Snow White Must Die (Bodenstein & Kirchhoff, #4)(76)

“You lied to us yesterday,” she replied with a charming smile. “Since I probably don’t need to tell you where Feldstrasse is, I will ask you once again: Did you drive past the Black Horse on your way back from your firm, or did you take the short cut across the field and along Feldstrasse?”

“What’s the meaning of all this?” Terlinden turned to Bodenstein, but he was silent. “What are you trying to imply?”

“That was the night Amelie Fr?hlich disappeared,” Kirchhoff answered for Bodenstein. “She was last seen at the Black Horse about the time you drove by there on the way to your office, about ten thirty. Two hours later, around twelve thirty, you came back to Altenhain, and from a different direction—not the way you claimed.”

He stuck out his lower lip, squinting at her. “And from this you deduce that I waylaid the daughter of an employee, dragged her into my car, and murdered her?”

“Was that a confession?” Pia asked coolly.

To her annoyance Terlinden gave her an almost amused smile.

“By no means.”

“Then tell us what you did between ten thirty and twelve thirty. Or was it perhaps not ten thirty, but a quarter past ten?”

“It was ten thirty. I was in my office.”

“It took you two hours to put your wife’s jewelry in the safe?” Pia shook her head. “Do you think we’re stupid or what?”

The situation had shifted by a hundred and eighty degrees. Claudius Terlinden was in a jam, and he knew it. But he still kept his cool.

“Who did you have dinner with?” Pia asked. “And where?”

Silence. Then Pia remembered the cameras she had seen at the gate of the Terlinden company property, when she drove past on her way back from the Wagners.

“We could take a look at the footage from the surveillance cameras at the gate to your firm,” she suggested. “That way you could prove to us that you’re telling the truth about the timeline.”

“You’re very clever,” said Terlinden appreciatively. “I like that. Unfortunately the surveillance system has been down for four weeks now.”

“And the cameras at the entrance gate to your property?”

“They don’t record.”

“Well, then it looks pretty bad for you.” Pia shook her head in feigned regret. “You have no alibi for the time when Amelie disappeared. Your hands are scratched as if you’d been fighting with someone.”

“Aha.” Claudius Terlinden remained calm, raising his eyebrows. “So what now? Are you going to arrest me because I took another way home?”

Pia kept her eyes steadfastly fixed on him. He was a liar, possibly also a criminal, who knew perfectly well that her assumptions were much too vague to justify an arrest.

“You’re not under arrest, only temporarily detained.” She managed a smile. “And not because you took another way home, but because you lied to us. As soon as you give us a plausible, verifiable alibi for the time period in question, you may go.”

“Good.” Claudius Terlinden shrugged his shoulders nonchalantly. “But please no handcuffs. I’m allergic to nickel.”

“I assume you won’t try to escape,” Pia retorted dryly. “Anyway, our handcuffs are stainless steel.”

* * *



The phone on his desk rang just as he was leaving the office. Lars Terlinden was expecting an urgent callback from the derivatives broker at the Credit Suisse. With the broker’s help he had sold off a large part of the credit portfolio for this con man Mutzler before he appeared before a tribunal of the board of directors. He put down his briefcase and took the call.

“Lars, it’s me,” said his mother. He wished he could hang up.

“Please, Mother, leave me alone. I don’t have time right now.”

“The police arrested your father this morning.”

Lars felt himself turn cold, then hot.

“Better late than never,” he replied bitterly. “After all, he isn’t God—he can’t do whatever he likes in Altenhain just because he has more money than everybody else. Actually, he’s been getting away with his little charade for far too long.”

He went behind his desk and sat down in his armchair.

“How can you say that, Lars? Your father always wanted what was best for you.”

“Wrong,” said Lars coolly. “He only wanted what was best for him and for his firm. And back then he exploited the situation, the way he basically exploits every situation to his own advantage. He forced me into a job that I never wanted to do. Mother, believe me, I don’t give a shit what’s happening to him.”

Suddenly everything was closing in again. Why did his father have to meddle in his life? Especially now, when he needed all his energy and concentration to save his career and his future. Anger was boiling over inside him. Why couldn’t they just leave him alone? Images he had thought long forgotten were coming to his mind, unasked and unwanted, but he was powerless to stop the memories and the feelings that accompanied them. He knew that his father had been regularly f*cking Laura’s mother, who used to work in the villa as housekeeper. They would retreat to one of the attic guest rooms when his mother wasn’t home. But that wasn’t enough for him. He also had to get the daughters of his serfs, as his employees and the whole town used to call them, into bed—ius primae noctis, the same as a feudal lord in the Middle Ages.