“Not a word to the press or anyone else about the cell phone,” Bodenstein ordered. All the officers taking part in the house search had gathered under the entrance gate. The rain was pouring down and the temperature had dropped twenty degrees in the past twenty-four hours. The first snowflakes were mixed in with the rain.
“But why?” Behnke protested. “The guy goes and disappears and we stand here like a bunch of idiots!”
“I don’t want to start a witch hunt,” Bodenstein countered. “The mood in the village has been stirred up enough. I’m ordering a total information blackout until I’ve spoken with Tobias Sartorius. Is that clear?”
The men and women nodded; only Behnke crossed his arms in exasperation and shook his head. The humiliation from earlier smoldered inside him like a burning fuse, and Bodenstein knew that. On top of everything else, Behnke had understood exactly what his assignment to secure evidence meant: this degrading treatment was a punishment. Bodenstein had made it clear to him in private how bitterly disappointed he was by Behnke’s breach of trust. In the past twelve years Bodenstein had always generously ironed out any problems that Behnke had provoked because of his explosive temperament. But now, he had explicitly told him, it had to stop. This violation of regulations could not be excused by family problems. Bodenstein hoped that Behnke would follow his orders; otherwise it would no longer be possible to protect him from the threat of suspension.
Oliver turned away and swiftly followed Pia to the car.
“Put out an APB on Tobias Sartorius.” He turned on the engine but didn’t drive off. “Damn, I was so sure that we wouldn’t find any trace of the girl at their farm.”
“You believe he did it, don’t you?” Pia grabbed her phone and called Ostermann. The wipers scraped across the windshield, and the heater fan was on full blast. Bodenstein bit his lip pensively. To be honest, he wasn’t really paying attention. Every time he tried to concentrate on the case, the image of a naked Cosima rolling in the sheets with a strange man leaped into his mind. Had she met the guy yesterday too? When he got home late at night she was already in bed asleep. He had taken the opportunity to check her cell phone, and found that all her call lists and text messages had been deleted. This time he hadn’t felt a single pang of conscience, even when he went through her coat and purse. He had almost given up his suspicions when he discovered in her wallet, stuck between the credit cards, two condoms.
“Oliver!” Pia’s voice startled him out of his reverie. “Kai found a passage in Amelie’s diary where she writes that her neighbor has started waiting for her, to drive her to the bus stop.”
“Yeah, so?”
“The neighbor is Claudius Terlinden.”
Oliver didn’t know where Pia was going with this. He couldn’t think. His mind just couldn’t seem to process the information.
“We have to talk to him,” said Pia with a hint of impatience in her voice. “We don’t know enough yet about the girl’s circle of friends and acquaintances to establish Tobias Sartorius as the only possible perpetrator.”
“Yes, you’re right.” He shifted into reverse and lurched into the street.
“Watch out for the bus!” Pia screamed, but too late. Brakes squealed, metal crashed into metal, and the car was shaken by a violent impact. Oliver’s head was slammed hard against the side window.
“Oh great.” Pia undid her seatbelt and climbed out. Dazed, Oliver looked back over his shoulder and saw through the rain-glazed window the contours of a large vehicle. Something warm was running down his face; he touched his cheek and stared in confusion at the blood on his hand. Only then did he realize what had happened. The thought of getting out in the rain and talking with an angry bus driver in the middle of the street made him sick. Everything made him sick. The door opened.
“Man, you’re bleeding!” Pia’s voice sounded at first shocked, but all of a sudden she burst out in snorting laughter. Behind her on the rainy street a crowd had gathered. Almost every one of their colleagues involved in the house search obviously wanted to inspect the damage to the BMW and the bus.
“What’s there to laugh about?” Oliver gave her an offended look.
“Please forgive me.” The tension that had been building inside her over the past few hours had given way to an almost hysterical laughing fit. “But somehow I thought your blood would be blue, not red.”
* * *
It was almost dark by the time Pia steered the rather dented but still drivable BMW through the gate of the Terlinden estate; this time it stood wide open. Fortunately Dr. Lauterbach just happened to be in her “branch office,” although normally she held consultations in her office in the old Altenhain courthouse on Wednesday afternoons. But she’d only stopped by to pick up a medical file for a visit to a patient when the accident occurred outside. She had quickly and expertly dressed the cut on Bodenstein’s head and advised him to lie down for the rest of the day, because there was the chance of a concussion. But he had staunchly refused. Pia, who had rapidly brought her outburst of levity under control, had an idea what was bothering her boss, although he hadn’t mentioned Cosima or his suspicions.
