by Nele Neuhaus
No reaction. Had she run away?
Emma went to the front door. No, the key was in the keyhole, and the door was locked. She always did this now, because one time she’d accidentally locked herself out. Louisa had run around the apartment screaming in panic until Mr. Grasser appeared and opened the old-fashioned door using a picklock.
It just couldn’t be true. Emma needed to pull herself together and think calmly. But what she most wanted to do was scream. She always had to be so considerate of others—but sometimes she wondered if anyone was ever considerate of her.
“Louisa?”
She went into Louisa’s bedroom. The wardrobe wasn’t closed all the way. She opened the door and gave a start of surprise when she spied her daughter cowering under the clothes and jackets hanging inside. She had her thumb in her mouth and was staring into space.
“Oh, sweetie!” Emma squatted down. “What are you doing in here?”
No answer. The girl sucked harder on her thumb, at the same time rubbing her forefinger over her nose, which was already quite red.
“Don’t you want to go downstairs and see Grandma and Grandpa? Don’t you want any carrot cake with whipped cream?”
Vigorous head shaking.
“Wouldn’t you at least like to come out of the wardrobe?”
More head shaking.
Emma felt helpless, at a complete loss. What was happening to her daughter? Should Louisa be seeing a child psychologist? What fears were tormenting her?
“You know what? I’m going to call Grandma and tell her we’re not coming. And then I’ll sit down and read you a story. Okay?”
Louisa nodded timidly without looking at her.
With an effort, Emma got up and went to the telephone. Anger was now mixed with her concern. If she found out that Florian had actually done something to Louisa, then God help him!
She called her mother-in-law and said they couldn’t come to tea because Louisa wasn’t feeling well. She quickly cut short Renate’s disappointed laments; she had no desire to make excuses.
Louisa was still sitting in the wardrobe when she came back.
“What book do you want me to read to you?” Emma asked.
“Franz Hahn and Johnny Mauser,” Louisa mumbled without taking her thumb out of her mouth. Emma looked for the book on the shelf, moved the beanbag chair over next to the bed, and sat down.
It was extremely uncomfortable to sit on the floor in her condition. First her left leg went to sleep, then her right. But she bravely kept reading, because it was doing Louisa good. She stopped sucking her thumb, and then she crept out of the wardrobe and cuddled up in Emma’s arm so she could look at the book, too. She was laughing and enjoying the pictures, which she knew by heart. When Emma closed the book, Louisa sighed and closed her eyes.
“Mama?”
“Yes, my sweet?” Emma tenderly caressed her daughter’s cheek. She was so small and innocent, her soft skin so translucent that Emma could see the veins in her temples.
“I don’t ever want to go away from you, Mama. I’m so scared of the bad wolf.”
Emma caught her breath.
“You mustn’t be afraid.” She had to make an effort to keep her voice calm and sound firm. “No wolf is ever going to come here.”
“Yes, he does,” Louisa whispered sleepily. “Every time you’re away. But it’s a secret. I can’t tell you because then he’ll eat me up.”
* * *
In the morning, they had taken Bernd Prinzler before the judge and then transferred him from the holding cell at the police station, where he’d spent the night, to the remand prison in Preungesheim. It took almost half an hour before they brought him to the visitors’ room where Pia and Christian were waiting. The two guards who accompanied him were taller than Pia, but Prinzler was more than a head taller than they were. Pia was prepared for a difficult conversation. The man had years of prison experience, and the atmosphere of the prison wouldn’t intimidate him in the least—not like someone who had spent his first night in a jail cell and was feeling alarmed about being locked up. Men like Prinzler usually didn’t say a word; at most, they might refer all questions to their lawyers.
“Hello, Mr. Prinzler,” said Pia. “My name is Pia Kirchhoff, and this is my colleague Chief Detective Inspector Kröger. K-11 Hofheim.”
There was no visible emotion on Prinzler’s face, but in his brown eyes Pia saw an expression of concern and tension that surprised her.
