Snow White Must Die (Bodenstein & Kirchhoff, #4)(36)

“In the office over there,” said the youth. “At least I think so.”

“Thanks.” Pia refrained from mentioning the fire code and set off to look for the boss, who obviously didn’t care about much of anything. She found Manfred Wagner in a tiny, windowless office so cramped that three of them would hardly fit inside. The man had lifted the receiver off the phone and was reading the BILD tabloid. Apparently nobody cared much about customers. When Bodenstein knocked on the open door to announce his presence, the man reluctantly looked up from his paper.

“Yeah?” He was somewhere in his mid-fifties and smelled of alcohol despite the early hour. His brown coverall looked as if it hadn’t seen the inside of a washing machine in weeks.

“Mr. Wagner?” Kirchhoff took over. “We’re with the Hofheim Criminal Police and we’d like to talk with you and your wife.”

Wagner turned pale as a ghost, staring at her with his red-rimmed, watery eyes like a bunny at a snake. At that moment a vehicle pulled up outside and then a car door slammed.

“That’s … that’s my wife,” Wagner stammered. Andrea Wagner came into the workshop, her heels clacking on the concrete floor. She had short blond hair and was very thin. She must have been pretty once, but now she looked merely careworn. Grief, bitterness, and uncertainty about the fate of her daughter had etched deep furrows in her face.

“We’ve come to inform you that the mortal remains of your daughter Laura have been found,” said Bodenstein after he introduced himself to Andrea Wagner. For a moment there was complete silence. Manfred Wagner let out a sob. A tear ran down his unshaven cheek, and he hid his face in his hands. His wife remained calm and composed.

“Where?” was all she asked.

“On the grounds of the old military airfield in Eschborn.”

Andrea Wagner heaved a big sigh. “Finally.”

There was so much relief in this word, more than she could have expressed in ten sentences. How many days and nights of vain hope and utter despair had these two people endured? How must it feel to be constantly haunted by the ghosts of the past? The parents of the other girl had moved away, but the Wagners had not been able to give up their business, which was their livelihood. They were forced to stay, while their hope for the return of their daughter grew ever fainter. Eleven years of uncertainty must have been hell. Maybe it would help now that they could bury her and say good-bye.

* * *



“No, leave it,” Amelie insisted. “It’s no big deal. Just a bruise, that’s all.”

She was certainly not going to undress and show Tobias the spot where one of those jerks had kicked her. It was embarrassing enough to be sitting here, looking so filthy and ugly.

“But the cut might need stitches.”

“Bullshit. It’ll heal just fine the way it is.”

Tobias had stared at her as if she were a ghost when, shortly after seven thirty, she stood at his front door, dirty and smeared with blood. She told him that she’d just been attacked by two masked men in his yard. He made her sit down on a kitchen chair and carefully dabbed the blood from her face. Her nose had stopped bleeding, but the cut over her eyebrow, which he had stuck together in a makeshift way with two Band-Aids, might soon start bleeding again.

“You do that really well.” Amelie gave him a crooked smile and took a drag on her cigarette. She felt shaky and her heart was pounding, but this reaction had nothing to do with the attack. It was because of Tobias. Up close and in the daylight he looked a lot better than she had first thought. The touch of his hands was like electric sparks, and the way he kept looking at her with his incredibly blue eyes, so anxious and thoughtful—that was almost too much for her nerves. No wonder all the girls in Altenhain had been after him in the old days.

“I’m wondering what they wanted,” she said as Tobias busied himself with the coffee machine. She looked around with curiosity. So it was in this house that the two girls were murdered, Snow White and Laura.

“They were probably waiting for me, and you happened to run into them,” he said. He set two cups on the table, along with the sugar bowl, and got some milk out of the fridge.

“You say that so matter-of-factly. Aren’t you the least bit afraid?”

Tobias leaned against the counter and crossed his arms. He looked at her, his head tilted. “What am I supposed to do? Go into hiding? Run away? I won’t give them the satisfaction.”

“Do you know who they might have been?”

“I’m not a hundred percent sure. But I can guess.”

Amelie could feel herself blushing under his gaze. What was going on? Nothing like this had ever happened to her before. She hardly dared look him in the eye, and he could probably tell what kind of emotional chaos he was unleashing inside her. The coffee machine was making alarming noises and sending out clouds of steam.

“It probably needs decalcifying,” she diagnosed the problem. A sudden smile brightened her gloomy face, making her look totally different. Amelie stared at Tobias. She felt a crazy need to protect him, to help him.

“The coffeemaker really isn’t a top priority,” he said with a grin. “First I have to finish cleaning up outside.”

At that moment the doorbell rang shrilly. Tobias went to the window, and the smile vanished from his face.

“It’s the cops again,” he said, looking tense. “You’d better go. I don’t want anyone to see you here.”