They were headed along the curving driveway, illuminated by low lamps, which led through a park with magnificent old trees, boxwood hedges, and flowerbeds bare in winter. Beyond a curve the house appeared out of the misty twilight. It was a big old villa in half-timbered style with oriels, towers, pointed gables, and invitingly lit windows. They drove into the inner courtyard and pulled up right in front of the three steps at the front door. Under the porch roof supported by massive wooden pillars an array of Halloween pumpkins grinned at them. Pia rang the doorbell, and at once a multivoiced barking arose inside the house. Through the old-fashioned milky glass panes of the front door she could dimly make out a whole pack of dogs jumping at the door; the highest jumper was a long-legged Jack Russell terrier, yapping like a maniac. A cold wind drove the fine rain, which was gradually changing to sharp little snow crystals, under the porch roof. Pia rang the bell again, and the barking of the dogs rose to an ear-splitting crescendo.
“I hope somebody hurries up,” she grumbled, putting up the collar of her jean jacket.
“Sooner or later someone will open the door.” Oliver leaned on the wooden railing and didn’t bat an eye. Pia gave him a sullen look. His stoic patience was making her blood boil. Finally footsteps approached, the dogs fell silent and vanished as if by magic. The front door was opened, and in the doorway appeared a girlish, delicate blonde dressed in a fur-edged vest over a turtleneck sweater, a knee-length checked skirt, and fashionable high-heeled boots. At first glance Pia took the woman to be in her mid-twenties. She had an ageless, smooth face and big blue baby-doll eyes, with which she scrutinized first Pia, then Oliver with polite reserve.
“Mrs. Terlinden?” Pia searched in the pocket of her down vest, then in her jean jacket underneath for her badge, while Bodenstein remained mute as a fish. The woman nodded. “My name is Pia Kirchhoff, and this is my colleague Oliver von Bodenstein. We’re from K-11 in Hofheim. Is your husband at home?”
“No, I’m sorry.” With a friendly smile Mrs. Terlinden offered her hand, which betrayed her real age. She must have passed fifty a few years ago, and her youthful attire suddenly seemed like a disguise. “Can I help you?”
She made no move to invite them inside. Through the open door Pia nonetheless caught a glimpse of the interior and saw a wide flight of stairs whose steps were covered with a Bordeaux-red carpet, an entry hall with a marble floor in a chessboard pattern, and dark framed oil paintings on high walls papered in saffron yellow.
“As you probably know, your neighbors’ daughter has been missing since Saturday night,” Pia began. “Yesterday the tracking dogs kept barking in the vicinity of your house, and we’ve asked ourselves why.”
“I’m not surprised. Amelie visits us often.” Mrs. Terlinden’s voice sounded like a bird chirping. Her eyes shifted from Pia to Oliver and back again. “She’s friends with our son Thies.”
With a gesture that seemed unconscious she reached up to smooth her hair, perfectly coiffed in a pageboy style. Then she glanced, a bit irritated, over at Bodenstein, who remained quiet in the background. The white bandage on his forehead glowed brightly in the dim light.
“Friends? Is Amelie your son’s girlfriend?”
“No, no, not at all. They just get along with each other,” Mrs. Terlinden replied guardedly. “Amelie doesn’t judge him or make him feel that he’s … different.”
Although Pia was steering the conversation, Mrs. Terlinden kept glancing over at Oliver, as if seeking his support. Pia knew this type of woman, this masterly rehearsed mixture of feminine helplessness and coquetry that awakened the protective instinct in almost every man. Few women were actually that weak; most of them had discovered over time this role was an effective method of manipulation.
“We would very much like to speak with your son,” she said. “Perhaps he can tell us something about Amelie.”
“I’m afraid that won’t be possible.” Christine Terlinden pulled up the fur collar of her vest, again stroking her immaculate blond coiffure. “Thies is not well. Yesterday he had an attack, and we had to call the doctor.”