“Please have a seat.” She turned to the two guards. “Thank you. Would you mind waiting outside?”
Prinzler sat down on the chair with his legs apart, crossed his tattooed arms, and fixed his steady gaze on Pia.
“What do you guys want with me?” he asked as the key turned in the lock from outside. “What’s this all about anyway?” His voice was deep and rough.
“We’re investigating the murder of Leonie Verges,” said Pia. “A witness saw you and a second man coming out of Ms. Verges’s house on the evening that her body was discovered. What were you doing there?”
“When we got to the house, she was already dead,” he replied. “I called one one zero from my cell and reported the body.”
After this promising beginning, he refused to answer any more of the questions that Pia and Christian took turns asking.
“Why were you at Ms. Verges’s house?”
“How did you happen to know her?”
“Your car was observed multiple times at Ms. Verges’s house. What were you doing there?”
“Who was the man who accompanied you?”
“When was the last time you spoke to Kilian Rothemund?”
“What were you doing on the night of the twenty-fourth of June?”
Finally, he deigned to open his mouth.
“Why do you want to know that?”
“That night, the TV host Hanna Herzmann was attacked, beaten, and brutally raped.”
Pia noticed a flicker in Prinzler’s eyes. His jaw muscles were tensing, and his neck muscles were noticeably taut.
“I have no need to rape women. And I’ve never beaten one, either. On the twenty-fourth I was at a bikers’ convention. There are about five hundred people who can testify to that.”
He still hadn’t denied that he knew Hanna Herzmann.
“On the evening mentioned, why did you accompany Kilian Rothemund to Ms. Herzmann’s house?”
Pia hadn’t expected Bernd Prinzler to be a chatterbox, but her patience, which is the highest virtue an investigator can have, was being sorely tested. Time was running out.
“Listen, Mr. Prinzler,” said Pia, taking an unconventional tack. “My colleague and I do not consider you a suspect in either case. I think you’re trying to cover up for someone or protect him. I can understand that. But we’re looking for a dangerous psychopath who abused, violated, and drowned a young girl before the Main spit her out like a piece of garbage. You have children yourself, and something like this could happen to them.”
Prinzler’s eyes showed surprise, and respect.
Pia went on. “Hanna Herzmann was bestially violated with the handle of an umbrella and so severely injured that she almost bled to death. Then they locked her in the trunk of her car, and she was very lucky to have survived. Leonie Verges was tied to a chair. Somebody watched her die of thirst; a video camera recorded and transmitted her agonizing death. I would be very grateful if you could somehow help us find and arrest the perpetrator or perpetrators and bring them to justice.”
“If you help me get out of here,” replied Prinzler, “then I can help you, too.”
“If it were up to us, you could go right now.” Pia gave a rueful shrug. “But there are higher powers involved.”
“It doesn’t bother me to hang around here for a few days,” he said. “There are no warrants for my arrest. My lawyer will appeal, and I’ll even get paid for the days I was here.”
His face with the neatly trimmed beard seemed almost carved out of stone, but the expression in his eyes b
elied his inscrutable façade. This man had countless hearings and interrogations behind him; he was used to a rough way of speaking and certainly had no scruples. Yet he was worried—very worried. The person he was trying to protect must be someone close to his heart. Pia decided to take a shot in the dark.
“If you’re worried about your family, I can arrange for them to have police protection,” she said.
The thought of police protection for his family seemed to amuse Prinzler; a tiny smile twitched at the corners of his mouth but vanished immediately.
“I’d rather you see about getting me out of here today.” He gave her an urgent and stern look. “I have a permanent residence, so I’m not going to split.”
“Then answer our questions,” Christian told him.
Prinzler ignored him. It showed his great self-confidence that he would let down his guard and practically beg a cop bitch to help him. Men of his caliber normally had nothing but contempt for the police.
“Someone saw you at the site where Ms. Herzmann was found in the trunk of her car. Tomorrow there will be a lineup with the witness.”
