The Ice Queen: A Novel

by Nele Neuhaus

  Then she looked again at her son.

  “Elard, this is Detective Superintendent von Bodenstein from the Kripo in Hofheim, Gabriela’s son-in-law. And this is his colleague … Please forgive me, I didn’t catch your name.”

  Before Pia could say a word, Elard Kaltensee spoke up. His smoky voice had a pleasant, melodious sound.

  “Ms. Kirchhoff.” He astonished her with his phenomenal memory for names. “It’s been quite a while since we last met. How is your husband?”

  Professor Elard Kaltensee, Pia thought. Of course she knew him. He was an art historian and for many years had been the dean of his department at the university in Frankfurt. As acting head of the Institute of Forensic Medicine, her ex-husband, Henning, also belonged to the faculty of the university, so she had occasionally attended functions at which Elard Kaltensee had also been present. Pia remembered hearing a rumor that he was a ladies’ man and had a preference for young female artists. He had to be over sixty now, she realized, but he was still attractive, albeit in a somewhat dissipated way.

  “Thank you for asking.” Pia omitted mentioning that she and Henning had divorced two months ago. “He’s doing fine.”

  “Herrmann has been murdered,” Vera Kaltensee remarked. Her voice was quavering again. “That’s why the police are here.”

  “Oh no,” said Elard Kaltensee, raising his eyebrows. “When did it happen?”

  “Late last night or in the early-morning hours today,” said Bodenstein. “He was shot in the foyer of his house.”

  “That’s terrible.” Professor Kaltensee received the news without any visible emotion, and Pia wondered whether he might know something about Schneider’s Nazi past. But she could hardly ask. Not here and not now.

  “Your mother has already told us that Mr. Schneider was a good friend of your late father,” said Bodenstein. Pia noticed the glance that Elard Kaltensee cast at his mother. She thought she noticed a trace of amusement in his expression.

  “That’s right,” he replied.

  “We’re assuming there’s a connection with the murder of David Goldberg,” Bodenstein went on. “At both scenes, we found a number that presents us with a riddle. Someone had written ‘one one six four five’ using the victims’ blood.”

  Vera Kaltensee uttered a choking sound.

  “One one six four five?” her son repeated thoughtfully. “That could—”

  “Oh, it’s so horrible! This is all too much for me!” Vera Kaltensee burst out, covering her eyes with her right hand. Her narrow shoulders shook, and she began sobbing. In sympathy, Bodenstein took her left hand and said softly that they could continue the conversation later. Pia, however, was not watching her, but her son. Elard Kaltensee made no move to console his mother, whose sobs had grown louder. Instead, he went to the sideboard and calmly poured himself a cognac. His face was completely unmoved, but his eyes revealed what Pia could only describe as contempt.

  * * *

  His heart was pounding, and he stepped back a bit when he heard the footsteps on the other side of the door. Then the front door swung open. The sight of Katharina took his breath away once more. She was wearing a pink linen dress and a white jacket, her gleaming black hair falling in great locks over her shoulders, her long legs suntanned.

  “Hello, sweetheart. How are you?” Thomas Ritter forced himself to smile and went over to her. She coolly looked him up and down.

  “Sweetheart,” she repeated derisively, “are you trying to make fun of me?”

  As beautiful as she was, she could also be so rude. But that was part of her appeal. Alarmed, Ritter wondered if Katharina could have found out about him and Marleen; he rejected that notion. For weeks, she’d been either at the publishing house in Zürich or on Mallorca, so she couldn’t possibly know.

  “Come in.” She turned around and he followed her through the sprawling penthouse and all the way out onto the terrace. The thought went through his head that Katharina would probably be royally amused if she found out what he’d done. When it came to the Kaltensee family, they shared a strong desire for revenge. But he wasn’t quite comfortable with the idea of laughing with Katharina about Marleen.

  “So,” Katharina said, stopping and not offering him a chair, “how far along are you? My boss is starting to get impatient.”

  Ritter hesitated.

