Snow White Must Die

by Nele Neuhaus

  The alarm clock rang as it did every morning at exactly six-thirty, but for the past few days he hadn’t really needed to set the alarm. Gregor Lauterbach had been awake for a long time. The fear of Daniela’s questions had made it impossible for him to go back to sleep. Lauterbach sat up and swung his legs over the edge of the bed. He was soaked with sweat and felt like he’d spent the night on a torture rack. He dreaded facing the countless appointments scheduled for the day. How was he supposed to concentrate while in the back of his mind this threat kept ticking like an insidious time bomb? Yesterday another anonymous letter had arrived in the office mail, the contents even more distressing than the first one:

  I wonder if your fingerprints could possibly still be identified on the tire iron that you tossed in the cesspool? The police will find out the truth and then you’re in for it!

  Who knew these details? Who was writing him these letters? And why now, after eleven years? Gregor Lauterbach got up and dragged himself into the bathroom. Bracing his hands on the washbasin, he stared at his unshaven, bleary-eyed face in the mirror. Should he call in sick? Make himself scarce until the storm gathering on the horizon blew over? No, impossible. He had to keep living as he always did. Under no circumstances could he let his resolve waver. His career ambitions didn’t need to end with the position of cultural minister; politically he could still achieve a lot more if he didn’t let himself be intimidated by shadows from the past. He couldn’t permit a single mistake, which in any case happened eleven years ago, to destroy his life. Lauterbach straightened his shoulders and gave his mirror image a determined look. Because of his job, means and opportunities that he’d never dared dream of were now at his disposal. And he was going to use them.

  * * *

  It was still dark when Pia rang the bell at the closed gate of the Terlinden estate. Despite the early hour it didn’t take long before the voice of Mrs. Terlinden spoke from the intercom. In a moment the gate opened as if by magic. Pia got back into the passenger seat of the plainclothes police car; Oliver was at the wheel. Followed by a patrol car and a tow truck they drove over the still virgin snow covering the winding drive. Christine Terlinden awaited them with a friendly smile at the front door, which under the circumstances was as misplaced as the polite greeting that Pia offered. At least for Mr. Terlinden it was not going to be a good morning.

  “We’d like to speak with your husband.”

  “I’ve already told him you were coming. He’ll be down shortly. Please come in.”

  Pia merely nodded, while Oliver said nothing. She had phoned him yesterday and then spent another half hour talking with the acting district attorney, who refused to give her an arrest warrant, but approved a search warrant for Terlinden’s car and filed an application with the court. Now they stood in the imposing entry hall and waited. The lady of the house had vanished, and somewhere in a distant wing the dogs were barking.

  “Good morning!”

  Bodenstein and Kirchhoff looked up as Claudius Terlinden came down the stairs from the upper floor, impeccably dressed in suit and tie. This time the sight of him left Pia cold.

  “You’re certainly the early birds.” He stood smiling before them without offering his hand.

  “Where did the dent in the fender of your Mercedes come from?” asked Pia without any preamble.

  “Excuse me?” Astonished, he raised his eyebrows. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Then I’ll have to refresh your memory.” Pia didn’t take her eyes off him. “On Sunday a resident of Feldstrasse reported a hit and run, because someone had bashed into his car the night before. He had parked it in front of his house at ten minutes to midnight and happened to be standing on his balcony at 12:33 a.m. smoking a cigarette when he heard a crash. He could see the car belonging to the person who caused the crash and even the license plate: MTK-T 801.”

  Terlinden didn’t say a word. His smile had vanished. Crimson was climbing up his throat and spreading over his face.

  “The next morning the man got a phone call.” Pia explained that she had met the man, and then continued mercilessly. “A call from you. You offered to settle the whole matter with no bureaucracy, and consequently the man withdrew his complaint. Unfortunately, it was not deleted from the police computer.”

  Claudius Terlinden stared at Pia with a stony expression.

  “What do you want from me?” he asked, making an effort to control himself.

