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

by Inge Löhnig

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘he’s not here yet, but he should be arriving at any minute. So perhaps you would like to wait for him.’ She stepped aside and asked him to follow her. She introduced herself as Barbara Schulz. ‘I run the priest’s household.’

  She walked down a hallway with a worn flagstone floor. The house had to be very old. The walls were thick and massive dark wooden beams supported the ceiling. Sparse light came through small windows that were like slits situated deep in the walls. A musty smell hung in the air. Dühnfort looked around as he followed the housekeeper down the long corridor. Old pictures and engravings depicted church dignitaries and the original monastery complex, of which only the church and the priest’s house remained.

  ‘Other than the church, the priest’s house is all that’s left of the Monastery of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary,’ Mrs Schulz said.

  ‘Wasn’t it expropriated by the state during the secularisation?’ Dühnfort asked, having vaguely remembered hearing about it.

  ‘Yes, that’s right. A few neighbouring farmers bought some of the farm buildings and used them as stables and barns.’

  She stopped in front of an oil painting and pointed to the portrait of a bearded, severe-looking man. ‘This is Ignaz Graf von Mallott. He purchased the rest of the monastery along with the brewery in 1804. Under his leadership, the Seeoner Monastery Beer became famous. It was sold as far afield as France and Italy.’ Mrs Schulz sighed and went to the next-but-one image, an old, time-darkened photograph. It showed the narrow face of a frail-looking young man with dreamy eyes. ‘Ansgar von Mallott,’ Mrs Schulz said. ‘His great-grandson. When he inherited the brewery, they expected it to go to ruin. He was a musician and left the management of the property to his best friend. The friend completely betrayed him and then settled in America in June of 1939 with his ill-begotten fortune. It was a tragedy.’

  Dühnfort saw the wet shine in her eyes. ‘Did you know him?’ he asked.

  ‘I was a little girl at the time, six years old. Ansgar looked like a prince from a fairy tale. He was engaged to the daughter of a merchant from Munich, but she called off the wedding after he lost a large portion of his fortune. Ansgar shut down the brewery and sold the facilities and a few fields to settle the debt. That way, he managed to at least save the former monastery and a portion of the property and forest. When the war began a few weeks later, he volunteered. I think he’d lost the will to live. In the event of his death, he ordered that the monastery be returned to the archdiocese. In the summer of 1944, he died in France.’ Mrs Schulz sighed.

  ‘And the monastery was bombed shortly before the end of the war,’ Dühnfort said. Kallweit had mentioned it.

  ‘On the night of the seventh of April, 1945,’ Mrs Schulz said. ‘The Americans had actually meant to hit the ammunition factory five kilometres away. It was an inferno. Every last corner of the monastery was in flames. Everyone in the village helped put it out, so at least the church and the priest’s house were saved.’

  ‘Why was the monastery never rebuilt?’

  ‘Only ruins remained. The reconstruction would have cost a fortune. The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary was just a small, insignificant monastery. There are larger and more influential ones in Bavaria. The archdiocese didn’t want to invest. The wreckage was demolished, the cellars were filled in, the property was levelled and the orchard was planted.’ Mrs Schulz turned away from the image and led him further down the hall. She opened a dark oak door. ‘You can wait here.’

  * * *

  Fifteen minutes later, Dühnfort was sitting with the priest in his office. He was in his mid-fifties, athletic-looking, and had short, greying hair and the wrinkled forehead of a thinker. He was wearing jeans and a black polo shirt. The conversation had still not given rise to any new information. There were no religious zealots in Mariaseeon. And the priest couldn’t say who’d had the idea for the prayer service.

  ‘It was natural to want to pray for Jakob in the circumstances. The idea was just in the room,’ he said as he looked for something in the drawer of his desk. ‘Who said it out loud . . .’ He interrupted his search and shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’ He kept digging around and then finally pulled out a crumpled packet of cigarillos. ‘My personal vice,’ he said with a wink. ‘Do you mind?’

  Dühnfort didn’t, so the priest lit a cigarillo, took a drag and leaned back, relaxed, as he slowly exhaled the smoke.