  “I’m still not happy with the first few chapters,” he admitted. “It’s almost as if Vera appeared out of thin air in Frankfurt in 1945. There are no earlier photos, no family documents—nothing at all. Right now, the whole manuscript reads like any old celebrity bio.”

  “But you told me you had a really hot source!” Katharina Ehrmann frowned, annoyed. “Why do I have the feeling that you’re trying to stall?”

  “I’m not,” replied Ritter gloomily. “I’m really not. But Elard keeps avoiding me and pretends not to be available.”

  The radiant blue sky arced over the Old Town in Königstein, but Ritter had no interest in the spectacular view from Katharina’s penthouse terrace, a scape extending from the ruins of the fortress on one side to the Villa Andreae on the other.

  “Your source is Elard?” Katharina shook her head. “You should have told me that earlier.”

  “What good would that have done? Do you think he’d rather talk to you than to me?”

  Katharina Ehrmann scrutinized him.

  “Whatever,” she said at last. “Just make use of what I told you. That should be enough ammunition.”

  Ritter nodded and bit his lower lip.

  “I still have a small problem,” he said in embarrassment.

  “How much do you need?” Katharina Ehrmann asked, her face stony.

  Ritter hesitated, then sighed. “Five thousand would fill the biggest holes.”

  “You’ll get the money, but under one condition.”

  “And what’s that?”

  Katharina Ehrmann gave him a sardonic smile. “You’re going to finish writing the book in the next three weeks. It has to come out by early September, when my bosom friend Jutta plans to be nominated as the top candidate.”

  Three weeks! Thomas Ritter stepped over to the parapet of the terrace. How the hell had he wound up in this shitty situation? His life had been in good shape until he’d lost his common sense in an attack of megalomania. When he’d told Katharina about his idea of writing a tell-all biography of Vera, he hadn’t imagined what enthusiasm this plan would trigger in the former best friend of Jutta Kaltensee.

  Katharina had never forgiven Jutta for the ice-cold way in which she’d been dumped; she was hungry for revenge, although it wasn’t really necessary. Her brief marriage to the Swiss publisher Beat Ehrmann had been more than profitable for her in terms of finances. Old Ehrmann, in a grandiose overestimation of his physical prowess a mere two years after their wedding, had suffered a heart attack between the thighs of his best editor, and Katharina had inherited everything: his fortune, his possessions, his publishing company. But the insult she’d suffered from Jutta’s jealous intrigue was obviously still festering. Katharina had made Thomas Ritter’s mouth water at the prospect of the millions he could earn from writing a scandalous biography about one of the most famous women in modern Germany. Subsequently, he had lost everything that had ever meant anything to him: his job, his reputation, his future. Because Vera had found out about his little project and thrown him out. Since then, he’d been a social pariah, living more or less off of Katharina’s money, working at a job that he deeply despised. He found himself unable to escape this situation. His secret marriage to Marleen, which in his blind vindictiveness had seemed like such a brilliant idea, had proved to be merely another trap. He just didn’t know anymore what he could say to whom.

  Katharina stepped up beside him. “Every day I have to think up new excuses for why you haven’t delivered that damned manuscript,” she said in a sharp tone that he hadn’t heard before. “They want to see some results, since we’ve been shoving money up your ass for months now.”

/>   “You’ll have the complete manuscript in three weeks,” Thomas hurriedly promised her. “I have to do some rewrites on the beginning, because I didn’t find out what I’d hoped to discover. But the thing with Eugen Kaltensee is explosive enough.”

  “I hope so, for your sake.” Katharina Ehrmann tilted her head. “And for mine. Even though it’s my publishing company, I’m accountable to my business partners.”

  Ritter managed a guileless smile. He was very aware of his looks and his charm. Experience had taught him that he possessed something that made women fall at his feet. The lovely Katharina was no exception.

  “Come on, darling.” He leaned on the parapet and stretched out his arms. “Let’s leave business till later. I’ve missed you.”

  She remained aloof for a few more moments, then let down her guard and even smiled.

  “It’s a matter of millions,” she reminded him in a softer voice. “Our legal team has found a way to get around the interim injunction regarding publishing the book in Switzerland.”