“I already told you where I was that night.” Prinzler was avoiding the insults, macho behavior, and biker slang that were doubtless his normal modus operandi. He was an intelligent man who had retired after fourteen years spent handling the daily business of the Road Kings. He now lived in a paradise, far from the strip clubs and dives of the red-light district that had once been his home. Why? What had caused him to change his life like that? Pia guessed he was in his mid-fifties. At the time, he must have been somewhere in his late thirties—not an age at which somebody like Bernd Prinzler would simply retire. And although he seemed to have left his criminal days behind, he was still doing everything he could to remain invisible. Who was he hiding from? And once again, a big “Why?”
Time passed, and for a moment no one said a word.
Pia broke the silence. “Why did Erik Lessing have to die? What did he know?”
Prinzler had his poker face well under control, but he couldn’t help his eyebrows from reflexively rising.
“That’s exactly what this is all about,” he said roughly.
“What do you mean by that?” Pia asked. She didn’t avoid his gaze.
“Think about it,” replied Prinzler. “That’s all I’m saying without my lawyer present.”
* * *
She was pissed off—totally pissed off—and insulted.
What was the idea of that asshole, giving her the brush-off like that? Tears of rage were burning in Meike’s eyes as she went down the stairs, her back rigid.
After visiting Hanna, she had driven out to see Wolfgang in Oberursel. She didn’t know why he had become so important to her or why she had the feeling that he was lying to her. Where did the distrust come from? When he told her on the phone that she couldn’t stay overnight at his place because his father had visitors, she hadn’t believed him.
But the driveway and the neatly raked gravel forecourt were both jammed with parked cars—Big fancy ones from Karlsruhe, Munich, Stuttgart, Hamburg, Berlin, even from abroad. Okay, so Wolfgang hadn’t lied. She stood there for a while, trying to decide whether she should simply drive off or ring the bell. Wolfgang knew that she was sitting home alone. If there was a party at his house, he could have at least invited her. Hanna always received an invitation to every occasion.
Meike looked at the big old house that she loved so much. The high mullioned windows, the dark green shutters, the half-hipped roof covered with reddish beaver-tail tiles, the eight front steps leading up to the dark green double door, on which a brass lion’s head knocker was mounted. The lavender bushes in front of the house gave off an intense fragrance on this warm evening, reminding Meike of vacations in southern France. Hanna who had brought back the lavender from Provence for Wolfgang’s mother many years ago.
She had often come here with Hanna, and in her memory the house seemed like the epitome of security and safety. But now Aunt Christine was dead, and Hanna was in the hospital looking more dead than alive. And Meike had nobody waiting for her, nobody she could turn to in order to feel safe and protected. Yet it was true that Wolfgang had developed into the most important person in her life, a sort of father figure, for whom she felt the deepest trust. Her stepfathers had come and gone, viewing her as nothing more than a troublesome but unavoidable appendage to Hanna, and her own father had married a jealous shrew.
Meike cast a last look at the house; then she turned around to leave. At that moment, a black Maybach drove up the driveway and stopped right in front of the steps. A slim white-haired man got out, and his eyes met hers. She smiled and waved and registered with astonishment the expression of displeasure that passed over the suntanned face of Peter Weissbecker. Peter was an old acquaintance of Hanna, an actor and master of ceremonies who was a legend on German television. Meike had known him all her life. Of course she found it a bit silly to call him Uncle Pitti now that she was twenty-four, but that’s what she’d always called him.
“Little Meike! How wonderful to see you,” he said with feigned enthusiasm. “Tell me, is your mother here, too?” He gave her a clumsy hug.
“No, Mama is in the hospital,” she said, linking arms with him.
“Oh no, I’m so sorry. Is it something serious?”
She walked up the steps with him. The front door swung open and there stood Wolfgang’s father. She could see from his expression that he, too, was not happy to see her. At least he made no pretense about his displeasure, unlike Uncle Pitti, the professional stage actor.
