‘No.’ Nik brushed off the suggestion. The last thing he needed now was an investigation into Tilo’s disappearance. ‘He’s probably just at work. I’ll drive to the station and see if I can find him there.’ He raised his hand. ‘Thanks for your time.’
Nik arrived at his car and called Jon. It went straight to voicemail.
‘Listen, Jon,’ Nik said angrily. ‘I have no idea what happened to Viola but I’ve been beaten up, tied up and very nearly shot by a colleague. Plus, a guy who’d done nothing wrong was murdered in front of me just because he knew Viola. So I’m not making one more move until you tell me what you’ve got to do with all this.’
Nik hung up, started his car and drove home.
Nik’s phone rang in the middle of the night. It was an unknown number. Only a few people had his number, and he’d killed one of them the day before. So chances were it was Jon.
‘Good evening, arsehole,’ Nik answered, taking some pleasure in his bad-tempered greeting.
‘Good evening, Nik,’ Jon replied in a friendly manner.
‘Before I tell you anything about what happened, I want to know everything,’ Nik said angrily. ‘Who is this Viola and how do you know her?’
‘Sounds like your relationship with Jennifer isn’t as solid as it once was. I can’t imagine any other reason why you’d want to give her up to social services. Did she throw you out of bed or something?’
‘Oh, much better than that,’ answered Nik. ‘There’s actually a case in the system where an unidentified man blackmailed a woman with a raunchy video. The woman works for the city council. The case is only slightly similar to yours but I’ll make the connection somehow. Together with your photo, your name and a statement from myself that Jennifer just needs to sign, I’ll put you on the wanted list. And then you can make your game apps in jail, where I’ll spread the word you’re a kiddy-fiddler. Your stay there will just be one massive party.’
‘Not bad, Nik,’ said Jon, laughing. ‘Shame you’re such a prick. With your skills, you would’ve had a long career ahead of you at the Munich CID.’
‘Tell me, or this is over!’
‘You’re forgetting I hacked your computer, Nik.’
‘And what’s on it that could force me to work for you? You’d need to make something up.’
‘Oh, that won’t be necessary,’ responded Jon. ‘You know, my father always used to say it’s important to have a good plan. But what’s even more important is a good back-up plan.’
‘How fascinating.’
‘Do you remember copying some case notes and taking them home with you to work without authorisation?’
‘You mean that? That’s already on my record.’
‘Yes, but what I find interesting is that initial period of all your lone-wolf antics. Your downfall, you could say,’ Jon went on. ‘Christmas 2013. The case of Rachel Preuss?’
Nik held his breath. The name still made him shudder.
‘Until then, your record was spotless. You were given a promotion, two commendations. And your supervisor predicted you’d have a successful career as an investigator. But then it all changed. You became disobedient, there were breaches of internal security regulations, not to mention the bodily harm to other public officials.’
‘You wouldn’t get it,’ said Nik softly.
‘I think I would, Nik. You see, that case was just like ours: a search that had been underway for weeks was called off after the husband received an email from his wife saying she’d left to start a new life in Thailand and was never coming home. Your colleagues ignored the police reports on domestic abuse and the passport that was found during the house search.’
Nik closed his eyes. The details of the case started to haunt him all over again. The car full of shopping at the supermarket. The conversations at the station. His boss’s stubborn attitude. And of course, his consequent demotion because he leaked information to the press. The image of Rachel’s husband, grinning triumphantly, hounded him to this day.
‘Here’s my second offer,’ continued Jon. ‘I’ll get you Rachel’s case files just like I got hold of your personnel folder.’
‘What would I need them for?’
‘The files have been securely locked away since 2014 but since then, there have been three additional entries.’
‘How d’you know that?’
‘Ah, money . . .’ Jon mused. ‘You wouldn’t believe what you can achieve with money and bribes.’
An image of Rachel came into Nik’s mind. Her friendly smile, and that gentle face.
‘You’d never get hold of that file in your position,’ Jon said, interrupting Nik’s thoughts.
