Time Heals No Wounds (33 page)

Fritz gazed past him, lost in thought. “That . . . that was wrong of me. Merle is Heinrich Ternheim’s granddaughter. Christian Ternheim slept with her mother; she was the result. Of course, the Ternheims simply bought the mother’s silence. Merle only recently found out who her father is.”

“Why did you kidnap her? She bears no guilt just because she’s Christian’s daughter.”

“You’re right . . .” Fritz’s moist eyes were shimmering. “I said I made a big mistake. I was blinded by hatred. It was only in the last few days that I found out her true story. But hindsight is always twenty-twenty. When I kidnapped her, all I knew was that she was that barbarian’s granddaughter and probably meant more to him than his own children. She visited him often, and since there are no buses out here, she’d walk from the last stop. I watched her over and over. It was obvious the old man had a soft spot for her.” He rubbed his eyes again. “I was sure she was his weak point. I observed Merle for quite some time, waiting for the right opportunity. She always had a water bottle in her backpack. I laced her bottle with sleeping pills when she wasn’t looking. Today I realize Merle was just as much a victim of this family as I was.”

Hannes was shaken by the scope of his revenge. “I remember you told me at the very beginning that most murders have to do with personal relationships and that it’s impossible to see inside another person. You were right. This was a family drama—one that played out over more than these last seven days. But it ends here and now.”

“No, Hannes,” Fritz said with a smile. “This drama isn’t over yet. Something’s missing.”

With that, he took a giant step back and fell off the cliff. A horrified Hannes cautiously approached the edge and peered over to see the twisted, motionless body lying on the beach fifty feet below.

“But Fritz,” he whispered, “where do I find Merle?”

The front door of the ramshackle cottage was still open, and Hannes knocked loudly on the wood to announce his arrival. It was now drizzling, and the wind blew softly.

“Mr. Ternheim, it’s Johannes Niehaus from the police!” he called out. “You can rest assured, Josef—Fritz—Janssen is no longer a danger to you!”

Nothing moved. Hannes pushed open the door to the room where Fritz had attacked the old man what felt like an eternity ago. First, he noticed the unusual brightness; the shutters had been opened in his absence, and the giant canvas, which had buried him less than an hour before, stood again in the middle of the room. But something else had changed. The large white sheet that had covered the huge picture lay crumpled in a corner. The canvas was covered in a colorful hodgepodge of shapes and images. The chair in which Heinrich Ternheim had almost been split in two was now placed in front of the painting, and he was sitting in it.

Hannes stood reverently behind him and gazed at the picture. It undoubtedly represented the old man’s life. The stages of his multifaceted existence were displayed in realistic detail. What surprised him most wasn’t the artistic quality of the painting but its honesty.

The story began on the left side with a young girl and a little boy who ran holding hands over a blooming meadow. Colorful butterflies seemed to flutter from the painting toward the viewer. The scene expressed profound serenity and intimacy. However, it was replaced by the overwhelming imagery of the next scenes. Marching hordes with outstretched right arms made for a nightmarish transition, and in the middle stood a young man whose features were somewhere between those of the boy in the picture and the old man in the chair. Tortured souls in prison uniforms and distraught figures on an assembly line seemed to plead for deliverance. One woman’s face was drawn in vivid detail. Her arm was tattooed with a six-digit number and stuck with a syringe bearing the letters NGCP. A whirlwind of paper money directed the viewer’s gaze to the right. Two lonely children looked with wide eyes at the viewer while an oversized figure resembling Old Ternheim towered menacingly over them. Tormented people appeared again—the effects of Xonux.

Then a skeleton swinging a scythe separated the heads of Helene and Christian Ternheim from their bodies. And as always, the painter had successfully achieved a realistic effect: there was no denying the vivid likeness of Fritz in that skeleton. The picture ended on the right with an old man standing in front of a canvas on which the painting was faithfully reproduced in miniature. Opposite him was a judge’s bench, and behind it was a giant figure in a white robe whose neck was cut off by the edge of the canvas so the head was no longer visible.

