The Ice Queen: A Novel

by Nele Neuhaus

  “Well?” she asked.

  “They put me on sick leave,” he replied without looking at her. He got into the passenger seat and put on his sunglasses. Pia rolled her eyes as she ground out her cigarette with her foot. For the past couple of weeks, Behnke had once again been completely unbearable. During the short drive to the station, he didn’t say a word, and Pia wondered whether she should tell Bodenstein about his blowup. She didn’t want to be a snitch, but even though Behnke was known for his irascible temperament, losing it in Monika Krämer’s apartment had surprised her. A police officer needed to be able to tolerate provocations and control himself. When they reached the parking lot at the station, Behnke got out without a word of thanks.

  “I’m going home” was all he said, gathering his service weapon, shoulder holster, and leather jacket from the backseat. He pulled the medical release from the hospital out of the back pocket of his jeans and held it out to Pia. “Could you give this to Bodenstein?”

  “If I were you, I’d go in and tell him what happened in person.” Pia took the piece of paper. “And it would probably be better if you wrote up the report yourself.”

  “You do it,” he grumbled. “You were there, too.”

  He turned and went to his car, which was parked in the public lot. Pia was fuming as she watched him go. What Behnke did really shouldn’t bother her, but she was fed up with his grumpy behavior and the nonchalant way he had of getting his colleagues to do his work lately. Still, she didn’t want any bad blood in the team. Bodenstein was an easygoing boss who seldom wielded his authority with an iron hand, but she was sure he would have wanted to hear from Behnke himself how he’d sustained his injuries.

  “Frank!” Pia called out, getting out of the car. “Wait up!”

  He turned around reluctantly and stopped.

  “What’s the matter with you?” Pia asked her colleague.

  “You were there,” he replied.

  “No, that’s not what I mean.” Pia shook her head. “Something is going on with you. You’ve been in such a bad mood lately. Is there anything I can do to help?”

  “Nothing’s going on with me,” he snapped. “Everything’s fine.”

  “I don’t believe you. Is it something with your family?”

  Inside him, an iron shutter seemed to roll down. His expression said, That’s enough, no further.

  “My private life is nobody’s business,” he shot back.

  Pia felt she’d done her duty as a good colleague, and she shrugged. Behnke had always been a stubborn guy. Nothing had changed on that score.

  “If you ever want to talk, you know how to get hold of me,” she called after him. Then he tore off his sunglasses and came storming toward her. For a moment, Pia thought he was going to give her the same treatment he’d given Monika Krämer.

  “Why the hell do you women always have to play Mother Teresa and butt in where you’re not wanted? Does it make you feel better, or what?” he berated her.

  “Are you kidding?” Pia was mad. “I want to help you because you’re my colleague and because I can tell something is wrong. But if you don’t need my help, then do whatever you want!”

  She slammed the car door and left him standing there. She and Frank Behnke were never going to be friends.

  * * *

  Thomas Ritter lay in the hot bathwater with his eyes closed, feeling his aching muscles slowly relax. He wasn’t used to this sort of exertion anymore, and to be honest, he no longer cared much for it. Katharina’s aggressive sexuality, which used to drive him crazy with desire, had lost its allure. And he was surprised at how guilty he’d felt when he’d gone over to Marleen’s place later in the evening. He was deeply ashamed of his afternoon activities when faced with her innocent warmth. At the same time, he’d been furious. She was a Kaltensee, an enemy. He’d come on to her specifically to get back at Vera and humiliate her; his affection was merely feigned and part of the plan. Once he achieved his goal, he would kick both Vera and Marleen in the ass. That was what he’d imagined during those many sleepless nights on the rickety sofa bed in the shabby apartment. But suddenly emotions had become involved, emotions that he hadn’t anticipated.

  After his wife had filed for divorce and his social decline became obvious, he had sworn never to trust a woman again. His relationship with Katharina Ehrmann was based on business. She was the publisher who was paying him to write the life story of Vera Kaltensee—and quite well, too. He was her preferred lover whenever she was in Frankfurt. What she did when he was out of reach didn’t really matter. Ritter heaved a sigh. He had maneuvered himself into a really shitty position. If Katharina found out about Marleen, he might lose his meal ticket. If Marleen found out about his breach of trust and all the lies he had told her, she would never forgive him, and he would inevitably lose both her and the baby. No matter which way he turned, he was in a bind. The phone rang. Ritter opened his eyes and fumbled to pick it up.

