by Nele Neuhaus
He stated that he’d known Hanna for many years and that their relationship was friendly but professional. Pia listened in silence. Matern was a businessman through and through, polite, noncommittal, and slippery as an eel. Given the fact that Hanna Herzmann was the ratings queen of the station, and the station did own 30 percent of Herzmann Productions, it would not be in Matern’s interest to lose his cash cow on a long-term basis. Just as Pia was about to ask him about Kilian Rothemund and Bernd Prinzler, her cell rang. Christoph! Her thoughts flew to Lilly. She hoped nothing had happened. Whenever Christoph knew she was in the midst of a sensitive investigation, he almost never called her, but sent a text instead.
“Hi, Pia.” She heard Lilly’s voice and was relieved. “I haven’t seen you in so long.”
“Hi, Lilly.” Pia lowered her voice and moved to the other side of the conference table. “We saw each other last night. Where are you now?”
“In Grandpa’s office. You know what, Pia? I got a tick! In my hair. But Grandpa operated and got rid of it.”
“Yikes. Did it hurt?” Pia had to smile as she turned to face the wall. She listened to Lilly for a while, then promised her she’d get home earlier.
“Grandpa wants me to tell you that we’re making a reeeeeally delicious potato salad.”
“Well, that’s one more reason to get home early.”
Pia saw Bodenstein signaling to her that he was leaving. She said good-bye to Lilly and stuck the phone in the back pocket of her jeans. She was truly sorry that the little girl would have to leave soon.
“I find it odd that no one on Hanna’s staff knows anything about her research nor do any of her other colleagues,” Pia said to her boss as they left the office and headed for their car. “And the daughter seems really suspect. How could anyone have so little sympathy for her own mother?”
She was not satisfied at all with the results of her conversations. Seldom had an investigation moved so sluggishly as with the two current cases. At their morning meeting, Commissioner Engel had put the pressure on for the first time, and rightly so, because there’d been no progress in either the Mermaid case or Hanna Herzmann’s. Bodenstein had asked his colleagues in Hanau for their cooperation. A round-the-clock stakeout of the box at the Hanau post office seemed to be their last chance to learn the whereabouts of Bernd Prinzler. An examination of the records of all Residential Registry offices in all of Germany had produced no satisfactory results.
“After Germany’s Most Wanted is broadcast on Wednesday night, something will happen,” Bodenstein prophesied. “I know it.”
“All right, your word in God’s ear,” replied Pia drily, unlocking the car. She looked up because she sensed someone was watching them. Meike Herzmann was standing at a window on the sixth floor, staring down at them.
“I’m going to get you, too,” Pia murmured. “I’m not going to let you get away with lying to me.”
* * *
Emma’s in-laws had already left for the airport by the time Emma got home after her meeting. All morning, the strange encounter with Helga Grasser had been on her mind. Of course she could have called Florian and asked him directly why he’d never told her about having a twin sister. But after everything that had happened lately, she simply couldn’t bring herself to do that.
Emma hesitated when she reached her in-laws’ front door. The door was never locked, and she could come and go as she pleased. Still she felt like an intruder as she stepped into the house and looked around. Renate kept her photo albums in the living room cabinet. They were arranged by year, and Emma started with the album from 1964, the year Florian was born. An hour later, she had leafed through dozens of albums. She had seen pictures of Florian, his foster and adopted siblings, and a zillion other children at all ages, but no girls that looked like they might be Florian’s twin sister.
With a mixture of disappointment and relief, Emma broke off her search and left her in-laws’ house. Had Corinna been right? Was Helga Grasser really just a crazy old woman who liked to tell stories? But why had she changed the details in the fairy tale about the wolf and the seven kids? Emma stuck the key in the lock of the door to the apartment. Why had she spoken of only six kids? Had she meant Florian and his siblings? Florian, Corinna, Sarah, Nicky, Ralf—if so, then one was missing. But who? Emma’s gaze shifted to the wooden stairs that led to the attic. She’d been up there only once, when Renate had shown her the house. Hadn’t Helga Grasser mentioned an attic in her fairy-tale version?
