The Ice Queen: A Novel (47 page)

Auguste Nowak looked thoughtfully at the gun in Elard’s hands.

“By the way, we’ve found your grandson,” said Pia. “And in the nick of time, too. A few more hours and he would have bled to death internally.”

Elard Kaltensee raised his head and looked at her with a flickering gaze. “What do you mean, ‘bled to death’?” he asked hoarsely.

“He sustained internal injuries from the attack,” Pia replied. “Because you dragged him into that basement, he’s in critical condition. Why did you do that? Did you want him to die?”

Elard Kaltensee suddenly lowered the pistol, and his eyes went to Auguste Nowak, then to Pia. He shook his head.

“My God, no!” he exclaimed, deeply upset. “I wanted to make sure that Marcus was safe until I got back. I would never do anything to harm him.”

His consternation surprised Pia. Then she remembered her encounter with Elard Kaltensee in the hospital and thought she understood.

“You and Nowak are more than acquaintances. Am I right?” she asked.

“Yes,” he admitted. “We’re very good friends. Actually … much more than that…”

“That’s right,” said Pia with a nod. “You’re related. Marcus Nowak is your nephew, if I’m not mistaken.”

Elard Kaltensee gave her the pistol and then ran both hands through his hair. In the beam from the floodlight, she could see that he’d turned deathly pale.

“I have to go to him at once,” he muttered. “I didn’t mean to hurt him, really I didn’t. I only wanted to make sure nobody did anything to him before I got back. I … I had no idea that he … Good God! Is he going to recover?”

He looked up. His desire for revenge all at once seemed utterly pointless, and naked fear shone in his eyes. That was when Pia realized what sort of relationship there was between Elard Kaltensee and Marcus Nowak. She remembered the photos on the walls of his residence at the Kunsthaus. The rear view of a naked man, the dark eyes in close-up. The jeans on the bathroom floor. Marcus Nowak had indeed cheated on his wife. Not with another woman, but with Elard Kaltensee.

*   *   *

Siegbert Kaltensee sat slumped in a chair in one of the interrogation rooms, staring into space. Overnight, he seemed to have aged terribly. All the rosiness and joviality were gone; his face was gray and sunken.

“Have you heard anything from your mother in the meantime?” Bodenstein began. Kaltensee shook his head mutely.

“We’ve learned some very interesting things recently. For instance, we know that your brother Elard is not really your brother.”

“Pardon me?” Siegbert Kaltensee raised his head and stared at Bodenstein.

“We’ve caught the murderer of Goldberg, Schneider, and Mrs. Frings, and she confessed,” Bodenstein continued. “The real names of those three are Oskar Schwinderke, Hans Kallweit, and Maria Willumat. Schwinderke was your mother’s brother. Her real name is Edda Schwinderke, the daughter of the former paymaster at Lauenburg Manor.”

Kaltensee shook his head in disbelief, and his face revealed bewilderment when Bodenstein now told him in detail about Auguste Nowak’s confession.

“No,” he murmured. “No, that can’t be.”

“Unfortunately, it’s true. Your mother has been lying to you all your life. The rightful owner of Mühlenhof is Baron Elard von Zeydlitz-Lauenburg, whose father was shot to death by your mother on January sixteenth, 1945. The mysterious number that we found at all the murder scenes referred to that day.”

Siegbert Kaltensee hid his face in his hands.

“Did you know that Moormann, your mother’s chauffeur, used to be in the Stasi?”

“Yes,” said Kaltensee dully. “I knew that.”

“We presume that he was the one who killed your son, Robert, and his girlfriend, Monika Krämer.”

Siegbert Kaltensee looked up.

“What an idiot I am!” he exclaimed with sudden bitterness.

“How do you mean?” Bodenstein asked.

“I had no idea.” The lost expression on Siegbert Kaltensee’s face showed that his whole world was falling apart. “I had absolutely no idea what was going on the whole time. My God. What have I done?”

Bodenstein involuntarily tensed every muscle, like a hunter who unexpectedly sees his prey standing in front of him. He almost held his breath. But he was disappointed.

“I want to talk to my lawyer.” Siegbert Kaltensee squared his shoulders.

“Where is Moormann?”

No reply.

“What happened to your son-in-law? We know that Thomas Ritter was abducted by people from your security firm. Where is he now?”

“I want to talk to my lawyer,” Kaltensee repeated hoarsely, and his eyes seemed to be popping out of his head. “Right away.”

