“Altenhain?” Pia asked in surprise. “But Ostermann said something about Bad Soden.”
“Waldstrasse 22.” Oliver pointed to the GPS in his BMW, which he tended to follow blindly, although in the past it had sometimes gotten him lost. “It’s in Altenhain. But it belongs to Bad Soden.”
A sense of foreboding crept over Pia. Altenhain. Tobias Sartorius. She would never admit it, but she felt a certain sympathy for the young man. Now another girl had gone missing, and she could only hope that he’d had nothing to do with it. But she didn’t doubt for a second how the villagers would react, and it didn’t matter if he had an alibi or not. Her bad feeling grew when they reached the residence of Arne and Barbara Fr?hlich. The house stood only a few yards from the rear exit of the Sartorius property. They stopped in front of the handsome brick house with a deep hipped roof and several dormer windows. The parents were waiting for them.
Arne Fr?hlich, despite his cheerful surname, was a serious man of about forty-five with a receding hairline, thin sandy hair, and steel-rimmed glasses. His face was distinguished by the lack of any striking features. He was neither fat nor thin, of medium height, and looked so ordinary that it was almost uncanny. His wife, in her early thirties, was the complete opposite. Extremely attractive, with medium blond hair, expressive eyes, regular features, a wide mouth, and a slight snub nose. What did she possibly see in her husband?
They were both worried but very composed, with no trace of the hysteria usually displayed by the parents of missing children. Barbara Fr?hlich gave Pia a photo. Amelie was obviously a striking girl, but not in the way her mother was: her big brown eyes were heavily made up with kohl and eyeliner, and she had several piercings in her eyebrows, lower lip, and chin. She had teased her hair and styled it so it stood out like a shelf from her head. Beneath the dramatic fa?ade Amelie was a good-looking girl.
“She has run away several times before,” her father replied to Bodenstein’s question of why they had delayed in reporting their daughter missing. “Amelie is my daughter from my first marriage and somewhat … hmm … difficult. We took her in six months ago; before that she’d been living with my ex in Berlin, and there she also had big problems with … the police.”
“What sort of problems?” asked Bodenstein. The answer was clearly unpleasant for Arne Fr?hlich.
“Shoplifting, drugs, trespassing, and vagrancy,” he enumerated. “Sometimes she’d be gone for a week. My ex-wife was feeling completely overwhelmed and asked me to take Amelie in. That’s why we called around first and waited for her to show up.”
“But then it occurred to me that she didn’t take any clothes with her,” Barbara Fr?hlich added. “Not even the money she’d earned waitressing. I thought that was odd. And she also left her driver’s license here.”
“Was Amelie fighting with anyone? Did she have problems at school or with her friends?” Bodenstein went through the usual questions.
“No, on the contrary,” said the stepmother. “I even had the impression that she had changed for the better recently. She didn’t wear her hair quite as wild, and she started borrowing clothes from me. Normally she wears nothing but black, but suddenly she put on a skirt and blouse…” She fell silent.
“Do you think there’s a boy behind this change?” Pia ventured. “She may have met someone online and left to go see him.”
Arne and Barbara Fr?hlich exchanged a baffled look and shrugged.
“We gave her plenty of freedom,” the father offered. “Lately Amelie has been quite dependable. My boss, Mr. Terlinden, arranged a job for her waiting tables at the Black Horse so she could earn her own money.”
“Any problems at school?”
“She doesn’t have many girlfriends,” said Barbara. “She likes to be alone. She hasn’t talked much about school, but she’s only been there since September. The only one she hangs out with regularly is Thies Terlinden, our neighbor’s son.”
For a moment Arne Fr?hlich pressed his lips together. It was obvious that he didn’t approve of this friendship.
“What do you mean by that?” asked Pia, digging deeper. “Are they a couple?”
“Oh no,” said Barbara, shaking her head. “Thies is … well … different. He’s autistic, lives with his parents, and takes care of their garden.”
At Bodenstein’s request Barbara showed them Amelie’s room. It was large and cheerful, with two windows, one facing the street. The walls were bare; the posters of pop stars that other girls Amelie’s age liked to put up would have been totally wrong. Barbara explained it by saying that Amelie felt that she was only “passing through.”
“On her eighteenth birthday next year she wants to go straight back to Berlin,” she said, and they could hear the regret in her voice.
“How do you get along with your stepdaughter?” Pia walked over and opened the desk drawers.
“We get along fine. I try to be lenient when it comes to rules. Amelie reacts to restrictions by retreating into herself rather than protesting loudly. I think she’s gradually coming to trust me. She’s often gruff with her half sisters, but both of them are very attached to her. When I’m not around she’ll play with them for hours with their Playmobil figures or read them a story.”
Pia nodded. “Our colleagues will need to take her computer along. Does Amelie keep a diary?”
She picked up the laptop and saw something that confirmed her worst suspicions. On the desk blotter there was a drawing of a heart. And inside was a name in curlicue letters: Tobias.