  Katharina’s voice sounded in his ear. “It’s me. Did you hear? Old Schneider was murdered, too.”

  “What? When?” Ritter shot up, and the water sloshed over the edge of the tub onto the parquet floor of the bathroom.

  “Late Monday night or early Tuesday morning. He was shot, just like Goldberg.”

  “How do you know this?”

  “I just know.”

  “Who would want to shoot that old fart?” Ritter was trying to keep his tone indifferent as he got out of the tub and gazed at the mess he’d made.

  “No idea,” said Katharina. “My first suspicion was you, to be honest. You visited him and Goldberg recently, didn’t you?”

  Ritter was speechless for a moment. He went ice-cold. How could Katharina know that?

  “What bullshit,” he said with an effort, hoping that his voice sounded amused. “Why would I do something like that?”

  “To shut them up?” Katharina suggested. “You were putting a lot of pressure on both of them.”

  Ritter could feel his heart pounding in his throat. He hadn’t told anyone about these visits, nobody at all. Katharina was hard to read, and she never showed her cards. Ritter hadn’t been able to tell which side she was really on, and occasionally he had a bad feeling that for Katharina he was no more than a tool to accomplish her own revenge on the Kaltensee family.

  “I didn’t put pressure on anybody,” he replied, sounding cool now. “Unlike you, my dear. You were at Goldberg’s, and it was because of those stupid company shares that you’ve all been fighting over for eons. Maybe you were at Herrmann’s, too, watching a few movies and putting away a bottle of Bordeaux with him. I know you’d do anything to get even with the Kaltensees.”

  “Let’s drop it,” said Katharina calmly after a brief pause. “The police have Robert in their sights, by the way. I wouldn’t be surprised if he did it; he’s always hard up for cash. But for now, just keep writing. Maybe we’ll get another chapter out of this, all about the current adventures of the dear Kaltensee family.”

  Ritter put down his cell next to the washbasin, grabbed a couple of towels, and cleaned up the bathwater before it could damage the parquet floor. In his head, all the information was swirling around. Goldberg, that repulsive old creep, shot to death. Schneider also shot dead. He knew that Elard had hated both old men deeply, for different reasons. Robert was always in need of money, and Siegbert was undoubtedly after the damn company shares. But was either of them capable of committing a murder, or even two? The answer was unequivocal: yes. Ritter had to laugh. All he had to do was sit back comfortably and wait.

  “Time is on my side,” he sang to himself, but he had no idea how wrong he was.

  * * *

  Monika Krämer was still shaking all over as she tried to stop the nosebleed with a wet towel and ice cubes. That arrogant, ugly piece of shit cop had really hurt her. Too bad he hadn’t cut his throat falling into the pile of bottles! She gazed at her face in the bathroom mirror. Cautiously, she touched her nose, but it didn’t seem to be broken. And it w
as all because of Robert. That idiot must have really pulled some number he’d never told her about. She’d seen the gun in his backpack; he claimed he’d found it. Murder, the cops had said. Now the shit was really going to hit the fan! Monika Krämer had absolutely no desire to have the cops on her back, and that was why she was going to throw Robert out once and for all. But the real reason was that he got on her nerves. It was getting harder and harder to get rid of him, but she had such a hard time saying no. She always felt sorry for him and kept bringing him home, although she’d sworn to herself a dozen times not to do it again. He never had any money and was jealous on top of it.

  She went into the bedroom and stuffed the used bedclothes in the wardrobe. From the chest under the bed she took out the silk sheets she used when she had a “visitor.” Two years ago, she’d started putting classified ads in the paper. The text, which read “Manu, 19, very discreet—tasty, no taboos,” appealed to many men, and once they showed up, they didn’t care that her name wasn’t really Manu or that she wasn’t nineteen. Some of them came regularly: a bus driver, a couple of pensioners, the mailman, and the teller from the bank during his lunch hour. She charged thirty euros for the standard services, fifty for French, and one hundred for extras, which nobody had yet requested. Together with the welfare check, she was able to make a decent living, put away a little every month, and treat herself to something once in a while. Another two or three years and she could realize her dream: to buy a small house on a lake in Canada. That’s why she was studying English on the side.

