The Ice Queen: A Novel

by Nele Neuhaus

  “The cell is on again!” Ostermann said excitedly.

  “Is it in the building?” Pia stopped and covered her other ear so she could hear her colleague better.

  “Yes, definitely.”

  The door to Kaltensee’s office was locked. Another delay ensued until someone finally located the head janitor, who had a pass key. The elderly gentleman with a snow-white mustache fumbled with his key ring. When the door finally opened, Behnke and Bodenstein stormed past him impatiently.

  “Shit,” said Behnke. “Nobody here.”

  The janitor stood in a corner of the office, watching with big eyes the enormous efforts of the police.

  “What’s going on here anyway?” he asked after a moment. “Is it something to do with Professor Kaltensee?”

  “Do you think we’d show up here with a hundred officers and the SWAT team otherwise? Of course it has to do with him!” Pia leaned over the desk and studied the desk blotter, which was covered with scribbles. She was hoping to find a name, a phone number, or some clue to the whereabouts of Nowak, but it seemed that Kaltensee had just enjoyed doodling while he was on the phone. Bodenstein rummaged through the wastebasket and Behnke searched the desk drawers while the SWAT team waited in the hall.

  “He was acting strange yesterday,” said the head janitor thoughtfully. “He seemed somehow … excited.”

  Bodenstein, Behnke, and Kirchhoff stopped at once and stared at him.

  Behnke reproached the man angrily. “You saw Professor Kaltensee yesterday? Why didn’t you tell us that right away?”

  “Because you didn’t ask me,” he replied with dignity. The SWAT team leader’s radio hissed and crackled; then a voice came through, barely understandable through the atmospheric static caused by the thick concrete ceilings in the building. The janitor pensively twirled one end of his mustache.

  “He seemed elated,” he recalled. “Which is generally never the case. He came out of the basement in the west wing. I wondered about that, since his office is—”

  “Could you take us there?” Pia asked impatiently.

  “Of course,” the janitor said with a nod. “But what did he do, the professor?”

  “Nothing much,” Behnke replied sarcastically. “He just may have killed a few people.”

  The janitor’s mouth fell open.

  “My men are holding several individuals in detention who gained unauthorized access to the building,” the SWAT team leader now reported in official police lingo.

  “Where?” Bodenstein asked impatiently.

  “In the basement. In the west wing.”

  “All right, let’s go,” Bodenstein barked.

  * * *

  The six men wearing black K-Secure uniforms were standing with their backs to the police officers, legs spread, hands on the wall.

  “Turn around!” Bodenstein commanded. The men obeyed. Pia recognized Henri Améry, the leader of the Kaltensee security force, even without his suit and patent-leather shoes.

  “What are you and your men doing here?” Pia asked.

  Améry said nothing and smiled.

  “You’re under arrest.” She turned to one of the SWAT team officers. “Get them out of here. And find out how they knew we were here.”

  The man nodded. Handcuffs snapped shut and the six men in black were escorted out. Bodenstein, Kirchhoff, and Behnke got the janitor to open every room—document archives, storerooms, electrical and heating equipment rooms, empty cellars. In the next-to-last room, they finally hit the jackpot. A person was lying on a mattress on the floor. Next to him were water bottles, food, medications, and a steamer trunk. Pia turned on the light. Her heart leaped into her throat as the fluorescent lights on the ceiling hummed softly and flickered on.

  “Hello, Mr. Nowak.” She went over to the mattress and squatted down. The dazed man blinked in the bright light. He was unshaven and deep furrows of exhaustion had become etched into his badly beaten face. With his good hand, he was clutching a cell phone. He looked very ill, but he was alive. Pia put her hand on his feverish brow and saw that his T-shirt was soaked in blood. She turned to Bodenstein and Behnke.

  “Call an ambulance right away.”

  Then she turned back to the injured man. No matter what he might have done, she felt sorry for him. He must have endured incredible pain.

  “You belong in a hospital,” she said. “Why are you here?”

  “Elard…” Nowak murmured. “Please … Elard…”

  “What about Professor Kaltensee?” she asked. “Where is he?”

