by Nele Neuhaus
“Simple,” she said and winked, “It’s 123456.”
“I might be able to remember that,” he said with a smile. “Thanks.”
At the table across from him sat an elderly couple. Were they staring at him, or was he just imagining things? He shouldn’t underestimate how suspicious people had become. With a little bad luck, the police could catch him, just as the goal was nearly within reach. Good thing he’d left red herrings all over the place. If the police had found the garage, they would also find the bottle with Thomsen’s prints on it. He sent off the e-mail even before the coffee and cake arrived. His heart was pounding. The old couple glanced over at him again and whispered to each other. Jeez, he was seeing ghosts everywhere. He had to get out of here. He didn’t care what they thought of him. He put a banknote next to the plate, not even touching the cake or the coffee, grabbed his jacket, and left.
“But if it isn’t Thomsen, then who is it?” asked Kathrin Fachinger after Pia had explained to her colleagues point by point why she doubted that Mark Thomsen was the sniper. They were sitting at some laminate tables covered with coffee stains. They’d shoved the tables together in the special commission center. The team members were morose, bleary-eyed, and hopelessly exhausted after being hit by one defeat after another for over two weeks. The energy of the first few days had long since vanished, along with their fighting spirit and firm conviction that they would soon catch the perp. Bodenstein took a soft pretzel from the tray containing Pia’s purchases from the bakery as he looked at the weary faces of his team. After his conversation with Mark Thomsen, he’d been filled with a mixture of despondency and angry defiance. He felt oddly disoriented, and his sense of time was off due to lack of sleep and no fixed daily schedule. Both were terrible conditions for doing systematic work. The situation was taking a toll on everyone; they had all become thin-skinned. Even Kai Ostermann, normally steady as a rock in the surf, was reacting with swift irritation.
“So we’re left with Hartig,” said Kai as he ate. “He’s my favorite anyway.”
“What about Winkler?” Cem suggested dubiously.
“Neither one,” said Pia, shaking her head and glancing at Bodenstein. “It’s somebody else. He fell through the cracks for us before, but he still has the strongest motive.”
Where did this woman get her energy? She couldn’t have gotten much more sleep than he had, but she looked alert and sharp, remembering small details that he had forgotten.
“There’s so little evidence pointing to him,” Kai said, because he knew whom Pia was talking about.
“Whom do you mean?” Nicola Engel asked Pia. She was the only one eating her cheese sandwich in a civilized manner from a plate.
“Dirk Stadler.” Pia wiped her hands on a paper napkin and crumpled it up. “Even though Thomsen appeared to be the perfect perp, my gut tells me that he’s not the sniper. He’s too . . . perfect. It’d be too easy, and easy solutions always make me suspicious.”
Bodenstein had to admit that Pia’s argument was valid.
“My impression is that somebody has been deliberately planting clues that pointed to Thomsen. The rented garage, for instance. All it takes is an e-mail and a stranger putting a couple of euros in someone’s hand, who couldn’t care less about any of it, and bingo—you’ve got a rental contract.”
“But how do you explain Thomsen’s prints on the water bottle that was found in the garage?” Kröger asked skeptically.
“For Stadler and Hartig, it wouldn’t be much of a problem to get hold of some object with his prints on it,” Pia countered. “They all know one another and have met before because of Helen. Who knows how old that bottle is?”
“Dirk Stadler is severely handicapped and can hardly walk,” Neff remarked. “Besides, he has alibis for the times the crimes were committed. He was working.”
“Have you checked that out?” asked Pia, raising her eyebrows.
“Yes. Well, not directly.” Embarrassed, Neff avoided her gaze.
Everyone turned to look at him.
“What’s that supposed to mean—‘not directly’?” Bodenstein’s voice was cold, but his eyes were blazing. He had ruled out Dirk Stadler as the possible perp because he was firmly convinced that the man had airtight alibis for the times of the shootings. “You did the research on the guy, and when I asked you if you’d double-checked all the info, you told me ‘of course’!”
