Amelie waited until her stepmother had left the house. Barbara had believed her without question when she said that her first class of the day had been canceled. Amelie smirked. This woman was so gullible that it was almost boring telling lies to her. Entirely different from her own highly suspicious mother. She basically never believed a word Amelie said, so it had become a habit to lie to her. Her mother often swallowed the lies more easily than the truth.
Amelie waited until Barbara had driven off with the two toddlers in her red Mini, then she slipped out the front door and ran over to the Sartorius farm. It was still dark and no one was on the street; even Thies was nowhere to be seen. Her heart was pounding as she sneaked across the dismal yard, past the barn and the long stall building where no animals had lived for ages. She kept close to the wall, turned the corner, and almost had a heart attack when two masked figures suddenly appeared in front of her.
Before she could cry out, one of them grabbed her and pressed his hand over her mouth. He brutally twisted one of her arms behind her back and shoved her against the wall. The pain was so intense that she practically stopped breathing. What the hell was the matter with this guy, hurting her like this? And why were these characters waiting for her at seven thirty in the morning? Amelie had dealt with many threatening situations in her life, so after the first shock, her fear turned to fury. She doggedly struggled against the iron grip, kicking and flailing her free arm, trying to yank off the attacker’s mask with the eye slits. With the strength of desperation she managed to get her mouth free when she saw a patch of bare skin right before her eyes, a spot between glove and sleeve. She bit down as hard as she could. The man uttered a muted cry of pain and shoved Amelie to the ground. Neither he nor his pal had reckoned on such ferocious resistance, and they were panting with exertion and anger. Finally the second man gave Amelie a kick in the ribs that took her breath away. Then he punched her in the face with his fist. Amelie saw stars, and all her instincts screamed at her to stay down and keep her trap shut. She heard footsteps hurrying off and then it was completely still except for her own labored breathing.
“Shit,” she cursed, trying with an effort to get up. Her clothes were soaking wet and muddy. Blood ran down her chin and dripped onto her hands. Those shitheads had really hurt her.
* * *
The Wagner cabinet shop and the attached residence gave the impression that the owner had run out of money in the midst of construction. Unplastered walls, the front yard only partially paved, the rest covered with asphalt and full of potholes. It was actually just as depressing as the Sartorius place. Stacked up everywhere were boards and planks, some of them covered with moss, looking like they’d been lying there for years. Doors shrink-wrapped in plastic leaned against the wall of the workshop, and everything was filthy.
Kirchhoff first rang the bell of the residence, then at the door marked OFFICE, but there was no answer. Inside the workshop the lights were on, so she pushed the metal gate open and went in. Bodenstein followed her. It smelled of fresh wood.
“Hello?” she called. She walked through the shop, which was a terrible mess, and found behind a stack of boards a young man wearing earbuds and nodding in time to the music. He was busy varnishing something with one hand and had a cigarette hanging out of his mouth. When Bodenstein tapped him on the shoulder he spun around. He tore the earbuds out of his ears, looking guilty.
“Put out your cigarette,” Kirchhoff said to him, and he obeyed at once. “We’re looking for Mr. or Mrs. Wagner. Are they here somewhere?”
“In the office over there,” said the youth. “At least I think so.”
“Thanks.” Pia refrained from mentioning the fire code and set off to look for the boss, who obviously didn’t care about much of anything. She found Manfred Wagner in a tiny, windowless office so cramped that three of them would hardly fit inside. The man had lifted the receiver off the phone and was reading the BILD tabloid. Apparently nobody cared much about customers. When Bodenstein knocked on the open door to announce his presence, the man reluctantly looked up from his paper.
“Yeah?” He was somewhere in his mid-fifties and smelled of alcohol despite the early hour. His brown coverall looked as if it hadn’t seen the inside of a washing machine in weeks.
“Mr. Wagner?” Kirchhoff took over. “We’re with the Hofheim Criminal Police and we’d like to talk with you and your wife.”
Wagner turned pale as a ghost, staring at her with his red-rimmed, watery eyes like a bunny at a snake. At that moment a vehicle pulled up outside and then a car door slammed.
“That’s … that’s my wife,” Wagner stammered. Andrea Wagner came into the workshop, her heels clacking on the concrete floor. She had short blond hair and was very thin. She must have been pretty once, but now she looked merely careworn. Grief, bitterness, and uncertainty about the fate of her daughter had etched deep furrows in her face.
