“Was it? Daniel only mentioned that he worked for a software company. He didn’t say what he did for them.”
Max explained briefly what Inoware had been involved with. Professor Thelmann frowned. “I wouldn’t have expected that. As I said, Daniel is highly intelligent and easily bored, and programming simple security packages must have been a piece of cake for him. It’s no wonder he was back here in no time.”
“The company had to declare bankruptcy,” Max said.
Professor Thelmann laughed. “That was surely not because of Daniel or his work. He’s a perfectionist, and if the assignments were as simple as you say, he most likely installed some additional security components, even if nobody asked for them.” Then she became serious again. “But why are you asking all these questions? Is Daniel in trouble?”
Max didn’t answer at once. Eventually he said, “We’re currently investigating two murder cases. Herr Vogler knew both victims.”
She raised her eyebrows. “I wasn’t aware that was considered a crime.”
“It isn’t,” Max replied calmly. “But I still have to check whether Herr Vogler’s statement is true or not. He said he was logged in to the university computer last week, during the night from Thursday to Friday, and this week on Tuesday evening. Is it possible to confirm that?”
Professor Thelmann looked at Max for a long time before she answered. “Sure. I don’t have the slightest doubt that you’ll find his statements confirmed when you check the protocols.”
“You mean you believe him when he says he was logged in here at those times?”
“I didn’t say that.” The woman looked at the whiteboard covering the wall to the right of her desk. Her face was pensive, as if she were checking the formula on the board. “I only wanted to hint that those protocols don’t prove that Daniel was logged in.”
“Oh,” Max said. “Is it that easy to manipulate them?”
The woman laughed. She had a pleasant, warm alto voice, and there was none of the mockery in her laughter that Daniel Vogler infused into his. “It’s not child’s play, necessarily, but it seems to me you forgot with whom we’re dealing here. Daniel Vogler is the ultimate pro. He wouldn’t have the slightest difficulty manipulating the protocols to create an alibi for himself.” She paused. “If he should ever need one.”
Lina had gotten up early enough to have her first cup of coffee with milk at home. So she was in a good mood when she ambled along the small side street in Eimsbüttel at nine in the morning. The sun was shining and she admired the beautiful, old houses, most of which looked as if they were freshly painted. The district around Osterstrasse used to be quite frumpy, but it had picked up considerably in the past few years. People who couldn’t afford or who weren’t willing to pay the horrific rents in Eppendorf or in the Schanzenviertel had moved here, into those magnificent Art Nouveau bourgeois buildings on Eichestrasse or into less elaborate old buildings on surrounding streets. The result was that by now it was almost equally impossible to find affordable housing in this area.
Barbara Schönbek’s naturopathic practice was located in the basement of an old building with a tiny but lovingly maintained front garden. Lina had called ahead, and so the door was opened by a smiling woman of about forty as soon as she rang. They shook hands. The practitioner led Lina into a room that was empty except for two comfortable chairs and a small table on which there was a lit candle. The window to the street was covered with rice paper, and one corner of the room was pleasantly lit by a standing lamp. The room smelled of fresh mint.
Barbara Schönbek had prepared some herbal tea, which would have made Max happy, but which Lina accepted only because it was the polite thing to do. She pretended to sip it.
“Have you found Franka—I mean Frau Leyhausen?” Barbara Schönbek asked before Lina had put down the cup so that she could forget about it for the rest of the conversation. Lina scrutinized the woman who looked at her expectantly: large brown eyes, a high forehead, thick black hair, a small face, and slender fingers. She was beautiful, but Lina also saw that she was exhausted. Now she looked worried. “Did something happen to her?”
Lina nodded. “Frau Schönbek, your friend is unfortunately no longer alive.”
The woman covered her mouth with both hands, and her eyes were wet with tears within seconds. She looked at Lina as if she hoped she might have misheard.
“She was found dead in Jenisch Park yesterday morning, but she probably died on Tuesday night.”
