The Ice Queen: A Novel (23 page)

Bodenstein looked at the picture. Jutta’s friend looked like a photo model. Next to her, the younger version of Jutta seemed like a gray mouse. Bodenstein tapped on another photo, which showed a youthful Jutta with a man of about the same age. “Who’s that next to you?” he asked.

“Robert,” replied Jutta. She was standing so close to Bodenstein that he could smell her perfume and a hint of cigarette smoke. “We’re exactly the same age; I’m only a day older. That always bothered Mama a lot.”

“Why?”

“Just think about it.” She looked at him; her face was so close to his that he could make out the dark speckles in her blue eyes. “My father got her and another woman pregnant almost on the same day.”

The candid mention of this highly intimate information embarrassed Bodenstein. Jutta seemed to notice and smiled suggestively.

“I’d be inclined to suspect Robert, by the way,” Siegbert Kaltensee interjected. “I know that he was always trying to tap our mother and her friends for money, even after I told him he was banned from the house.”

Jutta put back the framed pictures.

“He has totally let himself go,” she said regretfully. “He doesn’t even have a permanent place to live anymore, not since he got out of prison. It’s sad that he’s sunk so low; he really had all the opportunities in the world.”

“When was the last time you spoke with him?” Bodenstein asked. The Kaltensees looked at each other before replying.

“It’s been quite a while,” Jutta finally said. “I think it was during my latest campaign. We had a stand on the pedestrian mall in Bad Soden, and all of a sudden he was standing in front of me. At first, I didn’t recognize him.”

“Didn’t he ask you for money?” Siegbert Kaltensee gave a contemptuous snort. “All he ever talked about was money, money, money. I never saw him again after I threw him out. I think he realized that he wasn’t going to get anything from me.”

“They took the investigation in the Goldberg case away from us,” Bodenstein said now. “And today, Mrs. Frings’s apartment was cleaned out before we could have a look around.”

The Kaltensee siblings stared at him, clearly baffled by the abrupt change of subject.

“Why would anyone clean out her apartment?” Siegbert asked.

“I have a feeling somebody is trying to block the investigation.”

“Who would want to do that?”

“Well, that’s the big question, isn’t it? I don’t know.”

“Hmm,” said Jutta, looking at him thoughtfully. “Anita wasn’t rich, of course, but she did have some jewelry. Maybe it was somebody from the retirement home. Anita had no children, and they must have known that.”

Bodenstein had briefly considered that idea himself. But that wouldn’t explain why someone had cleared out everything except the furniture from the apartment.

Jutta continued her musings. “It can’t be coincidence that all three were killed in the same way. Sure, Uncle Jossi had an eventful life, and there’s no doubt that he made both friends and enemies. But Uncle Herrmann? Or Anita? I can’t understand it.”

“What has us puzzled is the number that the perpetrator left behind at all three murder scenes. One one six four five. It might refer to a date, or something else. But what?”

At that moment, the door opened. Jutta gave a start when Moormann appeared in the doorway.

“Can’t you knock?” she chided the man.

“I beg your pardon.” Moormann nodded politely to Bodenstein, but his horsey face remained expressionless. “Mrs. Kaltensee is feeling much worse. I just wanted to inform you before I call the emergency doctor.”

“Thank you, Moormann,” said Siegbert. “We’ll be right up.”

Moormann bowed every so slightly and then left.

“Please excuse me.” Siegbert Kaltensee suddenly seemed very worried. He fished a business card out of his inside jacket pocket and handed it to Bodenstein. “If you have any more questions, call me.”

“Of course. Please give your mother my wishes for a speedy recovery.”

“Thank you. Are you coming, Jutta?”

“Yes, right away.” She waited until her brother had left, then pulled out a cigarette from the pack with nervous fingers.

“Terrible, that Moormann.” Her face was white and she took a deep breath. “Creeping all over soundlessly and scaring me half to death each time, that old spy.”

Bodenstein was surprised. Jutta had grown up in this house and must have been used to the presence of discreet servants. Together, they walked through the foyer to the front door, where Jutta Kaltensee paused and looked around suspiciously.

“By the way, there’s someone else you ought to talk to,” she said in a low voice. “Thomas Ritter, my mother’s former assistant. He’s capable of anything.”

