Snow White Must Die

by Nele Neuhaus

  “And I thought you’d already done that,” said Pia.

  “Ostermann, give Sartorius a call,” Bodenstein ordered. “He needs to come down here right away.”

  He grabbed the photos and left the conference room. Pia rolled her eyes and followed him.

  “Could I see the pictures before we go in?” she asked him. He handed her the photos without slowing his pace. He was angry because a mistake had escaped his notice. A misunderstanding could always happen when events piled up so rapidly. Nobody was in the interrogation room yet. Bodenstein marched out and came back a moment later.

  “Nothing gets done right around here,” he growled in annoyance. Pia didn’t reply. She was thinking of Thies Terlinden, who had watched over the corpse of Stefanie Schneeberger for eleven years. Why had he done that? Did his father order him to do it? Why had Lars Terlinden chosen this moment to write that letter to Tobias and commit suicide? How come Thies’s studio had burned down? Did anyone know about Snow White—or was the arson because of Thies’s paintings? If so, the same person who had sent the phony policewoman to see Barbara Fröhlich could be behind the fire. And where was Amelie? Thies had shown her the mummy of Snow White and then let her go; otherwise she wouldn’t have been able to write in her diary. What had she told Tobias? Why did she disappear? Did her disappearance have nothing at all to do with the old case?

  A thousand thoughts were streaming through her brain, but she couldn’t bring any order to this information overload. Bodenstein was on the phone again, this time apparently with Commissioner Engel. He listened with a grim expression on his face and said only “Yes” or “No” occasionally. Pia sighed. The entire case was turning into a nightmare, and that was due less to the work than to the circumstances under which they had to carry out this investigation. She felt Bodenstein’s gaze on her and raised her head.

  “When we wrap up this case, she’s going to take drastic measures, she said. No, I mean threatened.” He put his head back and laughed all of a sudden, but without mirth. “Today she got an anonymous phone call.”

  “Aha.” Pia didn’t give a hoot about that. She wanted to talk to Claudius Terlinden and find out what he knew. Each bit of additional information that she received was making it harder to think clearly.

  “Somebody told her that you and I are having an affair.” Bodenstein ran both hands through his hair. “Allegedly someone saw us together.”

  “Well, that’s no big news,” Pia replied dryly. “We do drive around all day together.”

  A knock at the door ended their conversation. Tobias Sartorius’s three “friends” were escorted in. They sat down at the table and Pia took a seat too. Bodenstein remained standing and looked at the three men one by one. Why had they been seized with remorse now, after eleven years? He signaled for Pia to state the formal details of the interview that would be recorded. Then he placed the eight photos on the table. Felix Pietsch, Michael Dombrowski, and Jörg Richter looked at the pictures and turned pale.

  “Do you recognize these pictures?”

  They shook their heads.

  “But you recognize what they depict.”

  They nodded.

  Bodenstein crossed his arms. He seemed relaxed and calm, as he always did. Pia couldn’t help admiring his self-control. Anyone who didn’t know him well would never have guessed what was really going on inside him.

  “Can you tell us who and what we’re looking at in the pictures?”

  The three men were silent for a moment, then Jörg Richter spoke. He recited the names: Laura, Felix, Michael, Lars, and himself.

  “And who is the man in the green T-shirt?” Pia asked. The three hesitated, exchanging brief glances.

  “That’s not a man,” said Jörg Richter finally. “That’s Nathalie. Nadia, that is. She used to have really short hair.”

  Pia picked out the four pictures that showed the murder of Stefanie Schneeberger.

  “And who is that?” She tapped her finger on the person Stefanie was embracing. Jörg Richter hesitated.

  “That could be Lauterbach. Maybe he went after Stefanie.”

  “What exactly happened that evening?” Bodenstein asked.

  “There was the fair in Altenhain,” Richter began. “We were out all day and had drunk a lot. Laura was jealous of Stefanie because she’d been elected Queen of the Fair. Then she probably wanted to make Tobi jealous and flirted with us like crazy. She made us really hot. Tobi was working at the drink stand in the tent, with Nadia. At some point he left; there must have been trouble with Stefanie. Laura ran after him and we ran after her.”