Barbara Schönbek now covered her entire face with her hands and bent over as if she were trying to protect herself against invisible blows. Lina heard her sob quietly and looked on with empathy. She fished a packet of tissues from her knapsack and held it out to her.
“Thank you,” Frau Schönbek said, sniffled, and blew her nose. “To be honest, I was almost prepared for this news.” She clasped the tissue in both hands as if it were lending her support. “Franka was wiped out! Depressed! I’d never known her like that.” She cried out, “I should have canceled that stupid appointment on Tuesday; then she wouldn’t have killed herself.”
Lina frowned. “But she didn’t kill herself,” she said. “Your friend was killed.”
Barbara Schönbek lifted her head. “What?”
Lina nodded. “We don’t yet have the results of the autopsy, but in all probability she was strangled.”
“Strangled . . . Oh, god!” Barbara Schönbek jumped up, one hand pressed against her mouth. “Please excuse me.” She ran out of the room and soon afterward Lina could hear her throwing up in the bathroom. The woman seemed to be very sensitive, and Lina remembered Franka Leyhausen mentioning that her friend suffered from Crohn’s disease. Didn’t that affect one’s stomach and intestines?
She heard the flushing of the toilet, the splashing of water, and then Frau Schönbek returned. “I’m sorry. I’m hypersensitive and bad news immediately affects my stomach.” She raised her shoulders. “I can’t control it.”
Lina waited until the woman had sat down again and then asked, “How close were you with Frau Leyhausen?”
Barbara Schönbek again blew her nose and then took a deep breath. “We were very good friends. I don’t know whether we were best friends, but close to that. We met at the university.” When she saw the question in Lina’s look, she said, “I also studied biology at the time, but then I had to stop due to my illness. We stayed in touch, even though we are quite different in many ways.” With another shrug, she said, “Franka isn’t into energetic healing, which has become my field of expertise. She is . . . was rather scientifically inclined.”
Lina nodded even though she had not the slightest idea what energetic healing might be. She could always look into that later—if she felt like it. “Do you know Frau Leyhausen’s former boyfriend, Daniel Vogler?”
The holistic practitioner nodded. “But I really just know him from what Franka told me. We’ve rarely seen each other. On Franka’s birthdays and once or twice at concerts.” She hesitated. “Do you think Daniel had something to do with Franka’s death?”
Now it was Lina’s turn to shrug regretfully. “We’re investigating every possible lead. If I understand it correctly, Frau Leyhausen had also told Herr Vogler about the concert in the Waldschänke, but he didn’t go. Is that right?”
“Yes. We had chosen a spot with a good view of the door, but Daniel didn’t show up all evening.”
“Do you know why the two had split up?”
“Franka ended it.” Lina frowned. Barbara Schönbek seemed to be absolutely sure, but Daniel Vogler’s recollection had been quite different. “She was never in love with Daniel, but his intelligence fascinated her. Even after they broke up, they spent quite a bit of time together. But she didn’t even consider the question of moving in together.”
“They’d talked about moving in together?”
“I wouldn’t say it that way. Daniel wanted
it. He had bought an apartment, somewhere in the west of Hamburg, in a quite chic district. He was pressuring Franka to move in.” She paused and thought about it. “It’s possible this caused the end of the relationship.”
“Do you know how he financed the apartment?” Lina asked.
“Franka once mentioned a little inheritance.” Barbara closed her eyes. “She never felt comfortable there. She found it particularly strange that the only wall decoration in the apartment were photos of her.” She looked at Lina. “She told me once she wasn’t sure if the relationship was over for Daniel. He no longer pressured her to move in, but apart from that . . . she complained that he constantly called her, and she had qualms about telling him to stop.” Barbara Schönbek took a deep breath. “She thought that he had nobody but her—no friends, no family. Other than a demented grandmother, nobody.”
