The Wages of Sin: A Kidnap, a Crucifixion, a Murderer on the Loose

by Inge Löhnig

  ‘She lost her own child a year ago and then happened to be the one to find the missing boy. I wanted to make sure that we hadn’t overlooked anything.’ Although he didn’t feel good about it.

  Gina pulled up a chair and sat down. ‘I just managed to make it home before the storm. But did you end up sleeping here?’

  ‘At the hotel,’ Dühnfort said. He’d got a room there just before midnight and had slept well.

  Beppo Sonnberger held the door open for his wife. She was carrying Jakob. His head rested on her shoulder; one arm hung limply in front and the other lay loosely around her neck. He was still wearing Agnes Gaudera’s jumper.

  ‘He doesn’t want to give it up,’ Gabi Sonnberger said. Jakob was snoring.

  ‘He was given sleeping pills or something,’ Beppo Sonnberger said. ‘Yesterday he was talking again about the hot chocolate that he poured away. Maybe there was something in it and he noticed it.’

  Dühnfort nodded. ‘A clever fellow. If he’d been asleep, Mrs Gaudera wouldn’t have found him.’

  ‘So, her name is Gaudera. Didn’t she buy the Niedermeyer villa down by the lake?’ Gabi Sonnberger asked. ‘She disappeared so quickly, we haven’t had the opportunity to thank her.’

  * * *

  An icy wind swept through the village and chased the wispy clouds across the frosty blue sky, which made Dühnfort think of the Arctic Ocean. The summery interlude was over. The late frost was lasting a long time this year.

  Mariaseeon was full of hustle and bustle. The villagers were out clearing up the damage the storm had left behind. Tinsmiths were remounting a sheet-metal roof that had been torn loose. One of them greeted Dühnfort: ‘Good to hear the kid is back.’

  Shortly before nine thirty, Dühnfort was on the lakeside track. Buchholz and two men from his team, as well as Alois Fünfanger and Agnes Gaudera, were already waiting for him. Michael Wagner, a man from the volunteer fire brigade that Dühnfort had requested be in attendance, arrived a bit later. He had a chainsaw with him. Dühnfort drove in front with Agnes Gaudera. Fallen branches and two fallen trees blocked the route in several places. Then Wagner and the chainsaw were needed.

  About fifty metres before the Chapel of Our Lady, they parked the cars and put on helmets and wellingtons. Buchholz had the area round the chapel cordoned off and intended to search it for evidence later. Dühnfort thanked Wagner for his help and sent him home.

  Agnes Gaudera led the group along a narrow path to the place where she’d found Jakob. They waded through mud and climbed over broken branches and uprooted trees, sticking as close to the narrow path as possible, as the kidnapper could have taken the same route. They fought their way to the piles of brushwood, but there was nothing there. The kidnapper had covered his tracks. The plastic rope, stake and matches were gone.

  ‘He’s not afraid to take risks,’ Dühnfort said. ‘He’s no coward, anyway.’

  ‘Or he was desperate.’ Alois squatted down and poked at the ground with a dry twig.

  ‘Maybe also stupid, or he has an appetite for danger,’ Buchholz said. He was wearing a white disposable jumpsuit and had a portable forensic lamp in a bag with a shoulder strap, which he was shining on the ground. ‘After all, he was playing Russian roulette. With trees, mind you. I would estimate the probability of being killed by a tree here during the hurricane last night as being much greater than one in six.’

  Dühnfort looked over at Agnes Gaudera. She was sitting some distance away on a tree stump. Every gust of wind blew water from the treetops. The cool mountain air had an intense scent of resin and earth. Shafts of sunlight pierced the forest canopy, forming warm islands of light on the moss and a misty haze rising from it.

  Dühnfort tried to make sense of it. What had motivated the criminal to risk his life in the storm when the penalty for getting caught would not be death but merely a few years in prison? Courage? Conceivable. Fear and desperation? Understandable. But something else was worrying Dühnfort. Whoever had done this either had no imagination, which made him unaware of the danger and therefore stupid, or he was sure that nothing would happen to him. But what would give him such a sense of security?