“Divine judgment?” Hannes said as his eyes moved to the bottom of the gold frame. In the middle was a brass plaque on which the title of the painting had been engraved:
Crime and Punishment
.

Hannes reluctantly stepped around the chair and looked down at Heinrich Ternheim. He stared past Hannes to the image he must have worked on for months. His face was calm and composed. In his hands, he held the two parts of his broken cane. The top half was now covered in symbols—the timeline had reached its end. Hannes sensed Mr. Ternheim was no longer breathing and carefully closed the old man’s eyes.

S
UNDAY
E
VENING

Even Merle had been able to hear the storm. She had overcome her fear of thunderstorms and rejoiced at the sound after days of silence.

She had stopped talking to herself and instead played with the flashlight—so much so that it now only produced a weak glow. She had carefully shone the light over every inch of the space without finding a way to escape. At some point, she had put her fingers in front of the light and cast shadows on the wall, creating short plays with her hands.

Once, there had been a loud blast of classical music, and she had adapted the movements of her hands to the melody. She had been unsure whether this music had played only in her head, just as she had been uncertain whether her captor had really spoken to her the day before or if it was just her intense desire to hear a human voice that had caused that illusion.

It doesn’t matter, anyway
, she thought and brushed a strand of hair from her face.
But the voice was right. It won’t be long, and I’ll take the end into my own hands!
She knew she could no longer hesitate. Who knew when her captor would come back and what he might do? She planned to wait for the flashlight battery to die. That would be the sign for her to plunge once and for all into the darkness.

She heard sounds that weren’t the thunderstorm. It was a voice and footsteps. She had waited too long! Determined, she grabbed the splinter and held it to her wrist. She hesitated. It was hard to hurt yourself, to take the ultimate plunge. When she heard the noises again, she closed her eyes and thrust. A sharp pain made her gasp and at the same time unlocked her last reserves of strength. She pulled the splinter of wood out of her left forearm and stabbed deeply again and again. Her left hand was numb, and she felt the moisture drip down her legs. Just to be sure, she touched her left wrist with her right index finger, which she then placed in her mouth. The rusty taste produced one last smile. Blood! She had done it just in time!

Exhausted and yet strangely satisfied, she stretched out on the bed. Her arm hung over the edge, and she listened to the steady drip of life flowing from her veins. It was loud, incredibly loud, and the sound completely filled her head. She felt the cold spread through her. Weak and shivering, she pulled the wool blanket over herself. In her daze, she heard excited voices at the door and felt no more fear.

The pounding on the door and the loud shouts barely registered. Suddenly, a light flooded the room, covering her in warmth.
Light!
she thought.
Finally! So it’s true we go into the light. It’s beautiful . . .

“My God, here she is! We found her!”

“Look at all the blood.”

“She cut her wrist. Where’s the damn ambulance?”

“Let me through, quickly!”

A finger was placed on Merle’s neck.

“She’s still alive!”

O
NE
W
EEK
L
ATER

Summer weather had returned after the storm, and the tinny speakers were blasting the current hits. The flags of the participating nations fluttered in the warm breeze, and a hundred spectators were in the stands. As usual, the crowd was made up almost exclusively of family members of the competing athletes, but in Hannes’s case it was different this time.

Anna strolled beside him in the grass. “Why did your boss stick that note on my bike? Would he have really done something to me?”

“No. I can’t picture him doing that. He probably just wanted to prevent you from meeting me that evening, because he didn’t know how much you knew about Ms. Ternheim’s contact with him—as Mark von Wittenberg, that is.”

Anna shuddered. “Good thing you were able to connect the dots. It never would have occurred to me to suspect my own boss, especially if he was in charge of the investigation.”

“Fritz’s biggest mistake was to tattoo his mother’s prisoner number on Ms. Ternheim’s forearm. He clearly wanted to send Old Ternheim a message, but after researching the number, I figured it out. If I hadn’t looked into it, I would have dismissed my theory as too far-fetched.”

“I still can’t believe that nice man was capable of doing what he did!”

“Me neither. And I think I’m never going to be able to get the images of the bodies—even Merle von Hohenstein—out of my head.”

