‘And what about the investigators who worked on the case?’ asked Jon. ‘Any of them also work on Viola’s case?’
‘No correlation,’ said Nik. ‘And Tilo’s name is nowhere to be seen either.’
‘So yet again we’ve got nothing.’
‘Very little.’
‘You got any ideas?’
‘Wouldn’t call it an idea, more like an act of desperation.’ Nik took a deep breath. ‘We could look at Kathrin’s body.’
‘You want to exhume her?’ asked Jon. ‘What’s that gonna achieve?’
‘The photos of the body are useless and the coroner’s report could be described as shoddy at best. They stuck to all their due diligence obligations, but it looks like they put it down to an accident from the word go. It’s pretty obvious that wasn’t the case but I need proof that something was covered up. A couple of discrepancies aren’t enough. There might have been injuries that weren’t caused by a fall. And her death is still recent enough that we’d be able to detect traces of drugs in her hair.’
‘And how d’you plan on getting permission for an exhumation?’
‘I don’t,’ explained Nik. ‘But I’ll deal with the body. I need you to find somebody corrupt enough to do an autopsy on an illegally dug-up corpse.’
Jon was silent for a moment. ‘There is one guy.’
At 10.47 p.m. Nik noticed his fridge was empty and that his favourite kebab shop was about to close.
He sprang into his boots, pulled on a winter jacket and left the flat. He cursed briefly as the cold air hit him, but then, as he mulled over the fates of the two women, all other considerations retreated. Viola and Kathrin were three years apart in age; they didn’t know one another from school. Kathrin did her undergrad in England and never studied at any Munich university. Viola had never been climbing and didn’t know anybody from Flintsbach. Other than the way they looked, the only thing similar about the two was the way they disappeared.
All of a sudden, a woman called his name. ‘Hi, Nik.’ Nik stopped abruptly and turned around, perplexed. A woman with long black hair was standing in a side street. She was wearing a hooded winter jacket with a faux fur collar, a short skirt and black knee-high boots. Her eyebrows, which were extremely thin, looked like they’d been tattooed on. ‘You haven’t forgotten me, have you?’
Nik was exceptionally good with faces and he was certain he’d never seen the woman before but the way she was acting and the fact she knew his name was annoying him. He looked at her more closely. She had brown eyes, a small nose and strong cheek bones. He imagined her with blonde hair – first of all short and then with a ponytail, but neither image brought any names to mind.
‘Have we met?’ He edged over to her.
‘Elvira,’ she said, with a fake tone of indignation. ‘Your memory must be fading.’
‘I’ve met three Elviras in my lifetime. The first was an aunty on my mother’s side who died in 1992, the second my German teacher, and the third a clerk at work with an arse like an Asian water buffalo.’ As Nik spoke, he took in the woman’s desirable figure. It clearly wasn’t the clerk.
The woman crossed her arms over her chest and tapped her foot. Nik was so focused on her, he failed to notice a young man approaching him from behind. And then it was too late. In a flash, the man managed to get his hand inside Nik’s jacket pocket and grab his wallet, then he jumped back, holding two notes in his hand.
‘Oh, Pohl . . . you’re getting old,’ Nik sighed as he turned to look at the thief. He was small and wiry with dark messy curls and a cut above his right eye.
‘I just need a little spare change, mate,’ he said, giving Nik an arrogant, toothless grin. Then he tossed the wallet back to him, stuffed the two notes in the back pocket of his scruffy jeans and turned to make his way back to the main street.
‘Give me my money back, you worthless piece of shit.’
The boy raised his hands, turned around to look at Nik again and walked backwards away from him. ‘Please don’t hurt me. I can’t pay you tonight.’ The disdainful grin was gone and fear had spread across his face.
‘What the fuck!’ said Nik, confused by the boy’s sudden surrender. ‘Give me my money!’
‘Please! No!’ he begged, his hands still in the air.