  Dühnfort presented him with the, as he had to admit, very vague hypothesis that Jakob’s kidnapping could have had a religious motive. The stake, the prayer service, Jakob’s drawing that might represent a Sacred Heart. Maybe there was a connection between these three pieces of the jigsaw.

  The priest dug through his desk again and pulled out an ashtray. ‘The cult of the Sacred Heart originated in France in the seventeenth century,’ he said. ‘It started with the vision of a nun.’ The priest tapped the ash from the end of the cigarillo. ‘It symbolically embodies the incarnate love of God in the body of Christ.’

  ‘The love of God. How does that go with kidnapping and murderous intent?’ Dühnfort asked.

  ‘It doesn’t. In the true and original sense,’ the priest added. ‘But a lot of blood has been shed in the name of Christ and the Virgin Mary. Think of the Crusades and the Inquisition in all their cruelty. They tortured and murdered, all supposedly in the name of a good and holy thing. In truth, it’s always about power and the elimination of dissidents. Or Galileo Galilei. It was only after he’d sworn to believe, then and forever, in what the Church held true and in its teachings that his sentence was reduced to mere incarceration. And he still got off lightly. Others had worse luck: Giordano Bruno, Jan Huss, Joan of Arc or, for example, Agnes Bernauer. A simple girl from Straubing, whom the son of Duke Ernst of Bavaria happened to fall in love with and marry, even though she was below his station. The Duke then sent his son out of the city on some pretext and had his daughter-in-law drowned as a witch and a heretic. A murder that was motivated by political power play but covered in a cloak of true faith.’

  ‘That was long ago –’ Dühnfort began.

  ‘Today is not that different,’ the priest interrupted. ‘We may act modern, but we are not. The fundamental motives behind human behaviour don’t change. And the dominant motives throughout history have been the pursuit of power and money.’

  ‘That is a depressing stance for a priest. What about the pursuit of knowledge and . . .’ Dühnfort hesitated. ‘And romance, love, sexual fulfilment?’

  The priest furrowed his brow. ‘Sometimes I have nihilistic tendencies.’ He chuckled. ‘But let’s take a look at the pursuit of knowledge: whoever has knowledge also has power. He can withhold this knowledge and use it exclusively for his own ends, he can pass it on to hurt someone else or even to achieve financial success. And love? When is it truly selfless? How often is it confused with possession? You must know that. How many murderers have you had in front of you that claim to have killed out of love? In reality, they don’t want to give up their property. As the saying goes: if I can’t have her, then no one can. They exert their power one last time. Ultimate power.’

  Dühnfort had to admit he was right.

  ‘Essentially, it’s almost always about power and money or hate and revenge,’ the priest continued. ‘But back to your question about how faith and murder go together. There is a current example: the war in Iraq. It’s a holy war. Bush himself said that he has a Christian mission to fulfil: he has to eliminate evil from the world. He is a devout man and America is God’s chosen nation. Bush is a Christian fundamentalist and nothing will make him back down from winning this war. It began with the lie about the non-existent weapons of mass destruction and probably won’t end with the excessive torture in Abu Ghraib. This behaviour, which is really not in accordance with the Christian Commandments, is justified as a higher mission. One puts oneself above the rules and can break them with good conscience. So, you see, faith and love do not implicitly
preclude murder and manslaughter. It’s a question of the position one adopts.’ The priest took a drag of his cigarillo.

  Dühnfort let it all sink in. ‘Whoever thinks and acts that way must feel chosen.’

  The priest nodded and stubbed out the cigarillo in the ashtray.

  ‘But what does Jakob’s kidnapper feel he’s been chosen for? To proselytise?’ Dühnfort voiced his thoughts. ‘If the stake that Jakob was tied to was meant to represent the one where Abraham was going to sacrifice Isaac, then was the kidnapper replicating that test of faith? But whose faith was being tested? Then he would have been –’

  ‘Taking on the role of God.’ The priest completed Dühnfort’s thought. ‘Then you are looking for a person with fantasies of omnipotence.’

  ‘Then I’m looking for a criminal for whom this is not a fantasy but reality,’ Dühnfort corrected him. He had to get used to the idea. It seemed unimaginable to him.

