The Ice Queen: A Novel (46 page)

“Yes, it was undoubtedly murder,” Ostermann now replied. “Wait a second, I’ll read you the passage from the manuscript: “‘Vera shoved him down the steep cellar stairs and then ran down as if she wanted to help him. She knelt down next to him, put her ear to his lips, and, when she noticed that he was still breathing, smothered him with his own sweater. Then she went upstairs, unmoved, and sat down at her desk. The body wasn’t discovered until two hours later. A suspect was soon identified: After a vehement fight with his stepfather, Elard had left Mühlenhof in the late afternoon in a great hurry, and took the night train back to Paris that same evening.’”

Bodenstein nodded. Thomas Ritter must either be very naïve or truly blind with the desire for revenge to write such a book, he thought. It was clever of Katharina Ehrmann to make her knowledge public in this way. He didn’t know why Katharina hated the Kaltensees, but it was impossible to ignore the fact that she did. One thing was certain: If this book were ever published, the scandal would drag some members of the Kaltensee family into the abyss.

The phone rang. He was hoping it was Pia, but it was Behnke. The description of the man who had accompanied Ritter the night before last as he left the editorial office might match an employee of K-Secure. But Améry and his five colleagues were being as closemouthed as the Sicilian Mafia.

“I want to speak to Siegbert Kaltensee,” said Bodenstein, at the risk of being reported again for acting with arbitrary high-handedness. “Bring him here. And the receptionist from
Weekend,
too. We’ll do a lineup with the K-Secure men. Maybe she’ll recognize the messenger.”

Where was Vera Kaltensee? Where was Elard? Were they still alive? Why had Elard Kaltensee locked Nowak in the basement of the university building? Marcus Nowak had been operated on last night, and he was now in the ICU of the Bethanien Hospital. The doctors still couldn’t say whether he would survive. Bodenstein closed his eyes and rested his head on his hand. Elard had been in possession of the trunk and the diaries. At the request of Katharina Ehrmann, he had given the diaries to Ritter, and somehow the Kaltensees must have found out about it. Absentmindedly, he leafed through the transcript. Suddenly, he stopped.

“
The Little Tomcat, who came regularly,
” he read. “
Used to push her wheelchair around in the park.
” … “
The Little Tomcat?
” … “
That’s what she called him, the young man
.” … “
What did he look like?
” … “
Brown eyes. Slim. Medium height, average-looking face. The ideal spy, right? Or a Swiss banker.
”

Something stirred in Bodenstein’s memory. Spy, spy … Then it dawned on him. “Terrible, that Moormann,” Jutta Kaltensee had said, and turned all pale when her mother’s chauffeur suddenly appeared behind her. “Creeping all over soundlessly and scaring me half to death each time, that old spy.”

That had been on the day when he’d met Jutta for the first time at Mühlenhof. Bodenstein thought about the shirt that Watkowiak had been wearing. Moormann could have easily worn one of Elard Kaltensee’s shirts to lay a false trail.

“Good God,” Bodenstein muttered. Why hadn’t he thought of this before? Moormann, the servant, whose constant unobtrusive presence in the house was so taken for granted. He must know about everything that happened in the family. Did he know about the transfer of the diaries to Ritter, and had he perhaps listened in on Elard’s phone call? Undoubtedly, the man was loyal to his employer. At the very least, he had lied for her. Had he also murdered for her? Bodenstein banged the folder shut and took his service weapon out of his desk drawer. He had to drive to Mühlenhof at once. Just as he was about to leave his office, Chief Commissioner Nierhoff appeared in his doorway with an ominous expression, accompanied by a rather smug-looking Nicola Engel. Bodenstein put on his jacket.

“Dr. Engel,” he said before either of them could open their mouths, “I urgently need your help.”

“Where is Ms. Kirchhoff?” Nierhoff asked sharply.

“In Poland.” Bodenstein looked at Nicola Engel. “I know that I have disregarded regulations, but I had my reasons.”

“What do you need help for?” Commissioner Engel ignored his explanation and returned his look with an unfathomable expression in her eyes.

“I’ve just realized that we’ve been overlooking someone this whole time,” said Bodenstein. “I believe that Vera Kaltensee’s chauffeur, Moormann, is the one who killed Monika Krämer and Robert Watkowiak.” He hurriedly explained the suspicious circumstances.