  With an effort, Nowak turned to look at her, but then he closed his eyes.

  “Mr. Nowak, you have to help us,” Pia pleaded. “We found Professor Kaltensee’s car at the airport. He and his mother seem to have vanished from the face of the earth. And in the safe in your office, we found the pistol that was used to shoot three people. We assume that Elard Kaltensee committed the murders, after he found the pistol in the trunk.”

  Marcus Nowak opened his eyes. His nostrils quivered and he was gasping for breath, as if he wanted to say something, but only a moan escaped from his split lips.

  “Unfortunately, I have to arrest you, Mr. Nowak,” said Pia with a certain amount of regret. “You have no alibis for the nights of the murders. Your wife has told us that you were not at home on any of those nights. Do you have anything to say about that?”

  Nowak didn’t answer; instead, he let go of his cell phone and reached for Pia’s hand. Desperately, he struggled to find the words. Sweat was pouring down his face, but an attack of chills made him shiver. Pia remembered the warning of the doctor at the Hofheim Hospital; he’d said that Nowak had suffered a wound to his liver in the attack. Apparently, being transported here had aggravated the internal injury.

  “Take it easy,” she said, patting his hand. “First we’re taking you to the hospital. When you’re feeling better, we’ll talk.”

  He looked at her like a drowning man, his dark eyes wide with panic. If Marcus Nowak didn’t get help soon, he was going to die. Had that been Elard Kaltensee’s plan? Was that why he’d brought him here, where no one would find him? But why hadn’t he taken away his cell phone?

  A voice interrupted her thoughts. “The ambulance is here.” Two EMTs shoved a gurney into the basement room, and a doctor wearing an orange vest and carrying an emergency medical bag followed them. Pia wanted to get up to make room for the doctor, but Marcus Nowak wouldn’t let go of her hand.

  “Please…” he whispered desperately. “Please … not Elard … my Oma…”

  His voice trailed off.

  “My colleagues will take care of you,” said Pia softly. “Don’t worry. Professor Kaltensee won’t do anything else to you, I promise.”

  She detached herself from Nowak’s grip and stood up.

  “He has a liver injury,” she informed the emergency doctor. Then she turned to her colleagues, who in the meantime had searched the trunk. “So, what did you find?”

  “Among other things, the SS uniform of Oskar Schwinderke,” Bodenstein replied. “We’ll take a look at the rest back at the station.”

  * * *

  “I knew the whole time that Elard Kaltensee was a murderer,” Pia told Bodenstein. “He would have left Nowak to rot in that cellar hole, just to keep from getting his own hands dirty.”

  They were on their way back to Hofheim. Katharina Ehrmann was waiting at the station, and the six K-Secure men were in the holding cells.

  “Who did Nowak call last?” Bodenstein asked.

  “No idea. We have to request the itemized call listing.”

  “Why didn’t Kaltensee take the phone away from him? He must have figured that Nowak would call somebody.”

  “Yes, I wondered that myself. Probably he didn’t know that we could get a fix on the phone.” Pia jumped at the shrill ring of the car phone. “Or maybe he just didn’t think about it.”

  “Hello,” a female voice came from the loudspeaker. “Mr. Bodenstein?”

  �
�Yes,” said Bodenstein, glancing at Pia and then shrugging. “Who is this?”

  “Sina. I’m the secretary at Weekend.”

  “Oh yes. What can I do for you?”

  “Mr. Ritter gave me an envelope last night,” she said. “I was supposed to keep it for him. But now that he’s disappeared, I thought it might be important. Your name is on it.”

  “Really? Where are you now?”

  “Still here, at the office.”

  Bodenstein hesitated.

  “I’ll send a colleague over to pick up the envelope. Please wait until he arrives.”

  Pia was already calling Behnke on her cell and telling him to drive over to the editorial office in Fechenheim. She ignored his angry curse at the prospect of driving all the way across town at this time of day.

