Snow White Must Die (45 page)

Bodenstein waited silently until Lauterbach spoke again in a whiny voice.

“When I … when I noticed that I’d lost my key ring, I wanted to go look for it. My wife would have ripped my head off, because the keys to her office were on it too.”

He looked up, pleading for understanding. Bodenstein had to force himself to conceal his growing contempt for this man.

“Stefanie said I’d better leave. She would look for the keys and bring them to me later.”

“And did she do that?”

“Yes. I’d gone home by then.”

Bodenstein left it at that for the moment.

“So you received letters and e-mails,” he said. “What was in them?”

“That Thies knew everything. And that the police would not find out if I kept my mouth shut.”

“What were you supposed to keep your mouth shut about?”

Lauterbach shrugged and shook his head.

“Who do you think wrote these letters to you?”

Again a helpless shrug.

“You must have some sort of idea. Come on, Mr. Lauterbach!” Bodenstein leaned forward again. “Keeping silent now is the worst possible solution.”

“But I really have no clue!” said Lauterbach in impotent despair which was obviously not faked. Alone and backed into a corner, he showed his true colors: Gregor Lauterbach was a weak man, and without his wife’s protection he shrank to a spineless homunculus. “I don’t know anything else! My wife told me that there were pictures, but Thies couldn’t have written the letters and e-mails.”

“When did she tell you about the paintings?”

Lauterbach rested his forehead on his hands, shook his head. “I don’t remember exactly.”

“Try to remember,” Bodenstein pressed. “Was it before or after Amelie disappeared? And how did you wife know about them? Who could have told her?”

“My God, I don’t know!” Lauterbach wailed. “I really don’t know!”

“Think!” Bodenstein leaned back. “On the Saturday evening that Amelie disappeared, you went to dinner with your wife and the Terlindens at the Ebony Club in Frankfurt. Your wife and Christine left for home at nine thirty, and you rode back with Claudius. What did you do after you left the Ebony Club?”

Gregor Lauterbach paused to think. He seemed to realize that the police knew a lot more than he’d assumed.

“Okay, I think my wife told me on the way to Frankfurt that Thies had given the neighbor girl some sort of pictures and I was in them,” he admitted reluctantly. “She found out about them that afternoon, from an anonymous phone call. We didn’t have time to discuss it further. Daniela and Christine left at nine thirty. I asked Andreas Jagielski about Amelie Fröhlich; I knew that she waited tables at the Black Horse. Jagielski called his wife and she told him that Amelie was at work. So Claudius and I drove to Altenhain and waited for the girl in the parking lot at the Black Horse. But she never showed up.”

“What did you want to find out from Amelie?”

“Whether she was the one who had written those anonymous e-mails and letters to me.”

“And? Did she?”

“I didn’t get a chance to ask her. We waited in the car, it was about eleven or eleven thirty. Then Nathalie showed up. I mean Nadia. Nadia von Bredow she calls herself now.”

Bodenstein looked up briefly and met Pia’s gaze.

“She ran around the parking lot,” Lauterbach went on, “looking in the bushes, and finally she went across the street to the bus stop. That was when we first noticed a man sitting there. Nadia tried to wake him up, but she couldn’t. Finally she drove off. Claudius called the Black Horse on his cell and asked for Amelie, but Mrs. Jagielski told him she’d left a long time ago. Then Claudius and I drove to his office. He was afraid the police would come snooping around. The last thing he needed was a police search, so he wanted to store some incendiary documents somewhere else.”

“What sort of documents?” asked Bodenstein.

Gregor Lauterbach resisted a bit, but not for long. Claudius Terlinden had secured his position of power over the years by bribery on a grand scale. Of course he’d always been wealthy, but he didn’t come into the big money until the late nineties, when he expanded his firm and took it public on the stock exchange. That was how he acquired major influence in the worlds of business and politics. He had done the best deals with countries against which an official trade embargo had been imposed, such as Iran and North Korea.

“He wanted to get rid of those documents that evening,” Lauterbach concluded. Now that he was no longer the immediate target, he had regained some of his self-confidence. “Since he didn’t want to destroy them, we took them to my house in Idstein.”

“I see.”