  ‘The interesting question is actually at what point did he discover that his victim had gone missing,’ Alois said. ‘Let’s say he came through here shortly after Jakob was found by his guardian angel, then he would have had plenty of time to clean up and get out of the forest before the storm broke.’

  ‘That’s possible,’ Dühnfort said. ‘Mrs Gaudera needed about twenty minutes to get from here to the church. The storm started about twenty minutes later. So, at most, he had half an hour. But the question of when he brought the boy here is just as interesting.’ Dühnfort got his mobile out of his pocket.

  Bichler had been expecting Dühnfort’s call and had already collected the relevant information. The search of the area round the Chapel of Our Lady had taken place on Saturday afternoon and had been completed by three o’clock. Bichler had searched the chapel himself. ‘It was locked, but the key was in the gutter. It’s absurd the way people can’t come up with better hiding places. Under the doormat, in the flowerpot or in the gutter. It’s always the same. But there was nothing noteworthy inside the chapel.’ Bichler didn’t remember seeing any piles of brushwood.

  ‘So, Jakob would have been brought here some time between Saturday night and Sunday evening,’ Dühnfort mused. ‘Most likely just before the kidnapper intended to kill him. It was a beautiful weekend, there were people walking and cycling through the forest. The location is remote, but he still wouldn’t take the risk. Presumably he drove to the chapel, then continued on foot. And then Jakob lost a shoe on the way. So he undressed the boy and took the clothes away with him. Mrs Gaudera didn’t see any, anyway. Then he tied up the sleeping boy and left. Why did he do that?’

  ‘Maybe he attended the prayer service for Jakob,’ Alois said. ‘Maybe he was turned on by watching everyone pray. That way he’d really be able to savour his power: he was more powerful than God, he alone would decide whether the boy lived or died. He was already condemning him to the grave while everyone else had their hands raised in prayer.’

  ‘Fünfanger, you read too many crime novels,’ Buchholz said as he came up from behind the group. ‘If you ask me, the guy abused the boy and wanted to kill him. He wanted to burn the body to cover up his crime and get rid of the evidence.’

  ‘If you don’t need me any more, then I’m going home.’

  Dühnfort turned round. Agnes Gaudera looked pale. She will run, he thought, as if she were being hounded by demons. And when she is exhausted, she will not have found the peace that she has been chasing. Just the peace that comes with exhaustion.

  * * *

  Dühnfort wiped the mud off in the grass and put the wellingtons in the boot of his car. There were still no clues. Jakob’s kidnapper had been lucky. The torrential rain the night before had washed away any tracks that the perpetrator hadn’t removed himself.

  Dühnfort slammed the boot shut. For a moment, he considered calling the Department of Forensic Medicine to request a verbal interim report on the findings of Jakob’s examination, but it was too early for that. He went to the chapel. The front door was on the gable side. The gutters were within reach. Dühnfort was feeling around for the key when he heard the sound of a car slowly approaching. The dark blue Fiat stopped in front of the police tape and the engine was switched off. Gabi Sonnberger got out.

  ‘I was hoping you’d be here,’ she said. She went round to the other side of the car and got a basket from the passenger seat. There was a bouquet wrapped in burgundy tissue paper on top.

  ‘Have you had the results yet?’

  Gabi Sonnberger shook her head. ‘May I?’ she asked and slipped under the police tape when he nodded. She reached into the gutter, pulled out an old-fashioned skeleton key and unlocked the chapel door. Dühnfort followed her.

  It was cool and damp inside. The air smelled musty. Two narrow windows to the lef
t and right of the small altar let in sparse light, which fell onto a statue of Mary painted in pastel colours and decorated with gold leaf.

  Dühnfort looked at the figurine. It was finely detailed. The folds of the loose garment fell so softly, it was as if they were actually made of cloth. The hands were also extremely delicate, but what fascinated him most was the facial expression. It was loving and gentle; a soft smile played around the mouth. It was a masterpiece. ‘This is a valuable piece. Amazing that it hasn’t been stolen. Especially considering how easy it is to find the key.’