Lina bought another coffee on the way back to headquarters. She took the elevator with a colleague in uniform, who wore her long brunet hair in a ponytail and who gave her a friendly nod. Her name tag revealed that her name was Helms. They were alone in the little elevator, but after a brief greeting, neither of them said anything until the elevator reached the sixth floor and both got out.
“Excuse me,” Officer Helms said, “do you have any idea where I’d find Major Crimes, group 3?”
Lina looked at her with interest. “One-fifth of it, the small one, is standing right in front of you,” she said. “What’s it about?”
Officer Helms hesitated. “You’re on the Birkner case, aren’t you?”
Lina nodded. “Come with me,” she said and brought her to her office. Max was already in. “This is Max Berg and I’m Lina Svenson.” She threw her knapsack on the floor. “Have a seat.”
“Thanks. My . . . my name’s Frauke, by the way. This morning I took statements in the hospital in a domestic violence case. The man had beaten his wife in front of his children. Concussion, bruised ribs, split lip . . . Not a pretty picture.”
Lina nodded and waited. Frauke Helms was trying to speak in a matter-of-fact voice, but it was obvious she would have liked to meet the bastard alone, in the dark. She had a buff body.
“The name rang a bell right away, but the poor woman was barely fit to be questioned, and so I waited until I was back at the precinct and could look up the name. I think she has something to do with your case.”
Alarmed, Lina sat up straight.
“Sonja Birkner. Her husband is Lukas Birkner, the brother of the dead man from the Niendorfer Gehege. My chief thought I should tell you this in person.”
Lina exchanged a glance with Max. When she had visited the couple, Sonja Birkner had been unable to hide her fear. It had been obvious that her husband bullied her. Was there any connection between the current abuse and the murder of Lukas’s brother? She turned to Officer Helms. “I’m glad you came. We know both of them. What did the woman tell you?”
Her colleague had first heard the story from the doctor who had admitted Sonja Birkner in the middle of the night. She hadn’t come in on her own. Her sister had practically forced her to seek treatment after Frau Birkner had shown up limping and bleeding at her door late at night with two terrified children. The sister had put the children to bed, asked a neighbor to watch them, and driven Sonja to the hospital. She knew what was going on. It wasn’t the first time Sonja had sought refuge with her, but Lukas had never done that much damage before. She and the doctor had finally persuaded Sonja to involve the police and press charges against her husband. Officer Helms had just started her shift, and so she was the one who talked with Sonja Birkner. She didn’t get much information since she didn’t want to push the poor woman.
Lina and Max listened without interrupting Frauke. They only wrote down the names of the hospital, the treating physician, and Sonja Birkner’s sister.
“What about her husband? Did you arrest Birkner?” Max asked.
Frauke Helms nodded. She had informed her colleagues while she was still at the hospital. They had found Birkner alone and very drunk in the apartment and had taken him in.
Lina nodded. “Just let the guy stew for a while,” she said. “But before you release him, we’ll have another little talk with him.” She winked at Frauke. Husbands who beat their wives—one of the occasions when police didn’t mind stretching the limits of their authority.
The woman in the hospital bed had her eyes closed. She was pale—apart from the crusted blood on her lower lip and the swelling around her left eye, which would shimmer in all colors in a few days. The left eye was severely bruised.
Max and Lina had softly knocked and entered before being asked in. Sonja Birkner opened her eyes only when Lina stood next to her bed and quietly said her name. When she recognized Lina, she closed them again.
Max got two chairs and they sat down next to the patient. The silence in the room was oppressive, like a pustule of suppressed words and emotions just waiting to burst. Lina silently observed the woman and wished that this might be the turning point in her life, in which something had obviously gone off-kilter.
“Frau Birkner,” she said in a soft voice. “I know that it’s difficult for you to speak, but I’m asking for your help.”
Frau Birkner breathed laboriously without opening her eyes. Finally she slowly nodded her consent.
“What your husband did to you . . . Was it connected to the questions we asked you?” Lina asked.
Hesitation, and then a cautious nod.