“Mr. Kaltensee,” said Bodenstein, pretending he hadn’t heard him, “you gave the men of K-Secure orders to attack Marcus Nowak in order to get hold of the diaries. And you also had Ritter kidnapped so that he couldn’t write the biography. As always, you’ve been doing your mother’s dirty work, right?”

“My lawyer,” Kaltensee murmured. “I want to talk to my lawyer.”

“Is Ritter still alive?” Bodenstein asked insistently. “Or don’t you care that your daughter is almost losing her mind out of worry over him? Bodenstein registered how the man flinched. “Incitement to murder is a felony offense. You will go to prison for it. Your daughter and your wife will never forgive you. You will lose
everything,
Mr. Kaltensee, if you don’t answer me right now!”

“I want to—” Kaltensee began again.

Bodenstein did not back off. “Did your mother ask you to take care of these things? Was this a favor you did for her? If this is true, you should say so now. Your mother is going to prison anyway; we have proof of what she did, as well as eyewitness testimony that reveals the alleged accidental death of your father was, in fact, murder. Don’t you get what this is about? If you tell us at once where Thomas Ritter is, you still have a chance of getting out of this whole mess with a relatively light sentence.”

Siegbert Kaltensee gasped for breath. A hounded look appeared on his face.

“Do you really want to go to prison for your mother, who did nothing but lie to you and exploit you all your life?”

Bodenstein let his words take effect and waited another minute. Then he stood up.

“You stay here,” he told Kaltensee. “Think everything over in peace and quiet. I’ll be right back.”

*   *   *

While Henning and Miriam went about searching the floor of the room inch by inch for human remains, Pia left the cellar with Elard, Vera, and Auguste Nowak.

“I hope you weren’t exaggerating,” said Elard Kaltensee as they emerged into daylight and crossed the former terrace. Auguste Nowak didn’t seem especially strained, but Vera Kaltensee needed a pause. Her hands still tied, she sat down on a pile of rocks, exhausted.

“No, it’s true.” Pia had put the safety on Elard Kaltensee’s pistol and stuck it in her waistband. “We know what happened here in 1945. And if we find any bones and can extract DNA from them, then we’ll have proof.”

“I mean what you said about Marcus,” Elard said with concern. “Is he really in such bad shape?”

“Last night, his condition was critical,” Pia replied. “But they’ll take good care of him at the hospital.”

“It’s all my fault.” Elard put both hands over his face and shook his head a few times. “If only I’d left that trunk alone. Then none of this would have happened.”

He was undoubtedly right about that. Some people would still be alive, and all the Kaltensees’ family secrets would still be well guarded. Pia’s eyes moved to Vera, whose face had assumed a blank expression. How could a person live with such guilt and act so cold and indifferent?

“Why didn’t you shoot the boy, too, back then?” Pia asked. The old woman raised her head and stared at Pia. Even after sixty years, her eyes blazed with naked hate.

“It was my triumph over that woman,” she hissed, and nodded in Auguste’s direction. “If she hadn’t existed, then he would have married
me
!”

“Never,” Auguste Nowak interjected. “Elard couldn’t stand you. He was just too well brought up to let you see it.”

“Well brought up!” Vera Kaltensee snorted. “That’s a laugh. I didn’t want him anymore anyway. How could he impregnate the daughter of Jewish Bolsheviks? He had already forfeited his life; anyone who had sex with a non-Aryan received the death penalty.”

Elard Kaltensee, stunned, stared at the woman he’d called “Mother” his whole life. Auguste Nowak, on the other hand, remained amazingly calm.

“Just imagine how amused Elard would have been, Edda,” she retorted derisively, “if he’d known that your brother, of all people, the Obersturmbahnführer, disguised himself as a Jew for more than sixty years to save his own skin. The staunchest Nazi of all had married a Jewish
mamme
and had to speak Yiddish!”

Vera Kaltensee’s eyes were shooting daggers.

“It’s a shame you couldn’t hear how pathetically he begged for his life,” Auguste Nowak went on. “He died the way he’d lived, a poor, cowardly worm! My family, on the other hand, faced death bravely, without whining. They were no cowards hiding behind a phony name.”

“Your
family
? Don’t make me laugh,” Vera Kaltensee said poisonously.

“Yes, my family. Pastor Kunisch married Elard and me on Christmas Day, 1944, in the library of the castle. Oskar could do nothing to prevent it.”