  ‘About five years ago, someone tried.’ Gabi Sonnberger took a lighter from her pocket and lit two candles on the altar. The effect of the light and shadow was stunning. Now the Madonna was smiling at Dühnfort. ‘She brought no luck to the thief. He crashed into a tree a few kilometres from here. He died immediately, and the car was a write-off, but the Madonna didn’t even have the slightest scratch. She was just lying in the grass, fully intact. We thought about keeping her at home after that, because she’d be safer there, but she belongs in here. That’s why we brought her back.’

  ‘We?’ Dühnfort asked. ‘Does the statue belong to you?’

  ‘The chapel belongs to the farm,’ Gabi Sonnberger said. ‘An ancestor of mine, Josef-Maria Münch, had it built out of gratitude for his miraculous salvation. That was in 1788.’ She unwrapped the bouquet of apricot-coloured roses and laid them on the altar. ‘He had been surprised by a big storm. Here, on this spot. It must have been as bad as the one last night. He was out with his ox cart and hadn’t reached the farm in time,’ she said as she smoothed out the flower paper, removed a bouquet of white lilies from a vase and wrapped them in it. They actually still looked fresh. ‘He found himself in the middle of the forest when the storm broke and he feared for his life.’ Gabi Sonnberger turned to Dühnfort and gestured to the wall beside the altar. ‘The event is depicted in that votive image.’

  It hung between a few other votive tablets that had also been donated by others out of gratitude for help in times of need. Dühnfort looked at the image, an oil painting on wood. The colours had faded over the course of more than two hundred years, but it was still easy to make out the subject. In the style of naive painting, it showed a wagon being pulled by two oxen through a forest. The trees bowed in the wind. Rain and hail were painted with almost horizontal brushstrokes. Between the trees was a blurry figure surrounded by a blaze of light.

  ‘Josef-Maria Münch had urged the oxen to go faster when the Virgin Mary appeared to him in a beam of light. She gestured for him to stop. He stopped. A moment later, lightning hit an oak, splitting it so that a section fell across the track. Had my ancestor kept going, the tree would have killed him.’ Gabi Sonnberger took a bottle out of the basket, used it to fill the vase with water, placed the roses in the vase and moved it in front of the Madonna.

  ‘Interesting story,’ Dühnfort said.

  Jakob’s mother folded the bouquet of lilies together several times, lengthwise and across, then placed the packet in the basket.

  ‘They still look good,’ Dühnfort said.

  ‘They would have been thrown away this evening anyway. Then the communion children will bring fresh flowers.’

  Dühnfort didn’t understand.

  Gabi Sonnberger smiled. ‘It’s May. Mary’s month. The girls that have their first holy communion this year bring fresh flowers to the Chapel of Our Lady every night. That’s been the custom for over two hundred years – for as long as the chapel has existed.’

  ‘Last night, too?’

  Gabi Sonnberger shook her head. ‘Very unlikely in the storm.’

  ‘And now you’re showing gratitude for Jakob’s rescue?’ Dühnfort looked at the roses.

  ‘Not really. It was a spontaneous decision. I’m not such a believer and Jakob wasn’t saved by a miracle.’ She looked at him and lowered her eyes. ‘I have to talk to you. I meant to bump into you here. You said you wanted to see the place where Jakob was found, and yesterday you told me where that was, so I knew where to find you. There was no opportunity this morning.’ She looked at her hands. ‘Let’s sit for a moment.’ She gestured to a small prayer bench.

  Without a word, Dühnfort sat beside Jakob’s mother. A vague fear welled up inside him. No, that couldn’t be it. ‘Well, why did you want to see me?’

  She sighed, crossed her legs and clasped the top knee with her hands. ‘As my husband said, I’ve made my bed, so now I must lie in it. That’s why Beppo went with Jakob to the examination. Beppo has nothing to do with it. I only told him last night.’

  ‘What is it, Mrs Sonnberger?’

  She looked at him. ‘You will be terribly angry with me.’

  * * *

  Agnes was about to lose it. ‘No, I won’t change my mind. I’m not giving any interviews.’ Reporters were calling non-stop. Agnes pulled the battery out of her cordless office phone, put it back in the charging cradle and turned off the answering machine. Thank God she hadn’t registered her private line.

  She didn’t want to be media fodder again. But she already was. They had not only turned her into the angel of Mariaseeon but had also made sure that her story was known in the village. At best this would mean that she would now be followed by sympathetic looks when she walked through the village and would bring conversations to a halt as soon as she entered a shop. At worst, complete strangers with a greedy gleam in their eye would feign sympathy and want to hear her story in the hope of learning the gruesome details.

