Bodenstein had been dreading the moment when he would have to face Cosima. He sat in his office and pondered the dilemma until it couldn’t be put off any longer. She was upstairs in the bathroom when he came home, lying in the tub, to judge by the splashing he heard. Feeling at a loss, he was standing in the kitchen when he noticed her purse hanging over the back of a chair. Never in his life had Bodenstein searched through his wife’s purse. Nor would he consider snooping through her desk—because he had always trusted her and assumed that she wouldn’t try to hide anything from him. But now things were different.
He struggled with himself for a moment, then grabbed her purse and rooted around in it until he found her cell phone. His heart was pounding in his throat when he flipped open the phone. She hadn’t turned it off. Bodenstein knew that he was committing a real breach of trust, but he couldn’t help himself. In the menu he called up the message file and clicked through the text messages. Last night at 9:48 she had received a brief text from an unknown sender. Tomorrow, 9:30? Same place? And she had answered it only a minute later. Where had he been at that moment? Why hadn’t he noticed Cosima texting her reply? All set, can’t wait!!! With three exclamation points.
A queasy feeling spread through the pit of his stomach. The fears that he’d been carrying around all day seemed to be well founded. With those three exclamation points the more harmless possibilities like a doctor or hairdresser fell away. She would never be looking forward to such appointments with so much enthusiasm—especially not at ten to ten on a Monday night. Bodenstein listened with one ear cocked upward as he searched through the cell phone for other treacherous messages. But Cosima must have cleared the cache recently, because he found nothing else. He pulled out his own cell and saved the number of the unknown person who was going to be meeting his wife apparently for the second time at nine thirty on a Tuesday morning. Bodenstein flipped his cell shut and put it back in his pocket. He felt terrible. The thought that Cosima was going behind his back and lying to him was simply intolerable. He had never lied to her, not in over twenty-five years of marriage. It was not always advantageous to be honest and straightforward, but lies and false promises conflicted deeply with his character and his strict upbringing. Should he explode and confront her with his suspicions? Ask her why she had lied to him? Bodenstein ran both hands through his thick, dark hair and took a deep breath. No, he decided, he wouldn’t say anything. He would preserve the appearance and illusion of an intact relationship for a while yet. It might be cowardly, but he simply didn’t feel capable of grabbing hold of his life and smashing it to bits. There was still a tiny hope that things weren’t as they seemed.
* * *
They arrived in pairs or in small groups and were let in through the back entrance of the church after they had said the password. The invitation had been given verbally, and the password was important because he wanted to make sure that only the right people were there. It was eleven years ago that he had called a secret meeting like this, preventing an even greater disaster. Now it was high time to take renewed measures before the situation escalated. He stood next to the organ in the gallery, hidden behind one of the wooden beams, and watched with growing nervousness as the pews below him filled up. The flickering of the few candles in the chancel cast grotesque shadows on the ceiling and walls of the vaulted nave. Electric light might have attracted unwanted attention, for even the dense fog that had settled outside wouldn’t have been able to conceal brightly lit church windows. He cleared his throat, rubbing his moist palms together. A glance at his watch told him that it was almost time.
They had all arrived. Slowly he felt his way down the wooden spiral staircase to the bottom, the steps creaking under his weight. When he emerged from the darkness into the dim candlelight, the whispered conversations died away. The bell in the church tower struck eleven—perfect choreography. He stepped in front of the first row of pews into the center aisle, looking at the familiar faces; what he saw was encouraging. All eyes were directed at him, and he recognized in them the same determination as they’d had before. They all understood what was at stake.
“Thank you for coming here this evening,” he began his speech, which he had long been polishing in his mind. Although he spoke softly, his voice carried to the farthest corners. The acoustics of the church were perfect; he knew that from choir practice. “The situation has become untenable now that he is here again, and I have asked you here today so that we can decide what to do about it.”