“I Googled his name.” Neff blushed to the roots of his hair. “And it said online that he works for the City of Frankfurt in the building commission. It even gave the phone number.”
“So did you call them?” Bodenstein’s anger, which had been slowly flowing through his veins, converged in his stomach like a fiery ball.
“N-no.” Neff was squirming in his chair.
“The Internet retains every piece of information, no matter how old.” Kai couldn’t resist the gibe. “It could be a very old page from the cache.”
Without waiting any longer, Pia picked up the phone on the table and asked the operator to connect her with the building commission of the City of Frankfurt.
It was deathly quiet in the room while they waited for someone to answer.
“Eckel, Frankfurt Building Commission,” a woman’s voice said on the speakerphone.
“Pia Kirchhoff, Hofheim Criminal Police,” she replied without taking her eyes off Neff. “I’d like to speak with Dirk Stadler.”
It seemed to Bodenstein as if a black hole opened beneath his feet when the woman replied that no employee by that name had worked in the office.
“Are you quite sure?” Pia asked. “Who is your superior?”
“Dr. Hemmer. The department head.”
“Please connect me with him.”
It took a while before the man picked up and confirmed that Dirk Stadler hadn’t worked for the City of Frankfurt in the past two years. There had been irregularities.
“Are you referring to the judgment concerning tax evasion?”
“Yes, that was the reason,” the office manager admitted.
Pia thanked him and hung up.
“How was I to know that it was old information?” Neff tried to defend his mistake. “I’m here only as an adviser, not an investigator. This is really not my job, and I thought someone would double-check the information. Ostermann does that sort of thing all the time and—”
Kai gasped angrily, but before he could say a word, Bodenstein completely lost it. He slammed his palm on the table, and Neff stopped in midsentence.
“You accepted this assignment; you even volunteered for it! You bragged about your excellent connections, and I depended on you. Teamwork means relying without question on everyone involved. Don’t you get that? If I could do everything by myself, I wouldn’t need colleagues or a team. Through your gross negligence, you caused us to stop focusing on Stadler. That is an investigative disaster that can never be put right. I promise you, Neff, if it turns out that Stadler is the perp, then I will personally make sure you lose your job.”
He shoved his chair back and stood up.
“Pia, call Dr. Burmeister at once. We’re taking him into protective custody,” he commanded. “Kai, Cem, and Kathrin, you go research everything you can find about Dirk Stadler.”
Those who had been given assignments got up and left.
“But I really—,” Neff began. He would probably have pleaded “not guilty” in court even if he were caught red-handed, with a bloody knife in his hand, standing next to a corpse. Bodenstein took advantage of his height as he looked down at Neff.
“Shut—your—mouth,” he said menacingly. With his inflated view of his own abilities and his arrogant narcissism, this man had brought nothing but unrest to his team. And it turned out that he had even obstructed the investigation. “Get out of my sight. Right now. Before I do something I’ll regret.”
Then he turned on his heel and left the room.
Standing in the corridor, Pia tapped in the number of Dr. Simon Burmeister’s cell pho
ne. The blood was rushing so loudly in her ears that she could hardly formulate a clear thought. Would her theory be proved right? When she called Stadler on Friday, shortly before Hürmet Schwarzer was shot, he had claimed to be at the Frankfurt Main Cemetery, checking the durability of gravestones. Why had she simply believed him? But why would she have had cause to doubt him? On Friday evening, she had again spoken with Stadler, and she tried feverishly to remember how the man had behaved. Burmeister did not answer his cell phone. It was twenty past ten, so he was probably at his meeting. Pia went to her office and sat down at her desk. Kai appeared only seconds later.
“That sleazy bastard tried to shove the blame onto me,” he complained furiously, plopping down on the chair behind his desk. “He puts on a good show, I’ll give him that. Talking big, refusing to be pinned down, uttering stupid, superficial psychobabble.”
