Snow White Must Die (31 page)

“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.

“This has to go out today,” he told his secretary and dropped the envelope on her desk.

“Of course,” she replied sharply. She had once been the executive assistant to the board, and she still felt it was beneath her dignity to be secretary to a division VP. “You do remember that you have an appointment, yes?”

“Of course.” He left without looking at her again.

“You’re already seven minutes late!”

He went outside to the hall. Twenty-four steps to the elevator, which seemed to be waiting impatiently for him with doors open. Upstairs on the twelfth floor the entire board had been sitting for seven minutes. His future was at stake, his reputation, yes, his entire life. Two female colleagues from the back office slipped into the elevator after him. He knew them by sight and nodded absently. They giggled and whispered, returning his nod of greeting. The doors closed silently. He was shocked when he saw the man in the mirror with the haggard face who returned his gaze with dull, dejected eyes. He was tired, infinitely tired and burned out.

“Where to?” asked the brunette with the big eyes politely. “Up or down?”

Her finger with the long fake nail paused expectantly over the button panel. Lars Terlinden couldn’t tear his eyes away from the sight of his face in the mirror.

“Down,” he replied. “All the way down.”

*   *   *

Pia Kirchhoff walked into the Ebony Club, nodding in thanks to the doorman who had opened the door for her with a flourish. Only a short time ago she and Christoph had dined here with Henning and Miriam. Henning had shelled out five hundred euros for the meal, utterly excessive in her eyes. Pia didn’t much care for trendy spots, cryptic menus, and wine lists in which the price for a single bottle could run into the four-figure bracket. Since she judged wines not by their labels but by her own personal taste, a bardolino or chianti at the pizzeria around the corner sufficed for a successful evening.

The maître d’ slithered down from his high perch and steered toward her with a radiant smile. Without a word Pia held up her badge in front of his nose. His smile cooled at once by several degrees. A potential prospect for the maharaja menu had suddenly transformed before his eyes into a toad that nobody would want to swallow. The criminal police were never welcomed anywhere, especially not in a posh restaurant in the midst of the noontime rush.

“May I inquire as to what this concerns?” murmured the maître d’.

“No, you may not,” said Kirchhoff dryly. “Where’s the manager?”

The smile vanished completely and with it the feigned courtesy.

“Wait here.” The man left, and Pia looked around unobtrusively. There she was. There sat Cosima von Bodenstein having an intimate conversation with a man who was clearly ten years younger. He was wearing a rumpled business suit, and his shirt was open with no tie. His casual posture radiated self-importance. His tousled, dark blond hair reached to his shoulders. He had an angular face with an aggressively jutting chin, five-day beard, and a prominent aquiline nose. His skin was tanned from being outdoors—or the result of alcohol, Pia thought maliciously. Cosima von Bodenstein was animatedly going on about something, and he was looking at her with a smile, obviously fascinated. This was no business lunch, and no accidental meeting of old acquaintances—the erotic vibrations between the two were evident even to an impartial observer. They’d either come directly from bed or were pausing on the way there for a little lunch to pump up the anticipation. Pia felt genuinely sorry for her boss, yet she also felt a certain sympathy for Cosima, who must be longing for an adventure after twenty-five years of marital routine.

The appearance of the restaurant’s manager tore Pia away from her ruminations. He was in his mid-thirties, at most, but his sparse sandy hair and puffy face made him look older.

“I won’t take up much of your time, Mr.…” Pia began, inspecting the huge man, who was so impolite that he hadn’t offered her his hand or deigned to introduce himself.

“Jagielski,” the man announced, peering down at her and dismissing his maître d’ with an arrogant gesture. “What is it? We’re in the middle of the noon rush.”

Jagielski. The name triggered some vague association in Pia’s mind.

“I see. Do you do the cooking?” she countered sarcastically.

“No.” He was clearly annoyed, and his restless eyes kept flitting over the dining room. Suddenly he turned around, stopped a young waitress, and hissed a remark that made her blush.

“It’s almost impossible to find properly trained help,” he then explained to Pia without a hint of a smile. “These young things are a disaster. They just don’t have the right attitude.”

New customers arrived, and they were standing in the way. In that instant she recalled where she had heard the name Jagielski before. That was the name of the owner of the Black Horse in Altenhain. Her inquiry confirmed that it was no coincidence. Andreas Jagielski owned the Black Horse as well as the Ebony Club and another place in Frankfurt.

“So, what’s the deal?” he asked. Politeness was not his strong suit. Neither was discretion. They were still standing in the middle of the foyer.

“I would like to know if a Mr. Claudius Terlinden had dinner here last Saturday evening with his wife.”

He raised one eyebrow. “Why do the police want to know?”

“Because it’s of interest to the police.” His condescending arrogance was really getting on Pia’s nerves. “Well?”

A tiny hesitation, then a curt nod. “Yes, he was here.”

“Just with his wife?”

“I don’t recall.”

“Perhaps your maître d’ would remember. You must keep a book of reservations.”

Reluctantly Jagielski waved over the maître d’ he had chased off earlier and told him to bring the reservation book. He held his hand out and waited silently while the maître d’ again climbed onto his high perch and then scurried back. The manager licked his index finger and paged slowly through the leather-bound register.

“Ah, here it is,” he said at last. “It was a party of four. Now I remember.”

“Who was with them? Names?” Pia insisted. Several customers were trying to get their coats and leave. At last Jagielski led Kirchhoff in the direction of the bar.

“I don’t see what business that is of yours,” he said, lowering his voice.

“Listen here.” Pia was impatient now. “I’m investigating the case of your missing waitress Amelie, who was last seen at the Black Horse on Saturday night. We’re looking for witnesses who may have seen the girl after that.”

Jagielski stared at her, thought it over for a moment, and probably decided that revealing the names would be harmless.