated, gray stranger who he scarcely recognized as his father.

A little while later they sat awkwardly facing each other at the kitchen table. There was so much to say, and yet every word seemed superfluous. The gaudy oilcloth on the table was covered with crumbs, the windowpanes were filthy, and a withered plant in a pot by the window had long since lost the fight to survive. The kitchen felt damp and smelled unpleasantly of sour milk and old cigarette smoke. Not a piece of furniture had been moved, not a picture taken down from the wall, since he’d been arrested on September 16, 1997, and left this house. But back then everything had been bright and cheerful and clean as a whistle; his mother was an efficient housewife. How could she permit such neglect, how could she stand it?