“That’s not true!” Vera shook her bound hands.

“Yes, it is.” Auguste Nowak nodded and grabbed Elard’s hand. “My Heinrich, whom you passed off as your son, is the baron of Zeydlitz-Lauenburg.”

“And Mühlenhof also belongs to him,” Pia said. “Even KMF doesn’t rightfully belong to you. You have stolen everything in your life, Edda. Anyone who was in the way was eliminated. Your husband, Eugen—it was you who pushed him down the basement stairs, wasn’t it? And the mother of Robert Watkowiak, that poor maid, also had to die. By the way, we found her remains on the grounds of Mühlenhof.”

“What else could I have done?” In her fury, Vera Kaltensee didn’t realize that with these words she was offering a confession. “Siegbert would never marry such a common person!”

“Maybe he would have been happier with her than he is now. But you put an end to the relationship and thought you could get away with all those murders,” Pia said. “But you didn’t count on Vicky Endrikat surviving the massacre. Were you scared when you heard about the number that was found next to the bodies of your brother, Hans Kallweit, and Maria Willumat?”

Vera was shaking all over with rage. There was nothing left of the elegant, friendly lady for whom Pia had once felt sympathy.

“Whose plan was it back then to shoot the Endrikats and the Zeydlitz-Lauenburgs?”

“Mine.” Vera Kaltensee smiled coldly and with obvious satisfaction, fully revealing the ice queen that had always lurked underneath her polished demeanor.

“You saw your big chance, didn’t you?” Pia continued. “Your ascent to the aristocracy. But the price of it was a life lived in constant fear of exposure. For more than sixty years, everything went well, but then the past finally caught up with you. And you
were
afraid. Not for your life, but for your social standing, which was always more important to you than anything else. That’s why you had your grandson Robert and his girlfriend murdered, leaving evidence behind that pointed to Elard. You and your daughter, Jutta, who is equally dependent on your high social status. The biography will be published. And with a first chapter that will shock everyone who reads it. The husband of your granddaughter Marleen refused to be intimidated by you.”

“Marleen is divorced,” Vera Kaltensee countered in a condescending tone of voice.

“That’s possible. But less than two weeks ago, Thomas Ritter married her. In secret. And she’s expecting a baby by him.” Pia enjoyed the impotent rage that appeared in the woman’s eyes. “So, this is the second man who has chosen someone else over you. First Elard von Zeydlitz-Lauenburg, who chose to marry Vicky Endrikat, and now Thomas Ritter.”

Before Vera could say anything, Miriam emerged from the cellar.

“We found something!” she cried breathlessly. “A whole bunch of bones!”

Pia met Elard Kaltensee’s eyes and smiled. Then she turned to Vera.

“I am placing you under provisional arrest,” she said. “For suspicion of instigating seven counts of murder.”

*   *   *

Sina, the receptionist, had unambiguously identified Henri Améry as the man who had come to the editorial office of
weekend
on Wednesday evening. Nicola Engel now offered him a choice: Tell everything or face charges of unlawful deprivation of personal liberty, obstruction of justice, and suspicion of homicide. The head of K-Secure was no fool, and after ten seconds he decided on option one. Améry had visited Marcus Nowak with Moormann and a colleague and kept Dr. Ritter under surveillance for a few days, on instructions from Siegbert Kaltensee. He discovered that Ritter was married to Siegbert’s daughter, Marleen. Jutta had insisted on keeping this fact from her brother. The order to “pick up Ritter for a little talk,” as Améry expressed it, had come from Siegbert.

“What was the exact wording of the assignment?” Bodenstein inquired.

“I was told to bring Ritter to a certain location without a lot of fuss.”

“Where to?”

“To the Frankfurt Kunsthaus. At Römerberg Square. And that’s what we did.”

“And then?”

“We put him in one of the basement rooms and left him there. What happened to him after that, I have no idea.”

To the Kunsthaus. A clever idea, because if a body was found in the basement of the Kunsthaus, Elard Kaltensee would immediately be linked to the murder.

“What did Siegbert Kaltensee want from Ritter?”

“No idea. I don’t ask questions when I get an assignment.”

“What about Marcus Nowak? You tortured him to find out something. What was it?”

“Moormann was asking the questions. It was something about a trunk.”

“What does Moormann have to do with K-Secure?”

“Actually, nothing. But he knows how to make people talk.”

“From his years with the Stasi.” Bodenstein nodded. “But Nowak didn’t talk, did he?”