The Ice Queen: A Novel (14 page)

After his wife had filed for divorce and his social decline became obvious, he had sworn never to trust a woman again. His relationship with Katharina Ehrmann was based on business. She was the publisher who was paying him to write the life story of Vera Kaltensee—and quite well, too. He was her preferred lover whenever she was in Frankfurt. What she did when he was out of reach didn’t really matter. Ritter heaved a sigh. He had maneuvered himself into a really shitty position. If Katharina found out about Marleen, he might lose his meal ticket. If Marleen found out about his breach of trust and all the lies he had told her, she would never forgive him, and he would inevitably lose both her and the baby. No matter which way he turned, he was in a bind. The phone rang. Ritter opened his eyes and fumbled to pick it up.

Katharina’s voice sounded in his ear. “It’s me. Did you hear? Old Schneider was murdered, too.”

“What? When?” Ritter shot up, and the water sloshed over the edge of the tub onto the parquet floor of the bathroom.

“Late Monday night or early Tuesday morning. He was shot, just like Goldberg.”

“How do you know this?”

“I just know.”

“Who would want to shoot that old fart?” Ritter was trying to keep his tone indifferent as he got out of the tub and gazed at the mess he’d made.

“No idea,” said Katharina. “My first suspicion was you, to be honest. You visited him and Goldberg recently, didn’t you?”

Ritter was speechless for a moment. He went ice-cold. How could Katharina know that?

“What bullshit,” he said with an effort, hoping that his voice sounded amused. “Why would I do something like that?”

“To shut them up?” Katharina suggested. “You were putting a lot of pressure on both of them.”

Ritter could feel his heart pounding in his throat. He hadn’t told anyone about these visits, nobody at all. Katharina was hard to read, and she never showed her cards. Ritter hadn’t been able to tell which side she was really on, and occasionally he had a bad feeling that for Katharina he was no more than a tool to accomplish her own revenge on the Kaltensee family.

“I didn’t put pressure on anybody,” he replied, sounding cool now. “Unlike you, my dear. You were at Goldberg’s, and it was because of those stupid company shares that you’ve all been fighting over for eons. Maybe you were at Herrmann’s, too, watching a few movies and putting away a bottle of Bordeaux with him. I know you’d do anything to get even with the Kaltensees.”

“Let’s drop it,” said Katharina calmly after a brief pause. “The police have Robert in their sights, by the way. I wouldn’t be surprised if he did it; he’s always hard up for cash. But for now, just keep writing. Maybe we’ll get another chapter out of this, all about the current adventures of the dear Kaltensee family.”

Ritter put down his cell next to the washbasin, grabbed a couple of towels, and cleaned up the bathwater before it could damage the parquet floor. In his head, all the information was swirling around. Goldberg, that repulsive old creep, shot to death. Schneider also shot dead. He knew that Elard had hated both old men deeply, for different reasons. Robert was always in need of money, and Siegbert was undoubtedly after the damn company shares. But was either of them capable of committing a murder, or even two? The answer was unequivocal: yes. Ritter had to laugh. All he had to do was sit back comfortably and wait.

“Time is on my side,” he sang to himself, but he had no idea how wrong he was.

*   *   *

Monika Krämer was still shaking all over as she tried to stop the nosebleed with a wet towel and ice cubes. That arrogant, ugly piece of shit cop had really hurt her. Too bad he hadn’t cut his throat falling into the pile of bottles! She gazed at her face in the bathroom mirror. Cautiously, she touched her nose, but it didn’t seem to be broken. And it was all because of Robert. That idiot must have really pulled some number he’d never told her about. She’d seen the gun in his backpack; he claimed he’d found it. Murder, the cops had said. Now the shit was really going to hit the fan! Monika Krämer had absolutely no desire to have the cops on her back, and that was why she was going to throw Robert out once and for all. But the real reason was that he got on her nerves. It was getting harder and harder to get rid of him, but she had such a hard time saying no. She always felt sorry for him and kept bringing him home, although she’d sworn to herself a dozen times not to do it again. He never had any money and was jealous on top of it.

She went into the bedroom and stuffed the used bedclothes in the wardrobe. From the chest under the bed she took out the silk sheets she used when she had a “visitor.” Two years ago, she’d started putting classified ads in the paper. The text, which read “Manu, 19, very discreet—tasty, no taboos,” appealed to many men, and once they showed up, they didn’t care that her name wasn’t really Manu or that she wasn’t nineteen. Some of them came regularly: a bus driver, a couple of pensioners, the mailman, and the teller from the bank during his lunch hour. She charged thirty euros for the standard services, fifty for French, and one hundred for extras, which nobody had yet requested. Together with the welfare check, she was able to make a decent living, put away a little every month, and treat herself to something once in a while. Another two or three years and she could realize her dream: to buy a small house on a lake in Canada. That’s why she was studying English on the side.