  Ritter let his lips drift down to her slim neck and sensed a growing desire in his groin as she now urgently pressed against him. After the boring, tepid sex with Marleen, he was getting excited at the thought of Katharina’s violent abandon and the way she could push him to his sexual limits.

  “Besides,” she murmured, undoing her belt, “I’m going to talk to Elard myself. He never could refuse me anything.”

  * * *

  “Did you notice the way she reacted when she heard that number?” Pia asked as they drove from Mühlenhof to the station in Hofheim. She’d been fretting about what she thought she’d seen for just an instant on the face of Vera Kaltensee. Anxiety? Hatred? Shock? “And the way she spoke to her son was so … imperious.”

  “I didn’t notice a thing.” Bodenstein shook his head. “And even if she did have a strange reaction, it’s quite understandable. We had just told her that an old friend of the family had been shot. How do you happen to know the son, by the way?”

  Pia explained. “The news of Schneider’s death seemed to leave him cold,” she added. “He didn’t look particularly shocked.”

  “And what do you make of that?”

  “Not a thing.” She shrugged. “At most, that he didn’t especially like either Schneider or Goldberg. But he didn’t have a single consoling word for his mother, either.”

  “Maybe he thought she was getting enough sympathetic support,” Bodenstein teased her, raising an eyebrow and laughing. “I was afraid you were going to break out in tears, too.”

  “I know. It was really unprofessional of me,” Pia admitted remorsefully. She was angry that she’d been taken in so easily by the old woman. Normally, she managed to keep enough distance to observe someone’s tears without pity. “Sobbing white-haired grandmas must be my Achilles’ heel.”

  “Now, now.” Bodenstein gave her an amused sidelong glance. “I used to think your Achilles’ heel was emotionally unstable young men from good families who were suspected of murder.”

  Pia got the reference to Lukas van den Berg from a previous case, but her memory was as least as good as Bodenstein’s.

  “People who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones, boss,” she countered with a grin. “Now that we’re speaking of weaknesses: I have a vivid memory of a lady veterinarian and her pretty daughter, who—”

  “That’s enough of that,” Bodenstein said, interrupting her. “You really have no sense of humor.”

  “You don’t, either.”

  The car phone buzzed. It was Ostermann, who told them that the permission for the autopsy on Schneider’s body had been received. He also had interesting news from the forensics lab in Wiesbaden. Their colleagues from the National Criminal Police, in their zeal to hush things up, had actually forgotten about the evidence that had been sent to the lab for analysis.

  “The cell phone that was found in the flower bed next to Goldberg’s front door belongs to a Robert Watkowiak,” said Ostermann. “He’s on the books, with mug shots and fingerprints and everything. An old acquaintance whose ambition seems to be to break every paragraph in the criminal law books. He’s been missing a homicide in his collection. Otherwise, he’s got everything on his rap sheet: burglary, assault and battery, robbery, repeated violations of the narcotics laws, driving without a license, having his license suspended several times for DUI, attempted rape, and so on.”

  “Then have him brought down to the station,” said Bodenstein.

  “It’s not that easy. He’s had no permanent address since he got out of the joint six months ago.”

  “And his last address? What was that?”

  “That’s where it gets interesting,” said Ostermann. “He’s still listed as living at Mühlenhof with the Kaltensee family.”

  “Are you kidding me?” Pia was stunned.

  “Maybe because he was an illegitimate child of old Kaltensee,” Ostermann replied, elucidating the situation.

  Pia glanced at Bodenstein. Could it be a coincidence that the name Kaltensee had turned up again? Her cell played its ringtone. Pia didn’t recognize the number on the display, but she took the call.

  “Hello, Pia, it’s me,” said her friend Miriam. “Am I interrupting anything?”

  “Nope, you’re not,” said Pia. “What’s up?”

  “Did you already know on Saturday night that Goldberg was dead?”

  “Yes,” Pia said. “But I couldn’t say anything to you.”

  “Oh God. Who would shoot an old man like him?”

