The Scholl Case

by Anja Reich-Osang

  Brigitte Scholl walked back to the house. It was half past six. In her husband’s room under the roof, no light was on; he was obviously still asleep, which gave her the opportunity to have a shower, get dressed, clear up, prepare breakfast and make a few phone calls in peace. Unlike his wife, Heinrich Scholl liked to sleep in and stay up late. He sometimes sat in the living room until well past midnight, drinking red wine and working at some papers or other long after she had turned in. If they went to birthday parties together, it sometimes happened that she left after dinner while he stayed on. They were very different. She loved dogs; he preferred cats. He liked drinking wine; she abhorred alcohol. He would climb six-thousand-metre-high mountains; she would rather lie on a beach on the Baltic—but most of all, she preferred to stay at home.

  You wondered how the two of them had put up with one another for so long—but then you wondered that about plenty of couples who had been married as long as the Scholls and whose marriage had come to resemble a business arrangement rather than a loving relationship. It was part of the Scholls’ arrangement to have breakfast together, discuss the day ahead and share out the chores. After that, they went their own ways until they eventually met at home again.

  Today, on that Thursday in December, things were no different. Heinrich Scholl got up, drank his coffee, read the paper. His nine-o’clock appointment had been cancelled and the next one—lunch with an old business friend in Berlin—wasn’t until one. So he had time to do a bit of shopping for his wife, go to the bank and fill up the car before checking up on the thermal spa.

  The spa had been his last big project as mayor—a twenty-million-euro building that had nearly cost him his head. Too big, too expensive—and naturist into the bargain. A luxury nudist spa in working-class Ludwigsfelde—even Heinrich Scholl’s friends feared that he’d taken leave of his senses. But they had been wrong. The spa was buzzing; the operating company even had plans to expand. It was a late triumph for the former mayor, which was why he was keen not to lose touch with his pet project and to help with the extension plans. Just like his wife, Heinrich Scholl needed a purpose in life. In this respect they understood each other splendidly.

  Today, Brigitte Scholl intended to tidy up the house and the basement party room for the New Year’s Eve celebrations. On her wedding anniversary the day before, she had had a facial and pedicure, wanting to treat herself for once, but also, as anyone who knew her could have told you, with an ulterior motive: she had wanted to scout out the competition. Her beauty salon was still doing well, in spite of the thermal spa and in spite of those other salons in and around town, which called themselves ‘beauty farms’ and ‘health farms’, and which she secretly scorned, because beauticians nowadays weren’t properly trained and sold cheap products at ridiculous prices. Luckily her regular customers knew her worth, but Brigitte Scholl realised that it would soon be time to start winding down a bit and eventually to retire. The standing was hard for her, and her hands ached from the neck and face massages that were part of her standard treatment. She had already cut back her working hours to three mornings a week, and before she stopped altogether, she had to find a salon that she could recommend to her customers with a clear conscience. That much she owed them.

  As expected, the facial hadn’t met her demands. Her skin had shone like lard and the prices had been much higher than in her own salon. This had annoyed her, but at the same time it had also pleased her; it meant a lot to her to know that she was irreplaceable.

  Ursus the dog was next on her agenda. At twelve o’clock she would put him in the car and take him to the woods for a walk. She did this every day, whatever the weather; you could set your clock by her. Her husband had often warned her that it wasn’t without risk for a woman to walk about in the woods like that by herself, especially as she didn’t even have a mobile—but she only ever laughed at him. Brigitte Scholl was not afraid. She was almost seventy—who would want to hurt her?

  Today her walk would take a little longer than usual, because she planned to gather some fresh moss for her flower arrangements. It was her hobby. Her entire terrace was adorned with little works of art made out of mosses, twigs, pinecones and dried berries. And not just her own terrace—she gave her moss arrangements to friends and relations, neighbours and acquaintances. Today she was going to smarten up the window boxes of an old schoolmate, Maria Zucker*. Now that Maria’s husband was dying, she no longer had the time to see to these things herself; it was up to Brigitte Scholl to step in.