* * *
“I’m worried about Thies,” Christine Terlinden replied to the angry question from her husband about what could be so urgent that she would ask him to come home in the middle of a special board meeting. “He’s … completely distraught.”
Claudius Terlinden shook his head and went downstairs to the basement. When he opened the door to Thies’s room, he could see at once that his wife’s use of the word “distraught” was a vast understatement. With a vacant stare Thies was kneeling on the floor stark naked in the middle of the room in a carefully arranged circle of toys, and he kept hitting himself in the face with his fist. Blood was running from his nose down his chin, and there was a sharp stench of urine. The sight was a shock and a painful reminder to Terlinden of episodes in the past. For a long time he had categorically refused to accept that his eldest son was mentally ill. He hadn’t wanted to hear the diagnosis of autism, even though the signs were all there in Thies’s alarming behavior. Worse still was the boy’s repellent habit of ripping everything to bits and smearing it with feces and urine. He and Christine had faced this problem in utter helplessness, deciding the only solution was to lock up the boy and keep him away from other people—especially his brother Lars. But as Thies grew older and turned more and more maniacal and aggressive, they could no longer close their eyes to the truth. Reluctantly Claudius Terlinden had taken a good look at his son’s syndrome and learned in conversations with doctors and therapists that there was no outlook for a cure. Daniela Lauterbach, their neighbor, had finally explained what Thies needed to be able to cope with his illness reasonably well. Familiar surroundings were important, in which nothing was ever changed and the unexpected rarely occurred. It was equally important for Thies to have his own strictly ritualized world into which he could retreat. For a while all went well, until the twelfth birthday of the twin brothers. Something happened on that day that completely derailed Thies. Something snapped in him so violently that he almost killed his brother and seriously injured himself.
That was the last straw for Claudius Terlinden, and the boy was taken raging and yelling to the locked psychiatric children’s ward, where he remained for three years. There they treated him with calming medications, and his situation improved. Tests had shown that Thies was of above-average intelligence. Unfortunately he had no idea what to do with this intelligence, because he lived as a captive in his own world, completely isolated from his surroundings and his fellow human beings.
Three years later Thies had been allowed to leave the facility in which he lived for a visit at home. He was calm and peaceful but had seemed in a virtual stupor. At home he immediately went down to the basement and began to set out his toys from long ago. He did that for hours, a disconcerting sight. Under the influence of the medications he didn’t suffer a single outburst. Thies even opened up a little. He helped the gardener, and he began painting. Although he still ate his meals using his childhood utensils from his teddy bear plate, by and large he ate, drank, and behaved normally. The doctors were quite pleased with this development and advised the parents to bring the boy home. Since then, now over fifteen years later, there had been no incident. Thies moved about freely in the village but spent most of his time in the garden, which he had single-handedly transformed into a symmetrically designed park with boxwood hedges, flowerbeds, and lots of Mediterranean plants.
And he painted, often until he was exhausted. The large-format pictures were impressive works: unconventional, disturbingly somber, oppressive messages from the hidden depths of his autistic inner life. Thies had nothing against exhibiting his work, and twice he had even accompanied his parents to openings. Nor did it bother him when he had to part with the paintings, as Claudius Terlinden had feared at first. So Thies continued to paint and tend to the garden, and everything was fine. By now Thies was even able to handle contact with the public without reverting to disturbing behavior. Now and then he even spoke a few words. He seemed to be on the right path to opening a tiny crack in the door to his inner self. And now this. What a setback! Without a word and deeply disturbed, Claudius Terlinden regarded his son. The sight of him pained him to his soul.
“Thies!” he called in a soft voice, then a bit more sternly: “Thies!”
“He hasn’t been taking his medication,” Christine Terlinden whispered behind him. “Imelda found it in the toilet.”
Claudius Terlinden went into the room and knelt down outside the circle. “Thies,” he said softly. “What have you got there?”
“Whathaveyougotthere,” repeated Thies tonelessly and rhythmically hit himself in the face like clockwork. “Whathaveyougotthere … whathaveyougotthere … whathaveyougotthere…”
Terlinden saw that he was holding something in his fist. When he tried to grab his son’s arm, Thies jumped up suddenly and fell upon his father, pounding and kicking him. Claudius Terlinden was surprised by the attack and instinctively defended himself, but Thies was no longer a little boy. He was a grown man with muscles steeled by gardening work. His eyes were wild, spittle and blood dripped from his chin. Panting, Claudius Terlinden fended off his son and as if through a fog he heard his wife screaming hysterically. Finally he managed to force open Thies’s fist and take away what he was holding. Then he crawled on all fours to the door. Thies didn’t pursue him but emitted a ghastly howl and curled up on the floor.
“Amelie,” he babbled. “Amelie Amelie Amelie Amelie. Whathaveyougotthere … Whathaveyougotthere … Whathaveyougotthere … Daddy … Daddy … Daddy…”
Breathing hard, Claudius Terlinden got to his feet. He was trembling all over. His wife stared at him, her hands clapped over her mouth, her eyes full of tears. Terlinden unfolded the paper and almost had a stroke. From the crumpled photo Stefanie Schneeberger was laughing up at him.