  * * *

  “Yes, that’s right,” Katharina Ehrmann said. “My company wants to publish the biography of Vera Kaltensee. I found Thomas’s idea tremendously interesting, and I’ve supported him in his endeavor.”

  “You know that he’s been missing since last night, don’t you?” Pia observed the woman sitting across from her. Katharina Ehrmann was a little too beautiful to be real. Her expressionless face testified either to a lack of emotion or too much Botox.

  “We had an appointment yesterday evening,” she replied. “When he didn’t show up, I tried to call him, but he didn’t answer. Later, his cell phone was turned off.”

  That matched what Marleen Ritter had told the police.

  “Why did you meet with Marcus Nowak in Königstein last Friday?” Bodenstein asked. “Nowak’s wife saw you get into her husband’s car, and then you drove off together. Are you having an affair with him?”

  “I really don’t work that fast.” Katharina Ehrmann seemed genuinely amused. “That was the first day I met him. He had brought the diaries and other documents I’d requested from Elard, and then he was nice enough to give me a ride before he met with Thomas.”

  Pia and Bodenstein exchanged a surprised look. That was interesting news. So that’s how Ritter had gotten hold of the information. Elard had thrown his own mother under the bus, so to speak.

  “The house where you met Nowak and in which Watkowiak’s body was found belongs to you,” said Pia. “What do you have to say to that?”

  “What should I say?” Katharina Ehrmann didn’t seem particularly bothered. “It was my parents’ house, and I’ve wanted to sell it for years. The real estate agent called me last Saturday to reproach me. As if I could do anything about Robert deciding to take his own life in precisely that location!”

  “How did Watkowiak get into the house?”

  “With a key, I presume,” Katharina Ehrmann replied, to Pia’s astonishment. “I let him use the house when he needed a place to stay. We were once good friends, Robert, Jutta, and I. I felt sorry for him at the time.”

  Pia highly doubted that. Katharina Ehrmann didn’t make an especially compassionate impression.

  “By the way, he didn’t take his own life,” she said. “He was murdered.”

  “Oh, really?” Even this information did not disconcert the woman.

  “When was the last time you spoke with him?”

  “It wasn’t that long ago.” She thought about it. “I think it was last week. He called and told me that the police were looking for him for the murders of Goldberg and Schneider. But he said he didn’t do it. I told him the smartest thing to do would be to turn himself in to the police.”

  “Unfortunately, he didn’t do that. Otherwise, he might still be alive today,” said Pia. “Do you think that Ritter’s disappearance might have something to do with this biography he’s writing?”

  “It’s possible.” Katharina gave a shrug. “What we’ve discovered about Vera’s past could put her in prison. And probably for the rest of her life.”

  “You mean that the death of Eugen Kaltensee was no accident? It was murder?” Pia asked.

  “Among other things,” said Katharina. “But primarily it’s the fact that Vera and her brother were said to have shot several people back in East Prussia.”

  January 16, 1945. The Four Musketeers in the jeep on their way to the Lauenburg estate. The Zeydlitz-Lauenburg family, which since then had been presumed dead or missing.

  “How did Ritter find out about it?” Pia inquired.

  “From an eyewitness, a woman.”

  An eyewitness who knew the secret of the four old friends. Who was she, and whom had she told about it? Pia felt electrified. They were only millimeters away from solving the three murders.

  “Do you think it’s possible that somebody from the Kaltensee family has kidnapped Ritter in order to prevent the publication of the book?”

  “I would believe anything of them,” said Katharina Ehrmann. “Vera would stop at nothing. And Jutta isn’t much better.”

  Pia glanced at her boss, but he was feigning indifference.

  “But how did the Kaltensees learn that Elard had passed this information to Thomas Ritter?” she now asked. “Who knew about it?”

  “Really only Elard, Thomas, Elard’s friend Nowak, and myself,” replied Katharina after a moment’s thought.

  “Did you ever talk on the phone about it?” Bodenstein asked.

  “Yes,” said Katharina hesitantly. “Not about details, but about the fact that Elard would put the contents of this trunk at our disposal.”

  “When was that?”

  “On Friday.”