  He paused.

  “We went up the hill, taking Waldstrasse, not the main road. Then we sat around in the back of Sartorius’s place. Suddenly Laura came through the milk room into the stable. She was howling and her nose was bleeding. We started pestering her until she got mad and punched Felix. And somehow … I don’t remember now exactly how … the situation escalated.”

  “You raped Laura,” Pia stated in a factual way.

  “She had been teasing us nonstop all evening.”

  “Was the sexual intercourse with her consent or not?”

  “Well,” said Richter, biting his lower lip. “Probably not.”

  “Which of you had sexual intercourse with Laura?”

  “I did, and … and Felix.”

  “Go on.”

  “Laura kept hitting and kicking us. Then she ran off. I went after her. And suddenly Lars was standing there. Laura was lying in front of him on the ground, and there was blood everywhere. She probably thought he wanted something from her too. She tripped and hit her head on the rock used to block the gate. Lars was totally shocked; he stammered something and then ran off. We … we panicked too and wanted to run away, but Nadia was very cool-headed, as always, and said we should make Laura disappear. Then there wouldn’t be any evidence.”

  “Where did Nadia suddenly come from?” Bodenstein asked.

  “She … she was there the whole time.”

  “Nadia watched while you raped Laura Wagner?”

  “Yes.”

  “But why did you want to get rid of Laura’s body? Her death was an accident.”

  “Well, we had … raped her, after all. And then she was lying there. All that blood. I don’t know why we did it.”

  “What exactly did you do then?”

  “Tobi’s Golf was parked there, with the key in the ignition, as always. Felix put Laura in the trunk, and it was my idea to take her to the old airfield in Eschborn. I still had the keys because we’d been there a few days before, doing a little racing. We threw her down the hole and drove back. Nadia waited for us. Nobody at the fair had noticed that we were gone. Everybody was pretty drunk by then. And later we went to Tobi’s place and asked him if he was coming back to the fair with us. But he didn’t want to.”

  “And what about Stefanie Schneeberger?”

  None of the three knew anything. In the pictures it looked like Nadia had hit Stefanie with the tire iron.

  “Anyway, Nadia hated Stefanie like the plague,” Felix Pietsch spoke up. “After Stefanie moved to town, Nadia couldn’t get anything going with Tobi; he fell for Stefanie like a ton of bricks. And then she also snapped up the lead role that Nadia wanted to play.”

  “That evening at the fair Stefanie had been flirting a lot with Lauterbach,” Jörg Richter recalled. “He was completely nuts about her; anyone with eyes in his head could see that. Tobi had caught the two of them making out near the tent, and that’s why he went home. The last time I saw Stefanie was with Lauterbach near the tent.”

  Felix Pietsch confirmed this with a nod. Michael Dombrowski didn’t react at all. He hadn’t said a word but just sat there, pale and staring into space.

  “Could Nadia have known about these paintings?” Pia asked.

  “That’s very possible. Tobi told us last Saturday what Amelie had found out. About the pictures and that Lauterbach seems to be in them. Tobi must have told Nadia about it too.”<
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  Pia’s cell hummed. She recognized Ostermann’s number and took the call.

  “Excuse me for bothering you,” he said. “But I think we’ve got a problem. Tobias Sartorius has disappeared.”

  * * *

  Bodenstein stopped the interview and went outside. Pia gathered together the photos, put them back in the plastic folder, and followed him. He was waiting in the hallway, leaning against the wall with his eyes closed.

  “Nadia must know what the pictures show,” he said. “She was at Laura’s funeral this morning, at the same time Thies’s studio burned down.”

  “She could also be the woman who passed herself off as a policewoman to Barbara Fröhlich,” Pia speculated.

  “I think so too.” Bodenstein opened his eyes. “And to make quite sure that no more paintings would turn up, she set fire to the orangerie while the whole village was at the cemetery.”

  He pushed off from the wall, walked down the corridor and up the stairs.

