Snow White Must Die

by Nele Neuhaus

  “He wanted to get rid of those documents that evening,” Lauterbach concluded. Now that he was no longer the immediate target, he had regained some of his self-confidence. “Since he didn’t want to destroy them, we took them to my house in Idstein.”

  “I see.”

  “I have nothing to do with the disappearance of Amelie or Thies,” Gregor Lauterbach declared. “And I haven’t murdered anyone.”

  “That remains to be seen.” Bodenstein gathered up the pictures and put them back in the file. “You can go home now. But you’re under police surveillance, and we’ll be monitoring your telephone. I would also like to ask you to remain available. In any event, let me know before you leave your house.”

  Lauterbach nodded meekly. “Could you at least keep my name out of the media for the time being?” he pleaded.

  “That’s not something I can promise you.” Bodenstein held out his hand. “The key to your house in Idstein, please.”

  Sunday, November 23, 2008

  Pia had spent a sleepless night and was already on her feet when the call came at 5:15 A.M. from the surveillance team: Nadia von Bredow had just returned to her apartment at the West Harbor in Frankfurt. Alone.

  “I’ll be right there,” said Pia. “Wait for me.”

  She tossed the hay that she was holding under her arm over the door of the horse stall and put away her cell phone. The case wasn’t the only thing that had kept her awake. Tomorrow at three thirty in the afternoon she had an appointment for an inspection at Birkenhof by the zoning office of the city of Frankfurt. If they didn’t cancel the demolition order, she, Christoph, and the animals would soon be homeless.

  In the last few days Christoph had been worrying himself sick about the matter, and his former optimism had swiftly evaporated. The seller of Birkenhof had failed to mention to Pia that there was a construction ban on the land where the house stood because of the high-tension lines from the power plant. The seller’s father had erected a hut sometime after the war and had expanded it over the years without a building permit. For sixty years no one had noticed until she had applied for a building permit, ignorant of the illegality.

  Pia quickly fed the poultry, then she phoned Bodenstein. When he didn’t answer, she wrote him a text and then, lost in thought, walked back to the house, which suddenly seemed foreign to her. On her tiptoes she crept into the bedroom.

  “Do you have to go?” asked Christoph.

  “Yes. Did I wake you?” She turned on the light.

  “No. I couldn’t sleep either.” He looked at her, his head propped on his hand. “I’ve been wondering for half the night what we can do if they’re serious.”

  “Me too.” Pia sat down on the edge of the bed. “Anyway, I’m going to sue the shitheads that sold me this property. It was malicious fraud, most definitely.”

  “We’ll have to prove it first,” Christoph noted. “I’m going to discuss it today with a friend of mine who knows about these things. Until then we won’t do anything.”

  Pia sighed. “I’m so glad you’re here,” she said softly. “I don’t know what I would have done alone.”

  “If I hadn’t come into your life, you would never have applied for a building permit, and nothing would have happened.” Christoph gave her a crooked grin. “Now don’t get discouraged. Go do your job and I’ll worry about all this, okay?”

  “Okay.” Pia managed a smile. She bent over and gave Christoph a kiss. “Unfortunately I have no idea when I’ll be home tonight.”

  “Don’t worry about me.” Christoph smiled too. “I have to work at the zoo.”

  * * *

  Bodenstein recognized her familiar figure from far away. She was standing in the light of the streetlamp next to her car in the parking lot, her red hair the only spot of color in the misty darkness. He hesitated a moment before he strode over to her. Cosima was not a woman who would allow anyone to hang up on her. Actually he should have known that sooner or later she would waylay him, but the case he was working on had monopolized his attention. So now he felt unprepared and at a disadvantage.

  “What do you want?” he asked gruffly. “I don’t have time for this.”

  “You didn’t call me back,” said Cosima. “I have to talk with you.”

  “Jeez, right now?” He stood in front of her, studying her pale, composed face. His heart was pounding and it took a real effort to remain calm. “You haven’t felt the need to talk to me in weeks. Go find your Russian friend if you’re in the mood to talk.”