  The following Monday Nowak had been attacked. That fit.

  “I just remembered that Thomas called me the night before last from the office. He was worried because there was a panel truck in the parking lot with two men in it. I didn’t take it very seriously, but maybe…” Katharina fell silent. “Good God! Do you think they may have tapped into our phone conversation?”

  Bodenstein nodded with concern. “It’s possible, I think.” The people from K-Secure were well equipped. They had been listening to the police band on their radios and learned where Nowak’s cell phone had been traced to. For them, it was probably an easy task to listen in on other phone conversations.

  There was a knock on the door, and Behnke came in and handed Pia the padded mailer, which she opened at once.

  “A CD-ROM,” she said. “And a cassette.”

  She reached over for her dictation machine, put in the cassette, and pressed PLAY. Seconds later, they heard Ritter’s voice.

  “Today is Friday, May fourth. My name is Thomas Ritter, and facing me is Mrs. Auguste Nowak. Mrs. Nowak, you would like to tell us something. Please go ahead.”

  “Stop!” Bodenstein ordered. “Thank you, Ms. Ehrmann. You may go now. Please inform us if you hear anything from Thomas Ritter.”

  The dark-haired woman understood and got up.

  “What a shame,” she said. “Just as it was getting exciting.”

  “Aren’t you worried about Thomas Ritter at all?” Bodenstein asked. “He’s still your author, who’s going to deliver a best-seller.”

  “And your lover,” Pia added.

  Katharina Ehrmann smiled coolly.

  “Believe me,” she said. “He knew what he was getting into. Almost nobody knew Vera better than he did. Besides, I warned him.”

  “One more question,” said Bodenstein, holding her back before she left. “Why did Eugen Kaltensee sign over company shares to you?”

  Her smile vanished.

  “Read the biography,” she said. “Then you’ll find out.”

  * * *

  The voice of Auguste Nowak came from the loudspeaker of the cassette player that stood in the middle of the table. “My father was a great admirer of the Kaiser. That’s why he had me named after the empress, Auguste Viktoria. People used to call me Vicky, but that was a long time ago.”

  Bodenstein and Pia glanced at each other. The whole K-11 team had gathered around the big table in the conference room. Next to Bodenstein sat Nicola Engel, a blank expression on her face. According to the clock, it was 8
:45, and not even Behnke was thinking about going home.

  “I was born on March seventeenth, 1922, in Lauenburg. My father, Arno, was the steward at the estate of the Zeydlitz-Lauenburg family. There were three of us girls living there: Vera, the daughter of the baron, Edda Schwinderke, the daughter of the paymaster, and me. All three of us were the same age and grew up almost as sisters. As young girls, Edda and I were wild about Elard, Vera’s older brother, but he couldn’t stand Edda. Even as a young girl, she was terribly ambitious and secretly envisioned herself as the mistress of Lauenburg Manor. When Elard fell in love with me, Edda was utterly furious. She thought Elard would be impressed because at sixteen she was already the leader of the girls’ group in the BDM, but the opposite was the case. He hated the Nazis, even if he never said it out loud. Edda didn’t notice, but she was always showing off with her brother Oskar because he was in the Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler.”

  Auguste Nowak paused. Nobody around the table said a word, waiting for her to go on.

  “In 1936, the young girls in the BDM went to Berlin to the Olympiad. Elard was studying in Berlin. He took Vera and me out to dinner, and Edda almost exploded with jealousy. She castigated us for leaving the group without permission, and there was a lot of trouble because of it. After that day, she harassed me every chance she got, ridiculing me in front of the other girls at the weekly social evenings. Once she even claimed that my father was a Bolshevik. When I was nineteen, I got pregnant. Nobody had any objections to a marriage, even Elard’s parents, but the war was on and Elard was at the front. When the wedding date approached, he was arrested by the Gestapo, although he was an officer in the Luftwaffe. The second wedding date also had to be postponed, because Elard was arrested again. By the way, it was Oskar who denounced Elard to the Gestapo.”

  Pia nodded. This account confirmed what the former Polish forced laborer had told Miriam.