Andrea Wagner couldn’t sleep. They had found Laura’s body, or rather, what was left of it. Finally, finally, all the uncertainty was over. They had given up hoping for a miracle long ago. At first they had felt nothing but boundless relief, but now the grief had set in. For eleven long years she had forbidden herself tears and sadness, displaying great strength and supporting her husband, who had abandoned himself to brooding about their missing child. But she couldn’t afford to break down. She had to keep the company going so that they could pay their debts at the bank. And there were the younger children, who deserved their mother’s attention. Nothing was the same as it once had been. Manfred had lost all his energy and joie de vivre, acting as if a millstone were attached to his leg, succumbing to his whiny self-pity and too much drinking. Sometimes she despised him. It was so easy for him to slip into hating Tobias’s family, and to her that seemed like a cop-out.
Andrea opened the door to Laura’s room, where nothing had been changed for the past eleven years. Manfred had insisted on it, and she had acquiesced. She turned on the light, taking the photo of Laura from the desk and sitting down on the bed. She waited in vain for the tears to come. Her thoughts strayed to that moment eleven years ago, when the police had stood at the front door and informed her that after evaluating the evidence they had arrested Tobias Sartorius for the murder of their daughter.
Why Tobias? she had thought in bewilderment. Offhand she could think of ten other boys who had more reasons to take revenge on Laura than Tobias did. Andrea had known what people in the village were whispering about her daughter. They had called her a slut, a calculating little bitch with big ambitions. While Manfred loved and idolized his oldest daughter unconditionally and always found excuses for her bad behavior, Andrea had seen Laura’s weaknesses and hoped she would eventually grow out of them. But the girl hadn’t had the chance. It was odd, really, that she had such a hard time remembering anything positive when she thought of Laura. Memories of the unpleasant things were more vivid, and there had been plenty of those. Laura had always had a low opinion of her father and was ashamed of him. She would have preferred a father like Claudius Terlinden, who had style and power—it was something she never hesitated to tell Manfred to his face at every suitable or unsuitable opportunity. Manfred had swallowed these insults without batting an eye, and they did no damage to the love he felt for his beautiful daughter. Andrea, on the other hand, was shocked to realize how little she knew her daughter, and blamed herself for failing to bring her up better. At the same time she was scared. What if Laura found out that she was having an affair with Claudius, her boss?
Night after night she had lain awake worrying about her daughter. During Laura’s teenage years Andrea had probably had even more reasons for concern. Laura was getting wild with the boys in town—until she finally starting going steady with Tobias. All of a sudden she seemed changed: content and happy. Tobias was doing her good. Undoubtedly he was something special; he was good-looking, he excelled in school and at sports, and the other boys listened to him. He was exactly what Laura had always wanted, and his popularity also rubbed off on her, his girlfriend. For half a year everything went well—until Stefanie Schneeberger came to Altenhain. Laura had instantly recognized her as competition and quickly made friends with her, but it did no good. Tobias fell for Stefanie and broke up with Laura, who clearly couldn’t cope with this setback. Her mother had no idea what exactly had transpired between the two young people that summer, but she knew that Laura was playing with fire when she urged her friends to turn against Stefanie. Andrea had discovered Laura at the photocopier in her office with a big stack of copies she had made. Laura blew her top when her mother tried to take a look at what was printed on them. They got into a fierce argument, and in her fury Laura ended up leaving the original in the copier. There was only one sentence in bold type on the white page: SNOW WHITE MUST DIE.
Andrea had folded up the sheet of paper and kept it, but she never showed it to her husband or the police. The idea that her child would wish the death of another human being was simply intolerable. Had Laura become the victim of her own intrigue? Andrea had kept her mouth shut and let things run their course. And every night she’d listened to Manfred glorifying their daughter.
“Laura,” she murmured, caressing the photo with her forefinger. “What did you do?”
Suddenly a tear ran down her cheek, then another. She blinked, wiping her hand over her face. It wasn’t grief that brought tears to her eyes, but the feeling of guilt that she hadn’t loved her daughter.
* * *
It was half past one before he stood in front of her house. For three hours he had driven around the area aimlessly. So much had bombarded him today that he simply couldn’t stand staying at home. First Amelie, who had suddenly appeared covered in blood. The shock at the sight of her. It wasn’t the blood on her face that had made his adrenaline level shoot up to the heights of Mount Everest, but her incredible likeness to Stefanie. Yet she was completely different. Not the vain little beauty queen who had bewitched him, seduced him, and duped him, only to dump him with such ice-cold indifference. Amelie was an impressive girl. And she seemed to have no fears of being touched.
