Hartmut Sartorius drove his car into the garage. The visit with Rita had been dreadful. The doctor he spoke to refused to offer any sort of prognosis. She’d been lucky, he said, that her spinal column was virtually unscathed, but of the 206 bones in the human body about half of hers were broken. She had also suffered severe internal injuries when she fell onto the moving car. On the drive back home Tobias hadn’t uttered a word, merely stared glumly into space. When they walked through the gate and approached the house, Tobias stopped by the steps to the front door and turned up the collar of his jacket.
“Where are you going?” Hartmut asked his son.
“I’m just going to get some fresh air.”
“Now? It’s almost eleven thirty. And the rain is coming down in buckets. You’ll get soaked in this terrible weather.”
“For the past ten years I haven’t had any weather at all,” said Tobias. “It doesn’t bother me to get wet. And at this time of night at least nobody will notice me.”
Hartmut hesitated, but then he put his hand on his son’s arm.
“Don’t do anything foolish, Tobi. Promise me that.”
“Of course not. Don’t worry about me.” He gave a brief smile, even though he didn’t feel like smiling at all, and waited until his father went inside. With his head down he walked through the darkness, past the empty stables and the barn. The sight of his mother lying in the ICU with her bones crushed, attached to all those tubes and other apparatus, had hit him harder than he’d expected. Was this attack on her somehow related to his release from prison? If she died, which the doctors had not ruled out as a possibility, then whoever had pushed her off the bridge would have a murder on his conscience.
Tobias stopped when he reached the rear gate to the farm. It was closed, overgrown with ivy and weeds. It probably hadn’t been opened at all in recent years. Tomorrow morning he would start cleaning up. After ten years he had a tremendous longing to breathe fresh air and do his own work.
After only three weeks in the joint he could tell that he’d turn into a zombie if he didn’t make an effort to use his mind. His lawyer had informed him that he had no chance for early release; an appeal had been denied. So Tobias had begun taking correspondence courses from Hagen University, studying to become a locksmith. Every day he had worked for eight hours; after an hour for exercise, he sat up half the night over his books, in order to distract himself and make the monotony of the days more bearable. Over the years he had become accustomed to the strict regulations, and the sudden lack of structure to his life now seemed threatening to him. Not that he was homesick for the joint, but it was going to take a while before he got used to freedom again.
Tobias vaulted over the gate and stopped underneath the cherry laurel, which had become a huge tree. He turned left and walked past the driveway of the Terlinden estate. The double wrought-iron gate was closed; the camera on top of one of the gateposts was new. Right behind the house the woods began. After about fifty yards Tobias turned down the narrow footpath, called the Gouge by the locals, which wound through the village to the cemetery, past the rear gardens and backyards of the houses built so close together. He knew every angle, every set of steps, and every fence—nothing had changed. As a boy he and his pals had often run along this path, on the way to church, to play soccer, or to visit a friend.
He stuck his hands in his jacket pockets. To the left old Maria Kettels had lived in a tiny cottage. She would have been his only defense witness, because she had seen Stefanie late that evening, but her testimony was not heard by the court. Everybody in Altenhain knew that Maria suffered from dementia and was also half blind. Back then she must have been at least eighty, and he was sure she must be in the graveyard by now.
Next to her property was that of the Paschkes. It bordered directly on the Sartorius land and was as neatly kept as always. Old man Paschke was in the habit of instantly spraying chemicals on any weed that poked up its head. He used to work for the city of Frankfurt and had access to the city supply depot. His neighbors who had worked for chemical giant Hoechst AG also had no qualms about using company materials to build and renovate their houses and yards. The Paschkes were the parents of Gerda Pietsch, the mother of Tobias’s friend Felix. Everyone in the village was related to someone who lived only a couple of blocks away, and everyone knew the family histories of everyone else. They also knew the darkest secrets, and liked to gossip about the transgressions, failures, and illnesses of their neighbors. Because of its geographically unfavorable location in a narrow valley, the village of Altenhain had been largely spared new construction. Hardly anyone ever moved there, so the village community had remained more or less the same for the past hundred years.