“I have nothing to do with the disappearance of Amelie or Thies,” Gregor Lauterbach declared. “And I haven’t murdered anyone.”

“That remains to be seen.” Bodenstein gathered up the pictures and put them back in the file. “You can go home now. But you’re under police surveillance, and we’ll be monitoring your telephone. I would also like to ask you to remain available. In any event, let me know before you leave your house.”

Lauterbach nodded meekly. “Could you at least keep my name out of the media for the time being?” he pleaded.

“That’s not something I can promise you.” Bodenstein held out his hand. “The key to your house in Idstein, please.”

Sunday, November 23, 2008

Pia had spent a sleepless night and was already on her feet when the call came at 5:15
A.M.
from the surveillance team: Nadia von Bredow had just returned to her apartment at the West Harbor in Frankfurt. Alone.

“I’ll be right there,” said Pia. “Wait for me.”

She tossed the hay that she was holding under her arm over the door of the horse stall and put away her cell phone. The case wasn’t the only thing that had kept her awake. Tomorrow at three thirty in the afternoon she had an appointment for an inspection at Birkenhof by the zoning office of the city of Frankfurt. If they didn’t cancel the demolition order, she, Christoph, and the animals would soon be homeless.

In the last few days Christoph had been worrying himself sick about the matter, and his former optimism had swiftly evaporated. The seller of Birkenhof had failed to mention to Pia that there was a construction ban on the land where the house stood because of the high-tension lines from the power plant. The seller’s father had erected a hut sometime after the war and had expanded it over the years without a building permit. For sixty years no one had noticed until she had applied for a building permit, ignorant of the illegality.

Pia quickly fed the poultry, then she phoned Bodenstein. When he didn’t answer, she wrote him a text and then, lost in thought, walked back to the house, which suddenly seemed foreign to her. On her tiptoes she crept into the bedroom.

“Do you have to go?” asked Christoph.

“Yes. Did I wake you?” She turned on the light.

“No. I couldn’t sleep either.” He looked at her, his head propped on his hand. “I’ve been wondering for half the night what we can do if they’re serious.”

“Me too.” Pia sat down on the edge of the bed. “Anyway, I’m going to sue the shitheads that sold me this property. It was malicious fraud, most definitely.”

“We’ll have to prove it first,” Christoph noted. “I’m going to discuss it today with a friend of mine who knows about these things. Until then we won’t do anything.”

Pia sighed. “I’m so glad you’re here,” she said softly. “I don’t know what I would have done alone.”

“If I hadn’t come into your life, you would never have applied for a building permit, and nothing would have happened.” Christoph gave her a crooked grin. “Now don’t get discouraged. Go do your job and I’ll worry about all this, okay?”

“Okay.” Pia managed a smile. She bent over and gave Christoph a kiss. “Unfortunately I have no idea when I’ll be home tonight.”

“Don’t worry about me.” Christoph smiled too. “I have to work at the zoo.”

*   *   *

Bodenstein recognized her familiar figure from far away. She was standing in the light of the streetlamp next to her car in the parking lot, her red hair the only spot of color in the misty darkness. He hesitated a moment before he strode over to her. Cosima was not a woman who would allow anyone to hang up on her. Actually he should have known that sooner or later she would waylay him, but the case he was working on had monopolized his attention. So now he felt unprepared and at a disadvantage.

“What do you want?” he asked gruffly. “I don’t have time for this.”

“You didn’t call me back,” said Cosima. “I have to talk with you.”

“Jeez, right now?” He stood in front of her, studying her pale, composed face. His heart was pounding and it took a real effort to remain calm. “You haven’t felt the need to talk to me in weeks. Go find your Russian friend if you’re in the mood to talk.”

He pulled out his car key, but she didn’t budge from the spot where she was standing next to the car door.

“I want to explain—” she began.

“I don’t want to hear it. And I really don’t have time right now,” Oliver interrupted her. He had barely slept all night and had to get going urgently, which made for rather poor conditions for an important talk like this.

“Oliver, please believe me, I didn’t want to hurt you!” Cosima reached out her hand to him, but let it drop when he shrank back. Her breath stood like a white cloud in the cold morning air. “I didn’t want to go that far, but—”

“Just stop!” he shouted. “You did hurt me! More than any person ever has! I don’t want to hear any excuses or justifications from you, because no matter what you say, you’ve ruined everything! Everything!”