  He pulled out his car key, but she didn’t budge from the spot where she was standing next to the car door.

  “I want to explain—” she began.

  “I don’t want to hear it. And I really don’t have time right now,” Oliver interrupted her. He had barely slept all night and had to get going urgently, which made for rather poor conditions for an important talk like this.

  “Oliver, please believe me, I didn’t want to hurt you!” Cosima reached out her hand to him, but let it drop when he shrank back. Her breath stood like a white cloud in the cold morning air. “I didn’t want to go that far, but—”

  “Just stop!” he shouted. “You did hurt me! More than any person ever has! I don’t want to hear any excuses or justifications from you, because no matter what you say, you’ve ruined everything! Everything!”

  Cosima didn’t say a word.

  “Who knows how many times you’ve cheated on me before? The way you’ve played me for a fool and lied to me is such a cliché,” he went on through clenched teeth. “What did you do on all those business trips? How many beds did you waltz through while your stupidly naïve and trusting bourgeois husband dutifully stayed home with the kids and waited for you? Maybe you even had a laugh at my expense because I was dumb enough to trust you!”

  Like poisonous lava these words erupted from the depths of him; finally all the bottled-up disappointment came pouring out. Cosima let his anger wash over her without batting an eye.

  “Maybe Sophia isn’t even my child—maybe she’s the brat of one of those shaggy, dubious film types you like to hang out with!”

  He stopped talking when he realized how monstrous this reproach was. But now that he’d said it, he couldn’t take it back.

  “I would have bet my life on our marriage,” he said in a strained voice. “But you’ve lied to me and betrayed me. I’ll never be able to trust you again.”

  Cosima straightened her shoulders.

  “I thought you’d react like this,” she responded coolly. “Self-righteous and uncompromising. You see the whole thing only from your own egotistical point of view.”

  “How else would I see it? From the point of view of your Russian lover?” He snorted. “You’re the one who’s selfish. For twenty long years you never once asked me how I was doing. You went off traveling for weeks at a time. I never liked it, but I accepted it because your work is important to you. Then you got pregnant. You never asked me if I wanted another child, you made the decision all on your own and presented me with the facts. You should have known that with a little baby you wouldn’t be able to go globetrotting. Then out of sheer boredom you plunged into an affair—and now you want to accuse me of being selfish? If it wasn’t all so sad, I’d have to laugh!”

  “When Lorenz and Rosi were small, I was still able to work. And sometimes you did take over the responsibility,” Cosima argued. “But that’s not what I want to discuss with you. What’s past is past. I made a big mistake, but I’m certainly not going to go around in sackcloth and ashes until you decide to forgive me.”

  “So why are you here?” The cell phone in his coat pocket rang and vibrated, but he ignored it.

  “After Christmas I want to accompany Gavrilow’s expedition through the Northwest Passage for four weeks,” Cosima informed him. “You’d have to take care of Sophia while I’m gone.”

  Speechless, Oliver stared at his wife as if she’d just slapped him. Cosima hadn’t come to ask his forgiveness—no, she had long ago
made up her mind about her future. A future in which he was relegated to the job of babysitter. His knees felt as soft as butter.

  “You can’t be serious,” he whispered.

  “Oh yes I am. I signed the contract a couple of weeks ago. It was clear to me that you wouldn’t approve.” She shrugged. “I’m sorry it had to come up this way, honestly. But I’ve been doing a lot of thinking the past few months. I would regret it to the end of my days if I don’t make this film…”

  She kept on talking but her words no longer registered with him. He’d understood the most important thing: In her heart she had left him long ago, rejecting the life they had shared. Actually he’d never really been sure of her. All these years he had thought that the contradictory side of her personality was what made their relationship special, like adding salt to the soup. But now he realized that they just didn’t fit together. He felt a painful pang in his heart.

  And now she was doing the same thing she’d done so many times before: She had made a decision that he was forced to accept. She was the one who always determined the direction of their lives. She had the money. She had bought the property in Kelkheim and paid for the house to be built. He could never have afforded all that. It hurt, but on this gloomy November morning he saw for the first time that Cosima was no longer the beautiful, self-assured, exciting companion he wanted at his side. Instead she was the woman who ruthlessly pushed through her will and her plans. How stupid and blind he’d been all this time!