“What sort of attack?” Pia persisted. If Mrs. Terlinden was hoping that the police would be satisfied with vague hints, she now saw she was mistaken. Kirchhoff’s question seemed to annoy her.
“Well, Thies is very sensitive. Even small changes in his surroundings can sometimes throw him into a tailspin.”
It sounded like a response she had committed to memory. The lack of any empathy in her words was remarkable. Obviously Mrs. Terlinden had little interest in what had happened to the neighbor girl. She hadn’t even asked about her out of politeness. That was odd. Pia remembered the conjectures of the women in the grocery store who considered it entirely possible that Thies might have done something to the girl when he was prowling through the streets at night.
“What does your son do all day?” Pia asked. “Does he have a job?”
“No. Strangers expect too much of him,” said Christine Terlinden. “He takes care of our garden and those of a few neighbors. He’s a very good gardener.”
Involuntarily Pia thought of an old mystery novel cliché: The murderer is always the gardener. Was it that simple? Did the Terlindens know more? Were they hiding their handicapped son in order to protect him?
* * *
The rain had finally turned to snow. A fine white layer had formed on the asphalt of the street, and Pia took great pains to bring the heavy BMW with its summer-tread tires to a gentle stop at the main entrance to the grounds of the Terlinden company.
“You should have your tires changed,” she told her boss. “Winter tires from O to E.”
“What?” Oliver frowned in annoyance. He was lost in thought, but clearly it had nothing to do with their work. His cell buzzed.
“Hello, Dr. Engel,” he answered after glancing at the display.
“October to Easter,” Pia murmured. She rolled down the window and showed the gate guard her ID. “Mr. Terlinden is expecting us.”
That wasn’t exactly true, but the man merely nodded, hurried back into his warm hut, and raised the barrier. Pia accelerated slowly so as not to skid and steered the car across empty parking spaces near the glass fa?ade of the main building. Right in front stood a black Mercedes S-Class. Pia stopped behind it and climbed out. Why couldn’t Oliver cut short his conversation with Engel? Her feet were blocks of ice because the short drive through Altenhain was barely enough to get the car heater going. The snow was coming down faster. How was she going to drive the BMW all the way back to Hofheim in the snow later on without ending up in a ditch? Her gaze fell on an ugly dent on the left rear fender of the black Mercedes, and she took a closer look. The damage couldn’t be very old or rust would have formed.
She heard a car door slam behind her and turned around. Bodenstein held the front door open for her, and they entered the lobby. Behind a counter of polished walnut sat a young man; on the white wall behind him was only the name TERLINDEN in gold letters. Simple yet imposing. Pia told him their business, and after a brief phone call he accompanied them to an elevator in the rear of the lobby. They rode in silence to the fifth floor, where a stylish middle-aged woman awaited them. She was apparently on her way out the door since she was wearing a coat and scarf, with her bag over her shoulder, but she dutifully escorted them to her boss’s office.
After everything Pia had heard about Claudius Terlinden, she’d expected a jovial patriarch and was at first a bit disappointed when she saw the rather average-looking man in suit and tie sitting behind a completely overloaded desk. He got up when they entered, buttoned his jacket, and came forward to greet them.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Terlinden.” Bodenstein had woken up from his daze. “Please excuse us for bothering you so late in the day, but we’ve been trying to reach you for hours.”
“Good afternoon,” said Claudius Terlinden with a smile. “My secretary gave me your message. I was planning to call you early tomorrow morning.”
He was somewhere in his mid- to late fifties, and his thick dark hair was graying at the temples. Seen close up he looked anything but average, Pia ascertained. Claudius Terlinden was not a handsome man: his nose was too big, his chin too angular, his lips a bit too full for a man, and yet he radiated a presence that fascinated her.
“Good Lord, your hands are freezing!” he said with concern when he offered his warm dry hand, and put his other hand on hers briefly. Pia gave a start; it felt like he’d given her an electric shock. A fleeting expression of astonishment flitted across Terlinden’s face.
“Shall I get you some coffee or hot chocolate so you can thaw out a bit?”
“No, no, we’re fine,” said Pia, disconcerted by the intensity of his gaze, which had made her blush. They looked at each other a bit longer than necessary. What had just happened here? Was it a simple case of static electricity explainable by physics or something altogether different?