The doorbell rang. She glanced at the clock in the kitchen. Quarter to ten. Her Wednesday-morning regular customer was punctual. He was with the sanitation department and spent his breakfast break with her once a week. Like today. The fifty euros were easy money; he never stayed more than fifteen minutes.

Only five minutes after he left, there was a knock at her door. It could only be Robert, because Monika wasn’t expecting anyone else until noon. What was he thinking, showing up here again? The cops were probably downstairs in their car waiting for him. Furious, she marched to the door and tore it open.

“What the heck—” she began, then stopped when she saw a gray-haired stranger standing in front of her.

“Hello,” said the man. He had a mustache, was wearing old-fashioned glasses with tinted lenses, and clearly belonged in the category of “tolerable.” Not a sweaty fatso with hair on his back, not a dirty slob who hadn’t showered in a week, and not a guy who would try to haggle over the price afterward.

“Come in,” she said, turning around. As she passed the mirror next to the front door, she glanced at herself. She didn’t look nineteen anymore, but maybe twenty-three. Anyway, no one had left disappointed.

“It’s right this way.” Monika Krämer pointed toward the bedroom. The man was still standing in the doorway, and she noticed he was wearing gloves. Her heart began to pound. Was the guy some sort of pervert?

“You won’t need rubber gloves,” she joked. Suddenly, she had an uneasy feeling.

“Where’s Robert?” he asked.

Shit! Was he a cop, too?

“I have no idea,” she replied. “I already told that to the other damn cop.”

Without taking his eyes off her, he reached behind and turned the key in the lock. Suddenly, she was scared. He wasn’t from the police. Who had Robert gotten mixed up with now? Did he owe somebody money?

“You must know where he hangs out when he’s not here with you,” said the stranger. Monika thought fast and decided that Robert wasn’t worth getting herself involved in any trouble.

“Sometimes he crashes in an abandoned house in Königstein,” she said. “In the Old Town, at the end of the pedestrian zone. Could be he’s there now, hiding out from the cops. They’re looking for him.”

“Okay.” The man nodded and gave her an appraising look. “Thanks.”

He looked kind of sad with the mustache and the thick glasses. A little like the guy from the bank. Monika Krämer relaxed and smiled. Maybe she could make some money out of the situation.

“How about it?” She smiled coquettishly. “For a twenty, I’ll blow you.”

The man came closer, until he was standing right in front of her. The expression on his face was calm, almost indifferent. He made a quick movement with his right hand, and Monika Krämer felt a burning pain in her neck. She grabbed reflexively at her throat and gazed incredulously at the blood on her hands. It took a couple of seconds before she realized it was her own. Her mouth filled with a warm coppery-tasting fluid, and she felt the pricking of real panic at the back of her neck. What was happening? What had she done to this guy? She backed away from him but tripped over one of her dogs and lost her balance. There was blood everywhere. Her blood.

“Please, please don’t,” she croaked, raising her arms protectively in front of her body when she saw the knife in his hand. The dogs were barking like crazy. She punched and kicked in all directions, desperately defending herself with strength bolstered by the fear of death.

*   *   *

It was no real surprise to anyone at K-11 that when Dr. Kirchhoff performed the autopsy on the corpse of Herrmann Schneider, he found the same blood-type tattoo as he’d seen earlier on Goldberg’s arm. What
was
surprising was that Schneider, on the day before his body was discovered, had written a cashier’s check for ten thousand euros, which Robert Watkowiak tried to cash at around 11:30 this morning at the Taunus Savings & Loan branch in Schwalbach. The bank employees had refused to honor the unusually large amount and called the police. The man could be seen on the tapes from the surveillance camera trained on the tellers, and a warrant had been issued for his arrest. When he noticed that there was a problem, Watkowiak had fled the bank and left the check behind. A little while later, he showed up at the Nassau Savings Bank in Schwalbach and tried his luck with a cashier’s check for over five thousand euros, again without success. Bodenstein had both checks lying in front of him on his desk. A graphological report would determine whether Schneider’s signature was authentic. At any rate, the circumstantial evidence against Watkowiak was overwhelming, since his fingerprints had been found at both murder scenes.