  The blood was roaring in his ears. She had stopped talking and looked at him unmoved, as if waiting for a reply. He blinked. Her face, the car, the parking lot—it all blurred before his eyes. She wanted to leave him for another man. She wanted to live her life, and there was no longer any room for him in it. Suddenly jealousy and hatred overwhelmed him. He took a step toward Cosima and grabbed her wrist. Shocked, she tried to pull away, but he held her hand tight, as if in a vise. Her cool superiority vanished abruptly, and she opened her eyes wide in fear. Then she opened her mouth to scream.

  * * *

  At six thirty Pia decided to go to Nadia von Bredow’s condo without her boss. Bodenstein wasn’t answering his cell and hadn’t responded to her text.

  Just as she was about to press the doorbell, the front door opened and a man came out. Pia and her two plainclothes colleagues who’d been staked out at the apartment started to slip past him to enter the building.

  “Stop!” The slightly graying man in his mid-fifties and wearing round horn-rims blocked their way. “This is not allowed! Who are you looking for?”

  “None of your business,” Pia snapped back.

  “It certainly is.” The man took up position in front of the elevator, crossed his arms, and scrutinized her arrogantly. “I’m the chairman of the owners’ association. You can’t just walk right in here.”

  “We’re from the criminal police.”

  “Oh yeah? Have you got an ID?”

  Pia was boiling with fury. She pulled out her ID and shoved it in front of the man’s nose. Without another word she started for the stairs.

  “You can wait down here,” she told one of her colleagues. “The two of us will go up.”

  They had barely reached the door of the penthouse apartment when it opened. A brief look of fear was evident on the face of Nadia von Bredow.

  “I told you to wait downstairs,” she said curtly. “But as long as you’re here you can take the suitcases.”

  “Are you going away?” Pia realized that Nadia von Bredow didn’t recognize her and probably took her for the cab driver. “But you just got home.”

  “What business is it of yours?” she replied irritably.

  “Quite a bit, I think.” Pia held out her ID. “Pia Kirchhoff, Hofheim Criminal Police.”

  Nadia von Bredow looked her up and down and stuck out her lower lip. She was wearing a dark-brown Wellensteyn jacket with a fur collar, jeans, and boots. She had pulled back her blonde hair in a tight knot, but even her carefully applied makeup couldn’t hide the shadows under her red-rimmed eyes.

  “You’re coming at a bad time. I have to rush to the airport.”

  “Then you’ll have to take a later flight,” said Pia. “I have a few questions for you.”

  “I don’t have time for this right now.” She pushed the button for the elevator.

  “Where have you been?” asked Pia.

  “Traveling.”

  “I see. And where is Tobias Sartorius?”

  Nadia von Bredow gave Pia an astounded look with her grass-green eyes.

  “How should I know?” Her surprise seemed genuine, but she wasn’t one of the best-paid actors in Germany for nothing.

  “Because you drove off with him after Laura Wagner was buried instead of dropping him off with us for questioning.”

  “Who said that?”

  “Tobias’s father. So?”

  The elevator arrived and the door slid aside. Nadia von Bredow turned to Pia and gave her a mocking smile.

  “I hope you don’t believe everything he tells you.” She looked at Pia’s colleague. “The police: to serve and protect. Would you mind helping me get my luggage into the elevator?”

  The man actually made a move to grab her suitcase, but at that instant Pia blew her top.

  “Where is Amelie? What did you do with the girl?”

  “Me?” Nadia von Bredow’s eyes widened. “Not a thing! Why would I do anything with her?”

  “Because Thies Terlinden gave paintings to Amelie that clearly prove that you were not only present when your friend Laura was raped, but you also watched as Gregor Lauterbach had sex with Stefanie Schneeberger in Sartorius’s barn. Afterward, you beat Stefanie Schneeberger to death with a tire iron.”

  To Pia’s surprise Nadia von Bredow began to laugh.