Emma pulled the key back out of the lock and climbed up the narrow steps. The plywood door was stuck and she had to press her shoulder against it until it swung open with an awful creak. Stuffy, hot air gusted toward her. The heat of the past few days had accumulated beneath the poorly insulated roof. Scant light came through the tiny attic window, but it was bright enough for her to see carefully stacked moving cartons, discarded furniture, and all sorts of other junk that had piled up over forty years. A thick layer of dust covered the creaky wooden floor, and spiderwebs hung from the rafters. The whole attic smelled of wood, dust, and mothballs.
At a loss, Emma looked around and then pushed aside a moth-eaten velvet curtain that was fastened to a crossbeam. She gave a start when she saw a woman facing her in the dim half-light, and it took a few seconds before she realized that she was looking at her own reflection. A large mirror was leaning against the wall. Its glass had turned cloudy over time. Behind the curtain, there were also crates and cartons, all meticulously labeled. Winter jackets, a Carrera racecourse, Playmobil, wooden toys, receipts, Florian’s books, Corinna’s schoolwork, baby clothes, Halloween costumes, Christmas tree ornaments, and Christmas cards from 1973 to 1983.
Josef and Renate wouldn’t be back from Berlin until tomorrow, so she had plenty of time to look through all the boxes and chests of drawers. But where to start?
Finally, Emma pulled out a box labeled Florian: kindergarten, grammar school, high school. She had to sneeze when she opened the lid. Her mother-in-law had certainly saved everything: notebooks, schoolbooks, Florian’s artwork, receipts for school milk, swimming awards, programs from school plays, even a gym bag with the initials FF cross-stitched on it. Emma leafed through one notebook after another, looking at the clumsy writing, the fading ink. Did Florian know that these relics of his childhood still existed?
Emma closed the box and put it back in place, then moved on, looking at scratched furniture, rickety children’s chairs, an old-fashioned baby scale, a wonderful antique typewriter that would probably bring a tidy sum on eBay. She kept sneezing; her T-shirt was sticking to her back and her eyes were itching. She was just about to give up, when she spied a carton hidden beneath the sloping ceiling behind the bricked-up fireplace. She didn’t recognize the name that was printed on the side in big block letters, and it aroused her curiosity. She squatted down, which was not easy in her condition, pulled out the carton, and opened it. Unlike Florian’s carefully packed childhood memories, this box looked as though someone had simply tossed everything inside. Books, notebooks, drawings, a doll, stuffed animals, photos, documents, articles of clothing, a flowered poetry album with a lock, a red hood. Emma lifted out a shoe box, opened it, and pulled out a black-and-white photo with a white border like people had in the sixties. Her heart skipped a beat and then started racing in a wild staccato. The photo showed a smiling Renate with two little blond children on her lap, and in the foreground two cakes, each with two candles. Emma turned the photo over, fingers trembling. Florian and Michaela, 2nd birthday, December 16, 1966 was written on the back.
* * *
Back at her desk, Pia typed in “Wolfgang Matern + Antenne Pro” into Google. She instantly got hundreds of hits. Wolfgang Matern, born 1965, was the son of Dr. Hartmut Matern, the noted media mogul. He was one of the first to see the lucrative possibilities of commercial television in Germany, and he exploited the opportunity to amass a fortune. Even today, Matern senior, at seventy-eight, held the office of chairman of a diversified holding com
pany, which owned various commercial television and cable networks as well as numerous other firms. The company also held part interests in other enterprises. Wolfgang had studied business administration and political science, earning a doctorate in the latter. On the Web site of the Matern Group, which was headquartered in Frankfurt am Main, he was listed as a member of the board, in addition to being the program director and chief operating officer of several commercial broadcast stations that belonged to the company conglomerate. Pia found innumerable photos of him, most of which showed him with his father at various public events, lectures, awards dinners, or television galas. The Web had absolutely nothing to say about the private lives of the Materns. As genuine media professionals, they no doubt knew how to protect themselves from intrusive scrutiny. Not much changed when she entered Wolfgang Matern’s name by itself. A sheer waste of time.
There was no news from the hospital; Hanna Herzmann was still not able to be questioned. Kilian Rothemund remained at large, and at the Hanau post office, no one had yet come to pick up the mail from Prinzler’s box.