* * *
Arne and Barbara Fr?hlich had gone to see friends in the Rheingau on Saturday morning with their two younger children and didn’t return home until late. Amelie had worked the evening shift at the Black Horse. When she wasn’t home by midnight, her father had called the restaurant and learned from the incensed boss that Amelie had left shortly after ten, although they were at their wits’ end, they were so busy. After that the Fr?hlichs had called around to all their daughter’s classmates and friends whose numbers they could find. No luck. Nobody had seen Amelie or talked to her.
Oliver and Pia questioned Jenny Jagielski, the proprietor of the Black Horse, who told them what Arne Fr?hlich had said before. Amelie had been acting strangely distant all evening and kept trying to make a phone call from the kitchen. At ten o’clock she got a call and just took off. And on Sunday she didn’t turn up as usual to serve the early drinks crowd. No, Jenny didn’t know who had made the phone call that sent Amelie rushing off in such a hurry. The rest of the staff had no idea either. That evening all hell broke loose in the restaurant.
“Stop for a moment at the store,” Pia said to Oliver as they drove back down the main street. “It can’t hurt to ask around one more time.”
It turned out that they had come at a good time with regard to making inquiries. On this Monday morning Margot Richter’s small store was obviously the central meeting place for the female inhabitants of Altenhain. This time the ladies proved much more communicative than they were at their last visit.
“And this is exactly how it all started back then,” said Inge Dombrowski the hairdresser, and the other women present nodded in agreement. “I don’t want to imply anything, but Willi Paschke told me he saw Amelie over at the Sartorius place.”
“I also saw her go into their house recently,” another woman piped up, adding that she lived kitty-corner from Hartmut’s house and had an excellent view.
“She’s also bosom buddies with our village idiot,” a fat woman commented from the produce counter.
“Yes, that’s right,” three or four other women eagerly confirmed.
“With whom?” Pia inquired.
“With that Thies Terlinden,” the hairdresser explained. “He’s a few cards short of a deck, and prowls around at night through the village and the woods. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’d done something to that girl.”
The other women nodded in agreement. In Altenhain there were always plenty of suspicions to go around. Neither Oliver nor Pia said anything to that, but simply let the women talk. They were clearly enjoying whetting their knives and sharing their lust for scandal. They seem to have forgotten the police were present.
“The Terlindens should have locked that son up in a home long ago,” one woman insisted. “But in this town nobody dares say a word to the old man.”
“Right, because then they’d have to worry about losing their job.”
“The last person who said something against the Terlindens was Albert Schneeberger. Then his daughter disappeared, and soon he was gone too.”
“It’s strange how Terlinden helped out Sartorius. Maybe the two boys did have something to do with it.”
“That Lars sure left Altenhain in a hurry afterwards.”
“And now I hear Terlinden has even offered the murderer a job. Unbelievable! Instead of making sure he gets lost.”
For a moment silence descended over the store; everyone seemed to be pondering the possible meaning of these words. Then they all started jabbering at once. Pia decided to play dumb.
“Excuse me!” she shouted, trying to make herself heard. “Just who is this Terlinden you keep talking about?”
Abruptly the women realized that they weren’t alone. One after the other hurried to leave the store under some pretext, most of them with empty baskets. Margot Richter remained behind at her cash register. Until now she had kept out of the discussion. As befitted a good shop owner, she kept her ears open but preserved her neutrality.
“That’s not the result we had in mind,” said Pia apologetically, but the shop owner was unperturbed.
“They’ll be back soon enough,” she said. “Claudius Terlinden is the owner of the Terlinden company up there in the industrial park. The family and the company have been here in Altenhain for more than a hundred years. And without them not much would happen here at all.”
“How do you mean?”
“The Terlindens are very generous. They support the associations, the church, the elementary school, the district library. With them it’s a family tradition. And half the village works at the plant. The one son, Thies, that Christa called ‘the village idiot,’ is a very peaceful guy. He wouldn’t harm a fly. I can’t imagine he could have done anything to hurt the girl.”
“By the way—do you know Amelie Fr?hlich?”
“Yes, of course.” She gave a slightly disapproving smile. “You can’t miss her, the way she dresses! Besides, she works with my daughter at the Black Horse.”
Pia nodded and jotted down a note. Once again her boss was leaving her totally in the lurch, standing next to her absentmindedly and not saying a word.
“So what do you think could have happened to the girl?”
Margot Richter hesitated a moment, but her eyes twitched to the right, and Pia knew immediately who she suspected, because from her spot behind the cash register she had a clear view of the Golden Rooster. The gossip about Terlinden’s son was only a smoke screen. In reality everyone in town suspected Tobias Sartorius, who had done something like this before, after all.
“I have no idea what could have happened,” Margot Richter said evasively. “Maybe she’ll turn up.”
* * *