  He thanked the priest for the information as he accompanied him to the door. On their way, they passed a statue of Mary that Dühnfort hadn’t noticed when Mrs Schulz had led him to the office. She stood in a wall niche across from the picture gallery. A bouquet of white lilies had been placed in front of her. Dühnfort stopped short. He had already seen flowers like that in the Chapel of Our Lady. And there they had also been placed in front of the Madonna. ‘Tell me, these lilies, do they have a particular meaning?’ he asked Father Schops.

  He smiled and straightened the bouquet. ‘They are the flowers of Mary, a symbol of the innocence and purity of our Mother of God.’

  Dühnfort went on his way and drove towards headquarters. During the drive, he called Gina and Alois and presented them with the vague working hypothesis.

  Gina seemed sceptical. ‘A religiously motivated kidnapper? That’s very abstruse. But I’m making some progress with the satanist thing. The year nine PE teacher at the secondary school overheard a few words in the girls’ changing room. Apparently, one of the girls from the church choir is going out with a boy who is fascinated by satanism. Unfortunately, she doesn’t know who they were talking about and when she asked about it, the girls acted like she’d misheard. I’m going to drive out and grill them.’

  But Alois was taken with the idea. ‘I’ll see what I can find out about this cult of the Sacred Heart.’

  ‘I’ll call in Boos,’ Dühnfort said. ‘Maybe there have been other similar cases.’

  Alexander Boos ran the Major Crime Unit. Generally, the members of this group were called profilers, based on the American model. Contrary to common assumptions, objective or secured case data was used as the basis for case analysis. Dühnfort wanted to call in the unit to determine whether his hypothesis was either a credible lead that they could follow or completely unsupported and should be dropped. Boos was not in his office. Dühnfort tried calling his mobile and reached him on his way home. He told him about the case. Naturally, Boos was not pleased at the late inclusion of his department, but he agreed to go through the documents and check the databases for reference cases. Dühnfort thanked him and ended the conversation.

  A criminal with fantasies of omnipotence, Dühnfort thought. If that’s the case, then the kidnapping might just have been the beginning. But the beginning of what?

  Friday, 30th May

  Agnes cycled into the neighbouring village of Baierdilching specially to buy croissants from the baker there. They were just better than the ones from the local baker. Then she rode back, past the yellow rapeseed fields and freshly mown meadows that smelled of clover, and then down Dorfstrasse. Finally, she turned onto the road that led to her house. When she reached it, she bumped into Melli, who was also on her bike. Melli waved to her and then continued in the direction of the forest. She was probably going to the lake, as she had done every day since Franz’s death.

  Yesterday, Agnes had accompanied her to a rickety boardwalk in the nature reserve. Melli had been there so often in recent days that she’d left a trail through the reeds. The boardwalk ended in a platform over the water. That was where Franz had kissed Melli for the first time. They sat there silently. Agnes’s eyes landed on Melli’s hand. She was wearing both wedding rings. Franz’s was too big and nearly slid over Melli’s smaller one. Agnes automatically reached for the chain on which she wore her own wedding rings. Melli would start therapy the following day, as Wiessner had advised her to. It was nearly dusk when Agnes accompanied Melli home and handed her over to her mother. She was taking care of her daughter, just as Agnes’s mother had done for her for more than a year.

  Agnes pushed her bike under the roof overhang. Then she began setting the table on the terrace for breakfast with Kathrin. She had just finished when she heard a horn honking. Agnes looked up. Kathrin was driving up in her convertible. Agnes quickly ran inside and put the empty tray in the kitchen. On the way to the door, she glanced in the mirror as usual. The new linen dress looked good on her. It was a greyish green. She opened the door.

  Kathrin was wearing a black silk top and white Marlene Dietrich trousers with a wide belt. Her tanned skin and pierced belly button were just about visible between them. She kept her chestnut-brown hair off her face with a headband. A pair of oversized sunglasses hid her eyes. Kathrin took them off.

  ‘My God, Agnes, I hardly recognised you.’ She gave Agnes a tight hug, which still felt familiar. ‘And this house really is a gem.’