Since she had nothing better to do, Pia searched all the available social networks, but Wolfgang Matern was not on XING, Facebook, or Classmates.com.
“Do you have any other ideas where I might find information about this man?” Pia asked her colleague.
Kai rattled off a few sites without looking up from his monitor: LinkedIn, 123people, Yasni, CYLEX, firma-24.de.
“Tried them already.” Pia leaned back in resignation, clasping her hands behind her head. “Damn it, this guy was my last hope. Why does it all seem so mysterious? Somebody must know what Hanna Herzmann was working on. Why can’t I find what it was?”
“Did you already check out the daughter?”
“Yeah, of course. But she seems to have almost no presence online.”
“Try Stayfriends,” Kai suggested, looking up. “Oh man, I’m as hungry as a bear. Got any snacks?”
“Nope. You scarfed down my last bag of chips. Go and find some food before you start getting grouchy.” Pia put her fingers on the keyboard again and entered the Web address of Stayfriends: www.stayfriends.de.
“Kebab or burger?” Kai asked, getting up from his chair.
“Kebab. Extra spicy, with double meat and feta,” Pia replied. “I knew it!”
“What?”
“I knew something was fishy about this Wolfgang Matern.” Pia grinned in triumph and pointed at her screen. “He’s actually registered at Stayfriends, just like Hanna Herzmann. And get this: Those two went to the same school, yet he swore that their relationship was only professional. Why would he do that?”
“Maybe he’s afraid of getting involved in something,” Kai guessed. “Be right back.”
Pia focused all her attention on the site. She clicked on the profiles of Hanna Herzmann and Wolfgang Matern as well as the 1982 class photo of the eleventh grade of the Königshofen private high school in Niedernhausen. Since she wasn’t a “gold member,” she couldn’t see any more details on the site, but it didn’t matter. The connection was there, and Wolfgang Matern had lied to Bodenstein. He had known Hanna Herzmann better and longer than he’d claimed. Even more important, he and Hanna had studied at the Ludwig-Maximilian University in Munich and were both members of the same alumni club from their secondary school. Pia spent the next hour and a half going through photos of Hanna Herzmann on the Web; unfortunately, there were thousands of them. She was finishing off the rest of her cold kebab when she found what she was looking for. It was a photo from 1998 that had appeared in an illustrated magazine, and it showed a radiant Hanna in her wedding dress with her second or third husband. On the other side of her stood Wolfgang Matern, and in front of him was Meike as a sullen, chubby preteen. Wolfgang Matern (34), son of media mogul Hartmut Matern, close friend of the bride and godfather of her daughter Meike (12), acted as witness read the caption.
“Ha!” Pia exclaimed as she clicked on the photo and sent it to the printer. She was already extremely curious about what the program director of Antenne Pro would say. With the still-warm printout, she went to Bodenstein’s office and almost ran into him in the doorway.
“Look what I—” she began, but Bodenstein interrupted her.
“Kilian Rothemund’s motor scooter was found at the main train station and impounded,” he said brusquely. “And a witness recognized Rothemund. He got on an intercity express to Amsterdam at ten-forty-four this morning. I spoke with our Dutch colleagues, and they’ll be waiting for him when he arrives at five-twenty-two this afternoon. If we’re lucky, we’ll have him in custody in a few hours.”
* * *
Meike had opened all the windows in the apartment to get some air flowing through. She was sweating even though she was wearing only a bra and slip. At the office, nobody had noticed when she took Hanna’s computer home with her. Even the supersmart blond cop chick hadn’t thought of that computer. Since this morning, Meike had found herself with plenty of time on her hands because she no longer had a job. Irina and Jan had promised to keep her on the payroll at the company; everyone else had been forced to take their annual vacation until it was clear whether Hanna would be able to appear before a camera again. Antenne Pro was fair: no replacement show was aired in her time slot; instead, there were reruns of In Depth.