He was not a practiced speaker; he was trembling inside with the nervousness he always felt whenever he had to speak to an audience. And yet in a few words he succeeded in expressing the concerns of himself and the village. None of those present had to be told what was at risk this evening, so no one batted an eye when he announced his decision. For a moment there was a deathly silence. Somebody coughed softly. He could feel the sweat running down his back. Even though he was absolutely convinced of the necessity of his plan, he was still aware that he was standing in a church and had just incited these people to murder. His gaze swept over the faces of the thirty-four people before him. He had known every one of them since he was a kid. None of them would ever breathe a word of what was discussed here. Back then, eleven years ago, it had been no different. He waited, tensely.
“I’m in,” came a voice finally from the third row.
There was silence. One more volunteer was needed. There had to be at least three.
“I’ll come along too,” somebody said at last. A deep sigh went through the gathering.
“Good.” He was relieved. For a moment he’d been afraid that they would back down. “It will serve as a warning. If he doesn’t leave town voluntarily after that, we’ll really have to get serious.”
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Dr. Nicola Engel regarded her decimated K-11 team with displeasure. There were only four present at the morning meeting; besides Behnke, Kathrin Fachinger was missing too. While Ostermann reported on the less than satisfactory response to their public appeal for help, Oliver von Bodenstein stirred his coffee with an absentminded expression on his face. Pia Kirchhoff thought he looked bleary eyed, as though he hadn’t gotten enough sleep. What the heck was going on with him? For the past couple of days he’d given the impression of being one step removed from himself. Kirchhoff suspected family trouble. In May of last year he’d been acting so strangely, and it turned out that he was worried about Cosima’s health. His concerns had proved to be groundless—he hadn’t had a clue that she was pregnant.
“So.” Dr. Engel took the floor, since Bodenstein failed to do so. “The skeleton from the airplane hangar turned out to be Laura Wagner from Altenhain, who has been missing since September 1997. The DNA was a match, and the healed fracture of her upper arm matches the X-ray taken before she died.”
Kirchhoff and Ostermann already knew the contents of the forensic report, but they listened patiently until their chief finished her lecture. Was Dr. Engel bored with her job? Was that why she kept interfering with the work of K-11? Her predecessor, Dr. Nierhoff, had put in an appearance only once in a blue moon, primarily when an especially important case needed to be solved.
“I just wonder,” said Pia when Dr. Engel had finished, “how Tobias Sartorius could have driven from Altenhain to Eschborn, broken into a secure, locked military site, and managed to get the body into an underground tank, all within forty-five minutes.”
There was silence around the table. Everybody looked at Bodenstein.
“Sartorius allegedly murdered the two girls in his parents’ house,” Kirchhoff clarified. “He was seen by the neighbor when he first entered the house with Laura Wagner and later, when he opened the door for Stefanie Schneeberger. The next time he was seen was around midnight when his friends came to pick him up.”
“What are you getting at?” Dr. Engel wanted to know.
“It’s possible that Tobias Sartorius was not the perpetrator.”
“Of course he was,” Hasse countered at once. “Did you forget that he was convicted?”
“In a trial based purely on circumstantial evidence. And I ran across several inconsistencies when I studied the documents. At a quarter to eleven the neighbor saw Stefanie Schneeberger being let into the house by Tobias Sartorius, and half an hour later his car was seen by two witnesses in Altenhain.”
“So?” said Hasse. “He murdered the girls, put them in his car, and took the two bodies away. They reconstructed it.”
“At that time it was assumed that he had disposed of the bodies somewhere nearby. Now we know that this was not the case. And how did he get onto the closed military site?”
“The young people have always gone out there to party. They must have known about some secret entrance.”
“That’s ridiculous.” Kirchhoff shook her head. “How could a man who’d been drinking heavily accomplish all that? And what did he do with the second body? We didn’t find that one in the tank! I tell you, the time frame is much too tight!”