Then the cops showed up. They had found Laura’s body. Because it was raining so hard, he’d had to leave off cleaning up the yard and instead turned his anger to cleaning out his room. He ripped down the stupid posters from the walls and summarily stuffed the contents of the cabinets and all the drawers into blue trash bags. Just get rid of all that crap! Suddenly he was holding a CD in his hand. Time to Say Goodbye by Sarah Brightman and Andrea Bocelli. Stefanie had given him the CD because she had kissed him for the first time to this song in June, at the graduation party. He put the CD on, not understanding the empty feeling that abruptly seized him with the first chord, refusing to let him go. He had never before felt so alone and abandoned, not even in prison. There at least he could hope for better days, but now he knew that they would never come. His life was over.
It took a moment before Nadia opened the door and let him in. He’d been afraid that she wasn’t home. He hadn’t come to sleep with her, he hadn’t been thinking of that at all, but when she stood before him, blinking at the bright light, her blond hair loose on her shoulders, so sweet and warm, a flash of sexual desire shot through him with a power he wouldn’t have thought possible.
“What—” she began, but Tobias muffled the rest of her question with a kiss, pulling her close, almost expecting her to resist and push him away. But the opposite happened. She slipped his wet leather jacket from his shoulders, unbuttoned his shirt, and shoved up his T-shirt. The next instant they were lying on the floor and he entered her impetuously, felt her tongue in his mouth and her hands on his ass, inciting him to plunge harder and faster. Much too soon he felt the tidal wave roaring, the heat that made him sweat from every pore. Then it broke over him, so glorious and such a relief that he moaned—a moan that turned to a muted cry. With his heart pounding he lay on top of her for a few seconds and could hardly believe what he had done. He rolled off, lying on his back with his eyes closed, gasping for air like a fish out of water. Her soft laughter made him open his eyes.
“What is it?” he asked in confusion.
“I think we need a little more practice,” she said. With a nimble movement she got to her feet and held out her hand to him. He took it, got up with a groan, and followed her into the bedroom after getting rid of his shoes and jeans. The spirits of the past had vanished. At least for the moment.
Thursday, November 13, 2008
“The police came by my house yesterday.” Tobias blew on the hot coffee that Nadia had poured for him. Last night he hadn’t wanted to bring up that topic, but now he had to tell her about it. “They found Laura’s skeleton at the old airfield in Eschborn. In an underground tank.”
“What?” Nadia, who was just about to take a sip from her cup, stopped short. They were sitting at the gray granite table in the kitchen, where they had sat together last night. It was a little past seven, and it was still pitch dark outside the panoramic window. Nadia had to catch a flight to Hamburg at eight o’clock, where the exterior shots were being filmed for a new episode of the series in which she played the detective superintendent.
“When…” She set down her cup. “I mean … How do they know it’s Laura?”
“No idea.” Tobias shook his head. “They didn’t say much. At first they didn’t want to tell me where they found the skeleton. The cop in charge just said I must know where it was.”
“Oh my God,” Nadia gasped.
“Nadia.” He leaned over and put his hand on hers. “Please tell me if you want me to leave.”
“Why would you think that?”
“I can see that you’re scared of me.”
“What nonsense.”
He let go of her hand, stood up, and turned his back to her. For a moment he struggled with himself. Half the night he had lain awake, listening to her steady breathing and asking himself when she might find him superfluous. He was already apprehensive about the day she would get rid of him with embarrassed excuses, then avoid him, pretending that she wasn’t home. That day was bound to come. He wasn’t the right man for her. He could never fit in with her world, her life.
“It’s not easy to ignore the topic,” he said at last in a hoarse voice. “I was convicted of murder and did ten years in the joint. We can’t simply act as if that never happened and we’re still twenty years old.”
He turned around. “I have no idea who killed Laura and Stefanie. I can’t rule out that it could have been me, but why can’t I remember? And so far I can’t. There’s only this … this black hole. The psychologist at the trial said that the human brain sometimes reacts with a sort of amnesia, like after a bad shock. But don’t you think I would remember something, at least? Like putting Laura in the trunk and driving somewhere? But it’s all a blank. The last thing I remember is Stefanie telling me that she … that she … didn’t love me anymore. And then Felix and J?rg came to the door at some point, and I had drunk so much vodka that I was feeling terrible. Then suddenly the cops were standing there and claiming that I’d killed Laura and Stefanie!”
Nadia sat there studying him with her big jade-green eyes.
“Don’t you see, Nadia?” His tone was pleading. The pain inside him was back, stronger than ever before. Too much was at stake. He didn’t want to get into a relationship with Nadia when he knew that she would only end up disappointed again. “It torments me not to know what really happened. Did I kill them? Or didn’t I?”
“Tobi,” Nadia said softly. “I love you. And have for as long as I can remember. It doesn’t matter to me, even if you did do it.”
Tobias grimaced in despair. She simply didn’t want to understand. He urgently needed someone to believe him. To believe in him. He couldn’t handle living as an outcast; it would destroy him.