‘I’m done with that case.’
‘No, you’re not,’ Jon argued. ‘I looked through your server history. In just the last couple of weeks, you’ve been looking at photos of Thailand. Lots of them from travel companies but also lots of holiday snaps people had posted on social media. And when I looked to see what time you were looking at these photos, I saw it was mostly in the middle of the night. You couldn’t sleep, so you kept checking to see if Rachel maybe was in Thailand. Leading a happy life. And not buried somewhere in the woods.’
‘Bastard,’ mumbled Nik.
‘You won’t be able to lead any kind of normal life until you know what happened to Rachel.’
‘You don’t know that.’
‘Not only am I giving you the chance to get your hands on all the paperwork, I’m also offering you my help. I’m not just a good hacker, I’ve got a lot of money,’ Jon went on. ‘That opens doors which, until now, were firmly shut for you.’
‘You have no idea what you’re getting yourself into,’ said Nik. ‘These people are everywhere and all your money and IT skills can’t hurt them. They won’t be blackmailed by videos and you wouldn’t believe how powerful the people on their payroll are.’
‘So what do you have to lose, Nik? What do you have left that’s worth fighting for?’
Nik laughed ironically. Good question. Right now, he actually wouldn’t care if he disappeared down a dark hole and was never seen again. On the contrary, he might enjoy it.
Nik went over to the fridge, grabbed a beer and sat down on the sofa. After the third gulp he began to tell Jon everything, starting with the visit to the club and Finn’s death, right up to the cleaned-up crime scene and lack of any bodies.
‘Shit. I hadn’t expected it to be as bad as that,’ said Jon sincerely. ‘So, what d’you want to do now?’
‘No idea,’ Nik admitted. ‘Finn was the only link to Viola we had.’
‘And what about your colleague, Tilo?’
‘Too risky,’ said Nik. ‘Somebody cleaned up the crime scene and whoever it was must have been in the building when I killed Tilo, otherwise they wouldn’t have had enough time between my emergency call and when the police officer arrived.’
‘And where would this unidentified person get stuff to clean away all the traces at that time of night?’ asked Jon. ‘It’s unlikely they popped into a DIY store.’
‘The clean-up had been planned in advance,’ explained Nik. ‘Tilo wanted to kill me and the young barman. The fact that the tables turned to a certain extent didn’t seem to change anything in the cleaner’s mind. It just meant there was a different second body to dispose of.’
‘And how did Tilo find out about Finn?’
‘He must have had this unnamed cleaner follow me. Must have come in behind me when I went into the club and saw me speaking to Finn . . . twice. And then finally, whoever it was picked up Finn on his way to our meeting point.’
‘Who are we dealing with here? Organised crime, sex traffickers . . . ?’
‘No idea. But other than Tilo, at least one more police officer is involved.’
‘What makes you say that?’ asked Jon.
‘Tilo was never officially assigned to Viola’s case. The connection to her boyfriend was probably one of many details removed from her file. And somebody else was responsible for tha
t.’
‘OK, so you need to write up a list of everyone involved in the case. And then one of them is the rogue.’
‘Yeah, but I can’t prove which one without any evidence,’ Nik pointed out. ‘Up to now, neither Tilo’s nor Finn’s body has been found. At some point, both will be declared missing but even then, nothing will link their disappearances to Viola’s case or give me anything to use against the former investigator.’
‘Viola must have had something really big on Tilo. Why else would he try to murder two people?’
Nik took a swig of beer. ‘No idea, but he didn’t give the impression he was involved. He barely even asked about Viola, just what I knew about her disappearance. He was probably just doing someone’s dirty work.’
‘Who on earth could be controlling a CID officer who’s that high up?’
‘Somebody even higher up,’ answered Nik.
‘We need to find out more about Tilo.’
‘Well, going down the normal routes won’t work,’ said Nik. ‘Whoever he was working with won’t let me out of their sight for two seconds. And we can forget doing any research at the station.’