“Ms. Kirchhoff,” Dr. Engel chided. “We’re not doing an investigation here. The perpetrator was caught, convicted, sentenced, and has served his time. Now I want you to go see the parents of this girl and tell them that the mortal remains of their daughter have been found. And that’s the end of it.”
* * *
“And that’s the end of it!” Kirchhoff mimicked her boss. “I have no intention of letting this matter rest. It’s obvious that a sloppy investigation was done at the time, and the conclusions were totally arbitrary. I’m asking myself why.”
Bodenstein, who had let her drive, didn’t reply. He had folded his long legs into the uncomfortably cramped Opel, closed his eyes, and said not a word during the whole trip.
“Tell me, Oliver, what’s going on with you?” Pia asked at last, slightly miffed. “I don’t feel like driving around all day with somebody who’s as talkative as a corpse.”
Oliver opened one eye and sighed. “Cosima lied to me yesterday.”
Aha. A family problem. As expected.
“And? Who hasn’t lied occasionally?”
“Me.” Oliver opened his other eye. “I have never lied to Cosima. I even told her about the Kaltensee case.”
He cleared his throat and then told Pia what had happened the day before. She listened with growing discomfort. It certainly sounded serious. Yet even in this situation Oliver’s noble sense of honor gave him a guilty conscience, because he had snooped for evidence in his wife’s cell phone.
“There’s probably a completely innocent explanation for all of this,” said Pia, although she didn’t believe it. Cosima von Bodenstein was a beautiful, temperamental woman who was financially independent because of her job as a movie producer. Lately there had been some friction between her and Oliver—Pia had noticed that—but her boss hadn’t seemed to take it seriously. How typical that he was now dumbfounded. He lived in an ivory tower. It was even more astonishing considering how fascinated he was by the abysses he witnessed in other people’s relationships every day. Unlike Pia, he seldom let himself get emotionally involved in a case. He seemed able to maintain a distance that she found rather self-righteous. Did he think that something like this couldn’t happen to him? That he was somehow above such mundane matters as marital problems? Did he really think that Cosima was satisfied just sitting around the house with a small child, waiting for him to come home? She was used to a whole different kind of life.
“But she’s going out to meet somebody and telling me she was somewhere else entirely,” he argued. “That sounds suspicious to me. What am I supposed to do?”
Pia didn’t answer right away. In his situation she would have done everything to find out the truth. She probably would have confronted her husband at once, creating a scene with yelling and tears and accusations. It would be impossible for her to act as if nothing had happened.
“Just ask her,” she suggested. “She’s not going to lie to your face.”
“No,” he replied firmly. Pia sighed. Oliver von Bodenstein was not like other people. He might even accept a potential rival and suffer in silence, simply to preserve appearances and protect his family. In the area of self-control he had already earned top marks.
“Did you write down the cell phone number?”
“Yes.”
“Give it to me. I’ll make a call. With caller ID suppressed.”
“No, I’d rather you didn’t.”
“Don’t you want to find out the truth?”
Oliver hesitated.
“Listen here,” said Pia. “It’ll eat you up inside if you don’t find out where you stand.”
“Damn it!” he burst out. “I wish I’d never seen her in Frankfurt! I wish I’d never called her.”
“But you did. And she lied.”
Oliver took a deep breath and ran his hand through his hair. Pia had seldom seen her boss look so helpless. The present dilemma seemed to be making him feel worse than ever before.
“What am I going to do if I find out that she … that she’s cheating on me?”
“You’ve jumped to the wrong conclusions about her behavior before,” Pia reminded him, wanting to calm him down.
“This time it’s different,” he said. “Would you want to know the truth if you suspected you were being cheated on?”
“One hundred percent.”
“And what if—” He broke off. Pia kept quiet. They had arrived at the cabinet shop of Manfred Wagner in the Altenhain industrial park. Men, she thought. They’re all the same. No problem making a decision on the job. But as soon as it’s about a relationship and emotions come into play, they’re all a bunch of damn cowards.
* * *