“But it matters to me,” he insisted. “I’ve lost ten years of my life. I no longer have a future. Somebody has destroyed me. And I can’t just act like it’s all in the past now.”
“So what do you plan to do?”
“I want to know the truth. Even if it means finding out that I really did do it.”
Nadia pushed back her chair. She came over to him, threw her arms around him, and looked into his eyes.
“I believe you,” she said softly. “And if you want, I’ll help you with everything. Just don’t go back to Altenhain. Please.”
“Where am I supposed to go?”
“Stay here. Or in my house in Ticino in Switzerland. Or in Hamburg.” She smiled, warming to the idea. “That’s it! Come with me now! You’ll like the house. It’s right on the water.”
Tobias hesitated. “I can’t just leave my father alone like that. And my mother needs me too. As soon as she’s feeling better, then maybe.”
“From here you can drive to see your father in Altenhain in fifteen minutes.” Nadia’s big green eyes were close to his. He could smell the scent of her skin, the fragrance of her shampoo. Half the men in Germany dreamed of being asked to move in with Nadia von Bredow. What was stopping him?
“Tobi, please!” She put her hand on his cheek. “I’m worried about you. I don’t want anything bad to happen to you. When I think what might have happened if those guys caught you instead of that girl…”
Amelie. He’d forgotten all about her. She was in Altenhain, and somewhere in that village the truth about those terrible events was hiding.
“I’ll be careful,” he reassured her. “Don’t worry.”
“I love you, Tobi.”
“I love you too,” he replied, and took her in his arms.
* * *
“Boss?” Kai Ostermann was standing in the doorway of his office, holding two sheets of paper in his hand.
Bodenstein stopped in his tracks. “What’s up?”
“We just got this fax.” Ostermann handed him the pages and scrutinized Bodenstein’s face; since it revealed nothing, Ostermann refrained from commenting.
“Thanks” was all Bodenstein said, going into his office with his heart pounding. It was the GPS track of Cosima’s cell phone over the past two weeks, which he had ordered the day before yesterday from the phone company. For the first time he had used his professional clout to find out something of a personal nature. The urge to know was stronger than his guilty conscience about an action that a malicious officer might interpret as abuse of his position. He sat down at his desk and took a moment to prepare himself. What he read robbed him of any illusion. She had indeed been in Mainz on two different days, and only for about an hour each time. But she had spent the mornings of eight days in Frankfurt. Bodenstein leaned his elbows on the desk, rested his chin on his fists, and paused to think. Then he grabbed the phone and punched in the number of Cosima’s office. Kira Gasthuber, Cosima’s production assistant and jill-of-all-trades, picked up after two rings. Cosima was out of the office for a short time. Why didn’t he try her cell?
So that she won’t lie to me, you nitwit, thought Bodenstein. He was about to hang up when he heard the bright voice of his youngest daughter in the background. All at once an alarm went off in his head. Cosima normally took Sophia everywhere with her. Why had she left the girl at the office today? To his question Kira replied that Cosima hadn’t been out for long, and Sophia was amusing herself as best she could with her and René.
When he hung up, Bodenstein sat for a while at his desk. His thoughts were churning. Five times Cosima’s phone had been tracked to the cellular zone located in the north end of Frankfurt between Glauburgstrasse, Oeder Weg, the Eckenheimer highway, and Eschersheimer Park. On the city map it might look small, but that area contained hundreds of buildings with thousands of apartments. Damn. Where was she? And most importantly, with whom? How would he react if it turned out that she was actually cheating on him? And how come he thought she had a need to cheat on him? Sure, their sex life was no longer as lively as before Sophia was born; the presence of a small child took care of that. But it wasn’t as if Cosima was missing out on anything. Or was she? To his dismay he could no longer remember the last time he had slept with his wife. He thought back. He did remember! It was the night she came home a little tipsy and in a good mood from her friend’s birthday party. Bodenstein got out his day planner and searched for that date. A strange feeling came sneaking up on him that got stronger the farther back he paged. Had he totally forgotten to enter Bernhard’s birthday? No, he hadn’t. Bernhard had celebrated his fiftieth on September 20 at Schloss Johannisberg in the Rheingau. That couldn’t be right! He counted and realized that he hadn’t slept with Cosima in eight weeks. Was he the one to blame if she was unfaithful? There was a knock on the door and Nicola Engel stepped in.
“What’s up?” he asked.
With a frosty expression on her face, she asked, “When were you planning on telling me that Detective Inspector Behnke has been moonlighting against regulations at a bar in Sachsenhausen?”
Damn. It had totally slipped his mind, he was so wrapped up in his own problems. He didn’t ask where she had heard about it, and made no attempt to offer excuses.
“I wanted to talk with him first,” was all he said. “I haven’t had a chance to do that yet.”
“Tonight at six thirty you will. I’ve ordered Behnke to come in, sick or not. See about fixing this situation.”
* * *