“What are you doing here?” Hartmut Matern reproached Meike.
A slap wouldn’t have hurt more than this surly greeting.
“Hello, Uncle Hartmut. I happened to be in the neighborhood,” Meike lied. “I just wanted to stop by and say hello.”
“This evening is not a good time,” said Hartmut. “I have guests, as you can see.”
Meike stared at him, dumbfounded. He had never before spoken to her with such rudeness. Wolfgang came up behind him. He seemed nervous and tense. His father and Uncle Pitti went inside the house, leaving her standing there like a stranger without saying good-bye or even sending a greeting to Hanna. Meike was deeply hurt.
“What’s going on here?” she asked. “Some sort of stag party? Or was Mama invited, too?”
Wolfgang grabbed her by the arm and ushered her down the stairs.
“Meike, please. Today is a very bad time.” He spoke quietly, as if he didn’t want anyone else to hear. “It’s sort of … sort of a shareholders’ meeting. To discuss business.”
It was a smooth attempt to lie, but so obvious that it hurt her more than the humiliating feeling of being more or less thrown out.
“Why don’t you answer the phone when I call?” Meike hated the tone of her own voice. She wanted to be cool, but she sounded like a hysterical, jealous bitch.
“In the past week, I’ve had so much to do. Please, Meike, don’t make a scene,” he implored her.
“I most certainly will not make a scene,” she snorted in fury. “I just thought you meant what you said, that I could come here anytime.”
Wolfgang hemmed and hawed, stammering something about a crisis meeting and restructuring. What a lame excuse.
Meike yanked her arm away from his grasp. She was hugely disappointed.
“All right, I get it. It was all just talk to ease your guilty conscience. Actually, I don’t give a shit. Have fun tonight.”
“Meike, wait! Please. It’s not like that.”
She kept walking, hoping that he would follow her and apologize or something, but when she melodramatically turned around to forgive him, he’d gone back inside the house and closed the door. Never before had she felt so alone and shut out. It was devastating to realize that these people had never felt any real affection or friendliness for her. They had merely accepted her because she was the ugly, irritating daughter of the famous Hanna Herzmann.
Meike trudged a
long the driveway, fighting back tears of rage. Before she went out to the street, she shot a few photos of the parked cars with her iPhone. If this was a shareholders’ meeting, then she was Lady Gaga. Something was going on here, and she was going to find out what it was. Fucking idiots!
* * *
“Good God!” Pia tilted her head back and gazed up at the façade of a gray apartment block on the Hattersheimer Schillerring. “I had no idea he lived here now.”
“Why? Where did he live before?” asked Christian Kröger. He was standing at the street door, squinting at the long list of tenants.
“In an old building in Sachsenhausen,” Pia recalled. “Not far from the apartment where Henning and I used to live.”
That was the address the computer had spit out as Frank Behnke’s current place of residence. She had told her boss she was going home, but she and Christian had met twenty minutes later in the parking lot of the Real Market in Hattersheim. It caused her no great pangs of conscience to keep secrets from Bodenstein. Whatever role he might have played in this story, she was sure that he had not been directly involved. So in that respect, it was none of his business if she decided to question a few people behind his back.
“Okay, I found him,” said Christian. “What should I say?”
“Just tell him your name,” Pia suggested. “You’ve never had any trouble with him.”
Her colleague pressed the doorbell, and seconds later someone croaked “Hello?” and Christian answered. The door opener buzzed, and they went into the foyer, which may have been old but was kept up better than the ugly concrete block would suggest from the outside. The elevator was vintage 1976, according to the manufacturer’s nameplate, and the sounds that it emitted on the trip to the seventeenth floor did not arouse confidence. The hall smelled of food and cleaning products; the walls were painted in a hideous ocher color, which made the windowless corridor look drearier than it was.
Pia, who remembered all too well Behnke’s profound abhorrence of these kinds of housing projects and their inhabitants, felt a hint of sympathy at the thought that he was now living among them.