Nik walked over to the boy and threw a punch to his stomach, making him stumble to the ground. Quickly twisting the guy’s arm around his back, he pushed his face to the ground. With his knee pressed firmly on his back, Nik took the money out of the guy’s back pocket and stood up. The boy started to cry, making no attempt to get up. Nik looked quickly around; the woman was nowhere to be seen.
Nik shook his head and moved on. For a flash it occurred to him that he might have just fallen for an extravagant trap, but by the time he made it to the kebab shop, his thoughts had returned once again to Viola and Kathrin. While he was waiting for his food, he drank a black tea – there’d be no sleep for him tonight, so the caffeine would do him good. He did have a dead body to steal after all.
Winter still had an icy, uncomfortable grip on Munich, but for tonight, the snow drifts and slippery ground were a welcome aid for Nik’s plans. Nobody would leave their house unless they really had to. All the night owls would be home by now and it was still five hours before the rush-hour traffic would begin. Nik parked his car in Regerstraße, put on the rucksack he’d filled with tools and walked alongside the S-Bahn tracks until he reached the rear end of the Ostfriedhof, Munich’s eastern cemetery. It was surrounded by a high fence, overgrown with weeds, and high trees stopped anyone from seeing into the grounds. But Nik wasn’t worried about getting in. It was the exhumation that would be the tricky part.
Even if the ground hadn’t been frozen, using a shovel to dig up Kathrin’s coffin would have taken forever, but not far from the crematorium was a garage which stored everything he would need. He went over to the garage door and examined the padlock. Taking out a large pair of bolt cutters from his bag, he cut the shackle. He made no attempt to cover his tracks – the first cemetery employee to get to work in the morning was going to notice a gaping hole in the ground and a missing coffin, so an investigation was pretty much guaranteed. Nik pulled the chain away from the lock, opened the door and shone his torch around the room.
There were two broken cemetery benches at the entrance, and next to them some artificial grass mats, a device for lowering coffins, a ring-beam formwork, and even a chiller cabinet for coffin trolleys. There were also some tools and gardening equipment hanging on a wall. But it was the small orange digger that Nik was interested in. All that work he’d done during college holidays would come in handy now. The digger was a Kubota KX. It weighed two tonnes and had a high-performance engine. He’d driven its predecessor and would quickly find his way around this one. Thanks to the track pads, it wouldn’t get stuck in the snow, and since it wasn’t a wide model, he’d be able to drive it down the narrow paths of the graveyard. Luckily for him, Bavarian burial law stipulated that a grave for an adult must be 1.8 metres deep. The digger’s bucket could reach down 2.3 metres, so he was confident he wouldn’t have any issues reaching Kathrin’s coffin. The law also said that the distance between graves had to be at least 60 cm. So although the digger was powerful, he wouldn’t damage any neighbouring graves.
Nik took a copy of the cemetery map out of his bag and followed the way from the garage to Kathrin’s grave with his finger. Once he’d memorised the shortest route, he took the digger key from the cabinet, started the engine and set off. The noise from the digger was deafening but hopefully the snow and thirty hectares of cemetery would be enough to absorb it.
When Nik got to Kathrin’s grave, he hesitated. A beautiful bunch of red flowers had been placed on top of it and was glowing against the sparkling snow. Beneath a crying marble angel stood a large, gold grave lamp. It was the only light for miles around, shining calmly like a reminder to the dead that they wouldn’t be forgotten. Nik closed his eyes and apologised to Kathrin, wherever she
might be. But although he was sorry, he was sure she’d accept his actions if her death turned out not to have been an accident.
The first layer was the most difficult, as the icy winter frost had made the earth almost impenetrable. But with each rise and fall of the digger, the mound of earth beside the grave slowly grew taller. Nik paused twice to measure the depth of the hole before carrying on carefully. As the bucket started to scrape over wood, Nik turned off the engine and went back to the garage.
He took a shovel and two strong chains, which he then laboriously pulled under the coffin. It was a peculiar feeling to be so near a corpse but Nik kept working relentlessly. Finally, he attached the chain to the arm of the digger. Climbing out of the grave, his boots caked in mud, he could feel his heart pounding from the exertion, and underneath his winter jacket his clothes were soaked with sweat. He desperately needed a rest but he couldn’t risk it. Had he been alone, he probably could have evaded a police officer but not while pushing a coffin with a human corpse inside.