  ‘You’ve still got Easter bunnies sitting in your window boxes,’ she’d exclaimed when she’d been to see Maria a few days ago and noticed that the old, dried-up spring flower arrangements were still standing about everywhere. Maria didn’t care what her flower pots looked like, but she didn’t say anything. She had known Gitti—as everyone called Brigitte—for sixty years and knew that once she’d set her mind on something, there was no stopping her.

  In the morning the two women spoke on the phone. Brigitte Scholl sounded her usual self—bright, determined, energetic. She said she’d drop in with the moss in the afternoon. Another friend whom Gitti rang that morning to recommend a drug for joint pain didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary either. Brigitte Scholl always knew the latest drugs on the market and the best doctors and liked to recommend them to her friends. Outside the house she had a bit of a chat with a neighbour who was taking down his Christmas decorations, and she set off for the woods a little before midday. Another neighbour saw her drive off and then come back and run into the house as if she’d forgotten something. The next time her car was sighted was near the thermal spa. Everyone in town knew Brigitte Scholl’s silver Mercedes with the registration number TF-BS 700. TF stood for the district, Teltow-Fläming; BS for Brigitte Scholl. A woman who had just left the photo shop drove behind her for a short while.

  At about midday, Brigitte Scholl came to Siethener Strasse, at the edge of town, and parked her Mercedes. She got out, changed into her walking shoes, put the dog on the lead and walked deep into the woods to gather moss. Her footprints petered out among the tall pine trees. Later in the day, it was only her car that was seen, being driven back into town.

  Sitting at the wheel was a man.

  Heinrich Scholl was kept at the thermal spa longer than planned. It was packed. The queue of waiting spa guests wound its way all through the foyer. He had arrived at lunch in Berlin over an hour late and been correspondingly late back in Ludwigsfelde. He and his wife had been going to have coffee together at 4 pm. At 4.15, he parked his car, a Nissan, in front of the house. His wife’s Mercedes wasn’t outside the door; there was no note on the kitchen table. She wasn’t there.

  He asked neighbours whether they knew where she was; he rang her friends. Nobody knew anything, but nobody was seriously worried. And so he drove on to his favourite haunt, Da Toni’s, on Potsdamer Strasse. It was on the ground floor of a modern five-storey block that he had inaugurated in the nineties during his time as mayor. Opposite was the shopping centre, also built in his time, and only a few metres further on, you found yourself underneath the three-hundred-and-fifty-metre motorway bridge, where he had shown Prince Charles around a few years before. Traces of his mayoral legacy were in evidence all over town. Heinrich Scholl was still proud of them and liked to invite friends and acquaintances on tours of the town, often ending up with a glass of red wine here in Da Toni’s.

  He greeted the landlord and sat down in his usual place next to the bar. It was afternoon; the restaurant was nearly empty. Heinrich Scholl ordered red wine and asked the landlord for a cigarette. He wasn’t actually a smoker; he was a sportsman—a gymnast, a footballer, a rower, a mountaineer. He had climbed Kilimanjaro and Mont Blanc. But he sometimes made an exception. When his wife wasn’t around.

  Her life followed a clear rhythm and rigid rules. She decided how they celebrated Christmas, who came for New Year’s Eve, when the leaves were raked and the hedge trimmed, how many glasses of wine her husband was allowed and
when it was time to go home. When Heinrich Scholl was mayor, she had rung him up in the middle of important meetings with lists of chores, and even now that he was retired, she kept him on his toes. It was always: ‘Heiner fetch this, Heiner bring that.’ He did the shopping, took her car to the garage, mowed the lawn, greeted her customers. When her friend Inge rang from Anklam, his wife would call him to the phone so he could say hello to her. Like a child. Two days ago, when her school friend Maria had dropped in, Brigitte Scholl had made her husband interrupt his morning’s newspaper reading and recite a poem about a candle for Maria.

  And so Scholl relished his moments of peace and freedom in Da Toni’s all the more. Here, the landlord took his coat and asked: ‘A glass of red wine as usual, Herr Bürgermeister?’ Here, he was held in respect.