“We have one trace-trace hit that we haven’t been able to account for. I need Moormann’s DNA, and I’d like you to accompany me to Mühlenhof. In addition, we need a lineup to show Ritter’s secretary the K-Secure men. I can only keep them detained until this evening.”

“But that’s not procedure…” Nierhoff protested, but Nicola Engel nodded.

“I’ll come with you,” she said decisively. “Let’s go.”

*   *   *

Pia slowly went around the black limousine that had been parked carelessly between the thistles and a pile of rubble. The doors weren’t locked. Whoever had come here in the vehicle had been in a hurry. Quietly, she moved away and went to tell Henning and Miriam about her find. None of their cell phones was working, but Bodenstein wouldn’t have been able to help her now anyway.

“Maybe we’d better ask the Polish police to intervene,” Pia suggested.

“Nonsense.” Henning shook his head. “What do you want to tell them? ‘There’s a car over here. Could you please come out and take a look?’ They’ll have a good laugh at you.”

“But who knows what might be going on down there in the cellar?” Pia said.

“We’ll soon see,” replied Henning, and marched off resolutely. Pia had a bad feeling about this, but it was silly to turn back when they were so close to their goal. Who could have driven the Maybach here all the way from Germany, and why? After a brief hesitation, she followed Miriam and her ex-husband.

The once-magnificent castle had almost completely caved in. The outer walls were still standing, but the ground floor was covered in rubble and offered no access to the cellar.

“Here,” Miriam called in a low voice. “Somebody has gone this way, and fairly recently.”

The three of them followed a narrow path through nettles and underbrush in the direction of the lake. Downtrodden grass told them that the path had been used not long before. They made their way through head-high reeds that rustled softly in the wind. Their feet squelched in the mire. Henning cursed, startled, when right next to them two wild ducks took off with a loud quacking. Pia’s nerves were stretched to the breaking point. The weather had turned hot, and sweat ran into her eyes. What awaited them in the cellar of the castle? How should they act if they actually ran into Vera or Elard Kaltensee? They had promised Bodenstein not to take any risks. Wouldn’t it be smarter to notify the Polish police?

“Ah yes,” said Miriam. “Here are the stairs.”

The crumbling steps seemed to lead down into nothingness, since the rear portion of the castle lay in rubble and ashes. The marble flagstones of the former terrace with its spectacular lake view had long since vanished. Miriam stopped and wiped the sweat from her face with her forearm. She pointed to a gaping hole at her feet. Pia gulped and struggled with herself for a moment before she was the first to climb down. She wanted to reach for her pistol, when she remembered that she had left it back in Germany, at Bodenstein’s request. Cursing silently, she felt her way over a mountain of rubble down into the darkness.

The cellar of Lauenburg Manor had survived fire, war, and the tooth of time astoundingly well; most of the rooms were still intact. Pia tried to orient herself. She had no idea in which part of the extensive cellar they were standing.

“Let me go first,” said Henning, who had switched on a flashlight. A rat scurried across the rubbish and paused for a moment in the beam of light. Pia grimaced in disgust. After a few yards, Henning stopped suddenly and turned off the flashlight. Pia bumped into him hard and staggered.

“What is it?” she whispered tensely.

“Somebody’s talking,” he said softly. They stood very still and listened, but except for their breathing, they heard nothing for quite a while. Pia jumped in fright when almost directly beside her an imperious female voice resounded.

“Untie me, now! What’s gotten into you, treating me like this?”

“Tell me what I want to know; then I’ll release you,” said a man.

“I’m not saying anything. And stop waving that thing around!”

“Tell me what happened here on January sixteenth, 1945. Tell me what you did, you and your friends, and I’ll let you go immediately.”

Pia squeezed past Henning, her heart pounding, and looked around the corner, holding her breath. A portable floodlight threw a glaring beam on the ceiling, illuminating the low cellar room. Elard Kaltensee was standing behind the woman he had always thought was his mother, pressing the barrel of a pistol into the back of her neck. She was kneeling on the ground, her hands tied behind her back. There was nothing left of the elegant, worldly woman. Her white hair stood out wildly from her head, she wore no makeup, and her clothes were dirty and rumpled. Pia could see the tension in Elard Kaltensee’s face. He was blinking his eyes, licking his lips nervously. One wrong word or false move and he might fire.

*   *   *

When Bodenstein and Dr. Engel returned from Mühlenhof, having achieved nothing because everyone had already cleared out, Siegbert Kaltensee was waiting at the station.