He was really pissed off, but Pia had no words of solace for her colleague, because she felt exactly the same way. She was annoyed because she had relied on Neff and had been taken in by Stadler, even though from the start, her intuition had been warning her to beware.
In her cell phone, she searched for the message from Henning with Dr. Furtwängler’s phone number. She called the doctor in Cologne, but she got his wife, who claimed that her husband was out and did not own a cell phone.
Pia ended the call. She no longer felt like listening to lies and excuses. Once again, she tapped in Burmeister’s number. Still no answer. So she called the UCF and demanded to speak to Dr. Burmeister. She was put on hold for a long time, but finally someone from the hospital administration answered.
The woman sounded irritated as she reported that “Dr. Burmeister has not yet arrived. But we expect him any moment. He’s scheduled to perform an important operation at ten.”
Pia was suddenly filled with foreboding.
“Are you sure he’s not there?”
“That’s what I just told you,” the annoyed woman snapped. “Do you think I’m incompetent?”
“Dr. Burmeister’s life is in danger,” Pia said insistently. “As soon as he arrives at the clinic, have him call me right away. And now I need phone numbers for Dr. Janning and Professor Hausmann.”
“Those gentlemen are still on vacation,” the administrative woman informed her in a cool voice. “I am not authorized to release any information—”
Pia hit the roof. “Listen, this is an emergency!” She no longer bothered to sound polite or friendly. “In case you misunderstood: I am Chief Criminal Inspector Pia Kirchhoff from the Homicide Unit of Kripo Hofheim. We have already had five homicides; we are trying to prevent two more! Now, give me the goddamned phone numbers at once or I’ll have you arrested for obstructing a police investigation!”
The woman finally seemed to understand. Clearly intimidated, she rattled off the phone numbers. Then Pia hurried over to Bodenstein’s office. Before she could knock, he opened the door, and she almost fell into his arms.
“I can’t get hold of Burmeister,” she told him. “He hasn’t shown up at the hospital yet, although he—”
“Ms. Albrecht just called me,” Bodenstein interrupted her. “She found documents in her father’s house and clothes that reek of smoke.”
Pia, who was worrying about Burmeister, didn’t understand.
“We’re going to Oberursel.” Bodenstein pulled on his coat as he walked. “Hurry up.”
“But we can’t just—,” she began, but Bodenstein didn’t let her finish.
“Gehrke supposedly burned documents,” he said impatiently. “But no smoke particles were found in his bronchial passages and lungs. Either he was wearing a face mask or he was already dead when the documents were burned in the fireplace. Rudolf’s clothes reeked of smoke, and Ms. Albrecht found a document binder that obviously came from Gehrke’s house.”
“I see.” Pia postponed the calls she was planning to make until later. “Give me a minute to get my things.”
“Fritz Gehrke was the victim of a cover-up.” Karoline Albrecht got straight to the point. “When he figured out what my father had done, he had to die.”
On the big dining room table lay the document binder that she’d found in her father’s car, and next to it a cell phone and other papers. Her exhaustion was evident on her face, yet she presented the facts that her investigation had uncovered with a precision that won Bodenstein’s respect. She had dismissed his polite inquiry as to how she was feeling by saying simply, “I’m all right.” The left side of her face was swollen, and a bruise stretched from temple to chin, but even this disfigurement couldn’t ruin the remarkable symmetry of her face. He wondered how she would look when she laughed.
“The search for my mother’s murderer isn’t the focal point of my interest,” she said. “That’s your job. I want to find out what my father did, and why my mother became a victim. The truth is, my father gave the order to stop Kirsten Stadler’s respirator. Part of a diagnosis of brain death is the so-called apnea test, in which the patient’s ability to breathe unaided is tested. He is disconnected from the respirator, and if he does not start breathing within five minutes, that is one of the indications of brain death. Kirsten Stadler was still breathing unaided in the first test as well as the second. Normally, the tests must be carried out no more frequently than twelve hours apart, and by doctors who have nothing to do with an eventual explantation. Are you following me?”