“We’ve come to inform you that the mortal remains of your daughter Laura have been found,” said Bodenstein after he introduced himself to Andrea Wagner. For a moment there was complete silence. Manfred Wagner let out a sob. A tear ran down his unshaven cheek, and he hid his face in his hands. His wife remained calm and composed.
“Where?” was all she asked.
“On the grounds of the old military airfield in Eschborn.”
Andrea Wagner heaved a big sigh. “Finally.”
There was so much relief in this word, more than she could have expressed in ten sentences. How many days and nights of vain hope and utter despair had these two people endured? How must it feel to be constantly haunted by the ghosts of the past? The parents of the other girl had moved away, but the Wagners had not been able to give up their business, which was their livelihood. They were forced to stay, while their hope for the return of their daughter grew ever fainter. Eleven years of uncertainty must have been hell. Maybe it would help now that they could bury her and say good-bye.
* * *
“No, leave it,” Amelie insisted. “It’s no big deal. Just a bruise, that’s all.”
She was certainly not going to undress and show Tobias the spot where one of those jerks had kicked her. It was embarrassing enough to be sitting here, looking so filthy and ugly.
“But the cut might need stitches.”
“Bullshit. It’ll heal just fine the way it is.”
Tobias had stared at her as if she were a ghost when, shortly after seven thirty, she stood at his front door, dirty and smeared with blood. She told him that she’d just been attacked by two masked men in his yard. He made her sit down on a kitchen chair and carefully dabbed the blood from her face. Her nose had stopped bleeding, but the cut over her eyebrow, which he had stuck together in a makeshift way with two Band-Aids, might soon start bleeding again.
“You do that really well.” Amelie gave him a crooked smile and took a drag on her cigarette. She felt shaky and her heart was pounding, but this reaction had nothing to do with the attack. It was because of Tobias. Up close and in the daylight he looked a lot better than she had first thought. The touch of his hands was like electric sparks, and the way he kept looking at her with his incredibly blue eyes, so anxious and thoughtful—that was almost too much for her nerves. No wonder all the girls in Altenhain had been after him in the old days.
“I’m wondering what they wanted,” she said as Tobias busied himself with the coffee machine. She looked around with curiosity. So it was in this house that the two girls were murdered, Snow White and Laura.
“They were probably waiting for me, and you happened to run into them,” he said. He set two cups on the table, along with the sugar bowl, and got some milk out of the fridge.
“You say that so matter-of-factly. Aren’t you the least bit afraid?”
Tobias leaned against the counter and crossed his arms. He looked at her, his head tilted. “What am I supposed to do? Go into hiding? Run away? I won’t give them the satisfaction.”
“Do you know who they might have been?”
“I’m not a hundred percent sure. But I can guess.”
Amelie could feel herself blushing under his gaze. What was going on? Nothing like this had ever happened to her before. She hardly dared look him in the eye, and he could probably tell what kind of emotional chaos he was unleashing inside her. The coffee machine was making alarming noises and sending out clouds of steam.
“It probably needs decalcifying,” she diagnosed the problem. A sudden smile brightened her gloomy face, making her look totally different. Amelie stared at Tobias. She felt a crazy need to protect him, to help him.
“The coffeemaker really isn’t a top priority,” he said with a grin. “First I have to finish cleaning up outside.”
At that moment the doorbell rang shrilly. Tobias went to the window, and the smile vanished from his face.
“It’s the cops again,” he said, looking tense. “You’d better go. I don’t want anyone to see you here.”
She nodded and got up. He led her down the hall to a door.
“This leads through the pantry to the stables. Can you make it on your own?”
“Sure. I’m not scared. Now that it’s light out those guys aren’t going to be hanging around anymore,” she replied, determined to sound tough. They looked at each other and Amelie lowered her eyes.
“Thanks,” said Tobias softly. “You’re a brave girl.”
Amelie made a dismissive gesture and turned to go. Then something occurred to Tobias.
“Wait a minute,” he said, stopping her.
“Yes?”
“Why were you actually out in the yard?”
“From the picture in the paper I recognized the man who pushed your mother off the bridge,” Amelie said after a brief hesitation. “It was Manfred Wagner. Laura’s father.”
* * *
“You again.” Tobias Sartorius made no bones that the police were not particularly welcome. “I don’t have much time. What is it now?”
Kirchhoff sniffed at the air, smelling the aroma of freshly brewed coffee.
“Do you have company?” she asked. Bodenstein thought he’d seen another person through the kitchen window, a woman with dark hair.
“No, I don’t.” Tobias remained standing in the doorway with his arms folded. He didn’t invite them in, although it had started to rain. Fine with him.