Nik ran back to the garage to fetch a coffin roller, a simple device made up of metal poles and rubber wheels, which he placed next to the grave. After that he started the engine and lifted the digger arm upwards. The wood creaked but the coffin was solid enough not to fall apart. Nik placed it carefully on to the metal poles and released the chains.
Getting back to the garage with the trolley would have been difficult enough, but Nik needed to get across the cemetery to St Martin’s Square. The snow had become heavier and the rubber wheels on the roller were not designed for snow. Terrified that it would get stuck in a hole, Nik kept his eyes to the ground. Finally, he came to a point where all the paths in the cemetery met. From here, across the expanse of lawn, he had a good view of the gabled main building, with its large cross and round copper roof. He paused, stamping his icy feet and stretching his aching muscles. Suddenly he noticed the flashing blue light of an emergency vehicle through a window in the main building. Hurriedly, he pushed the coffin further westwards before cutting down a small path, and parking it up against a large oak tree. He’d only just got back on to the main pathway without the coffin when he saw two figures walking towards him with torches. Nik took out his CID badge, and got ready to show it to the officers.
‘Inspector Walter,’ Nik said. Giving a false name was a risky move but thanks to the hat, scarf and snow in his beard, the officers wouldn’t be able to recognise him. Plus, he looked a lot like Walter from the 14th Division. ‘Did you get a call about the digger noise?’
‘No,’ answered the officer. ‘Because of a silent alarm in the garage.’
‘Ah, OK. I was just passing by and heard a digger. Probably somebody trying to steal it. The garage is over at the back there.’ Nik pointed north-east. ‘I’ll stay at the gate and make sure any thieves don’t leave this way.’
The two men nodded and headed off in the direction Nik had indicated. He waited until they had disappeared before running back to collect the coffin and continuing towards the entrance. Between pushes, he texted ‘2.45 a.m.’ to the number Jon had given him. He had five minutes to get out of the cemetery. The officers would soon get into the garage and find a visible trace back to Kathrin’s grave. That would keep them busy for a while.
Cursing himself and his stupid ideas with every step, he pushed the coffin through the snow towards the copper-roofed house. Large white mounds were collecting at the end of the trolley, making pushing almost impossible. Finally, he reached the house, where a side gate led him to the street. It was 2.46 a.m. A dark-grey hearse was waiting nearby, and slightly up the street, a police car was parked on the pavement, its blue lights still blinking. With its headlights off, the hearse cruised silently towards him and stopped. A man in dark jeans and a thick winter jacket got out. He was wearing a woollen hat and glasses with extra thick lenses.
‘Let’s get this over with as quickly as possible,’ he said nervously, gesturing to the police car with his thumb. Briefly, he made the sign of the cross when he laid eyes on the coffin, then quickly opened up the car boot. Nik had no idea whether Jon had blackmailed this man as well or if he’d just offered him money, but in that moment he didn’t care. He was sweating and freezing at the same time and they had to get away from that cemetery there and then. Once the coffin was in the car, Nik pushed the roller back inside the grounds, closed the gate and got into the passenger seat beside the stranger.
‘Where to?’
‘Pathology Institute at LMU. Thalkirchner Straße,’ replied Nik. The man nodded, saying nothing, and drove off. The LMU, or Ludwig Maximilian University, was one of Munich’s oldest and most prestigious universities.
Nik closed his eyes, grateful for the warmth of the car heater, and prayed that he was right – that the real cause of death had been covered up and it wasn’t simply down to his colleagues’ sloppy work.
Because if he didn’t get another clue tonight, the investigation would be over.