Cosima didn’t say a word.

“Who knows how many times you’ve cheated on me before? The way you’ve played me for a fool and lied to me is such a cliché,” he went on through clenched teeth. “What did you do on all those business trips? How many beds did you waltz through while your stupidly naïve and trusting bourgeois husband dutifully stayed home with the kids and waited for you? Maybe you even had a laugh at my expense because I was dumb enough to trust you!”

Like poisonous lava these words erupted from the depths of him; finally all the bottled-up disappointment came pouring out. Cosima let his anger wash over her without batting an eye.

“Maybe Sophia isn’t even my child—maybe she’s the brat of one of those shaggy, dubious film types you like to hang out with!”

He stopped talking when he realized how monstrous this reproach was. But now that he’d said it, he couldn’t take it back.

“I would have bet my life on our marriage,” he said in a strained voice. “But you’ve lied to me and betrayed me. I’ll never be able to trust you again.”

Cosima straightened her shoulders.

“I thought you’d react like this,” she responded coolly. “Self-righteous and uncompromising. You see the whole thing only from your own egotistical point of view.”

“How else would I see it? From the point of view of your Russian lover?” He snorted. “You’re the one who’s selfish. For twenty long years you never once asked me how I was doing. You went off traveling for weeks at a time. I never liked it, but I accepted it because your work is important to you. Then you got pregnant. You never asked me if I wanted another child, you made the decision all on your own and presented me with the facts. You should have known that with a little baby you wouldn’t be able to go globetrotting. Then out of sheer boredom you plunged into an affair—and now you want to accuse me of being selfish? If it wasn’t all so sad, I’d have to laugh!”

“When Lorenz and Rosi were small, I was still able to work. And sometimes you did take over the responsibility,” Cosima argued. “But that’s not what I want to discuss with you. What’s past is past. I made a big mistake, but I’m certainly not going to go around in sackcloth and ashes until you decide to forgive me.”

“So why are you here?” The cell phone in his coat pocket rang and vibrated, but he ignored it.

“After Christmas I want to accompany Gavrilow’s expedition through the Northwest Passage for four weeks,” Cosima informed him. “You’d have to take care of Sophia while I’m gone.”

Speechless, Oliver stared at his wife as if she’d just slapped him. Cosima hadn’t come to ask his forgiveness—no, she had long ago made up her mind about her future. A future in which he was relegated to the job of babysitter. His knees felt as soft as butter.

“You can’t be serious,” he whispered.

“Oh yes I am. I signed the contract a couple of weeks ago. It was clear to me that you wouldn’t approve.” She shrugged. “I’m sorry it had to come up this way, honestly. But I’ve been doing a lot of thinking the past few months. I would regret it to the end of my days if I don’t make this film…”

She kept on talking but her words no longer registered with him. He’d understood the most important thing: In her heart she had left him long ago, rejecting the life they had shared. Actually he’d never really been sure of her. All these years he had thought that the contradictory side of her personality was what made their relationship special, like adding salt to the soup. But now he realized that they just didn’t fit together. He felt a painful pang in his heart.

And now she was doing the same thing she’d done so many times before: She had made a decision that he was forced to accept. She was the one who always determined the direction of their lives. She had the money. She had bought the property in Kelkheim and paid for the house to be built. He could never have afforded all that. It hurt, but on this gloomy November morning he saw for the first time that Cosima was no longer the beautiful, self-assured, exciting companion he wanted at his side. Instead she was the woman who ruthlessly pushed through her will and her plans. How stupid and blind he’d been all this time!

The blood was roaring in his ears. She had stopped talking and looked at him unmoved, as if waiting for a reply. He blinked. Her face, the car, the parking lot—it all blurred before his eyes. She wanted to leave him for another man. She wanted to live her life, and there was no longer any room for him in it. Suddenly jealousy and hatred overwhelmed him. He took a step toward Cosima and grabbed her wrist. Shocked, she tried to pull away, but he held her hand tight, as if in a vise. Her cool superiority vanished abruptly, and she opened her eyes wide in fear. Then she opened her mouth to scream.