  Heinrich Scholl stayed about an hour, talking to the landlord, who was in fact from Macedonia, but had, Scholl thought, mastered the finer points of Italian cuisine. They discussed the possibility of a terrace, and a conservatory for smokers. At about six o’clock, Heinrich Scholl paid and got back in his car.

  By now it was dark outside. The day guests from the thermal spa were returning to their living rooms. Television sets flickered in the windows. It was the time of year when they showed old fairy-tale films. The roads seemed even quieter than usual. Now and then there was a bang from an early New Year’s Eve rocket. In Heinrich Scholl’s house there was still no light on; his wife’s car was neither out the front nor in the garage. Scholl set off to look for her again, this time in earnest. He rang at the neighbours’ doors, drove round to the house of the friend his wife had been going to gather moss for, and asked an acquaintance, who had been a detective superintendent until retirement, whether it was too early to involve the police. The superintendent said that the best thing to do was to ask whether there had been an accident anywhere and whether Gitti wasn’t perhaps in hospital. He offered to ring some of his old police colleagues, but then couldn’t get hold of anyone.

  At about eight o’clock, Heinrich Scholl showed up at the town police station, a shack only a few metres from the motorway and not exactly one of Ludwigsfelde’s showpieces. The policeman on duty was a young man with glasses and a goatee who did not recognise Heinrich Scholl. Scholl had to begin by pointing out to him that he’d been mayor until three years ago. The young officer didn’t take his concerns about his wife particularly seriously either. You don’t report a person missing after three or four hours, he said. ‘Your wife is a free citizen in a free country and she can do what she wants.’ Maybe she was at a friend’s house, or with a man. What kind of a relationship did the couple have then?

  The young policeman did, however, inform his supervisor, and he knew Scholl. He had the town searched for Brigitte Scholl, checked her wardrobe to see if anything was missing, looked to see if her toothbrush was there. Back at the police station, he issued a missing person report: ‘Missing: Brigitte Scholl, née Knorrek, 67 years old, 165 cm, slightly stocky, dark blond hair, pierced ears, wearing an all-weather jacket and boots. Accompanying objects: silver Mercedes, registration TF-BS 700, and greyish brown cocker spaniel with harness’.

  A few hours later, shortly before midnight, a helicopter circled the woods with a thermal-imaging camera. Accustomed to the steady drone of the motorway, the people of Ludwigsfelde wondered whether something had happened—perhaps a road accident.

  Heinrich Scholl walked around among the trees with a torch. It was the middle of the night; the woods were dark and deep. The retired superintendent, who was also troubled by the events, saw Heinrich Scholl and invited him to patrol the roads with him—not a trace of the car. The superintendent gave Heinrich Scholl a lift home and kept him company for a little while. Heinrich Scholl drank red wine and more red wine, and he smoked again. At about half past two, he fell asleep.

  Three hours later he was woken by the ringing of his phone. His son wanted to know whether his mother had turned up, and announced that he was setting off for Ludwigsfelde. Heinrich Scholl lay down again and tried to get some more sleep. It was just gone six, the time when Brigitte Scholl usually got back from her morning walk with Ursus. All was quiet in the house.

  The morning passed with phone calls and visits. Another policeman came by and questioned Heinrich Scholl about his wife’s habits—what she did, where she spent her weekends. Scholl told him about her son and her friends—and how she liked to go to the Bleiche at the weekends, a health farm in the Spree Woods, but that she’d hardly been lately, because of the dog. The policeman suggested cancelling her debit card and ringing the Bleiche. A patrol car drove through the forest area and the town centre.

  Heinrich Scholl asked the vet Werner Singer*, a friend of the family, to help him look for Gitti. Singer was a huntsman; he knew the woods. He wanted to set off immediately, but Heinrich Scholl preferred to wait for his son, Frank. At about two, the three of them drove to the woods in the vet’s pick-up truck, past the cemetery entrance and along the main road towards Siethen, stopping just short of the asparagus field—exactly the same way Brigitte Scholl had driven the day before. By now, more than twenty-four hours had passed; the sky was as grey as the day before, the air damp. The men wore sturdy footwear and all-weather jackets. They searched on both sides of the forest path for clues, for some kind of sign; they called her name. Gitti. Brigitte. Mum.