Tobias had reached the cemetery and pushed with his shoulder against the small wooden gate, which opened with a tormented screech. The naked branches of the mighty trees standing among the graves whipped back and forth in the wind, which was blowing up a storm. He walked slowly along the rows of graves. Cemeteries had never given him the creeps. He thought there was something peaceful about them. Tobias approached the church as the clock in the tower struck twelve times for midnight. He stopped, tilted his head back, and for a moment looked up at the squat tower built of gray quartzite.
Wouldn’t it be better if he accepted Nadia’s offer and moved in with her until he could get back on his feet? People didn’t want him in Altenhain, that was obvious. But he couldn’t just leave his father in the lurch. He was deeply indebted to his parents, who had never turned their backs on him, even when he was convicted of killing those two girls.
Tobias walked around the church and entered the vestibule. He gave a start when he noticed a movement to his right. In the weak glow of the streetlight he recognized a dark-haired girl, who was sitting on the arm of a wooden bench next to the entry portal and smoking a cigarette. His heart skipped a beat and he could hardly believe his eyes. Before him sat Stefanie Schneeberger.
* * *
Amelie was no less startled when a man suddenly entered the church. His jacket was wet and shiny, and his dark hair hung dripping wet into his face. She had never seen him before, but she knew at once who he was.
“Good evening,” she said, taking her iPod buds out of her ears. The voice of Adrian Hates, the leader of her absolute favorite band Diary of Dreams, squawked from the earbuds until she shut off the iPod. There was total silence except for the sound of the rain. A car drove by on the street below the church. For a split second the beams of its headlights flitted across the man’s face. Without a doubt, this was Tobias Sartorius. Amelie had seen enough photos of him online to recognize him. He actually looked rather nice. Attractive even. Not at all like the other guys in this dump of a town. And not at all like a murderer.
“Hello,” he answered at last, scrutinizing her with a peculiar expression. “What are you doing here so late?”
“Listening to music. Having a smoke. It’s raining too hard to walk home right now.”
“I see.”
“I’m Amelie Fr?hlich,” she said. “And you’re Tobias Sartorius, aren’t you?”
“Yes I am. How do you know that?”
“I’ve heard a lot about you.”
“That’s no surprise, if you live in Altenhain.” His voice had a cynical ring to it. He seemed to be considering how to categorize her.
“I’ve lived here since May,” Amelie explained. “Actually I’m from Berlin. But I didn’t get along with my mother’s new boyfriend, so she sent me here to stay with my father and stepmother.”
“And they let you just run around like this at night?” Tobias leaned against the wall and looked her over carefully. “When a murderer has just come back to town?”
Amelie grinned. “I don’t think they’ve heard anything about that yet. But I have. I work evenings right over there.” She nodded in the direction of the restaurant located on the other side of the parking lot next to the church. “For the past two days you’ve been the main topic of conversation.”
“Where?”
“At the Black Horse.”
“Oh, right. That wasn’t here when I left.”
Amelie remembered that when the murders took place in Altenhain, Tobias Sartorius’s father ran the only restaurant in the village, the Golden Rooster.
“So what are you doing here this time of night?” Amelie dug a pack of cigarettes out of her backpack and held it out to him. He hesitated a moment and then took a cigarette and lit it with her lighter.
“I’m just walking around.” He braced his foot against the wall. “I was in the joint for ten years, where I couldn’t exactly do that.”
They smoked for a while in silence. Across the parking lot a couple of late customers were leaving the Black Horse. They heard voices and then the sound of car doors slamming. The sound of the engines moved off down the road.
“Aren’t you afraid at night, in the dark?”
“No.” Amelie shook her head. “I’m from Berlin. Sometimes I’ve squatted with a few pals in abandoned buildings slated for demolition, and we’d have trouble with the squatters who were already living there. Or with the law.”
Tobias exhaled the cigarette smoke through his nose.
“Where do you live?”
“In the house next to the Terlindens.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah, I know. Thies told me about it. That’s where Snow White used to live.”
Tobias froze.
“Now you’re lying,” he said after a while, his voice sounding different.
“No I’m not,” Amelie countered.
“Sure you are. Thies doesn’t talk. Ever.”
“He does with me. Every so often. He’s a friend of mine.”
Tobias took a drag on his cigarette. The light from the glowing tip lit up his face, and Amelie saw him raise his eyebrows.
“Not a boyfriend, if that’s what you’re thinking,” she was quick to add. “Thies is my best friend. My only friend.”