by Inge Löhnig
Gina broke his gaze and turned back to her mother. ‘Mum, that’s not possible.’ She stood up. ‘Now, Tino and I have to discuss something.’
Surprised, Dühnfort got to his feet, thanked Dorothee for the strudel and followed Gina into the corridor. ‘My realm,’ she said, opening a door. The room was almost square, and had a window and small balcony over the rear courtyard. It was soberly furnished. A wardrobe, a rattan bed partially covered by a screen, a desk with a computer, a shelf full of books and CDs. In front of the window was a small table, beside it a rattan chair with red cushions. A pile of ironed T-shirts lay on the table, folded underwear and bras on the cushions. Gina took both piles and shoved them into the wardrobe. Then she offered Dühnfort the armchair while she settled onto the edge of the bed. ‘So, what did I do wrong?’
Dühnfort shook his head. ‘What gives you that idea?’
‘The look in your eyes. This whole time. Then that deep furrow on your brow. You only get that when you’re cross with me. I’d like to know what the matter is now, so I can get it behind me.’
It was definitely better to discuss it in private. Then he could skate over it on Monday. ‘I spoke to Mrs Ullmann today. She’s in the early stages of dementia, and gets everything confused.’
It took a second for Gina to understand. ‘Ah, bugger. So now we don’t know when Heckeroth was attacked?’
‘Why didn’t you follow procedure and ask her to give a written statement? Then you’d have realised her memory’s failing her.’
Gina shrugged. ‘It slipped my mind somehow.’
Of course, thought Dühnfort. She was under pressure, she was afraid of the upcoming medical examination. And she wouldn’t stop being afraid until the results of the biopsy came back. Maybe not even then. For a moment the thought made him uneasy. ‘It is what it is. We’ll solve the case anyway.’
‘You’ve made headway?’
By now Dühnfort was unsure whether Bertram was the killer after all. ‘The fingerprints on the car could have got there when he went to buy charcoal. But his bike was definitely in the boot, and it must have been put there after 4 October, when Heckeroth’s car was valeted. Bertram had no explanation for that. I also don’t think he shot himself. His mobile phone and laptop are missing, and so is a bottle of whiskey or cognac.’
Gina crossed her arms. ‘In that case, the first question’s got to be: is there a connection? Did Bertram know something about his father’s murder? Or it could be that he made enemies who didn’t hang around. After all, he wasn’t exactly a nice, good-natured kind of bloke.’
‘We need that mobile and laptop.’
‘And the phone records, most of all.’
‘Hopefully we’ll have them for our meeting on Monday.’
‘Another life we’ve got to pick apart,’ said Gina.
Sounds like exactly the sort of thing I’d say, thought Dühnfort, looking out of the window. It was spitting. In the rear courtyard was a linden, its branches nearly bare. They stood out black and glistening-damp against the pale grey wall, like skeletal fingers. Was the sun never going to shine this October? Was this bleak autumn going to slide seamlessly into a cold winter?
‘Everything all right?’
Dühnfort’s gaze flicked back to Gina. Her chocolate eyes had taken on an anxious sheen.
‘Of course.’
‘You look a bit down in the dumps. How are things between you and Agnes?’
He’d never told her about their complicated relationship, but Gina had witnessed it begin during the summer. The directness of her question caught him off-guard. ‘We broke up.’
‘Oh. I’m sorry. Must be rough for you?’
‘Yes. And what about you? No successor to Lars in sight?’ He was shocked at himself. It was none of his business, and by intruding he was tacitly encouraging her to overstep the mark.
Gina shrugged. ‘You know the film Four Weddings and a Funeral?’
Dühnfort shook his head. When was the last time he’d even been to the cinema?
‘I’m like Fiona. There’s this guy I’ve been crazy about for ages, but he’s in love with someone else. That’s just the way it goes.’
Somebody knocked. Dorothee poked her head round the door and glanced about as if looking for help. ‘I can’t find the recipe for roast lamb. Is it in here?’
Monday, 20 October
At dawn on Sunday Dühnfort had woken up on a sofa that he identified, after a moment’s disorientation, as the one in Gina’s living room. He’d felt like death warmed up, and the smell of lamb and beans still hanging in the air was the final straw. He rushed to the bathroom. Back on the sofa, he saw Xenia, who was due at a film shoot by sunrise.
