Snow White Must Die (Bodenstein & Kirchhoff, #4)(78)

“Are you finished already?” The voice of Pia Kirchhoff penetrated the fog that surrounded him like a wall and dragged him abruptly back to reality. “Was Terlinden there on Saturday?”

Terlinden! He had completely forgotten.

“I … I didn’t even ask,” he admitted.

“Is everything all right?” Pia looked at him curiously. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“Cosima is inside,” he said tonelessly. “With another man. Even though she told me this morning…”

He couldn’t go on, his throat seemed dry as sand. On unsteady legs he staggered to the next building and sat down on the step of the entrance, ignoring how wet it was. Pia looked at him, speechless and, it seemed to him, with sympathy. He lowered his eyes.

“Give me a cigarette,” he demanded in a hoarse voice. Pia dug in her jacket pocket and handed him a pack and a lighter. He hadn’t smoked in fifteen years and didn’t miss it, but right now he had to admit that the craving for nicotine still slumbered deep inside him.

“The car is parked on Kettenhofweg, corner of Brentanostrasse.” Pia held out the car key to him. “Go sit inside before you catch your death of cold.”

He didn’t take the key or give her an answer. He didn’t give a damn whether he got wet or what the passersby thought as they stared at him idiotically. Nothing mattered. Although he had secretly long suspected it, he had desperately hoped for some harmless explanation for Cosima’s lies and text messages. But he was not calm enough to confront her in the company of another man. He took a greedy drag on the cigarette, inhaling the smoke as deep as he could. It made him dizzy, as if he were smoking a joint and not a Marlboro. Gradually the kaleidoscope of thoughts tumbling through his mind slowed their furious pace and stopped. All that was left was a vast, empty silence. He was sitting on a step in the middle of Frankfurt, feeling profoundly alone.

* * *



Lars Terlinden had slammed down the receiver and sat for a couple of minutes without moving. Upstairs the board was waiting for him. The gentlemen had traveled from Zürich specifically to hear how he intended to recoup the 350 million euros he had blown. Unfortunately he had no solution to offer. They would hear him out and then tear him to pieces with a patronizing smile, those arrogant *s; a year ago they had been slapping him on the back like the best of pals because of this same gigantic deal.

The phone rang again, this time the in-house line. Lars ignored it. He opened the top drawer and took out a sheet of letterhead and his Montblanc fountain pen, a gift from his boss in better days. He used it only for signing contracts. For a full minute he stared at the blank, cream-colored page, then he started to write. Without reading over what he had written, he folded the paper and stuck it in an envelope. He wrote an address on the envelope, stood up, grabbed his briefcase and coat, and left the office.

“This has to go out today,” he told his secretary and dropped the envelope on her desk.

“Of course,” she replied sharply. She had once been the executive assistant to the board, and she still felt it was beneath her dignity to be secretary to a division VP. “You do remember that you have an appointment, yes?”

“Of course.” He left without looking at her again.

“You’re already seven minutes late!”

He went outside to the hall. Twenty-four steps to the elevator, which seemed to be waiting impatiently for him with doors open. Upstairs on the twelfth floor the entire board had been sitting for seven minutes. His future was at stake, his reputation, yes, his entire life. Two female colleagues from the back office slipped into the elevator after him. He knew them by sight and nodded absently. They giggled and whispered, returning his nod of greeting. The doors closed silently. He was shocked when he saw the man in the mirror with the haggard face who returned his gaze with dull, dejected eyes. He was tired, infinitely tired and burned out.

“Where to?” asked the brunette with the big eyes politely. “Up or down?”

Her finger with the long fake nail paused expectantly over the button panel. Lars Terlinden couldn’t tear his eyes away from the sight of his face in the mirror.

“Down,” he replied. “All the way down.”

* * *



Pia Kirchhoff walked into the Ebony Club, nodding in thanks to the doorman who had opened the door for her with a flourish. Only a short time ago she and Christoph had dined here with Henning and Miriam. Henning had shelled out five hundred euros for the meal, utterly excessive in her eyes. Pia didn’t much care for trendy spots, cryptic menus, and wine lists in which the price for a single bottle could run into the four-figure bracket. Since she judged wines not by their labels but by her own personal taste, a bardolino or chianti at the pizzeria around the corner sufficed for a successful evening.

The ma?tre d’ slithered down from his high perch and steered toward her with a radiant smile. Without a word Pia held up her badge in front of his nose. His smile cooled at once by several degrees. A potential prospect for the maharaja menu had suddenly transformed before his eyes into a toad that nobody would want to swallow. The criminal police were never welcomed anywhere, especially not in a posh restaurant in the midst of the noontime rush.

“May I inquire as to what this concerns?” murmured the ma?tre d’.

“No, you may not,” said Kirchhoff dryly. “Where’s the manager?”