  “She wouldn’t want anyone to know that Amelie had found out the truth about the disappearance of the two girls in 1997,” said Pia. “Amelie knew Nadia and had no reason not to trust her. Nadia could easily have thought up some pretext on Saturday night to lure the girl out of the Black Horse and into her car.”

  Bodenstein nodded, thinking it over. He now considered it highly possible that Nadia von Bredow had killed Stefanie Schneeberger. And now, fearing that what she’d done would be discovered, she had kidnapped and possibly killed Amelie.

  When they reached Ostermann’s office, they found him holding the phone in his hand.

  “I spoke to the father and also sent a patrol over there. Tobias Sartorius drove off with his girlfriend this afternoon. She told old man Sartorius she was taking him to us. But since she hasn’t shown up yet, I’m thinking they must have gone somewhere else entirely.”

  Bodenstein frowned, but Pia was quicker to pick up on what her colleague had said.

  “With his girlfriend?” she asked. Ostermann nodded.

  “Have you got Sartorius’s number?”

  “Yes.” Pia went around his desk and, with a sense of foreboding, she reached for the phone. She pressed the REDIAL button and put it on speaker. Hartmut Sartorius answered after the third ring. She didn’t even let him speak before she asked her question.

  “Who is Tobias’s girlfriend?” she wanted to know, although she had a pretty good idea.

  “Nadia. But … but she wanted to take him…”

  “Have you got a cell number for her? Or the license number of her car?”

  “Yes, of course. But what’s going on?”

  “Please, Mr. Sartorius. Give me her cell number.” Her eyes met Bodenstein’s. Tobias Sartorius was with Nadia von Bredow en route somewhere and probably didn’t have a clue what Nadia had done or what she might be planning. As soon as she jotted down the number, Pia hung up and punched it into the phone.

  The number you have called is temporarily unavailable …

  “Now what?” She didn’t blame Bodenstein for sending the patrol to Lauterbach’s house today. What’s done is done.

  “We’ll send out an APB,” Bodenstein decided. “Then we need to track her cell, as far as that’s possible. Where does the woman live?”

  “I’ll find out.” Ostermann rolled his chair back to the desk and dialed a number.

  “What’s going on with Claudius Terlinden?” Pia wanted to know.

  “He’ll have to wait.” Bodenstein went to the coffee machine, shook the pot, which apparently still had coffee in it, and poured himself a cup. Then he sat down in Behnke’s empty chair. “Lauterbach is much more important.”

  On the evening of September 6, 1997, Gregor Lauterbach had kissed Stefanie Schneeberger, his neighbor’s daughter, at the fair in Altenhain, and later he was with her in Sartorius’s barn. One painting didn’t show Nadia fighting with Stefanie, but possibly Lauterbach having sex with the girl. Did Nadia von Bredow find out about this? And later, when a suitable opportunity presented itself, did she strike her hated rival with a tire iron? Thies Terlinden had seen what happened. Who else knew that Thies was an eyewitness to both murders? Pia’s cell phone hummed. It was Henning, who was already in the process of examining the mummified corpse of Stefanie Schneeberger.

  “I need the murder weapon.” He sounded tired and tense. Pia glanced at the clock on the wall. It was ten thirty and Henning was still at the lab. Had he confessed his juicy problem to Miriam in the meantime?

  “You’ll have it,” she replied. “Do you think you can still get any DNA off the mummy? The girl possibly had sexual relations shortly before her death.”

  “I can try. The corpse is in very good shape. I estimate she was in that room all these years at stable temperatures, because she hasn’t deteriorated much at all.”

  “How quickly can we get some results? We’re under a lot of pressure here.” That was certainly an understatement. Not only because they were still searching for Amelie, using all their resources and every available officer, but they were also in the middle of a new investigation of two eleven-year-old murder cases. The latter with only four detectives on it.

  “So what else is new?” Henning said. “I’ll hurry.”

  Bodenstein had finished his coffee.

  “Come on,” he said to Pia. “Let’s get moving.”