‘Talking to Jesus on the big white throne, eh?’ She grinned, spread her arms wide as if hugging an imaginary toilet bowl, and pretended to retch. ‘Oh Jesus!’ Then she vanished, returning a moment later with aspirin and a glass of water. He accepted both gratefully, annoyed that he’d let himself get into this state.
Dorothee’s hunt for the recipe had led to him offering to cook for everybody. An Italian mum who couldn’t cook – just imagine that. In fairness, of course, she wasn’t actually Italian. She came from Miesbach. As he chopped garlic and rubbed it into the lamb, she told him her family history.
Gina’s father came from Landshut, where in 1877 his great-great-grandmother had married a Milanese clothes-maker called Giuseppe Angelucci, whose coach had broken a wheel on its way back from the royal court at Regensburg. While getting it repaired at the local smithy, the merchant had fallen in love with the blacksmith’s daughter. The resulting marriage had founded a dynasty of Bavarian Angeluccis. ‘Now let’s drink to that with this lovely Venetian merlot,’ she’d said, proudly holding up a musty bottle of supermarket hooch like it was a Piedmontese Barolo. He couldn’t turn it down without offending her, but the wine had been a catastrophe. After dinner Gina’s father Bodo had served Ramazzotti, and they hadn’t stopped at one, of course. Still, it had been a nice evening, though Dühnfort remembered nothing of the tail end.
That was a day ago now. When the alarm clock rang, he felt only a slight sensation of cotton wool. Dühnfort swung his legs out of bed, went into the kitchen, switched on the espresso machine and jumped under the shower. By the time he re-emerged from the bathroom, the machine had warmed up. He brewed himself a double espresso and knew after the first sip that he needed it.
When he left the apartment, the cotton-wool feeling was gone. Clouds piled up in the sky, a cold wind whistled down the streets, and a damp chill was in the air. Turning up the collar of his coat, Dühnfort decided to take a little detour. The gates of the Old South Cemetery were already open. He was greeted by the quiet of the morning. Wind shook the trees, while colourful leaves whirled and gathered in corners, covering paths and graves like a tatty carpet full of loose threads, its bright knots coming undone. Dühnfort walked past a row of weather-beaten headstones overgrown with ivy. On other stones he read names and occupations, epitaphs. Gentleman of private means . . . wife of a brewery owner . . . deeply beloved husband . . . fell on the field of honour. The last one was inscribed on the gravestone of a young man who had died in 1917 at Verdun. What field of honour would that be, wondered Dühnfort, seeing in his mind’s eye a young man dying wretchedly in the muck. What had Mrs Kiendel said? You don’t make a bad thing better by not calling a spade a spade. Yes, you do, he thought. Words are like colours. We paint over the truth with them, make the ugly sublime and a muddy trench a field of honour, turn the cruelty of death into a patriotic act. It’s the only way to bear it.
He walked on. Marble angels huddled against stone. A crow came sailing down from an oak and landed on the path. Cocking its head, it observed him at a few metres’ distance. Fly, bird, shrill your song in wasteland music’s key! – Hide, you fool, your bleeding heart in ice and scorn! Nietzsche; a poem Agnes especially liked. No wonder she was struggling to find her way back. She was entrenched behind her pain. Dühnfort shoved hi
s hands into his coat pockets. Perhaps he was the fool. As he approached the bird, it flew away. Dühnfort left the cemetery at the Stephansplatz exit.
By the time he reached the police station, he felt ready for the day. On his desk were stacks of papers. Skimming them, his attention was caught by a message about a phone call one of the admin assistants had taken. A colleague at the police directorate wanted him to call her back. It was about Sabine Groß. While his computer was booting up, Dühnfort dialled the number Sergeant Verena Böltsch had left. A dark, robust voice answered on the second ring. Involuntarily, Dühnfort pictured a sturdy woman with a no-nonsense face. ‘I hear you’ve had an unpleasant encounter with Sabine Groß.’
Police officers are such blabbermouths, he thought. ‘Do you know her?’
‘She lives in our area. We often have trouble with that building. Not enough work, not enough broad-mindedness, too much frustration and too much alcohol. Punch-ups, wife-beaters, kids with no boundaries. The usual. Sabine Groß was a witness once, but I knew her before that. I got out the file. Eight years ago, it was, the last time she went for a man with a knife. He said she didn’t, though. Very fishy story. I was sure he was lying to keep things under wraps.’
