It was cold, cold, cold. The icy wind howled and raged, the snowflakes stung his face like tiny needles. He could no longer see a thing, everything around him was white, and his eyes were watering so badly that he was almost blind. He could no longer feel his feet, nose, ears, or fingertips. He staggered through the snowstorm from one reflective road marker to the next to keep from losing his orientation entirely. He had no more sense of time and just as little hope that a snowplow might come by. Why did he keep walking at all? Where did he want to go? He could hardly pull his feet out of the snow, they were frozen to clumps of ice in the thin gym shoes. It took a superhuman effort to fight his way step by step through this white hell. He fell again and landed on all fours in the snow. Tears ran down his face and turned to ice. Tobias fell forward and just lay there. Every fiber of his body was in pain; his left forearm which she had struck with the iron poker was completely numb. She had attacked him like a madwoman, hitting and kicking him, spitting on him in an apoplectic, hate-filled frenzy. Then she ran out of the cabin and simply drove away, leaving him behind in the middle of nowhere in the Swiss Alps. For hours he had lain naked on the floor, unable to move, as if in shock. At the same time he had hoped and feared that she would come back and get him. But that didn’t happen.
What had actually happened? They had spent a wonderful day in the snow under a steel-blue sky, had cooked and eaten a meal together and then made passionate love. Out of the blue Nadia had suddenly blown her top. But why? She was his friend, his best, closest, oldest friend, who had never abandoned him. Suddenly the memory shot through him like a bolt of blinding lightning. “Amelie,” he mumbled with stiffened lips. He had mentioned Amelie’s name because he was worried about her, and that was what made Nadia blow up. Tobias pressed his fists to his temples and forced himself to think. Gradually his foggy brain came up with the connections that he had been unwilling to acknowledge until now. Nadia had long been in love with him, but he had never realized it. How painful it must have been for her to listen to him recounting his numerous infatuations in minute detail. She had never let it show as she gave him tips and advice the way a good pal does. Tobias lifted his head in a daze. The storm had died down. He resisted the temptation to remain lying in the snow and hauled himself up to a standing position, his knees stiff. He rubbed his eyes. Impossible! Down there in the valley he could make out lights! He forced himself onward. Nadia had been jealous of his girlfriends, especially Laura and Stefanie. And when she had casually asked him at the edge of the forest whether he liked Amelie, he had guilelessly answered “yes.” But how could he have known that Nadia, the famous actress, would be jealous of a seventeen-year-old girl? Had Nadia done something to Amelie? Good God! The thought got him moving faster, sending him down toward the valley. Nadia had a head start of a night and a day. If anything happened to Amelie, then he would be to blame, because he had told Nadia about Thies’s paintings and that Amelie wanted to help him. He stopped and opened his mouth in a wild, angry wail that echoed off the mountains. He screamed until his vocal cords hurt and his voice gave out.
* * *
Dr. Daniela Lauterbach seemed to have been swallowed up by the earth. At her office they thought she was at the physicians’ conference in Munich, but inquiries showed that she had never arrived there. Her cell phone was turned off and her car could not be found. It was so frustrating. At the psychiatric hospital they considered it possible that Dr. Lauterbach had picked up Thies. She was one of the doctors on call, and no one would have paid any attention if she entered a ward. But on that Saturday night she had not been on call for emergencies. She had faked the call so she could leave and then waited outside the Black Horse. Amelie knew her and had probably voluntarily gotten into her car. To throw suspicion onto Tobias, Dr. Lauterbach had shoved Amelie’s cell phone into his pants pocket when she drove him home later. It was a perfect setup, and other coincidences helped her out as well. The probability of finding Amelie Fr?hlich or Thies Terlinden alive was tending toward zero.
That evening at ten o’clock Bodenstein and Kirchhoff were sitting in the conference room watching the Hessen Journal news on TV, which had announced that the police were looking for Dr. Daniela Lauterbach and that Nadia von Bredow had been arrested. Reporters and two television teams were still hanging around outside the police station, greedy for news of Nadia von Bredow.
“I think I’ll go home.” Pia yawned and stretched. “Can I drive you somewhere?”
“No, no. You go ahead,” said Bodenstein. “I’ll take one of the official cars.”