Bodenstein and Pia nodded.
“The first offense against existing laws in the case of Kirsten Stadler was that these tests were performed a few hours apart. The reason for this was her blood type. It was determined that she was blood type O, which meant that her heart would be a match for any recipient.”
“The blood type!” exclaimed Pia. That was what had been hovering for days on the edge of her consciousness, but she hadn’t been able to put it into words. She now remembered her conversation with Henning. In answer to her question of whether Professor Rudolf might have transplanted organs for money, he had explained that especially for a heart transplantation, this would be as good as impossible because of the incompatibility of the blood types. “You can’t simply transplant a heart into any recipient; the blood types have to match. A to A, B to B, and so forth. The one exception is blood type O. A donor heart having this blood type will match with any donor.”
“Correct.” Karoline Albrecht nodded. “Blood type O was the death sentence for Kirsten Stadler. With the tacit consent of the head of intensive medicine, at the behest of my father all life-support measures were shut off. An hour later, her brain was irreversibly damaged due to lack of oxygen.”
“How do you know this?” Bodenstein asked.
“As chance would have it, the head of intensive medicine phoned,” replied Karoline Albrecht. “Dr. Arthur Janning wanted to speak to my father. He and my father used to be good friends, but Kirsten Stadler’s case had turned them against each other. There had already been incidents which he unfortunately chose to ignore, but this case was the last straw.”
“But why did your father take these measures?” Pia asked. “That was murder!”
“What’s one murder compared with the Nobel Prize in Medicine?” Karoline Albrecht snorted. “That’s my father’s cynical worldview. I always admired my father for his skill, but he was acting out of completely different motives than I’d assumed. Maybe this wasn’t the first time he’d let a person die to gain access to a donor organ.”
“Kirsten Stadler had to die so that he could implant her heart into the son of his friend Fritz Gehrke,” said Pia.
“Precisely.” Karoline Albrecht nodded and heaved a great sigh. She seemed to have reached a point far beyond any emotion. There was no other choice but to proceed, no matter how horrible the truth might be. “But there must be an even bigger story behind all this. My father did not help Maximilian Gehrke out of pure friendship, but because he feared that Gehrke’s company, Santex, might opt out of funding his research projects.”
She slapped her h
and on one of the files.
“These binders come from Gehrke’s house,” she said. “I don’t know what the documents prove, or whether they prove anything at all. There are protocols, documentation of transplantations, patient documents, and the complete correspondence between my father, Dr. Furtwängler, and Fritz Gehrke.”
“What did Furtwängler have to do with your father?” Pia asked.
“He was the hematologist.” Karoline Albrecht shrugged. “His specialty was human blood. He and my father had done research together in Cologne. Exactly what sort of research, I don’t know.”
Bodenstein cleared his throat.
“And why do you think that your father killed Gehrke? Why now, after so many years?”
“After I told Gehrke about the sniper’s motives by showing him the obituary, he must have gotten on the phone. Dr. Janning told me that he spoke with him in great detail on Saturday afternoon and confessed to him everything that had been weighing on his soul for years. After that, Gehrke must have been beside himself, so he called my father.” Karoline Albrecht pointed to her smartphone. “That’s my father’s secret cell phone, which I found in his safe. Gehrke called my father at around eight P.M. on Saturday evening.”
“He drove over to his house, knocked him out with chloroform, and injected him with an overdose of insulin,” Pia spun the thread further. “Then he searched through all the documents, burned most of them, and took these binders home with him. It was supposed to look as if Gehrke, in desperation, had wiped the slate clean and then committed suicide.”
“And he almost succeeded,” said Karoline Albrecht, her voice breaking as she stood up. She went to the window and looked out into the garden. “Sheer ambition drove my father to walk over dead bodies. Even the body of my mother.”
She folded her arms, choking back sobs, but otherwise keeping her emotions under iron control.