“You must have been working like a maniac,” said Pia with a friendly smile. “The place looks fantastic.”
Her attempt at friendliness fell flat. Tobias Sartorius remained aloof, his body language radiating disapproval.
“We just wanted to tell you that the remains of Laura Wagner have been found,” Bodenstein said then.
“Where?”
“You ought to know that better than we do,” Bodenstein countered coolly. “After all, you did transport Laura’s body there on the evening of September 6, 1997, in the trunk of your car.”
“No, I did not.” Tobias frowned, but his voice remained calm. “I never saw Laura again after she ran off. But I’ve already told the police that a hundred times, haven’t I?”
“Laura’s skeleton was discovered by construction workers at the old military airfield in Eschborn,” said Kirchhoff. “In an underground tank.”
Tobias looked at her and swallowed. There was a look of utter incomprehension in his eyes.
“At the airfield?” he murmured quietly. “I would never have gone there.”
All his animosity seemed to drop away at once; he appeared dismayed and distraught. Kirchhoff reminded herself that he’d had eleven years to prepare himself for this moment of being confronted with what he’d done. He must have reckoned that someone would find the girl’s corpse one day. Maybe he had practiced his reaction, planning in detail how he could make his look of surprise believable. On the other hand—why would he do that? He had served his time, and it shouldn’t matter to him if the bodies were found now. She thought about how her colleague Hasse had characterized this man: arrogant, overbearing, ice cold. Was that true?
“We’d be interested to know whether Laura was already dead when you threw her in the tank,” said Bodenstein. Kirchhoff kept her eyes fixed on Tobias. He was very pale and his mouth was quivering as though he were about to break out in tears.
“I can’t answer that question,” he replied tonelessly.
“Then who can?” asked Kirchhoff.
“That’s something that has occupied my mind day and night for eleven years.” His voice sounded like he was struggling to maintain control. “I don’t care whether you believe me or not. I have long since gotten used to being considered the villain.”
“Things would have gone much better for your mother if you’d said back then what you did with the girl,” Bodenstein remarked. Tobias shoved his hands in the pockets of his jeans.
“Does that mean you found out who the bastard was that pushed my mother off the bridge?”
“No, we haven’t yet,” Bodenstein conceded. “But for the time being we’re assuming it was someone from the village.”
Tobias laughed. A brief, cheerless snort.
“Congratulations on your incredibly astute observation,” he said mockingly. “I could help you out, because I happen to know who it was. But why should I?”
“Because that person committed a crime,” replied Bodenstein. “You have to tell us what you know.”
“I don’t have to do shit.” Tobias Sartorius shook his head. “Maybe you’re better than your colleagues were eleven years ago. Things would have gone considerably better for my mother, my father, and me if the police had done their work properly and caught the real killer.”
Kirchhoff wanted to say something to placate him, but Bodenstein spoke before she had a chance. “Naturally”—his voice was sarcastic—“you’re innocent, of course. We know that. Our prisons are full of innocent people.”
Tobias looked at him stonefaced. Fury suppressed with difficulty flickered in his eyes. “You cops are all the same—arrogant and full of yourselves,” he hissed contemptuously. “You don’t have a clue what’s going on here. Now get out and leave me in peace!”
Before Kirchhoff or Bodenstein could say a word, he slammed the door in their faces.
“You shouldn’t have said that,” Pia said reproachfully as they walked back to the car. “Now you’ve really turned him against us, and we still don’t know anything more.”
“But I was right!” Oliver stopped short. “Did you see his eyes? The guy is capable of anything, and if he really does know who pushed his mother off the bridge, then that man is in danger.”
“You’re biased,” Pia chided him. “He comes home after ten years in the joint—possibly having been sentenced unjustly—and finds out that everything here has changed. His mother is attacked and seriously injured, unknown vandals spray graffiti on his parents’ house. Is it any wonder he’s pissed off?”
“Give me a break, Pia! You can’t seriously believe that they convicted the wrong guy for a double murder!”
“I don’t believe anything. But I’ve found discrepancies in the old case files, so I have my doubts.”
“The man is ice cold. And as far as how the villagers have reacted, I can perfectly understand it.”
“Don’t tell me you condone somebody scrawling insults on the walls and the whole village conspiring to cover up the identity of the real killer!” Pia shook her head in disbelief.
“I’m not saying that I condone it,” said Oliver. They were standing underneath the arch of the village gate and squabbling like an old married couple, so they didn’t notice when Tobias Sartorius left his house and headed across the yard in back.
* * *