  Agnes’s private phone rang. It was her mother. She was worried and wanted to know if her daughter was all right. She was planning to come round right away. Agnes managed to put her off. Next, Agnes wondered if she should continue working on getting her name out there and promoting herself, but she decided to put that off until later. She needed to sort out the garden first. A spruce tree at the back had taken a beating and there were broken branches everywhere. The house was undamaged. But she still hadn’t checked whether the studio had been hit and was half expecting to find its large windows had been smashed by the hail. She slipped into her old running shoes and went outside.

  Jakob’s uncle was coming up the garden path. He was carrying a cardboard box full of flowers. She almost didn’t recognise him in his jeans, jumper and boots. She guiltily remembered the jacket, which was still lying damp in her bathroom.

  ‘Good morning, Mrs Gaudera.’

  Agnes was fascinated by his contradictory features. His strong chin and low forehead made him seem quite down to earth. But his narrow nose, finely curved mouth and clear blue eyes also gave him the appearance of a scholar. ‘Hello, Mr Münch.’

  ‘These are from my sister,’ he said and placed the box beside the front door. ‘She asked me to bring them over. She sends her apologies. There’s such a lot going on. She can’t get away.’

  ‘Thanks.’ Agnes was surprised. One bouquet would have been enough.

  ‘My sister thinks that your flowers will have been ruined by the storm, which is why she’s sent whole plants and not bouquets,’ Jakob’s uncle said, as if he’d read her thoughts. ‘And she also wanted me to tell you that she’s going to drop by in the next few days to thank you herself.’

  ‘She doesn’t need to thank me. Goodness!’

  ‘Of course we should thank you,’ he said in a tone that left no room for argument. ‘It’s good that you didn’t come to the prayer service. Otherwise you wouldn’t have found Jakob.’

  ‘I got lost. It happened by chance, fate’s little joke.’

  Agnes was instantly ashamed. This joke had saved Jakob’s life. I should be celebrating with his family and not feeling bitter that fate wasn’t in the mood for such jokes when it came to Rainer and Yvonne.

  Münch swallowed and then took a breath as if he was about to tell her something unpleasant. ‘You’re practically one of the family now. I’m Anselm.’ He extended his hand.

  Agnes was taken by surprise. Just because she’d found the boy, it didn’t mean
she had to be adopted by his family. But she didn’t want to hurt his feelings, so she returned his handshake. ‘How’s Jakob?’

  ‘He’s doing very well so far, I believe,’ Anselm Münch said and then pointed at the flowers. ‘Shall I help you plant them?’

  ‘I’ll have to get potting compost first. I’ll go tomorrow. But I could use some help in the garden, to be honest. If it’s not too bold to ask. A tree came down in the storm and I have to get it cleared somehow. Would you mind helping, Mr Münch?’

  ‘Anselm,’ he said. ‘We’re on first-name terms now.’

  A small smile stole across his face but didn’t seem to reach his eyes. Agnes noticed something melancholy at the corners of his mouth. She was suddenly overwhelmed with sadness. She felt like bursting into tears and didn’t know why. It was all just too much. She pulled herself together. ‘Would you mind helping?’ She repeated the question and tried to smile.

  ‘I own a piece of forest, so I know my way around a chainsaw.’

  ‘There’s one in the shed,’ Agnes said. ‘Hopefully it works.’

  They went to the back of the garden. To her relief, Agnes found that all the studio windows were still intact. She’d been lucky.

  The spruce had snapped off at around two metres. The upper part of the tree had fallen to the ground, but the splintered end of the trunk was still resting at the breaking point. Anselm got the chainsaw from the shed. Agnes took the wheelbarrow and began to collect the twigs and branches that the storm had shaken from the trees. Anselm started up the saw. They were startled by its sudden roar, which also prevented any further conversation. After fifteen minutes, Anselm had removed all the branches from the tree. Then he got a ladder from the shed, leaned it against the tree and climbed up. With one cut, he separated the fallen part from the rest. The trunk fell to the ground with a thud.