Snow White Must Die (Bodenstein & Kirchhoff, #4)(74)
“In the village there’s a rumor that Thies might have had something to do with her disappearance,” said Pia.
“That’s nonsense,” Terlinden contradicted her without any rancor. He sounded almost indifferent, as though this sort of talk was all too familiar to him. “Thies likes the girl a lot. But some people in the village think he belongs in an institution. Naturally they won’t say that to my face, but I know it.”
“We’d really like to talk to him.”
“At the moment I’m afraid that’s not possible.” Terlinden shook his head regretfully. “We had to take him to the psychiatric ward.”
“What will happen to him there?” Pia instantly conjured up ghastly images in her head of people in chains being maltreated with electroshock.
“They’ll try to calm him down.”
“How long will it take before we can talk to him?”
Claudius Terlinden shrugged. “I don’t know. He hasn’t had such a violent attack in years. I’m afraid that this event may have really set him back in his development. That would be a disaster. For us and for him.”
He promised to inform Kirchhoff and Bodenstein as soon as the doctors gave the green light so they could have a talk with Thies. As Terlinden accompanied them to the elevator and held out his hand in parting, he smiled again.
“Very pleased to meet you,” he said. This time his touch didn’t give Pia an electric shock, yet she felt strangely dazed as the elevator door finally closed behind them. On the ride down she tried to overcome her confusion.
“Well, he really seemed to go for you,” Oliver noted. “And you for him too.” There was gentle mockery in his voice.
“Very funny,” Pia retorted, zipping up her jacket to her chin. “I was just trying to scope him out.”
“And? What was the outcome?”
“I think he was sincere.”
“Really? I think just the opposite.”
“Why? He answered all our questions without hesitating, even the unpleasant ones. For example, he didn’t have to tell us that Laura had twice put him in an embarrassing position.”
“That’s exactly what I think is his trick,” Oliver countered. “Isn’t it a peculiar coincidence that Terlinden’s son was removed from the line of fire at the very moment the girl disappeared?”
The elevator stopped at the ground floor and the doors opened.
“We haven’t made any progress at all,” said Pia, feeling suddenly discouraged. “Nobody wants to admit they saw Amelie.”
“Or maybe it’s just that no one wants to tell us,” said Oliver. They crossed the lobby, nodded to the young man behind the reception counter, and stepped outside into the icy blast. Pia pressed the remote on her car key and the doors of the BMW unlocked.
“We have to talk to Mrs. Terlinden one more time.” Oliver stopped by the passenger door and looked at Pia over the roof.
“So you suspect Thies and his father.”
“Possibly. Maybe Thies did something to the girl and his father wants to cover it up, so he puts his son in the psych ward.”
They got in, and Pia started the engine and drove out from under the protective roof. Snow covered the windshield at once, and thanks to fine sensors the wipers started moving.
“I want to know which doctor treated Thies,” Bodenstein said pensively. “And whether the Terlindens really did go out to eat in Frankfurt on Saturday night.”
Pia just nodded. The encounter with Claudius Terlinden had left her with an ambiguous feeling. Normally she didn’t let herself be blinded so quickly by anyone, but the man had made a deep impression on her, and she wanted to figure out why.
* * *
Only the guard station was still manned when Pia entered police headquarters at nine thirty. By the time they’d reached Kelkheim the snow had turned to rain again, and despite his head wound Bodenstein had insisted on driving home by himself. Pia would have also preferred to call it a day. Christoph was no doubt already waiting for her, but she couldn’t get the meeting with Claudius Terlinden out of her mind. Besides, Christoph understood that she had to work late occasionally.
She walked through the empty corridors and stairwells to her office, switched on the light, and sat down at her desk. Christine Terlinden had given them the name of the doctor who’d been treating Thies for years. It was no surprise that it was Dr. Daniela Lauterbach; she was a longtime neighbor of the Terlindens and could be on the spot quickly in a crisis situation.
Pia typed in her password. Ever since she left Claudius Terlinden’s office she’d been going over and over the conversation in her mind, trying to recall every word, every sentence, all the subtle signals. Why was Oliver so convinced that Terlinden was mixed up in Amelie’s disappearance, while she wasn’t at all? Had the attraction that he’d exerted on her clouded her objectivity?
She entered Terlinden’s name in a search engine and got thousands of hits. In the next half hour she learned a good deal about his company and his family, as well as about Claudius Terlinden’s manifold social and philanthropic commitments. He was actively involved with dozens of foundations and supervisory boards and various associations and organizations. He had also funded scholarships for gifted young people from disadvantaged families. Terlinden did a lot for young people. Why? Officially he stated that as a person who had been particularly favored by fate he wanted to give something back to society. Definitely a noble sentiment, and one could find fault with that. But could there be something else behind it?