Before she or Bodenstein could ask their first question, Terlinden asked about Amelie.
“I’m extremely worried,” he said gravely. “Amelie is the daughter of my legal advisor. I know her well.”
Pia dimly recalled that her plan had been to go after him hard and insinuate that he was hot for the girl. But this plan had suddenly been quashed.
“Unfortunately we have no new information,” said Bodenstein. Then he got straight to the point. “We’ve been told that you visited Tobias Sartorius several times in prison. What was your reason for doing so? And why did you pay off his parents’ debts?”
Pia shoved her hands in her vest pockets and tried to remember what she’d been intending to ask Terlinden so urgently. But her mind was suddenly as blank as a freshly formatted computer hard drive.
“Everyone in the village treated Hartmut and Rita like lepers after that terrible tragedy,” Claudius Terlinden replied. “I don’t believe in blaming a whole family for the crimes of one member. Whatever their son may have done, there was nothing they could have done to prevent it.”
“But Tobias suspected you of having had something to do with the disappearance of both girls. That claim must have caused you a lot of trouble.”
Terlinden nodded. He stuck his hands in his pants pockets and tilted his head. It didn’t seem to adversely affect his self-confidence that Bodenstein was a head taller than he was, forcing him to look up at the detective.
“I didn’t hold that against Tobias. He was under tremendous pressure and simply wanted to defend himself by all available means. And it was true, as a matter of fact, that Laura had twice gotten me into extremely compromising situations. As the daughter of our housekeeper she was in the house often, and she imagined that she was in love with me.”
“What kind of situations?” Bodenstein asked.
“One time she climbed into my bed while I was in the bath,” replied Terlinden in an unemotional voice. “The second time she undressed in front of me in the living room. My wife was away, and Laura knew it. She told me straight out that she wanted to sleep with me.”
For some incomprehensible reason his words annoyed Pia. She avoided looking at him and instead looked at the furnishings in his office. The huge desk of massive wood with imposing carvings on the sides rested on four gigantic lion’s paws. Presumably it was very old and valuable, but Pia had seldom seen anything so ugly. Next to the desk stood an antique globe, and on the walls hung dark expressionistic paintings in simple dark frames, similar to those she had spied over Mrs. Terlinden’s shoulder in their home.
“So what happened?” Bodenstein inquired.
“When I declined, she broke into tears and ran off. Just at that moment my son came in.”
Pia cleared her throat. She had herself under control again.
“You often gave Amelie Fr?hlich a ride in your car,” she said. “She mentions it in her diary. She had the impression that you were deliberately waiting for her.”
“I didn’t wait for her,” Claudius Terlinden said with a smile, “but I did give her a ride a few times if I happened to see her on the road to the bus stop or walking up the hill from the village.”
His voice was calm and composed and gave no indication that he had a guilty conscience.
“You arranged the waitress job for her at the Black Horse. Why?”
“Amelie wanted to earn some money, and the proprietor of the Black Horse was looking for a waitress.” He shrugged. “I know everybody here in the village, and if I can help I do it gladly.”
Pia scrutinized the man. His searching gaze met hers, and she stood firm. She asked questions and he answered. At the same time something completely different was going on between them, but what was it? What was this strange magnestism that this man exerted over her? Was it his brown eyes? His pleasant, sonorous voice? The aura of calm self-confidence that surrounded him? No wonder he had impressed a young girl like Amelie, if he was able to cast his spell on a grown woman.
“When was the last time you saw Amelie?” Bodenstein asked.
“I don’t know exactly.”
“Then do you know where you were on Saturday night? We are particularly interested in the hours between ten p.m. and two a.m.”
Claudius Terlinden took his hands out of his pockets and crossed his arms. Across the back of his left hand was a nasty scratch that looked fresh.
“That evening I went to dinner with my wife in Frankfurt,” he said, after thinking a moment. “Because Christine had a bad headache, I dropped her off at the house first, then I drove over here and put her jewelry in the safe.”
“When did you get back from Frankfurt?”
“About ten thirty.”
“So you drove past the Black Horse twice,” Pia noted.
“Yes.” Terlinden looked at her with the concentration of a contestant on a quiz show when the host asks the decisive final question; he had answered Bodenstein’s questions almost nonchalantly. This attention was starting to irritate Pia, and now Oliver also seemed aware of it.