  “You lied to us yesterday,” she replied with a charming smile. “Since I probably don’t need to tell you where Feldstrasse is, I will ask you once again: Did you drive past the Black Horse on your way back from your firm, or did you take the short cut across the field and along Feldstrasse?”

  “What’s the meaning of all this?” Terlinden turned to Bodenstein, but he was silent. “What are you trying to imply?”

  “That was the night Amelie Fröhlich disappeared,” Kirchhoff answered for Bodenstein. “She was last seen at the Black Horse about the time you drove by there on the way to your office, about ten thirty. Two hours later, around twelve thirty, you came back to Altenhain, and from a different direction—not the way you claimed.”

  He stuck out his lower lip, squinting at her. “And from this you deduce that I waylaid the daughter of an employee, dragged her into my car, and murdered her?”

  “Was that a confession?” Pia asked coolly.

  To her annoyance Terlinden gave her an almost amused smile.

  “By no means.”

  “Then tell us what you did between ten thirty and twelve thirty. Or was it perhaps not ten thirty, but a quarter past ten?”

  “It was ten thirty. I was in my office.”

  “It took you two hours to put your wife’s jewelry in the safe?” Pia shook her head. “Do you think we’re stupid or what?”

  The situation had shifted by a hundred and eighty degrees. Claudius Terlinden was in a jam, and he knew it. But he still kept his cool.

  “Who did you have dinner with?” Pia asked. “And where?”

  Silence. Then Pia remembered the cameras she had seen at the gate of the Terlinden company property, when she drove past on her way back from the Wagners.

  “We could take a look at the footage from the surveillance cameras at the gate to your firm,” she suggested. “That way you could prove to us that you’re telling the truth about the timeline.”

  “You’re very clever,” said Terlinden appreciatively. “I like that. Unfortunately the surveillance system has been down for four weeks now.”

  “And the cameras at the entrance gate to your property?”

  “They don’t record.”

  “Well, then it looks pretty bad for you.” Pia shook her head in feigned regret. “You have no alibi for the time when Amelie disappeared. Your hands are scratched as if you’d been fighting with someone.”

  “Aha.” Claudius Terlinden remained calm, raising his eyebrows. “So what now? Are you going to arrest me because I took another way home?”

  Pia kept her eyes steadfastly fixed on him. He was a liar, possibly also a criminal, who knew perfectly well that her assumptions were much too vague to justify an arrest.

  “You’re not under arrest, only temporarily detained.” She managed a smile. “And not because you took another way home, but because you lied to us. As soon as you give us a plausible, verifiable alibi for the time period in question, you may go.”

  “Good.” Claudius Terlinden shrugged his shoulders nonchalantly. “But please no handcuffs. I’m allergic to nickel.”

  “I assume you won’t try to escape,” Pia retorted dryly. “Anyway, our handcuffs are stainless steel.”

  * * *

  The phone on his desk rang just as he was leaving the office. Lars Terlinden was expecting an urgent callback from the derivatives broker at the Credit Suisse. With the broker’s help he had sold off a large part of the credit portfolio for this con man Mutzler before he appeared before a tribunal of the board of directors. He put down his briefc
ase and took the call.

  “Lars, it’s me,” said his mother. He wished he could hang up.

  “Please, Mother, leave me alone. I don’t have time right now.”

  “The police arrested your father this morning.”

  Lars felt himself turn cold, then hot.

  “Better late than never,” he replied bitterly. “After all, he isn’t God—he can’t do whatever he likes in Altenhain just because he has more money than everybody else. Actually, he’s been getting away with his little charade for far too long.”

  He went behind his desk and sat down in his armchair.

  “How can you say that, Lars? Your father always wanted what was best for you.”

  “Wrong,” said Lars coolly. “He only wanted what was best for him and for his firm. And back then he exploited the situation, the way he basically exploits every situation to his own advantage. He forced me into a job that I never wanted to do. Mother, believe me, I don’t give a shit what’s happening to him.”