Bodenstein was deep in thought as he returned to his car. Elard Kaltensee didn’t like either his mother or his siblings, who both countered his dislike with an air of condescension. Then why did he continue to live at Mühlenhof? Siegbert and Jutta Kaltensee had been polite and helpful and had answered all of his questions without hesitation. But they, too, seemed surprisingly unaffected by the brutal murder of the three old people, whom they had supposedly held in high esteem. Bodenstein stopped next to his car. Something had bothered him during his conversation with the two Kaltensees, but what was it? Twilight was falling. With a hiss, the sprinklers started up, spraying the water that was responsible for the lush green of the extensive lawns. And then it dawned on him. It had been only a casual remark that Jutta Kaltensee had made, but it might turn out to be important.

Saturday, May 5

Bodenstein looked at the taped-together paper strips that Pia Kirchhoff had handed him and listened in disbelief to her explanation of how she had obtained this evidence. They were standing at the front door of his house. Inside, frantic activity reigned. In this phase of the investigations, he really couldn’t permit himself a day off, but it would have led to a fairly serious family crisis if he had gone to the station on the day of his youngest daughter’s christening.

“We definitely need to talk to Vera Kaltensee,” Pia insisted. “She has to tell us more about the three victims. What if there are more murders?”

Bodenstein nodded. He remembered what Elard Kaltensee had said about his mother: “How she thinks that she’ll be the next one lying in the front hall with a bullet in the back of her head.”

“Besides, I’m convinced that she was the one who ordered Anita Frings’s apartment to be cleared out,” Pia said. “I’d really like to know why.”

“Mrs. Frings probably had a secret, just as Goldberg and Schneider did,” Bodenstein remarked. “But I’m afraid we’ll have to forget about talking to her for the time being. I just spoke to her daughter on the phone, and she told me that the emergency doctor had Vera admitted to the hospital last night. She’s in the locked psychiatric ward, suffering from a nervous breakdown.”

“Bullshit. She’s not the type to have a nervous breakdown.” Pia shook her head. “She’s going underground because things are getting too hot for her.”

“I’m not so sure that Vera Kaltensee is behind the whole thing.” Bodenstein scratched his head as he pondered the latest developments.

“Who else could it be?” Pia asked. “In Goldberg’s case, it could have been his son, or maybe the CIA. Someone who didn’t want the man’s past to be made public. But this old woman? What secret could she possibly have been hiding?”

“We may be on the wrong track about the number referring to a date,” he said. “Maybe the solution is much more banal than we assume. This number, for example, could also be a red herring that the perp left to confuse us. At any rate, Ostermann is going to have to find out more about KMF. Jutta Kaltensee mentioned some shares that her father had signed over to Anita Frings.”

Bodenstein had called Pia after his visit to Mühlenhof and briefly summarized the contradictory information he’d gleaned from the Kaltensee siblings about Goldberg and Schneider. He hadn’t told her that Jutta had called him back late in the evening, because he didn’t quite know what to make of that phone call.

“You think that it was about money?”

“In the broader sense. Perhaps.” Bodenstein shrugged. “At the end of the conversation, Jutta Kaltensee suggested that I talk to her mother’s former assistant. We ought to do that in any event, to get another angle on the Kaltensee family.”

“Okay.” Pia nodded. “I’ll also look into Schneider’s estate. Maybe I’ll get lucky.”

She was about to leave, when she remembered something else. From her pocket she took out a small gift-wrapped package and handed it to Bodenstein. “For Sophia,” she said with a smile. “With best wishes from K-Eleven.”

*   *   *

All morning long, Pia plowed through the mountains of files and documents that had been stored in Schneider’s house for safekeeping. Ostermann used all means at his disposal to gather information about KMF, as Bodenstein had requested.

It was almost noon when Pia gave up in frustration.

“The guy had half the tax office archives in his basement,” she said with a sigh. “I just have to ask why.”

“Possibly these documents earned him the true allegiance of the Kaltensees and others,” Ostermann conjectured.

“How do you mean? Extortion?”

“For example.” Ostermann took off his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger. “Maybe he used the files to exert pressure. Just think of the payments from KMF to Schneider’s Swiss bank account.”

“I don’t know.” Pia was doubtful. “At any rate, I don’t think these documents were the motive for the murder.”

She closed a document binder with a bang and tossed it on the floor with a pile of others.

“Were you able to find out anything?”

“Quite a lot.” Ostermann bit on the earpiece of his glasses as he rummaged in a pile of paper until he found the right page. “KMF is a group of companies with three thousand employees worldwide and representation in one hundred and sixty-nine countries. It encompasses about thirty corporations. The chairman of the board is Siegbert Kaltensee. The concern has equity of forty percent.”

“And what do they do?”