“And you didn’t notice anything unusual?” he asked. “Did you see anyone on the street? Someone out for a late-night walk, perhaps?”
“No, I didn’t notice anything,” Claudius Terlinden answered. “But I drive by there several times a day and don’t pay much attention to my surroundings.”
“Where did you get the scratch on your hand?” asked Pia.
Terlinden’s face darkened. He was no longer smiling. “I had an argument with my son.”
Thies—of course! Pia had almost forgotten what had led her here in the first place. Even Oliver seemed not to have thought about it again, but he smoothly adapted to the change in topic.
“Right,” he said. “Your wife just told us that your son Thies suffered some sort of attack last night.”
Claudius Terlinden hesitated briefly, then nodded.
“What sort of attack was it? Is he an epileptic?”
“No. Thies is autistic. He lives in his own world and feels threatened by any change in his normal surroundings. He reacts with autoaggressive behavior.” Terlinden sighed. “I’m afraid that Amelie’s disappearance was the catalyst for his attack.”
“In the village there’s a rumor that Thies might have had something to do with her disappearance,” said Pia.
“That’s nonsense,” Terlinden contradicted her without any rancor. He sounded almost indifferent, as though this sort of talk was all too familiar to him. “Thies likes the girl a lot. But some people in the village think he belongs in an institution. Naturally they won’t say that to my face, but I know it.”
“We’d really like to talk to him.”
“At the moment I’m afraid that’s not possible.” Terlinden shook his head regretfully. “We had to take him to the psychiatric ward.”
“What will happen to him there?” Pia instantly conjured up ghastly images in her head of people in chains being maltreated with electroshock.
“They’ll try to calm him down.”
“How long will it take before we can talk to him?”
Claudius Terlinden shrugged. “I don’t know. He hasn’t had such a violent attack in years. I’m afraid that this event may have really set him back in his development. That would be a disaster. For us and for him.”
He promised to inform Kirchhoff and Bodenstein as soon as the doctors gave the green light so they could have a talk with Thies. As Terlinden accompanied them to the elevator and held out his hand in parting, he smiled again.
“Very pleased to meet you,” he said. This time his touch didn’t give Pia an electric shock, yet she felt strangely dazed as the elevator door finally closed behind them. On the ride down she tried to overcome her confusion.
“Well, he really seemed to go for you,” Oliver noted. “And you for him too.” There was gentle mockery in his voice.
“Very funny,” Pia retorted, zipping up her jacket to her chin. “I was just trying to scope him out.”
“And? What was the outcome?”
“I think he was sincere.”
“Really? I think just the opposite.”
“Why? He answered all our questions without hesitating, even the unpleasant ones. For example, he didn’t have to tell us that Laura had twice put him in an embarrassing position.”
“That’s exactly what I think is his trick,” Oliver countered. “Isn’t it a peculiar coincidence that Terlinden’s son was removed from the line of fire at the very moment the girl disappeared?”
The elevator stopped at the ground floor and the doors opened.
“We haven’t made any progress at all,” said Pia, feeling suddenly discouraged. “Nobody wants to admit they saw Amelie.”
“Or maybe it’s just that no one wants to tell us,” said Oliver. They crossed the lobby, nodded to the young man behind the reception counter, and stepped outside into the icy blast. Pia pressed the remote on her car key and the doors of the BMW unlocked.
“We have to talk to Mrs. Terlinden one more time.” Oliver stopped by the passenger door and looked at Pia over the roof.
“So you suspect Thies and his father.”
“Possibly. Maybe Thies did something to the girl and his father wants to cover it up, so he puts his son in the psych ward.”
They got in, and Pia started the engine and drove out from under the protective roof. Snow covered the windshield at once, and thanks to fine sensors the wipers started moving.
“I want to know which doctor treated Thies,” Bodenstein said pensively. “And whether the Terlindens really did go out to eat in Frankfurt on Saturday night.”
Pia just nodded. The encounter with Claudius Terlinden had left her with an ambiguous feeling. Normally she didn’t let herself be blinded so quickly by anyone, but the man had made a deep impression on her, and she wanted to figure out why.
* * *