‘So then what?’
‘I need another way to get into the police server. I can barely order a pizza on my account.’
‘Hmm,’ said Jon pensively. ‘Maybe there’s another way.’
‘You want to hack the CID?’
‘No, but maybe our dead friend Tilo will be of some use to us yet.’
Chapter 4
Munich was pleasantly crime free on Sunday morning. Danilo was engrossed in writing up a report, leaving Nik in peace to work on Viola’s case. A cup of coffee stood on his desk and salt crystals from the pretzel he’d just eaten were strewn across his files.
Jon hadn’t been exaggerating when he’d said he was good with computers. Thanks to his skills and his knowledge of Tilo’s preferred passwords, which Tilo had once given to Nik over a beer, Jon was able to get on to the police server. Tilo had had loads of access privileges, so now Jon and Nik could access the entire system to read reports and look for cross references. Thankfully, Tilo’s disappearance had still gone unnoticed, so his account hadn’t been locked.
Nik started with the numerous folders his ex-colleague had saved on the server. He found photos from work outings, CID events and newspaper reports, all of which had been neatly arranged by date. He opened every single document and found drafts of employee appraisals, summaries of internal correspondence, but no mention of Viola. He then searched through Tilo’s address book. Most of the numbers were of other public officials, friends and tradespeople but nothing seemed suspicious. He clicked through the calendar, checking who he’d had meetings with, but nothing connected back to Viola.
Nik closed his eyes and tried to remember every gesture and every word from the other night. Tilo had been so calm and composed, not at all like someone who was being blackmailed or whose life depended on covering up the case. But he’d played a big part in the whole thing. Voluntarily. Tilo had been a smart guy, too smart to have ever saved anything incriminating on the CID server. Maybe on his private computer, but Nik was never going to get his hands on that. The people Tilo had worked with weren’t going to let his house out of their sight and any evidence had probably been disposed of by now.
Up to now, Nik had thought of two ways Viola could have been involved. Firstly, she could have been right at the centre of something big. For example, she was heading up a drug cartel, or knew a secret or was a principal witness. But other than the incident with her boyfriend, there was nothing leading Nik to believe any of these could be possible. The second possibility was that she’d been the unintended victim of a crime. Maybe she’d seen something she shouldn’t have, or got in the way of a crazy, violent criminal who then decided to live out his sick fantasies on her. If this was the case, then there might be other victims. Once was rarely enough for a psychopath.
Nik opened up an internal database and started a new search. He limited the search to women between twenty and thirty-five who’d been registered as missing and who shared Viola’s general physical appearance.
Thirty results came up. So as not to miss anything, he didn’t restrict the search any further and read through each report, one by one. Most of the women were adult runaways who’d left home for various reasons, be it domestic abuse, drug addiction or family problems. Sometimes, the reason for leaving was unknown but those women had only gone missing for a short period of time, so the cases were useless to Nik.
The nineteenth entry was a case about a woman from Schwabing who looked a lot like Viola. Twenty-six-year-old Kathrin Glosemeier had gone missing on 11 July 2016 after going to the gym. Her parents informed the police the next morning and a missing persons announcement was released. Kathrin had left the house with just a sports bag and her gym clothes. She’d left her phone at the house, hadn’t packed a suitcase and hadn’t told anyone she was planning a trip.
Three days later, one of her friends received a letter from her, much like the one Viola had supposedly written, and as a result the search was called off. But then, only a month later, on 15 August, Kathrin’s body was found at a climbing rock near to Flintsbach. There hadn’t been any sightings of her since she’d been reported missing.
Nik clicked on the report from the local police who’d been at the scene. The rock face where her body had been found was a popular climbing area. There were easier routes for beginners and there was also an adjoining car park. Nik looked at photos of the crag online and read some descriptions from climbers about the difficulty of the routes. ‘The Quarry’, as it was called, was a steep limestone rock face, overgrown in some areas and not very high. But it was very challenging in many spots. One mistake up there without the right gear would have been fatal.
