Snow White Must Die (Bodenstein & Kirchhoff, #4)(91)

“Not good,” the woman admitted. She was very pale but seemed composed. “I wanted to ask Mrs. Terlinden what happened here, since I saw her car. Is there any news? Did your colleague make any headway with those pictures?”

“What pictures?” asked Pia in surprise.

Bewildered, Barbara Fr?hlich looked back and forth from Pia to Bodenstein.

“B-but your colleague visited me yesterday,” she stammered. “She … she said you had sent her. Because of the pictures that Thies gave Amelie.”

Bodenstein and Pia exchanged a quick look.

“We didn’t send anyone,” said Pia with a frown. This whole case was getting stranger and stranger.

“But the woman said…” Barbara Fr?hlich began, and then stopped helplessly.

“Did you see the pictures?” Bodenstein asked.

“No … she looked through the whole room and found a concealed door behind the chest of drawers. And inside there really was a roll of pictures. Amelie must have hidden them there … But I didn’t see what was in the pictures. The woman took them with her, and even offered to give me a receipt.”

“What did she look like, our so-called colleague?” Pia asked. Barbara Fr?hlich seemed to grasp that she had made a mistake. Her shoulders slumped forward and she leaned against the fender of the car, a fist pressed to her lips. Pia went over to her and put an arm around her shoulder.

“She … she had a police badge,” Amelie’s stepmother whispered, fighting back the tears. “She was … so understanding and friendly. She … she … said that the pictures would help you find Amelie, and that was all that was important to me.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Pia tried to console her. “Can you remember what the woman looked like?”

“Short dark hair. Glasses. Slim.” Barbara Fr?hlich shrugged. In her eyes was naked fear. “Do you think Amelie is still alive?”

“I’m sure of it,” said Pia, though she had her doubts. “We’ll find her. Try not to worry.”

* * *



“Thies’s paintings show the real killer, I’m sure of it,” said Pia a little later to her boss as they drove in the direction of Neuenhain. “He gave them to Amelie for safekeeping, but Amelie made the mistake of telling somebody about the pictures.”

“Exactly.” Oliver nodded darkly. “Namely Tobias Sartorius. And he sent someone over to the Fr?hlichs to get the pictures. He’s probably already destroyed them.”

“It wouldn’t matter to Tobias if he was in the pictures,” Pia countered. “He served his time. What else could happen to him? No, no, there has to be somebody else who has a vested interest in making sure those pictures never see the light of day.”

“And who would that be?”

Pia found it hard to put her suspicions into words. She realized that her first impression of Claudius Terlinden couldn’t have been more wrong.

“Thies’s father,” she said.

“Possibly,” Oliver agreed. “But it could also be somebody who isn’t even on the list, because we don’t know about him. You have to take the next left.”

“Where are we going, anyway?” Pia turned on the left turn signal, waited for traffic to clear, and turned into the street.

“To Hasse’s,” Oliver said. “He lives in the last house on the left side, up near the woods.”

Her boss hadn’t reacted when Pia told him earlier about Ostermann’s call, but he now seemed determined to get to the bottom of the matter. A moment later they pulled up in front of the cottage with a tiny front yard. They knew that Andreas Hasse was planning to have his mortgage paid off on the day he retired. He had mentioned it countless times, full of resentment over the rotten pay that public servants received. They got out and went to the front door. Oliver rang the bell. Hasse himself opened the door. He suddenly turned deathly pale and lowered his head in embarrassment. So Ostermann had scored a bull’s-eye with his hunch. Unbelievable.

“May we come in?” Oliver asked. They entered a dark hallway with a worn linoleum floor; the smell of food mixed with cigarette smoke hung in the air. The radio was on. Hasse shut the door to the kitchen. He didn’t waste any time trying to lie, but spilled everything out.

“A friend asked me for a favor,” he said uncomfortably. “I didn’t think it would matter.”

“Jeez, Andreas, are you nuts?” Pia was beside herself. “You took transcripts out of the files?”

“How was I to know that old crap would be of any importance?” he protested lamely. “I mean, it’s all ancient history, the whole case was closed long ago…” He stopped talking when he realized what he was saying.

“You know what that means,” Oliver said gravely. “I have to suspend you from the force and take disciplinary action against you. Where are the documents?”

Hasse made a helpless gesture. “I destroyed them.”

“Why in the world would you do that?” Pia couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Had he really thought nobody would notice?

“Pia, Sartorius killed two girls and tried to cast suspicion on everyone else—even his friends and his teacher. I knew that guy back then. I was on the investigative team from the very beginning! What an ice-cold bastard he was. And now he wants to fan the flames again and—”