‘What exactly happened? Who reported it, if not the man she attacked?’
‘We were tipped off by A and E at Neuperlach Hospital. A doctor had treated a man for a knife wound on his right forearm the night before. Classic defensive wound, if you ask me. Told the hospital an employee of his went nuts. He was an optician with a business in Altperlach. When we tried to question him he dismissed the whole thing as a misunderstanding, said the doctor couldn’t have understood him correctly. According to him, he was putting up a glass cabinet with another staff member when a shelf slipped. He tried to catch it and it broke.’
‘The staff member was Sabine Groß?’
‘Precisely. When I tracked her down – she’d called in sick that day – she told exactly the same story as her boss. And now she’s gone and attacked you.’
‘Well, nothing happened.’ Dühnfort jotted down the name and address of the optician, thanking Böltsch for the information. Just as he was about to hang up, another question occurred to him: ‘You said Sabine Groß was a witness. What was that about?’
Verena Böltsch sighed. ‘Usual stuff. A man was beating his wife. She cried for help and Sabine Groß, who lived in the flat above, went to intervene. When she got there, however, the man was already on the floor. His wife had knocked him down with a frying pan. By the time we showed up they’d tied him to the radiator. With his own belt.’
*
When he entered the meeting room, Gina was already there. She closed the window and eyed him anxiously, then smiled. ‘Welcome to the land of the living. I should have warned you. My dad loves that stuff, and he’s made it his mission to convert everybody else. Sorry.’
‘I shouldn’t have let myself be converted . . . it was a nice evening, though.’ Dühnfort poured himself some water from a bottle on the table. Alois and Meo came into the room, greeted the others and went into the coffee nook, where Alois brewed his customary green tea and Meo poured some coffee. A moment later, Buchholz shuffled up to the door behind Ursula Weidenbach, banged his papers down on the table and flopped into a chair. His head shone, freshly shaven. He gazed at Dühnfort with a sombre expression, then a grin spread across his face. ‘Do you get vibrations, or something? How come you always know?’ His words grabbed everyone’s attention.
‘So Bertram didn’t shoot himself.’ Dühnfort put his pile of folders on the table.
Buchholz glanced at Ursula Weidenbach. ‘Looks that way.’
Chairs were pulled out, and everyone sat down. ‘You’ve stolen my thunder now.’ The coroner took a seat beside Buchholz. ‘I got the last few results ten minutes ago.’ She drew a file out of her briefcase. ‘Bertram Heckeroth was unconscious when he “shot himself”. Somebody put the gun in his hand, lifted it and pulled the trigger. His blood alcohol content was 0.07 per cent, so he had a drink before he died. And that drink was laced with 4-hydroxybutyric acid.’
‘Hydroxy what?’ Meo picked at a spot.
‘GHB, also known as liquid ecstasy,’ responded Gina. ‘A party drug.’
Ursula Weidenbach nodded. ‘We found traces of GHB in his bloodstream at a concentration that would definitely have knocked him unconscious. It’s a miracle he was still breathing, given how much he took.’
‘What do you mean?’ asked Dühnfort.
‘Originally GHB was an anaesthetic. In combination with alcohol it can cause hypoventilation leading to respiratory arrest.’
‘How do you get hold of it? I assume it’s not available without a prescription, and only then in hospital pharmacies.’
‘Wholesale, too,’ added Alois.
‘And from the manufacturer,’ interjected Gina.
Ursula Weidenbach took her silver-framed glasses off her nose and placed them on the table. ‘I find the choice of drug rather striking. I haven’t had a GHB death on my table yet. It’s often used by prostitutes to drug and rob their customers. In the States there have been rape cases where it was used to sedate the victims. But for a murder . . . ? On the drug scene it’s fallen out of favour, it’s too unpredictable. Junkies these days take Rohypnol, aka flunitrazepam, a slow-acting tranquilliser.’
‘But in our case it was GHB. How do you think the killer got hold of it?’ asked Dühnfort.