“What do you actually want from him?” Nicola Engel asked as they went up the stairs to Bodenstein’s office.

“I want to know where Moormann and Ritter are,” he replied with grim determination. He’d been concentrating for far too long on the obvious and overlooking what was just below the surface. Siegbert, who had stood in the shadow of Elard his whole life, had been used by his mother exactly as she had used every other person who came near her.

“Why would he know that?”

“He’s his mother’s gofer, and she was the one who gave the orders for everything.”

Nicola Engel stopped and held him back.

“How do you actually know that Jutta Kaltensee wanted to lure you into a trap?” she asked in earnest. Bodenstein looked at her. In her eyes he saw genuine interest.

“Jutta Kaltensee is a very ambitious woman,” he said. “She realized that the murders, which were so closely connected to her family, could be extremely damaging for her career. And a biography that attracted attention, that produced negative headlines, was the last thing she needed. I still don’t know who actually ordered the murders of Robert Watkowiak and his girlfriend, but both of them had to die to put us off the scent. The evidence pointing to Elard Kaltensee was also planted in order to make him seem untrustworthy. When we dug even deeper, she decided on a desperate move to compromise me. The chief investigator forces a member of the Kaltensee family into a sexual liaison—what could be better?”

Nicola Engel looked at him thoughtfully.

“She made an appointment with me, ostensibly to tell me something related to the case,” Bodenstein continued. “I can hardly remember that evening, although I drank only one glass of wine. Everything got very hazy. That’s why I had a blood sample taken yesterday. Dr. Kirchhoff determined that someone had given me liquid ecstasy. Do you understand now? She planned the whole thing.”

“To get you out of the way?” Nicola Engel asked.

“I can’t come up with any other explanation,” said Bodenstein. “She wants to be prime minister, but she could hardly manage it with a murderer for a mother and a skeleton discovered on the grounds of the family estate. Jutta will distance herself from the family in order to survive. And she’ll make use of what she did to me, resorting to blackmail if necessary.”

“But she doesn’t have any proof, does she?”

“Of course she does,” Bodenstein replied bitterly. “She’s clever enough to produce something on which my DNA is detectable.”

“You might actually be right,” Nicola Engel conceded after thinking it over.

“I
am
right,” Bodenstein insisted. “You’ll see.”

*   *   *

For a while, it was completely still in the vaulted space. Pia took a deep breath and moved forward a step.

“You might as well tell me, Edda Schwinderke,” she said loudly, stepping into the light with her hands raised. “We know what happened here.”

Elard Kaltensee spun around and stared at her as if he’d seen a ghost. Even Vera, aka Edda, gave a start in fright, but she quickly recovered from her surprise.

“Ms. Kirchhoff!” she cried in the sugar-sweet voice that Pia knew so well. “You’re heaven-sent. Please help me.”

Pia didn’t look at her, going over to Elard Kaltensee instead.

“Don’t do anything stupid. Give me the gun.” She held out her hand. “We know the truth, and we know what she did.”

Elard Kaltensee looked back at the woman kneeling in front of him.

“I don’t care.” He shook his head emphatically. “I didn’t come all this way to give up now. I want a confession from this murderous old witch. Now.”

“I’ve brought along a specialist who will search for the remains of the people who were shot to death here,” Pia said. “Even after sixty years, DNA samples can be taken and the individuals identified. We can bring Vera Kaltensee to trial in Germany for multiple homicides. The truth will come out in any event.”

Kaltensee didn’t take his eyes off Vera.

“Go, Ms. Kirchhoff. This is none of your business.”

Suddenly a small, stocky figure emerged from the shadow of the wall. Pia gave a start because she hadn’t noticed that anyone else was in the room. In astonishment, she recognized Auguste Nowak.

“Mrs. Nowak! What are you doing here?”

“Elard is right,” she said. “It’s none of your business. This woman inflicted deep wounds on my boy that have not healed in sixty years. She stole his life from him. It’s his right to hear from her what happened in this place.”

“We’ve heard the story that you told to Thomas Ritter,” said Pia in a low voice. “And we believe you. Nevertheless, I do have to arrest you. You shot three people to death, and without evidence for your motives, you will be sent to prison for the rest of your life. Even if that doesn’t matter to you, then at least keep your son from doing something stupid and committing another murder. This woman is not worth it.”