Snow White Must Die (46 page)

*   *   *

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.

“What happened?” Kirchhoff asked one of the uniformed officers after she introduced herself. She was watching her boss out of the corner of her eye.

“Apparently he swerved to avoid an animal,” replied the officer. “The car is totaled, but he doesn’t seem to be hurt. At least he doesn’t want to go to the hospital.”

“I’ll take care of him. Thanks a lot.”

She turned around. The tow truck moved off, but Bodenstein didn’t even raise his head.

“Hey.” Pia stopped in front of him. What should she say to him? He certainly wouldn’t want to go home—wherever that might be these days. Apart from that, now was not the time to be absent from the investigation. Bodenstein heaved a deep sigh. There was a forlorn expression on his face.

“She’s going with him on a trip around the world, right after Christmas,” he said tonelessly. “Her work is more important than me or the kids. She already signed the contract in September.”

Pia hesitated. A dumb cliché like
It’ll turn out all right
or
Chin up
would be out of place here. She felt really sorry for him, but there was no time to waste. Nadia von Bredow was waiting at the station, along with every available officer in the Regional Criminal Unit.

“Come on, Oliver.” Although she would have liked to grab him by the arm and drag him into the car, she forced herself to be patient. “We can’t stay here sitting on the side of the road.”

Bodenstein closed his eyes and rubbed the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger.

“Twenty-six years I’ve been dealing with murderers and killers,” he said in a hoarse voice. “But I could never really imagine what would drive a person to kill someone else. This morning I understood for the first time. I believe I would have strangled her in the parking lot if my father and brother hadn’t intervened.”

He hugged himself as if he were freezing, and looked at Pia with bloodshot eyes. “In my whole life I’ve never felt so shitty.”

*   *   *

The conference room could barely hold all the officers that Ostermann had ordered to come in to the Regional Criminal Unit. After his accident Bodenstein didn’t seem in any shape to take over the lead of the team, so Pia took the floor. She asked for quiet, outlined the situation, enumerated the facts, and reminded her colleagues of their highest priority, which was to find Amelie Fröhlich and Thies Terlinden. Since Behnke wasn’t there nobody questioned Pia’s authority, and everyone listened attentively. Pia’s gaze fell on Bodenstein, who was leaning against the wall in the back of the room next to Commissioner Engel. She had gotten him coffee at the gas station and added a little bottle of cognac. He drank it without protest, and now he seemed to be doing somewhat better. But he was obviously still in shock.

“The prime suspects are Gregor Lauterbach, Claudius Terlinden, and Nadia von Bredow,” Pia now said, stepping over to the screen on which Ostermann had projected a map of Altenhain and vicinity. “These three people have the most to lose if the truth comes out about what really happened in Altenhain in 1997. Terlinden and Lauterbach came from this direction last Saturday evening.” She pointed to the Feldstrasse. “Before that they were in Idstein, but we’ve already searched that house. We’re concentrating now on the Black Horse. The owner and his wife are in cahoots with Terlinden, so it’s entirely possible that they did him a favor. Possibly Amelie didn’t leave the restaurant at all. In addition, every resident around the parking lot has been questioned again. Kai, do you have the arrest warrants?”

Ostermann nodded.

“Good. Jörg Richter, Felix Pietsch, and Michael Dombrowski will be brought here; Kathrin will handle that, along with several colleagues from the patrol units. Two two-man teams will question Claudius Terlinden and Gregor Lauterbach simultaneously. We also have arrest warrants for both of them.”

“Who’s going to take on Lauterbach and Terlinden?” asked one of the officers.

“Detective Superintendent Bodenstein and Commissioner Engel will take Lauterbach,” Pia replied. “I’ll go see Terlinden.”

“With whom?”

Good question. Behnke and Hasse weren’t around any longer. Pia looked at the colleagues sitting before her, then made a decision.

“Sven will go with me.”

The officer from SB-21 who had been selected opened his eyes wide in surprise and pointed at himself. Pia nodded.

“Any more questions?”

There were none. The meeting adjourned with the hubbub of voices and scraping chairs. Pia jostled her way over to Bodenstein and Nicola Engel.

“Was that okay, that I included you?” she asked Engel.

“Yes, of course.” The commissioner nodded and then took Pia aside.

“Why did you pick DI Jansen?”

“Spontaneous inspiration.” Pia shrugged. “I’ve often heard the boss say how pleased he is with Sven’s work.”

Nicola Engel nodded. Her inscrutable expression might have made Pia doubt her decision under other circumstances, but there was no time for that now. DI Sven Jansen came over to join them. As they all made their way downstairs, Pia quickly explained what she expected to achieve from the simultaneous questioning of the two suspects and how she intended to proceed. In the parking lot they separated. Bodenstein held Pia back for a moment.

“Well done,” he said. “And—thank you.”

*   *   *

Bodenstein and Nicola Engel waited quietly in the car until Pia’s call came in, saying that she and Jansen were standing at Terlinden’s front door. Then they got out and rang the Lauterbachs’ doorbell at the same second Pia rang the Terlindens’ bell. It took a moment before Gregor Lauterbach opened the door. He was wearing a terrycloth bathrobe, and on the chest was the logo of an international hotel chain.

“What do you want?” he asked, studying them with swollen eyes. “I’ve already told you everything.”

“We like to ask questions multiple times,” Bodenstein replied politely. “Isn’t your wife at home?”

“No. She’s at a conference in Munich. Why do you ask?”

“Just wondering.”

Nicola Engel was still holding her cell phone to her ear and now nodded to Bodenstein. Pia and Sven Jansen were standing in the foyer of Terlinden’s villa. As they had all agreed, Bodenstein now asked the cultural minister the first question.