  Naturally, Kathrin wanted to look round. The tour ended at the breakfast table on the terrace. Pretzels, rolls and croissants were all laid out, along with melon and prosciutto and a pot of Earl Grey tea, which Kathrin had always liked.

  She sat down. ‘Wow. This looks great.’ Agnes poured the tea. ‘How are you?’ Kathrin looked at Agnes appraisingly.

  ‘Quite well, actually. I’m already working on my first job.’

  ‘The book?’

  Agnes nodded.

  ‘By the way, I’ve already spoken to Werner. He actually needs promotional materials for Luitpold Court and is expecting a call from you.’ She looked at Agnes again. ‘You’ve really changed. You look great. Have you hired some sort of fitness consultant or have you done it by yourself?’

  ‘Running and cycling. That’s the whole secret.’

  ‘And diet. You’ve lost at least twenty kilos.’ Kathrin bit into a dry pretzel.

  Agnes pushed the butter over to her.

  ‘No thanks. I stay away from fat where I can. You should do the same, otherwise you’ll just regain all those kilos you worked so hard to lose.’

  ‘I didn’t work at it. I exercise regularly. That’s enough.’

  Kathrin pushed her sunglasses down to the tip of her nose and looked at Agnes over the frames. ‘How regularly? Eight hours a day?’

  ‘In the mornings, I cycle and in the evenings, I jog.’

  ‘Every day?’

  Agnes nodded.

  ‘Madness. I don’t have that much discipline.’ Kathrin added artificial sweetener to her tea. ‘In any case, you look stunning. Are the men of Mariaseeon all chasing after you?’

  Now Kathrin was on about that, too. ‘I have to get my new life in order. There’s no room for a man.’

  ‘Why not? You’re young and attractive and surely you have needs – you know what I mean. Or are you planning to join a convent?’

  Now Agnes remembered why she’d stopped talking to Kathrin. It was her bluntness, her way of saying exactly what she thought. She’d said something similar a year ago. She’d tried to put Rainer down.

  ‘I can’t imagine that I’ll ever love again. Rainer was the love of my life. Am I supposed to replace him like an old sock? That would be a betrayal.’

  ‘A betrayal?’ Kathrin rested her chin on her hand and looked at her over the rim of her sunglasses.

  ‘I would feel like I was cheating on him. Can we drop the subject now?’

  ‘How would it be a betrayal? Or cheating?’

  Agnes was feeling uncomfortable. A memory wanted to come to the surface. She quickly choked it ba
ck down. ‘Rainer was the perfect man: tender and romantic, but also responsible and caring. I could always count on him . . .’

  Kathrin shook her head. ‘But, Agnes, he hadn’t even made provision for you.’

  It was true. Agnes had been completely surprised by that. Initially, it seemed as if she’d been left without a single penny. But then the police found the life-insurance policy, which for some unknown reason had been kept at Rainer’s mother’s house instead of with all the other important documents in the company safe. Since then, she’d apologised to Rainer in her thoughts and was ashamed that she’d ever doubted him.

  ‘The endowment went to his mother and he effectively gave the company shares to his partner, at a token price,’ Kathrin said angrily. ‘He forced you to give up your profession but then failed to leave you with any sort of safeguard. And you call that caring?’

  ‘I’m not offended that he also thought about his mother.’

  ‘His mother doesn’t depend on his money. But you were almost left with nothing.’

  ‘That’s not true,’ Agnes said angrily. Why had she told Kathrin about all of this?

  ‘I guess he forgot to transfer the life insurance over. If it had been up to him, you would probably have got nothing at all,’ Kathrin snapped back.

  Agnes’s neck and face were red with fury. ‘Can you tell me what this is about? Why are you talking about Rainer like that?’ She stared at Kathrin angrily. ‘I think it’s best if you go now. I won’t allow you to talk about him like this.’

  Kathrin put both hands flat on the table but didn’t stand up. Instead, she leaned forward. She seemed to be straining to maintain her composure. ‘No, Agnes, I won’t do that. You’re my friend. We’ve known each other since secondary school. A year ago, you threw me out because you wanted to wear those rose-coloured glasses at all costs. It is high time you took them off. Then you can start getting your life back.’