  “Where did you hear such nonsense?”

  Pia made an effort to control herself. She really wanted to grab the woman and give her a slap.

  “Your friends Jörg, Felix, and Michael have confessed,” she said. “Laura was still alive when you gave them orders to get rid of her. You must have been afraid that Amelie had found out the truth through Thies and his paintings. That’s why it was in your interest to get rid of her too.”

  “My God.” Nadia remained totally unmoved. “Even screenwriters couldn’t think up such an outrageous story. I saw that girl Amelie only once, and I have no idea where she is.”

  “You’re lying. You were in the parking lot of the Black Horse and you threw Amelie’s backpack in the bushes.”

  “Oh, really?” Nadia von Bredow looked at Pia with raised eyebrows, as if she were unbearably bored. “Who says so?”

  “You’ll see.”

  “I know how to do a few things,” she replied sarcastically. “But being two places at the same time, that’s something I haven’t mastered. I was in Hamburg on that Saturday, and I have witnesses.”

  “Who?”

  “I can give you their names and phone numbers.”

  “What were you doing in Hamburg?”

  “Working.”

  “Not true. Your manager told us that you had no shoot that evening.”

  Nadia von Bredow glanced at her expensive watch and made a face, as if she’d wasted enough time.

  “I was in Hamburg to MC a gala together with my colleague Torsten Gottwald for around four hundred guests, and it was taped by North German TV,” she said. “I can’t give you the phone numbers of all the guests that were present, but I can give you those of the director, Torsten, and several others. Would that be proof enough that I couldn’t have been running around in a parking lot in Altenhain at the same time?”

  “Save your sarcasm,” Pia snapped back. “If you’re worried about your suitcase, my colleague will gladly carry it for you to our car.”

  “Oh, that’s rich. The police are offering taxi service now.”

  “With the greatest of pleasure,” Pia replied coldly. “And it takes you straight to your cell.”

  �
��That’s ridiculous!” Nadia von Bredow seemed to be slowly realizing that she was in serious trouble. A deep furrow appeared between her carefully plucked eyebrows. “I have an important appointment in Hamburg.”

  “Not anymore. For now you’re under arrest.”

  “Why, if I may ask?”

  “Because you willingly collaborated in the death of your classmate Laura Wagner.” Pia smiled smugly. “You must know that from your film scripts. It’s also called accessory to murder.”

  * * *

  The two plainclothes colleagues put Nadia von Bredow in the back seat and drove off in the direction of Hofheim. Then Pia tried once more to reach Bodenstein. Finally he picked up.

  “Where the heck are you?” Pia asked with annoyance. She was clamping her cell phone between her ear and shoulder as she fished for the seatbelt. “I’ve been trying to reach you for an hour and a half. You don’t have to come to Frankfurt. I just arrested Nadia von Bredow and sent her off to the station.”

  Bodenstein said something, but his voice was so indistinct that she couldn’t understand him.

  “I can’t hear you,” she said peevishly. “What’s going on?”

  “… had an accident … waiting for the tow truck … fairgrounds exit … gas station…”

  “Oh no, that’s all we need. Just wait there, I’ll pick you up.”

  Swearing, Pia punched off the call and raced off. She felt like she was standing all alone in a big hall, at the precise moment when she couldn’t allow herself any mistakes or lose her perspective. One tiny slipup and the case would be ruined. She floored it. The city streets were nearly empty of traffic on this early Sunday morning, and it barely took her ten minutes to navigate the distance through the Gutleut district to the main train station and from there out to the fairgrounds. It would have taken her half an hour on a weekday.

  On the radio Amy MacDonald was singing a song that Pia had initially liked. But the station had been playing it around the clock and now it made her want to puke. Just before eight o’clock she spied the orange warning lights of the tow truck flashing on the opposite side of the road in the gradually brightening gray light of morning. What was left of Bodenstein’s BMW was being loaded onto the flatbed. She turned around at the Westkreuz and a couple of minutes later pulled up in front of the tow truck and a patrol car. Bodenstein sat on the crash barrier, his face pale and his elbows propped on his knees as he stared into space.