As the hearse was driving into the courtyard at the Pathology Institute, Nik looked across the street towards Munich’s southern cemetery, or Südfriedhof. He wondered whether it was merely a coincidence that the institute sat directly opposite a cemetery or if it had been planned that way. The driver seemed to be familiar with the route and had no trouble finding the shortest way from the Ostfriedhof to Thalkirchner Straße without any GPS. The hearse’s engine had barely cut out before the man sprang out and ran over to a chrome-coloured rack on wheels. The rack’s upper surface was covered in snow, as though it had been standing outside for a while. Nik got out of the car as the man pulled the coffin on to the rack in two swift moves. He then pushed the rack underneath a small awning at the back entrance to the building and, with a curt goodbye, rushed behind the wheel of the hearse.
Nik waited until the car was out of sight before going inside. The door to the institute was open and the light was on in the hall. Someone was expecting him.
Nik’s memories of his visits to the Forensics Institute weren’t good ones, so he didn’t imagine a visit to pathology would be much better. The smell that hit him as soon as he got inside the building overwhelmed him. It was a repulsive, nauseating stench, as though someone had relieved themselves in the hallway. Entering the dissection room, he saw the corpse of an elderly man lying on the first table, staring up at the ceiling. Dressed in only his underwear, he was desperately thin and his mouth sat open, as if frozen during his last desperate inhalation. On the second table was another body that had already been cut open, and over it stood a man in wellington boots, a face mask, green overalls and a blood-splattered plastic apron. A chrome trolley and tray stood to the side of the table. It reminded Nik of a large breakfast platter, but instead of rolls and jam, this platter was spread with pieces of intestine, most likely the source of the stench.
The man in the mask didn’t seem perturbed by the work in the slightest and hummed a tune as he inspected the intestines with gloved fingers. The pathologist was the same height as Nik but apparently had more stamina in the eating department. His belly was astonishing. He had a clean-shaven head and a round, deathly pale face. He repeatedly lifted pieces of intestine up to the light and observed each one attentively.
‘Aha!’ he said at last. ‘I knew it.’ He turned to look at Nik. ‘Cause of death: a small ulcer in the stomach which led to internal bleeding.’
‘Oh.’ Nik didn’t really know what to say.
The man pulled down his mask, peeled off a bloody glove and went over to a wooden table in the corner of the room. Picking up a lavishly painted porcelain cup from a coaster, he took a delicate sip, holding his cup with one manicured pinky extended, as if he were at a reception in Buckingham Palace. Closing his eyes, he drew in the scent of the tea through a nose that looked as if it had been flattened in a boxing ring. The contrast between his manicured hands and his flattened nose was disconcerting. Let alone the fact that he was drinking tea in front of a dead body and its extracted intestines.
‘You must be Inspecto
r Pohl,’ said the man. ‘Jon’s friend.’
‘Oh, we’re definitely not friends,’ responded Nik, taking in the rest of the room.
‘You seem disappointed.’
‘Look, don’t take it personally but I would have preferred a forensic scientist over a pathologist.’
‘I find it impressive you know the difference,’ said the man. ‘But we pathologists do have an advantage. You see, we have to be far more specific during our clinical autopsies than forensic scientists do during their legally requested post-mortems. Forensic scientists only clarify whether the death was natural or not. The actual cause of death is of secondary importance to them. Pathologists, on the other hand – we can’t rest until we’ve found the actual reason.’ He took another sip of tea. ‘Perhaps you’ll be reassured to hear that I worked for a year in a forensics department.’
‘Are pathologists allowed to do that?’
‘No, but I sort of . . . tweaked . . . my CV.’ He gave a throaty chortle that made his chins jiggle up and down.
‘How did Jon convince you to work with him?’ asked Nik, changing the subject.
‘My pathologist’s salary isn’t sufficient to meet all my needs.’ He set down the cup and walked over to Nik with an outstretched hand. ‘Balthasar von den Auenfelden, at your service.’
Nik took a step back. ‘Under the circumstances, I think I’ll pass on the handshake.’
‘As you wish.’ He reached for a chocolate biscuit from a plate and slung it into his mouth. ‘Well, now that we’re going to be working together whether we like it or not, you can call me Balthasar, but please, not Balthi, or Sasar or Smart Arse.’
‘Who calls you Smart Arse?’
Broken Glass Page 7