  Suddenly everything was closing in again. Why did his father have to meddle in his life? Especially now, when he needed all his energy and concentration to save his career and his future. Anger was boiling over inside him. Why couldn’t they just leave him alone? Images he had thought long forgotten were coming to his mind, unasked and unwanted, but he was powerless to stop the memories and the feelings that accompanied them. He knew that his father had been regularly fucking Laura’s mother, who used to work in the villa as housekeeper. They would retreat to one of the attic guest rooms when his mother wasn’t home. But that wasn’t enough for him. He also had to get the daughters of his serfs, as his employees and the whole town used to call them, into bed—ius primae noctis, the same as a feudal lord in the Middle Ages.

  While his mother was going on about something in a self-pitying voice, Lars thought about that evening. He had come home from training sessions at the firm and in the hall almost ran into Laura. Her face swollen from crying, she had stormed past him and out the door. He hadn’t understood a thing back then, as he saw his father come out of the living room, stuffing his shirt back in his pants, his face flushed and his hair a mess. That swine!

  At the time Laura had just turned fourteen. Only many years later did Lars accuse his father of sleeping with her, but he had denied everything. He said the girl had been in love with him, but he had rebuffed her overtures. And Lars had believed him. What seventeen-year-old wanted to think such things about his father? In retrospect he realized that he had doubted his father’s protestations of innocence. He had lied to him far too many times.

  “Lars?” his mother asked. “Are you still there?”

  “I should have told the police the truth eleven years ago,” he replied, making an effort to control his voice. “But my own father forced me to lie so that his name wouldn’t be dragged through the mud. What happened now? Did he snatch the missing girl this time too?”

  “How can you say such an outrageous thing?” His mother sounded shocked. Christine Terlinden was a master of self-deception. Whatever she didn’t want to hear or see she simply ignored.

  “My God, will you for once open your eyes, Mother!” Lars snapped. “I could say a lot more, but I won’t. Because for me that chapter is closed, understand? It’s over. Now I have to go. Please don’t call me anymore.”

  * * *

  The restaurant where Claudius Terlinden had spent that Saturday evening with his wife and friends was on Guiollettstrasse, across from the twin glass towers of the Deutsche Bank. That’s what his wife had told Pia last night.

  “Let me get out here, while you go find a parking spot,” Oliver decided after Pia had driven around the block three times. Parking near the posh Ebony Club was impossible, and valets in English livery waited by the entrance to take the guests’ cars and park them in the underground garage. Pia let Oliver out and he ran with head down through the pouring rain to the entrance. Nobody stopped him when he walked right past the PLEASE WAIT TO BE SEATED sign. The maître d’ and half the staff were making a big fuss over some VIP with an entourage who didn’t have a reservation. The restaurant was popular at midday, and apparently the financial crisis hadn’t spoiled the appetite of the managers from the surrounding banks from enjoying an extravagant lunch. Bodenstein looked around inquisitively. He had heard a lot about the Ebony Club; the restaurant decorated in Indian colonial style was one of the most expensive and most talked about in the city.

  His gaze fell on a couple at a table for two on the riser a bit farther back. He caught his breath. Cosima. As if entranced she was listening to a revoltingly good-looking man who seemed to be explaining something with expansive, spirited gestures. The way Cosima was sitting, leaning slightly forward, her elbows on the table and her chin resting on her clasped hands, set off alarm bells in his head. She brushed a lock of hair out of her face, laughing at something the guy had said, and then, to make matters worse, put her hand on his. Bodenstein stood petrified in the midst of the melee while the service staff ran busily past him; he may as well have been invisible.

  That morning Cosima had told him in passing that she would be busy all day at the editing room in Mainz. Had she changed her plans on short notice, or had she knowingly lied to him again? How could she possibly guess that his investigation would bring him at this precise time to this precise restaurant out of the thousands in Frankfurt?

  “May I help you?” A plump young woman had stopped in front of him and given him a rather impatient smile. His heart started pounding again with the force of a blacksmith’s hammer. He was shaking all over, and he felt like he was going to throw up.