  No reply. Nothing.

  They searched for an hour. Vet and son were ready to turn back, but Heinrich Scholl wanted to keep going until darkness fell, and suggested looking in another part of the woods where Brigitte Scholl also liked to walk. They had just set off when Frank stopped in his tracks as if struck by lightning and stared at the forest floor, where two shoes, two black women’s shoes, stood neatly one beside the other, like on the shelf in his parents’ hall.

  ‘There’s something here,’ he called. ‘There are shoes here.’ Heinrich Scholl and the vet approached. The three of them stared at the shoes. The vet explored the surrounding area and discovered, not far away, two mossy mounds. One was small and round, the other bigger and longer. Peeping out of the big one were two feet; out of the smaller one, copper-coloured fur.

  The ambulance was first on the scene; then came the police and forensics. Heinrich Scholl had to vomit and asked for a tranquilliser. An extensive area was cordoned off; forensics got to work; the police began their inquiries. There was no longer any doubt—and soon half the town would know. Brigitte Scholl, the former mayor’s wife, was dead, murdered on a walk in the woods in broad daylight.

  A sex murder, people thought. A compulsive offender going the rounds. For days, policemen searched the woods and flew over Ludwigsfelde in helicopters. Parents wouldn’t let their children out of the house by themselves, joggers changed their routes, rumours circulated about Eastern European gangs, the Russian mafia and robber-murderers. Every suspicious car, every unfamiliar person was reported. The New Year’s Eve fireworks seemed a little quieter this year.

  Heinrich Scholl appeared spaced out, as if stunned. His son stayed with him for the first days; they discussed the most important things. On 31 December there was a ring at the door. Friends of the Scholls had come to the New Year’s Eve party with sparkling wine and doughnuts. Brigitte Scholl had invited them a week before, when everything was still all right. They hadn’t heard anything; they stood on the doorstep like visitors from another age. Heinrich Scholl said: ‘Gitti’s dead and the dog too.’ He couldn’t say any more, he told them; the police were still investigating. A few days later, a death notice appeared in the local newspaper, expressing, in effect, Scholl’s wish to be left alone by the public. ‘In silent mourning. Closest family and friends only to attend the urn burial.’

  That Brigitte Scholl had made preparations for her funeral while she was still alive came as a surprise to Heinrich Scholl; his wife hadn’t mentioned it to him. She wanted a modest urn burial and a plain gravestone with her name on it. Only her closest friends and relations were to attend; Frank was to give the eulogy.
The deceased woman’s instructions were cautiously conveyed to Heinrich Scholl by Herr Klotz, the funeral director from across the road. It was a final message from his wife and it was not a message of love. Brigitte Scholl had insisted on having the grave to herself, even after his death. For forty-seven years they had shared a table and a bed; in the end, she cast him out.

  The funeral was small and oppressive. It was over three weeks since they had found Brigitte Scholl in the woods and it still wasn’t clear what had happened or why. The police didn’t seem to be getting anywhere with their investigations; the rumours were getting wilder and wilder. There was talk of a mutilated corpse, of the Thai mafia, of Polish gangs and political conspiracies. While her friends and family stood here in the cemetery, the murderer was at large.

  Frank spoke a few tearful words. Heinrich Scholl was pale and silent; his wreath was the largest. On the bow it said: ‘Lovingly, your Heiner.’

  Two days later—the flowers were still fresh—a task force drew up outside the wooden house in Rathenau Strasse. When Heinrich Scholl opened the door, he saw local policemen who played on his football team—also plain clothes police and men in white protective suits, who had been instructed to search his house. The public prosecutor handed him a warrant for his arrest: he was under strong suspicion of the heinous murder of his wife. Heinrich Scholl was able to pack his tablets and his identity card. Then he was led away.