  The doorbell rang. She glanced at the clock in the kitchen. Quarter to ten. Her Wednesday-morning regular customer was punctual. He was with the sanitation department and spent his breakfast break with her once a week. Like today. The fifty euros were easy money; he never stayed more than fifteen minutes.

  Only five minutes after he left, there was a knock at her door. It could only be Robert, because Monika wasn’t expecting anyone else until noon. What was he thinking, showing up here again? The cops were probably downstairs in their car waiting for him. Furious, she marched to the door and tore it open.

  “What the heck—” she began, then stopped when she saw a gray-haired stranger standing in front of her.

  “Hello,” said the man. He had a mustache, was wearing old-fashioned glasses with tinted lenses, and clearly belonged in the category of “tolerable.” Not a sweaty fatso with hair on his back, not a dirty slob who hadn’t showered in a week, and not a guy who would try to haggle over the price afterward.

  “Come in,” she said, turning around. As she passed the mirror next to the front door, she glanced at herself. She didn’t look nineteen anymore, but maybe twenty-three. Anyway, no one had left disappointed.

  “It’s right this way.” Monika Krämer pointed toward the bedroom. The man was still standing in the doorway, and she noticed he was wearing gloves. Her heart began to pound. Was the guy some sort of pervert?

  “You won’t need rubber gloves,” she joked. Suddenly, she had an uneasy feeling.

  “Where’s Robert?” he asked.

  Shit! Was he a cop, too?

  “I have no idea,” she replied. “I already told that to the other damn cop.”

  Without taking his eyes off her, he reached behind and turned the key in the lock. Suddenly, she was scared. He wasn’t from the police. Who had Robert gotten mixed up with now? Did he owe somebody money?

  “You must know where he hangs out when he’s not here with you,” said the stranger. Monika thought fast and decided that Robert wasn’t worth getting herself involved in any trouble.

  “Sometimes he crashes in an abandoned house in Königstein,” she said. “In the Old Town, at the end of the pedestrian zone. Could be he’s there now, hiding out from the cops. They’re looking for him.”

  “Okay.” The man nodded and gave her an appraising look. “Thanks.”

  He looked kind of sad with the mustache and the thick glasses. A little like the guy from the bank. Monika Krämer relaxed and smiled. Maybe she could make some money out of the situation.

  “How about it?” She smiled coquettishly. “For a twenty, I’ll blow you.”

  The man came closer, until he was standing right in front of her. The expression on his face was calm, almost indifferent. He made a quick movement with his right hand, and Monika Krämer felt a burning pain in her neck. She grabbed reflexively at her throat and gazed incredulously at the blood on her hands. It took a couple of seconds before she realized it was her own. Her mouth filled with a warm coppery-tasting fluid, and she felt the pricking of real panic at the back of her neck. What was happening? What had she done to this guy? She backed away from him but tripped over one of her dogs and lost her balance. There was blood everywhere. Her blood.

  “Please, please don’t,” she croaked, raising her arms protectively in front of her body when she saw the knife in his hand. The dogs were barking like crazy. She punched and kicked in all directions, desperately defending herself with strength bolstered by the fear of death.

  * * *

  It was no real surprise to anyone at K-11 that when Dr. Kirchhoff performed the autopsy on the corpse of Herrmann Schneider, he found the same blood-type tattoo as he’d seen earlier on Goldberg’s arm. What was surprising was that Schneider, on the day before his body was discovered, had written a cashier’s check for ten thousand euros, which Robert Watkowiak tried to cash at around 11:30 this morning at the Taunus Savings & Loan branch in Schwalbach. The bank employees had refused to honor the unusually large amount and called the police. The man could be seen on the tapes from the surveillance camera trained on the tellers, and a warrant had been issued for his arrest. When he noticed that there was a problem, Watkowiak had fled the bank and left the check behind. A little while later, he showed up at the Nassau Savings Bank in Schwalbach and tried his luck with a cashier’s check for over five thousand euros, again without success. Bodenstein had both checks lying in front of him on his desk. A graphological report would determine whether Schneider’s signature was authentic. At any rate, the circumstantial evidence against Watkowiak was overwhelming, since his fingerprints had been found at both murder scenes.