“But you didn’t say anything when we were at your house . . . What upset your husband to such an extent?” Lina was being unfair and knew it. The tiniest reason could make an abusive husband, someone prone to beating his wife, snap.
Sonja Birkner opened her mouth and licked her lips. She winced with pain when she touched the wound. “He thought I might have told you something on Monday, when you came by yourself,” she whispered.
Lina and Max looked at each other. “Is there something you could have told us?” The woman in the bed did not react until Lina finally asked, “Does it have anything to do with the clique of Julia Munz and the two Birkners?”
For the longest time, Sonja Birkner just lay there with closed eyes, but at length she nodded. “That clique was quite an arrogant bunch,” she said. Lina saw how difficult it was for her. “They thought they were better than everyone else, looked down on all other students, and mercilessly pestered those who couldn’t defend themselves.” She opened her eyes and slightly turned her head so Lina could look at her. “Julia and Philip were the worst. They had an actual fan club, people who idolized them and would have done anything to belong to their clique, but they hardly let anyone in. You really had to earn such an honor.” She closed her eyes and swallowed with difficulty. “May I have some water?”
Lina carefully held a glass to her injured lips, and Sonja took a few sips. Then she slowly lifted her left arm to her mouth to wipe away every last drop of moisture. She gently tapped her burst lips with her fingers and grimaced. “That bastard,” she whispered. Her eyes were suddenly filled with tears. She inhaled deeply and continued.
“Lukas was only allowed to participate because he was Philip’s brother. He wasn’t a bad guy. When Philip wasn’t there, he was a really nice guy. But he admired his brother more than was good for him.” She shook her head. “I was never allowed to voice the tiniest criticism of my brother-in-law; Lukas would immediately flip out. Philip was his hero, the white knight in shining armor.” She tried to laugh mockingly, but didn’t manage it. “Yesterday . . . yesterday he accused me of having spoken ill of Philip in front of the police by telling lies about him. He was so upset that he didn’t even listen to what I said. At one point he began to hit me. The kids were already in bed, but the noise woke them up, and they came to the living room.” She closed her eyes again. “I saw how horrified they were when they saw Lukas hitting me,” she said quietly. “That was almost worse than the blows.�
�� Tears were streaming down her face. She wiped them away with her left hand.
“Frau Birkner,” Lina said gently after a while, “is there anything you can tell us about what happened in the past?” The woman nodded but was silent. With a little more emphasis, Lina continued, “So, the clique of Julia Munz and Philip Birkner bullied other students, among them Daniel Vogler. Do you know what they specifically did to him?”
Sonja Birkner shook her head. “I just know the usual stuff,” she said in a low voice. “Stupid remarks, maybe some shoving in the schoolyard. Things like that.” She looked at Lina. “But something really bad must have happened one day. Daniel was absent from school for a few days, and afterward he was completely withdrawn. You know, he was always a geek. He’d correct everyone, even the teachers, and everyone in our school knew that. But now, he suddenly just sat there and said nothing.”
“When was that?”
Sonja Birkner was about to frown, but the huge bruise around her eye made her stop. “That was the summer before we started eleventh grade and Daniel skipped to the twelfth.” She nodded. “After that I lost sight of Daniel since he was one year above me.”
“And the clique of Julia Munz and your brother-in-law?”
Sonja Birkner looked at Lina. “It was somehow falling apart. I mean, Julia was still with Philip, and they were still arrogant and snooty, but as far as I could see, they stopped bullying other students. And with Daniel, they actually avoided him—and I wasn’t the only one who noticed it. But by then we were all already older, at least sixteen, and maybe things quiet down by themselves at that age.” She shrugged and grimaced in pain. “I don’t know, but I myself never heard anything really bad after that.”
Lina looked at the woman. If her husband battered her like that because of something that happened more than fifteen years ago, it must have been really bad. “And your husband?” she asked. “Was he involved when the bad thing happened?”
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