Ursula Weidenbach put her glasses back on. ‘There are three possibilities. GHB hasn’t been used by anaesthetists since the sixties, due to massive side effects. Today it’s used to treat narcolepsy. Commercially it’s known as Xyrem and Somsanit. Both require a prescription. And Xyrem is pretty expensive: two hundred millilitres cost more than four hundred euros. The second possibility is to hit the clubs and find a dealer who has liquid ecstasy in stock. Easiest of all, however, is to buy cleaning solvent. You can find that anywhere that sells chemicals. You can use it to get rid of graffiti and bits of glue left by stickers. A few drops into a drink is enough to knock someone out. There are solvents that contain almost a hundred per cent GBL, which is metabolised into GHB in the body. The taste is described as salty, or sometimes soapy, and can only be hidden in drinks with a strong flavour.’
‘Liquor, then. Probably whiskey. When it took effect, Bertram wouldn’t have been able to react?’ asked Dühnfort.
Weidenbach shook her head. ‘The effect is very similar to that of alcohol. GHB isn’t just relaxing, it’s an aphrodisiac. Perhaps Bertram had a female visitor, and the woman had other ideas . . .’ Weidenbach threw out her hands. ‘Anyway, the effect at low doses is much like alcohol. A little more makes you euphoric, and you might see hallucinations. A high dosage can put you into a drug-induced sleep from which it’s virtually impossible to be woken. After three to four hours, however, you wake up by yourself, feeling fresh and rested. Above five grams, you get into dangerous territory. The initial feeling of happiness is replaced by a sedative effect. Dizziness, nausea, loss of consciousness and respiratory failure can result.’
‘Good,’ said Dühnfort ironically. ‘So why wasn’t Bertram killed with that? It would have been easier.’
‘But not absolutely certain, if I’ve understood correctly,’ said Gina. ‘He might not have gone into respiratory arrest. And anyway, it was supposed to look like suicide.’
Alois, who was taking notes, looked up. ‘Do we have a time of death yet?’
‘Between eleven p.m. on Thursday night and two a.m. on Friday morning.’
Gina rolled her pen between her fingers. ‘Not exactly normal visiting hours. Bertram must have been expecting the killer.’
Buchholz looked up. ‘I think so too. There’s nothing to indicate a break-in.’
‘Any trace evidence on the weapon?’ asked Dühnfort.
‘Only Bertram’s fingerprints.’
‘And elsewhere?’
‘Nothing major yet. Loads of fingerprints, but so far no hits in the d
atabase, which means that the killer either wore gloves or hasn’t come to the attention of the police. Possibly both.’
‘Which,’ said Dühnfort, ‘brings us back to the question of motive. How are the two cases connected? Was Bertram involved in his father’s murder and bumped off because he knew too much, or was he innocent but silenced because he realised who’d killed his dad?’
Gina looked at Dühnfort, her brow wrinkled. ‘Other than the trace evidence in the car, we’ve got nothing on Bertram.’
‘What about the fake alibi? Why would he make that up otherwise? We’ll have to go through his life with a fine toothcomb, question friends and family, his former co-workers and clients. What interests me most of all is this: who knew about the weapon?’
Gina took a breath and glanced round the table. ‘We don’t have much on Bertram . . . and since I screwed up my interview with Mrs Ullmann, we don’t even know the exact time of the attack.’
‘What about Mrs Ullmann?’ Alois stared at Gina.
Dühnfort spoke up first. ‘Mrs Ullmann is suffering from early-stage dementia, and wasn’t at her cabin on 6 October. Nonetheless, I’m sure we can narrow it down a bit.’ He glanced at Ursula Weidenbach.
Alois smiled sourly. ‘Do we actually have a cause of death for old Mr Heckeroth yet?’
The coroner slid a sheet of paper out of a folder. ‘Just a hypothesis. As you know, the only external injuries were the chafed wrists and the small laceration on his head. We can also rule out poisoning. That leaves us with guesswork. My money’s on thirst. It was very hot in the bathroom. If he was left tied to the radiator for an extended period of time, and it looks like he was, then he would rapidly have dehydrated, leading to circulatory collapse.’
‘How long would that take?’ asked Alois.
‘In the desert, it’d all be over in a flash, maybe a day, whereas in cooler regions it can take eight to ten. In the bathroom, however, it was very warm. At that temperature, and given that he was in direct bodily contact with the radiator, I’d estimate it would have taken Heckeroth three days to dehydrate. Judging by the condition of the body when we found him, I believe death occurred sometime on Thursday. This is all educated guesswork, though – don’t hold me to it.’