  * * *

  Bodenstein remained sitting behind the wheel for a while when he pulled into the parking area in front of his parents’ estate. It was shortly after midnight and he was completely exhausted, but at the same time too wired even to think about going to bed. He had considered sending Felix Pietsch, Jörg Richter, and Michael Dombrowski home after the interview, but then the most important question of all occurred to him: Was Laura already dead when they threw her in the underground tank? The three men were silent for a long time. Suddenly it had dawned on them that it was no longer a matter of a rape or failing to help someone. They could be guilty of something far worse.

  Pia had succinctly formulated the charges that might be filed against them: conspiring to cover up the death of an individual to conceal a felony. With that Michael Dombrowski broke down in tears. That was enough to constitute a confession for Bodenstein, and he had instructed Ostermann to prepare a warrant for their arrest. What the three had already told them was more than enough information. It had been years since Nadia von Bredow had contacted any friends from her youth. But shortly before Tobias was due to be released from prison, she had showed up in Altenhain and put major pressure on the three friends from the old days to keep their mouths shut. Since none of them were interested in having the truth come to light eleven years after the fact, they certainly would have continued to keep silent if another girl hadn’t vanished. The fact that they bore responsibility for the wrongful conviction of their friend had weighed upon their consciences all these years. Even when the witch hunt directed at Tobias had started up, cowardice and fear of the inevitable consequences had been too great for them to turn themselves in to the police. Jörg Richter hadn’t called up Tobias last Saturday simply out of old friendship. Nadia had asked him to invite Tobias that evening and encourage him to drink. And that confirmed Bodenstein’s fears. But what got him to thinking most was what Jörg Richter said when asked the question: Why would three grown men listen to Nadia von Bredow?

  “Even eleven years ago there was something about her that could throw fear into us.” The others had nodded in agreement. “Nadia didn’t get to where she is by accident. When she wants something, she gets it. Never mind who loses.”

  Nadia von Bredow had felt that Amelie Fröhlich was a threat and wanted to gain control over her. The fact that she wouldn’t hesitate to kill someone was not a good omen.

  Deep in thought, Bodenstein sat in his car. What a day! First the discovery of Lars Terlinden’s body, then the fire in Thies’s studio, Hasse’s incredible admissions, the meeting with Daniela Lauterbach … Then he remembered that he was supposed to call her later, after
she had told Christine Terlinden the bad news about her son’s suicide. He took out his cell phone and searched the inside pocket of his coat until he found the doctor’s business card. With heart pounding, Bodenstein waited to hear her voice. But in vain. He got her voicemail. After the beep he asked her to call him back at her convenience. He might have stayed sitting in his car if the coffee he’d drunk hadn’t been pressing on his bladder. It was time to go inside anyway. He glimpsed a movement out of the corner of his eye and nearly jumped out of his skin when somebody knocked on the window.

  “Dad?” It was Rosalie, his eldest daughter.

  “Rosi!” He opened the door and got out. “What are you doing here?”

  “I just got off work,” she said. “But what are you doing here? Why aren’t you at home?”

  Oliver sighed and leaned against the car. He was dead tired and had no desire to talk about his problems with his daughter. All day long he’d been distracted from thinking about Cosima, but now the unbearable feeling of failure fell over him.

  “Grandma told me that you slept here last night. What happened?” Rosalie gave him a worried look. In the dim glow of the single light her face looked ghostly pale. Why shouldn’t he tell her the truth? She was old enough to understand what was going on, and she’d find out sooner or later anyway.

  “Last night your mother told me that she’s been seeing another man. As a result I preferred to sleep somewhere else for a few days.”

  “What?” Rosalie’s face showed disbelief. “Why, that’s … No, that’s impossible.”

  Her bewilderment was real, and Bodenstein was relieved to know that his daughter wasn’t a secret accomplice of her mother.

  “Well,” he said with a shrug. “I couldn’t believe it at first either. It’s going to take me a while.”

  Rosalie snorted and shook her head. But all at once every grown-up attitude fell away and she was again a little girl, completely overwhelmed by a truth that was just as incredible to her as it was to him. Oliver didn’t want to pretend that everything would soon be straightened out. Nothing would ever be the same between him and Cosima. The hurt that she’d caused him was too severe.