“Are you okay so far?”
“So far, yes.” Bodenstein shrugged. “Life goes on. Somehow.”
She gave him another dubious glance, then grabbed her jacket and purse and left. Bodenstein got up and turned off the TV. All day long he had managed to banish the unpleasant encounter with Cosima from his mind through hectic activity, but now the memory came back in a nasty, galling wave. How could he have lost control like that? He switched off the fluorescent lights and slowly walked down the hall to his office. The guest room at his parents’ house tempted him as little as a tavern. He might as well spend the night at his desk. He closed the door behind him and hesitated for a moment in the middle of the room, which was bathed in a weak glow from the streetlights outside. He was a failure as a husband and a police officer. Cosima preferred a thirty-five-year-old to him, and Amelie, Thies, and Tobias were probably long dead because he hadn’t found them in time. The past lay in ruins, and the future didn’t look much rosier.
* * *
If she leaned down and stretched out her arm, she could touch the surface of the water with her fingertips. The water was rising much faster than Amelie had thought it would, and obviously there was no drain anywhere. Not much longer and they’d be sitting in the water up here on the bookshelf. And even if they didn’t drown, because the water would flow out through the sliver of a window near the ceiling, they would die from hypothermia. It was cold as hell. And Thies’s condition had worsened dramatically. He was shivering and sweating, his body hot with fever. Mostly he seemed to sleep, his arm wrapped around her, but when he was awake, he talked. What he said was so scary and sinister that Amelie wanted to cry.
As if someone had pulled aside a black curtain in her mind, her memory was again crystal clear and she knew how she had ended up in this hole of a cellar. The Lauterbach woman must have put some kind of drug in the water and in the crackers, because she had fallen asleep every time she ate or drank anything. But now she could remember what happened. Dr. Lauterbach had called her and waited in the parking lot, friendly and concerned, begging her to come along to visit Thies, since he was having such a hard time. Without hesitation Amelie got into the doctor’s car—and woke up in this cellar. In the condemned buildings in Berlin, the homeless shelters, and on the streets of the city, she thought she’d seen all the evil that existed in this world, but it had only been a pale glimmer of how cruel people could be. Living in Altenhain, this idyllic little village that she had considered so boring and desolate, were merciless, brutal monsters, disguised behind masks of bourgeois respectability. If she ever got out of this cellar alive, she would never trust anyone again for the rest of her life. How could a human being do something so horrific to someone else? Why hadn’t Thies’s parents ever realized what the nice, friendly neighbor woman had done to their son? How could a whole village look on in silence as an innocent young man was sentenced to ten years in prison while the true criminals got off scot-free? In the long hours of darkness Thies had gradually told her everything he knew about the gruesome events in Altenhain, and that was a lot. No wonder Dr. Lauterbach wanted him dead. The instant she had this thought, Amelie was filled with the shattering certainty that the two of them were going to die. The Lauterbach woman wasn’t stupid. She would have made sure that nobody would find them here. Or at least not until it was too late.
* * *
Bodenstein rested his chin in his hand and stared at the empty cognac glass. How could he have been so wrong about Daniela Lauterbach? Her husband had murdered Stefanie Schneeberger in the heat of the moment, but she was ice cold. She had covered up what he’d done and threatened Thies Terlinden for years afterward, doping him up with drugs and intimidating him. She had allowed Tobias Sartorius to go to prison and sat by as his parents went through hell.
Bodenstein reached for the bottle of Rémy Martin that he’d once received as a gift and which had stood unopened for over a year in his cabinet. He loathed the stuff, but he was in the mood for something alcoholic. All day long he hadn’t eaten a bite, drinking way too much coffee. In one gulp he emptied the third glass of cognac in fifteen minutes and grimaced. The liquor kindled a small, agreeable fire in his stomach, flowed through his bloodstream, and relaxed him. His gaze wandered to the framed photograph of Cosima next to the telephone. She was smiling at him, as she had done for years. He didn’t hold it against her that this morning she had ambushed him and provoked him to say and do despicable things. He still regretted having lost control that way. Although she was the one who had ruined everything, he felt himself in the wrong. And that bothered him at least as much as his arrogant belief that he’d had a perfect marriage. Cosima had chosen to cheat on him with a younger man because he no longer satisfied her as a man. She had been bored with him and so she sought out another man, an adventurer like herself. This thought drove his feeling of self-worth to sink even lower than he would have thought possible. There was a knock on the door as he downed his fourth cognac.