There was a knock at the door, and Pia Kirchhoff came in.

“One of Schneider’s neighbors called,” she announced. “He says that the night Schneider was murdered, he saw a suspicious vehicle parked in Schneider’s driveway around twelve-thirty, when he stepped out to take his dog for a late walk. It was a light-colored station wagon with a company name on the side. When he returned fifteen minutes later, the car was gone, and the lights were off in the house.”

“Did he get the license plate number?”

“A local number. It was dark and the car was about sixty feet away. At first, he thought it might be the vehicle used by the home care for the elderly. But then he noticed the company logo.”

“Watkowiak wasn’t alone at Schneider’s. We know that because of multiple sets of fingerprints on the glasses and the statement from the neighbor. The other guy may have been driving a company car and then came back later.”

“Unfortunately, the fingerprint database didn’t spit out any names but Watkowiak’s. And the DNA results are going to take a while.”

“Then we have to find Watkowiak. Behnke will have to drive out to that woman’s apartment again and ask her what bars her lodger usually frequents.”

Bodenstein noticed his colleague hesitate and gave her a quizzical look.

“Uh, Frank went home,” Pia said. “He’s on sick leave.”

“How come?” Bodenstein seemed astounded at Behnke’s behavior. He’d worked with this man for more than ten years. When Bodenstein moved from Frankfurt to Hofheim and took over leadership of the newly formed K-11 at the Regional Criminal Unit, Behnke was the only one from his team who had gone with him.

“I thought he’d called you,” said Pia cautiously. “Ms. Krämer tried to stop Behnke from following Watkowiak. He fell on a broken bottle and cut himself on the arm and forehead.”

“Ah” was all Bodenstein said. “Then our colleagues from Eschborn will have to cover all the bars in the area and talk to the proprietors.”

Pia waited for Bodenstein to ask more questions, but he didn’t go any deeper into Behnke’s behavior. Instead, he stood up and grabbed his jacket.

“We’re going back out to Mühlenhof and talk to Vera Kaltensee. I’d like to know what she can tell us about Watkowiak. Maybe she knows where he might be.”

*   *   *

The big gate to the estate stood open, but a man in a dark uniform who was wearing an earpiece motioned for them to stop and roll down the window. Another uniformed man was standing nearby. Pia showed him her ID and said that she wanted to speak with Vera Kaltensee.

“Just a moment.” The security guard stood in front of the car and spoke into a microphone that he was wearing on his lapel. After a moment, he nodded, stepped aside, and signaled to Pia that she could drive on. Three cars were parked near the manor house, and a clone of the first guard stopped them there. Another ID check, another inquiry.

“What’s going on?” Pia muttered. “This is pure harassment.”

She had fully intended to show absolutely no emotion in her next conversation with Vera Kaltensee, even if the old lady were writhing on the floor in fits of sobbing. The next inspection took place at the front door of the house, and Pia was starting to get mad.

“What’s the point of this whole circus?” she turned and asked the gray-haired man who was escorting her and Bodenstein into the house. He was the same one who’d stopped them the day before. Moormann was his name, if Pia’s memory served her correctly. Today, he was wearing a dark turtleneck and black jeans.

“There was an attempted break-in. Last night,” he said with an anxious expression. “That’s why the security precautions have been beefed up. Mrs. Kaltensee is often all alone in the house.”

Pia remembered how afraid she had been in her own house after the break-in last summer. She could understand Vera Kaltensee’s anxiety. The old lady was still worth millions and fairly well known. She might be hoarding art treasures and jewelry of inestimable value, which would always prove a temptation for art thieves and burglars.

“Please wait here.” Moormann stopped at a different door than he had the day before. Agitated, muffled voices were coming from the room, but they stopped when Moormann knocked on the door. He stepped inside and closed the door behind him. With an indifferent expression, Bodenstein sat down in an easy chair upholstered in dusty brocade. Pia looked around the big foyer curiously. The sunlight falling through three Gothic stained-glass windows over the parapet of the stairs limned colorful patterns on the black-and-white marble floor. Dark, gold-framed portraits hung on the wall next to three unusual hunting trophies: a huge stuffed moose’s head, a bear’s head, and a gigantic rack of stag’s antlers. Upon closer inspection, Pia saw once again that the big house was not particularly well kept. The floor was scuffed, the wallpaper faded. Cobwebs marred the animal heads, and there were rungs missing in the wooden banister. Everything seemed slightly dilapidated, which lent the house a sort of morbid charm, as if time had stopped sixty years ago.