Nik looked at the climbing area on Google Earth. Flintsbach lay around seventy kilometres south-east of Munich. A nice place, but far too close if Kathrin had been aiming to leave her old life behind. Plus, it was a popular destination for day trips from Munich and not the best choice for somebody who intended to stay hidden.
Nik closed the browser and read the next part about the state of the body when it was found. Kathrin’s body was discovered by someone out walking in the area. There was little doubt from the photographs that she’d died from a fall. Her head lay in a pool of blood and her leg was twisted out unnaturally to the side. The left side of her face was crushed and her jaw was broken. Her tongue hung out of her open mouth and her eyes stared ahead rigidly.
Nik opened the attachment with the death certificate. There was a non-confidential page with Kathrin’s personal data. Her identity had been confirmed with her German ID card. The climbing area in Flintsbach had been entered as the place of death and ‘Unnatural’ had been marked as the cause of death.
Nik found more detailed information on the yellow pages that followed. There were observations on the certain signs of death and on the signs that the death had been unnatural. Overall, Kathrin’s demise had been declared an accident. Case closed.
Nik stood up, grabbed his coffee and shuffled into an adjoining office to make a call. Thankfully there was barely anyone around. He dialled Jon’s number.
‘We’ve got a problem,’ Nik said as soon as Jon picked up. ‘I’ve found a case that’s similar to Viola’s and so full of contradictions a drunk, coked-up colleague would have noticed.’
‘Go on,’ said Jon.
‘Kathrin Glosemeier went missing in July 2016. A search began, and not long after it was called off because a friend received a letter. What’s not similar to Viola’s case though is that Viola is still missing. Kathrin’s body was found a month later on 15 August at the bottom of a popular climbing crag near Flintsbach.’
‘She fell while climbing?’
‘That’s what it says in the final report but there are so many inconsistencies I reckon it’s a cover-up.’ Nik drank some coffee. ‘Kathrin’s body was found at dawn by somebody out walking. By the time t
he ambulance got there, rigor mortis had set in but only in the eyelids, jaw and neck. It takes at least two hours for rigor mortis to kick in, so it’s very likely she died during the night. And another thing, the ground where she was found was wet, so it must have rained at some point.’
‘Can’t say I’ve ever heard of a climber who likes to go out alone, at night and in the rain.’
‘Exactly. No car was found in the car park and there isn’t any public transport that goes out there. So you could assume someone brought her there but then nobody got in touch when the announcement went out. Whoever took her there was never identified, or more to the point, nobody ever made any effort to find out who they could have been.’ Nik sat down on a chair in the meeting room. ‘On top of that, Kathrin had nothing on her when she was found. No ID, no climbing gear and no jacket. It was hours before someone got in touch to say he’d found a rucksack hidden in a bush. All the typical climbing things were inside. A harness, a rope and a chalk bag, and also her purse. Going by the photos, all the gear was brand new, which is pretty strange, especially for a climbing harness. Plus, Kathrin wasn’t wearing any climbing shoes. Just a pair of dirty trainers.’
‘Was there an autopsy?’
‘Cause of death was determined as a skull fracture with a brain haemorrhage, which would support the theory that she died from falling.’
Nik heard Jon typing in the background. ‘Kathrin Glosemeier . . . She came from a well-off family,’ began Jon. ‘Her father’s big in the brewing industry and she founded a start-up which created marketing campaigns for small companies with a focus on social media. She studied abroad and came back to Munich three years ago. That’s all there is about her on the company website. Have you found any link to Viola?’ asked Jon.
‘Can’t see anything in the file,’ replied Nik. ‘The similarities stop at their physical appearance. Long brown hair, light eyes and an attractive smile. Kathrin would have had admirers, just like Viola.’ Nik took another sip of coffee. ‘The whole case is fishy. But once again, no leads. The man who found the rucksack can’t be reached at the registered address and the man who found the body was a tourist from Thuringia.’
Broken Glass Page 6