  “That’s a good question, and we don’t have the answer yet,” Pia replied. “Unfortunately, they’ve taken us off the case. Goldberg’s son showed up the next day with reinforcements from the American consulate and the Interior Ministry and took his father’s body away. We were pretty surprised about that.”

  “Ah well, it’s probably because you’re not familiar with our burial rites,” said Miriam after a brief pause. “Sal, Goldberg’s son, is an Orthodox Jew. According to Jewish ritual, the deceased has to be buried the same day if at all possible.”

  “Aha.” Pia looked at Bodenstein, who had finished talking with Ostermann, and put her finger to her lips. “So was he buried right away?”

  “Yes. First thing on Monday. At the Jewish cemetery in Frankfurt. Anyway, after they sit shiva for seven days, an official funeral service will be held.”

  “Shiva?” Pia asked, clueless. She knew the word only from the name of a Hindu god.

  “Shiva is Hebrew and means ‘seven,’” Miriam explained. “Shiva is the seven-day period of mourning that follows a burial. Sal Goldberg and his family will be staying in Frankfurt for that.”

  Suddenly, Pia had a brilliant idea.

  “Where are you now?” she asked her friend.

  “At home,” said Miriam. “Why?”

  “Would you have time to meet me? I have to tell you something.”

  * * *

  Elard Kaltensee stood at the window on the second floor of his mother’s big house and watched his brother’s car come rushing through the gate and stop at the front door. With a bitter smile, he turned away from the window. Vera had put everything in motion to keep the situation in check, because things were heating up, and Elard himself was not entirely innocent. Of course, he didn’t know the meaning of those numbers, but he suspected that his mother did know. She had skillfully avoided further questions from the police with her utterly atypical crying fit; it was her way of immediately taking the reins in her own hands. The Kripo officers had barely left before Vera had called Siegbert, who had, naturally, dropped everything to come to his mama’s rescue. Elard took off his shoes and hung his jacket on the clothes rack.

  Why had the policewoman, Dr. Kirchhoff’s wife, given him such an odd look? With a sigh, he sat down on the edge of the bed, buried his face in his hands, and tried to remember every detail of the conversation. Had he said anything wrong or acted suspiciously? Did the detective suspect him? And if so, why? He felt terrible. Ano
ther car drove up and parked. Naturally, Vera had also sent for Jutta. Now it wouldn’t be long before they called him downstairs to a family meeting. He realized now that he’d been incautious and had made a big mistake. The thought of what could happen if they found out sent a stabbing pain into his chest. But it was no use to hide. He had to go on living as usual and act as if he were completely clueless. He gave a start when his cell suddenly rang much too loudly. To his surprise, it was Katharina Ehrmann, Jutta’s best friend.

  “Hello, Elard,” said Katharina, sounding upbeat. “How are things?”

  “Katharina!” said Elard more nonchalantly than he felt. “I haven’t heard from you in ages. To what do I owe the honor of your call?”

  He’d always been very fond of Katharina, occasionally running into her at cultural events in Frankfurt or at other social functions.

  “I guess I’ll just have to be blunt,” she said. “I need your help. Could we meet somewhere?”

  The urgent undertone in her voice exacerbated the sense of foreboding he had inside.

  “It’s a little awkward at the moment,” Elard replied evasively. “We’re in the middle of a family crisis.”

  “Old Goldberg was shot. I heard about it.”

  “Oh yes?” Elard wondered how she could have heard, since the murder of Uncle Jossi had been successfully kept out of the papers. But maybe Jutta had told her about it.

  “Perhaps you know that Thomas is writing a book about your mother,” Katharina went on. Elard didn’t say a word to that, but the foreboding increased. Naturally, he knew about this crackpot book idea, which had already caused plenty of anger within the family ranks. He would have preferred simply to end the call, but that wouldn’t do any good. Katharina Ehrmann was known for her persistence. She would never leave him alone until she got what she wanted.

  “I’m sure you’ve heard what Siegbert did about it.”

  “Yes, I have. Why are you interested?”

  “Because the book is coming out from my publishing house.”

  This news left Elard momentarily speechless.

  “Does Jutta know this?” he asked at last.