Yesterday had been one of the best in Meike’s life: breakfast at the magnificent villa in Oberursel, lunch at the Schwarzenstein fortress in the Rheingau, riding in the Aston Martin convertible, and champagne in the evening on the terrace of the Hotel Frankfurter Hof with a view of the illuminated bank skyscrapers. Meike had never experienced anything like it. She had noticed people casting curious glances in her direction, obviously wondering whether she and Wolfgang were a couple. An age difference of more than twenty years was nothing unusual; lots of women dated much older men. Wolfgang was her godfather; she’d known him ever since she could remember, and had never viewed him in any other way. Until today. Suddenly, she’d noticed what nice hands he had and how good he smelled. She’d had to force herself not to keep staring at his lips and his hands. Once she started thinking about what it must be like to kiss him and sleep with him, she couldn’t get the idea out of her mind. She’d never been truly in love. She hadn’t even had a serious boyfriend, and she didn’t have much to be proud of when it came to her few adventures with the opposite sex. Yesterday, she’d gotten a glimpse of how wonderful it could be to belong to someone. Wolfgang was so solicitous and charming: he’d opened the car door for her, pulled out the chair for her, focused all his attention on her, his arm around her shoulder.
She’d lain awake half the night analyzing every word that Wolfgang had said. He had held out the prospect of an internship at Antenne Pro, although she had not yet completed her studies. But he thought she would be perfect for the position, since she’d already gained a great deal of experience by working at a TV station. Why had he done that? Because she was Hanna’s daughter? If Meike thought carefully about it, he hadn’t really said or done anything that could be interpreted as an expression of love. He had simply been nice to her. The euphoric feeling of happiness in which she had indulged herself all day had then turned to disappointment. Her hormones went crazy as soon as a man was nice to her. Clear proof of her own shortcomings.
“Ouch!” Meike hit her head as she was untangling the cables underneath the desk and fumbling the right plugs into the right slots on the back of Hanna’s computer. Fortunately, the friend whose apartment she was looking after had left her own computer along with the monitor, mouse, and keyboard on her desk. Meike rubbed the sore spot on her head and booted up Hanna’s computer. It worked. She clicked on the menu and configured the WLAN in the system settings. In a few moments, she was online. First, she checked her mother’s Facebook fan site, which Irina managed and supplied with content. No word of the attack or the hospital. Irina would certainly delete any posting that might mention such details. On Google, she found no new entry, either; the latest update referred t
o the broadcast with the ridiculed candidates and the summer special. Next in line were the e-mails. Over a hundred new messages were waiting in the in-box of the business account, and fourteen had come into the private address. One name instantly caught Meike’s eye, and she stopped short. Kilian Rothemund! What did her mother have to do with that child molester?
She clicked on the e-mail and read the brief text, which had been sent on Saturday at 11:43 A.M.
Hanna, why don’t you answer? Did something happen? Did I say or do something that made you mad? Please call me. Unfortunately, I can’t talk to Leonie anymore. She’s not answering, either, but on Monday I’m still going to go to A and meet with the people with whom B got in contact. They are finally ready to talk to me. I’m thinking of you. Don’t forget me. K.
What the hell did all that mean? Meike stared helplessly at the screen, reading the mail over and over. I’m thinking of you. Don’t forget me. What was going on between Rothemund and her mother? She had no doubt that “K” stood for Kilian Rothemund, who had put the note with the address of that rabid biker gang in Langensebold in Hanna’s mail slot, but none of it made any sense. What did Leonie Verges have to do with Kilian Rothemund and Hanna? Had Hanna been working on a story about the Frankfurt Road Kings? Rothemund used to be a lawyer, and he knew the bikers because he’d represented them. But this lying therapist didn’t fit in the picture.
Meike rested her chin on her hand to think. Should she call up Wolfgang and tell him about the e-mail? No. This morning, he had promised to call her. She wasn’t going to play the fool and keep calling him like some infatuated teenager.
Maybe there were more e-mails. Normally, Hanna downloaded her mail to her laptop, but with luck, she hadn’t done so since Thursday. Meike carefully went through all the folders on the computer. Her mother was the type of user who was a horror for computer nerds. She almost never deleted anything, and she backed up data according to a system that was purely intuitive and illogical. After an hour, Meike gave up in disappointment. For a few minutes, she sat there thinking. If she wanted to find out more, then she would have to go talk to that therapist again.