  There was a knock at the door, and Pia Kirchhoff came in.

  “One of Schneider’s neighbors called,” she announced. “He says that the night Schneider was murdered, he saw a suspicious vehicle parked in Schneider’s driveway around twelve-thirty, when he stepped out to take his dog for a late walk. It was a light-colored station wagon with a company name on the side. When he returned fifteen minutes later, the car was gone, and the lights were off in the house.”

  “Did he get the license plate number?”

  “A local number. It was dark and the car was about sixty feet away. At first, he thought it might be the vehicle used by the home care for the elderly. But then he noticed the company logo.”

  “Watkowiak wasn’t alone at Schneider’s. We know that because of multiple sets of fingerprints on the glasses and the statement from the neighbor. The other guy may have been driving a company car and then came back later.”

  “Unfortunately, the fingerprint database didn’t spit out any names but Watkowiak’s. And the DNA results are going to take a while.”

  “Then we have to find Watkowiak. Behnke will have to drive out to that woman’s apartment again and ask her what bars her lodger usually frequents.”

  Bodenstein noticed his colleague hesitate and gave her a quizzical look.

  “Uh, Frank went home,” Pia said. “He’s on sick leave.”

  “How come?” Bodenstein seemed astounded at Behnke’s behavior. He’d worked with this man for more than ten years. When Bodenstein moved from Frankfurt to Hofheim and took over leadership of the newly formed K-11 at the Regional Criminal Unit, Behnke was the only one from his team who had gone with him.

  “I thought he’d called you,” said Pia cautiously. “Ms. Krämer tried to stop Behnke from following Watkowiak. He fell on a broken bottle and cut himself on
the arm and forehead.”

  “Ah” was all Bodenstein said. “Then our colleagues from Eschborn will have to cover all the bars in the area and talk to the proprietors.”

  Pia waited for Bodenstein to ask more questions, but he didn’t go any deeper into Behnke’s behavior. Instead, he stood up and grabbed his jacket.

  “We’re going back out to Mühlenhof and talk to Vera Kaltensee. I’d like to know what she can tell us about Watkowiak. Maybe she knows where he might be.”

  * * *

  The big gate to the estate stood open, but a man in a dark uniform who was wearing an earpiece motioned for them to stop and roll down the window. Another uniformed man was standing nearby. Pia showed him her ID and said that she wanted to speak with Vera Kaltensee.

  “Just a moment.” The security guard stood in front of the car and spoke into a microphone that he was wearing on his lapel. After a moment, he nodded, stepped aside, and signaled to Pia that she could drive on. Three cars were parked near the manor house, and a clone of the first guard stopped them there. Another ID check, another inquiry.

  “What’s going on?” Pia muttered. “This is pure harassment.”

  She had fully intended to show absolutely no emotion in her next conversation with Vera Kaltensee, even if the old lady were writhing on the floor in fits of sobbing. The next inspection took place at the front door of the house, and Pia was starting to get mad.

  “What’s the point of this whole circus?” she turned and asked the gray-haired man who was escorting her and Bodenstein into the house. He was the same one who’d stopped them the day before. Moormann was his name, if Pia’s memory served her correctly. Today, he was wearing a dark turtleneck and black jeans.

  “There was an attempted break-in. Last night,” he said with an anxious expression. “That’s why the security precautions have been beefed up. Mrs. Kaltensee is often all alone in the house.”

  Pia remembered how afraid she had been in her own house after the break-in last summer. She could understand Vera Kaltensee’s anxiety. The old lady was still worth millions and fairly well known. She might be hoarding art treasures and jewelry of inestimable value, which would always prove a temptation for art thieves and burglars.