  “No,” he said without taking his eyes off Cosima and her companion. The waitress gave him an odd look, but he couldn’t have cared less what she thought of him. Not twenty yards away his wife was sitting with the man whose company she looked forward to with three exclamation points. Bodenstein concentrated hard on breathing in and out. He wished he could simply go up to their table and punch the man in the face with no warning. But because he had been brought up with polite manners and self-control, he remained standing there and did nothing. The skilled observer in him automatically registered the obvious intimacy between the two, who were now putting their heads together and exchanging deep looks. Bodenstein saw out of the corner of his eye that the young waitress was informing the maître d’, who in the meantime had found an acceptable table for his VIP. So he either had to go over to Cosima and her companion or leave at once. Since he didn’t feel up to guilelessly pretending he was pleased to see them, he decided on the latter option. He turned on his heel and left the overcrowded restaurant. When he walked out the door he stared for a moment at the fence surrounding the construction site across the street before he turned down Guiollettstrasse in a daze. His pulse was racing, and his stomach was churning. The sight of Cosima and that guy had burned its way indelibly into his retinas. The very thing he had feared so much had happened: He was certain that Cosima was cheating on him.

  Suddenly someone stepped into his path. He tried to move aside, but the woman with the umbrella took a step in the same direction, so he had to stop.

  “Are you finished already?” The voice of Pia Kirchhoff penetrated the fog that surrounded him like a wall and dragged him abruptly back to reality. “Was Terlinden there on Saturday?”

  Terlinden! He had completely forgotten.

  “I … I didn’t even ask,” he admitted.

  “Is everything all right?” Pia looked at him curiously. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  “Cosima is inside,” he said tonelessly. “With another man. Even though she told me this morning…”

  He couldn’t go on, his throat seemed dry as sand. On unsteady legs he staggered to the next building and sat down on the step of the entrance, ignoring how wet it was. Pia looked at him, speechless and, it seemed to him, with sympathy. He lowered his eyes.

  “Give me a cigarette,” he demanded in a hoarse voice. Pia dug in her jacket pocket
and handed him a pack and a lighter. He hadn’t smoked in fifteen years and didn’t miss it, but right now he had to admit that the craving for nicotine still slumbered deep inside him.

  “The car is parked on Kettenhofweg, corner of Brentanostrasse.” Pia held out the car key to him. “Go sit inside before you catch your death of cold.”

  He didn’t take the key or give her an answer. He didn’t give a damn whether he got wet or what the passersby thought as they stared at him idiotically. Nothing mattered. Although he had secretly long suspected it, he had desperately hoped for some harmless explanation for Cosima’s lies and text messages. But he was not calm enough to confront her in the company of another man. He took a greedy drag on the cigarette, inhaling the smoke as deep as he could. It made him dizzy, as if he were smoking a joint and not a Marlboro. Gradually the kaleidoscope of thoughts tumbling through his mind slowed their furious pace and stopped. All that was left was a vast, empty silence. He was sitting on a step in the middle of Frankfurt, feeling profoundly alone.

  * * *

  Lars Terlinden had slammed down the receiver and sat for a couple of minutes without moving. Upstairs the board was waiting for him. The gentlemen had traveled from Zürich specifically to hear how he intended to recoup the 350 million euros he had blown. Unfortunately he had no solution to offer. They would hear him out and then tear him to pieces with a patronizing smile, those arrogant assholes; a year ago they had been slapping him on the back like the best of pals because of this same gigantic deal.

  The phone rang again, this time the in-house line. Lars ignored it. He opened the top drawer and took out a sheet of letterhead and his Montblanc fountain pen, a gift from his boss in better days. He used it only for signing contracts. For a full minute he stared at the blank, cream-colored page, then he started to write. Without reading over what he had written, he folded the paper and stuck it in an envelope. He wrote an address on the envelope, stood up, grabbed his briefcase and coat, and left the office.