“Yes?”
Nicola Engel stuck her head in the door.
“Am I disturbing you?”
“No. Come in.” He rubbed the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger. She entered his office, closed the door behind her, and came closer.
“I’ve just gotten word that Lauterbach has been stripped of his immunity. The court has approved the arrest warrant for him and Ms. von Bredow.” She remained standing in front of his desk and eyed him. “My God, you look terrible. I didn’t realize this case was taking such a toll on you.”
What should he say to that? He was too tired to give a tactically intelligent answer. He still couldn’t really read Nicola. Was she asking out of genuine human interest or because she wanted to use his failures as the final nail in the coffin and put an end to his role as the head of K-11?
“The attendant circumstances have been getting to me,” he finally admitted. “Behnke, Hasse. This stupid talk about Pia and me.”
“There’s nothing to it, is there?”
“No, of course not.” He leaned back. His neck was sore, and he grimaced again. Her eyes fell on the cognac.
“Have you got another glass?”
“In the cabinet. Bottom left.”
She turned around, opened the cabinet door, took out a glass, and sat down on one of the visitors’ chairs facing his desk. He poured her a finger’s width, then filled his own glass almost to the brim. Nicola Engel raised her eyebrows but said nothing. He said “Cheers” and drank without putting the glass down.
“What’s really wrong?” she wanted to know. She was a sharp observer, and she’d known him for a long time now. Before he met Cosima, whom he married soon afterward, he and Nicola had been a couple for two years. Why try to fool her? Soon everybody would find out anyway, especially when he gave them his new address.
“Cosima has found somebody else,” he said, trying to make his voice sound as calm as possible. “I’d had my suspicions for a while, and a couple of days ago she admitted it.”
“Oh.” It didn’t sound like schadenfreude. But she couldn’t bring herself to say she was sorry. He didn’t care. He grabbed the bottle, filled his glass again. Nicola looked at him without saying a word. He drank. Felt the effect of the alcohol on an empty stomach and understood why people, under certain circumstances, turned into alcoholics. Cosima retreated all the way to the back of his consciousness, and his worries about Amelie, Thies, and Daniela Lauterbach went up in smoke.
“I’m not a good cop,” he said. “Or a good boss. You should look for somebody else to do my job.”
“Not on your life,” she answered firmly. “When I started here last year, that was my intention, I admit. But now I’ve had a year to watch your management style and the way you lead your team. I could use a few more people like you.”
He didn’t say anything to this, and wanted to pour himself another cognac, but the bottle was empty. He casually tossed the bottle in the wastebasket and followed it with Cosima’s photo. When he picked up the basket, he met Nicola’s searching look.
“I think you should call it a day,” she said, glancing at her watch. “It’s almost midnight. Come on, I’ll drive you home.”
“I don’t have a home anymore,” he reminded her. “I’m living with my parents again. Funny, right?”
“Better than a hotel. So, come on. Let’s go.”
Bodenstein didn’t budge. He didn’t move his gaze from her face. Suddenly he remembered the first time he’d met her, more than twenty-seven years ago, at a party given by a fellow student. He’d been standing around in the tiny kitchen with a couple of guys drinking beer. He hadn’t really noticed the girls at the party, because the disappointment over breaking up with Inka was still too fresh in his mind for him to consider a new relationship. In front of the door to the toilet he met Nicola. She had looked him over from head to toe and in her inimitable direct way said something to him that caused him to leave the party with her on the spot, without even saying good-bye to the host. That time he had also been drunk and in pain, the way he was today. Unexpectedly a wave of heat raced through his body and shot into his abdomen like glowing lava.
“I like you,” he repeated her words from back then in a hoarse voice. “Do you feel like having sex?”
Nicola looked at him in surprise, and a smile tugged at the corners of her mouth.
“Why not?” She hadn’t forgotten their first conversation either. “I just have to make a quick trip to the toilet first.”