Nor did he think he could forget the tormented look on Fritz’s face as the paramedics placed him on a stretcher at the beach. Fritz’s plan hadn’t worked. Although he was seriously injured in the fall, the cliff had not been high enough for him to evade justice. He was still in the intensive care unit, but would have to move from the hospital to a prison cell after his recovery.

“What about Merle?” asked Anna.

“We found her just in time. She had slit her wrist with a splinter of wood. She must have been so desperate.”

“I can imagine,” Anna said and shuddered again. “To be locked up for who knows how long in a dark room without knowing why or what’s going to happen . . . I don’t know what I would have done.”

“The irony is, she’s now in a psych ward. She hasn’t said a single word since we freed her and is completely spaced out. And you know whose drugs they’ll be giving her?”

“Lagussa’s?”

“That’s right! Sometimes I have the surreal feeling that this has all just been a dream and tomorrow I can laugh about it. Fritz was like a mentor to me: he bossed me around, but he also encouraged me. Unfortunately, this is one dream I won’t wake up from.”

“Well”—Anna shot him a mischievous look—“everything about this dream is hopefully not too bad.”

Hannes felt his ears turn red.

“Maybe he wanted to be caught. Maybe he wanted you to be the one who solved the case. Since he had cancer, he probably had no intention of surviving this.”

“I could see that.”

Fritz had left a detailed written confession on his desk in which he described his crimes as well as the whereabouts of Merle, whom he had hidden in an unused room in his basement at his house in the country. He also made no secret of how he had deliberately sought to mislead Hannes or how he’d failed to keep him at a distance.

Hannes had become an overnight hero at the station despite his attempts to stay out of the limelight. The events hit too close to home for him to be happy about his first successful investigation. Steffen Lauer had told him that he had a very promising career ahead of him, but he was unsure if he wanted to go down that path. At the moment, his focus was on an entirely different thing. He still hadn’t totally written off the Olympics, and today’s World Cup could be the first step. He needed to place in the top three to qualify for the world championships, which took place in a month. If he practiced hard, there would still be enough time for him to qualify.

“What was up with the twenty-euro notes in Ben’s nightstand?” Anna asked.

“Oh.” Hannes grinned. “There’s a simple explanation, but I promised Ben I’d keep my mouth shut.” Ben had recently revealed to him that since his pot dealer had once been ripped off with a fake fifty-euro note, he now only accepted twenties.

They arrived at the starting area, where Hannes was greeted by five smiling faces. He did, however, get the sense that Maria’s smile was a little forced.

“Here comes our medal contender!” said Ben as he jokingly punched Hannes in the chest. He had read an article about the Ternheim case on Monday and immediately called Hannes. He had cautiously asked if it was safe for him to come out of hiding, and a few hours later moved back into his garden cottage. He’d been holed up with a member of his group who wasn’t on the cops’ radar. As a thank-you for solving the case and saving him from the line of fire, Ben had given Hannes an oversized hand-rolled joint.

“Not too hard,” Elke said in protest to his playful roughhousing, “or Hannes won’t make it to the starting line.”

“Go get them, tiger,” said Kalle, and Ines rolled her eyes.

Maria looked suspiciously at Anna. “Anyway, we’ll be the loudest ones cheering you on. Then you can buy me that dinner you still owe me and celebrate your victory.” She winked at him. She wore a white miniskirt, which highlighted the full potential of her tanned legs, and a midriff-baring top, which clearly revealed her tattoo. Anna would have looked a little pale and boring next to Maria if not for her mysterious, radiant green eyes and fascinating charm.

“Men’s C-1 1000 meter in five minutes,” the announcer said.

As his new friends shouted in encouragement, an elated Hannes made his way to his canoe. When the starting pistol fired and the starting blocks holding his boat sank into the water, his arms almost froze. But then instinct kicked in, and his field of vision narrowed. He knew this phenomenon already: at his club, he was known for his tunnel vision. He tuned out all the sights and sounds around him and kept his eyes fixed on a point about fifteen feet ahead. His mind became freer with each new stroke, and he paddled as hard as he could toward the finish line.