“They make rolling mills for processing aluminum. The founder of the firm invented the first type of press for shaping aluminum into various thicknesses. Even today KMF holds the patent to this rolling press and the new developments that have come out of it. Well over a hundred in all. It seems to be a lucrative business.”

He got up from his desk. “I’m hungry. Should I order us a couple of
döners
?

“That would be great.” Pia dived into the next box. Their colleagues from the evidence team had marked it “Cabinet Contents, Lower Left,” and it contained several shoe boxes that were tied with cord. The first box held travel mementos; boarding cards for a cruise ship; postcards with pictures of exotic lands; a dance card; menus; invitations to christenings, weddings, birthdays, funerals; and other keepsakes that had no value to anyone but Schneider. The second shoe box contained neatly bundled handwritten letters. Pia unfolded one of them. It had been written on March 14, 1941. She laboriously deciphered the faded old-fashioned script.
Dear son, we hope and pray each day that you are well and that you will return to us in good health and in one piece. Here everything is as peaceful as always. Everything seems just the same, and you’d hardly believe there’s a war on.
This was followed by news of friends and neighbors, and descriptions of daily occurrences that would have interested the recipient of the letter. The letter was signed
Mother.
Pia took letters from the stacks at random. Schneider’s mother seemed to have been an avid letter writer. One letter was still in its envelope.
Käthe Kallweit, Steinort, Landkreis Angerburg
was the return address. Pia stared at the envelope, which was addressed to a Hans Kallweit. She was surprised to see that these letters weren’t from Schneider’s mother at all. But why had he saved them, carefully tying them up in bundles? A vague memory began stirring in her mind, but she couldn’t pin it down. She read more of the letters. Ostermann came back, bringing her a
döner
with extra meat and feta. Pia put the food on the table without touching it. Ostermann started eating, and soon the whole conference room smelled like, a
döner
stand.

On June 26, 1941, Käthe Kallweit wrote to her son,
Herr Schlageter from the castle told your father that a whole wing had been requisitioned for Ribbentrop and his men. He said it has something to do with the construction site of the Askania at Görlitz
. Then a passage had been blacked out by the censor.
Your friend Oskar visited us and brought greetings from you. He says that he now has things to do in the area and will try to visit us regularly,
the letter continued.

Pia stopped. Vera Kaltensee had claimed that Schneider was an old friend of her late husband, but Elard Kaltensee had said only “That’s right” and then gave his mother an odd look. And Miriam’s Oma said she remembered that the phony Goldberg’s name used to be Otto or Oskar.

“What sort of letters are they?” Ostermann asked, chewing his food. Pia picked up the last one she’d read.

“‘Your friend Oskar visited us…’” she began reading aloud. Her heart was beating excitedly. Was she getting close to the secret?

“Herrmann Schneider saved bundles of about two hundred letters from a Käthe Kallweit from East Prussia, and I’m asking myself why,” she said, rubbing the tip of her nose thoughtfully. “Supposedly he was born in Wuppertal and went to school there, but these letters came from East Prussia.”

“So what’s your theory?” Ostermann wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and rummaged in his drawer for a paper towel.

“That Schneider falsified his identity, too. The phony Goldberg’s real name was Oskar, and he attended the SS Junker School in Bad Tölz.” Pia looked up. “And this Oskar was, in turn, a friend of Hans Kallweit from Steinort in East Prussia, whose mother’s correspondence we found in Herrmann Schneider’s cabinet.”

She pulled over her keyboard and mouse. She entered the key words on Google that she had found in the letters—
East Prussia
and
Steinort, Ribbentrop
and
Askania
—and found an extremely informative site about the former East Prussia. For almost an hour, she delved into the history and geography of a lost region and realized to her shame how rudimentary her knowledge was of the recent past in Germany. The construction site of the Wolf’s Lair, Hitler’s headquarters in the East, had been given the cover name “Askania Chemical Works.” No one in the general populace had any idea what was going on deep in the thick Masurian forests not far from the hamlet of Görlitz, near the town of Rastenburg. Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop had actually requisitioned a wing of Steinort Castle from the Lehndorff family for himself and his staff, starting in the summer of 1941, when Hitler moved into the Wolf’s Lair. Käthe Kallweit from Steinort had apparently had some sort of connection to the castle—she might have worked there as a maid—and kept her son informed in her letters about the daily gossip and news. Pia gave an involuntary shudder at the idea of how the woman must have sat at her kitchen table a good sixty-five years earlier and written this letter to her son at the front. Pia jotted down a few key words and her information sources from the Internet, then grabbed her phone and dialed her friend Miriam’s cell.