Bad Wolf (11 page)

All of a sudden, it occurred to her how happy she would be with Wolfgang if he weren’t married or seriously involved. It wasn’t because of his looks. He was no Adonis, of course, but he was attractive enough. The years had treated him kindly, unlike most men she knew, and lent his soft, youthful features a rugged masculinity that suited him. His hair was graying at the temples, and the laugh lines at his eyes were deeper now, but that suited him, too.

A few years ago, he’d had a girlfriend, a boring, pale attorney, whom he seemed to be pretty serious about, but she’d found no favor in the eyes of Wolfgang’s father. Eventually, the relationship fell apart. Wolfgang never talked about it, but he hadn’t had a steady girlfriend since.

The sole was served. At KUBU, the meals didn’t take long; people knew that the patrons who came for a business lunch didn’t have a lot of time.

Hanna picked up her napkin.

“I’m not going to let myself be buffaloed,” she said forcefully. “Now we just have to salvage the situation as far as my show is concerned. Do you think my strategy will work?”

“I think so,” replied Wolfgang. “You can be very convincing, even when you aren’t convinced about something yourself.”

“Precisely!” Hanna grabbed her wineglass and held it up for a toast. “Here’s to resolving yet another minor mess.”

He clinked glasses with her. The apprehension in his eyes had given way to quiet disappointment. But Hanna didn’t notice.

*   *   *

Bodenstein couldn’t find a parking place anywhere near the Institute for Forensic Medicine on Kennedyallee. He parked on Eschenbachstrasse, so they had to walk a couple of hundred yards. Pia’s decision to go public with the case had provoked a good deal of media interest. There was a crowd of reporters on the sidewalk, and they pounced on anyone going in or out of the institute. One reporter recognized Kirchhoff and Bodenstein, and they were instantly surrounded. From the shouted questions, Pia gathered that they must have heard a rumor from somewhere that last night there had been another young victim of the phenomenon of “coma drinking,” and now the pack of reporters was greedy for details. For a brief moment, she wavered. Did the press guys have more current information from the hospital than she did? Had Alexander died?

“Why didn’t you tell us that two people died?” one young man shouted, louder than the others, sticking his microphone in Pia’s face like a weapon. “What are the police trying to pull?”

This wasn’t the first time in her life that she was astonished by the aggressive and excitable behavior of some reporters. Did they think they’d find out more if they shouted louder?

“There is no second fatality,” replied Bodenstein for Pia, shoving the mike aside. “Now let us through.”

It took a couple of minutes for them to fight their way to the entrance of the institute. Inside the building, it was cool and almost reverentially quiet; somewhere a computer keyboard was clacking. The doors to the lecture hall at the front of the wood-paneled lobby were standing open. Pia heard a voice and glanced into the spacious room. The rows of seats were empty, but State Attorney Dr. Markus Maria Frey was walking back and forth as he talked on the phone. He was once again impeccably dressed in a three-piece suit, with his hair parted meticulously. When he saw Pia, he ended his call and put away his cell phone. His annoyed expression faded.

“I must apologize for the behavior of my young colleague this morning,” he said, extending his hand first to Pia, then to Bodenstein. “Mr. Tanouti is a bit overzealous.”

“No problem,” replied Pia. She was somewhat surprised to see Dr. Frey here, because it was unusual for him to attend an autopsy at the institute.

“I assume that Commissioner Engel probably gave him a taste of his own medicine.” A smile passed over the SA’s face, but he turned serious at once. “Is there anything to this rumor of a second fatality?”

“Fortunately, no,” said Bodenstein. “My colleague called the hospital only half an hour ago. The boy who was found near the body is still in critical condition, but he’s alive.”

As they descended the stairs to the basement of the institute, the SA’s phone rang again, and he stayed behind.

Autopsy room 1 was too small to accommodate all the spectators. Henning Kirchhoff and his boss, Professor Thomas Kronlage, were conducting the autopsy together, supported by two postmortem assistants. The state attorney’s office had immediately sent over three representatives, including the zealous hothead from this morning. A police photographer whose name Pia couldn’t recall completed the group.

“Standing room only,” Henning’s colleague Ronnie Böhme whispered to Pia as she and Bodenstein squeezed past the autopsy table.

“This is not a forensics lecture for lawyers,” Henning complained to State Attorney Frey. They knew each other well, since the pathologist was often called upon to serve as an expert witness for the prosecutor’s office or for the court. “Do we really need four of you standing around and getting in the way?”

The representatives from the SA’s office put their heads together, and then two of them left the room with scarcely concealed relief. Frey and the overzealous Merzad Tanouti remained.

“That’s better,” grumbled Henning.

For everyone present, the autopsy of such a young person was bound to have a powerful emotional impact. The mood was tense, and even Henning refrained from his usual cynicism. When the victim was a child or teenager, everyone present felt a genuine sadness. It wasn’t the first court-ordered autopsy for either Bodenstein or the staff from the SA’s office, and Pia had spent countless evenings and weekends in this room or in autopsy room 2, next door, when she was still married to Henning. In order to have any time with her husband at all, there had often been no option but to come to his workplace, since his attitude toward his job bordered on obsession.

Pia had seen corpses in every stage of decomposition and in every possible or impossible condition—and smelled them: floaters, burn victims, skeletons, crash victims, and those who had died as the result of an accident or a horrendous suicide. Often she and Henning had stood by the autopsy table and discussed everyday topics; sometimes they’d even argued. And the detailed forays into forensic medicine under the guidance of a teacher as strict as Henning had sharpened Pia’s handling of crime-scene investigations.

This didn’t mean that Pia felt unmoved whenever she was called to a murder scene or the location where a body had been found. There were situations and circumstances so extreme or gruesome that sometimes she had to summon all her strength to maintain a professional demeanor. Like most of her colleagues, Pia did not see her job as a crusade against crime in the world. One of the reasons she loved doing her job, no matter how frustrating and depressing it could often be, was that she felt she was showing respect to the deceased by clearing up the circumstances of their deaths. She was restoring at least a small part of their human dignity. Because there was nothing as undignified as a nameless corpse, a person robbed of identity, who was buried somewhere or just left on the ground like a piece of garbage. No fate could be sadder than lying dead for weeks or even a month inside an apartment without being missed by anybody.

It was these cases, fortunately rare, that made Pia sense the true purpose of her work. And she knew that it was the same for many of her colleagues. And yet some of them shied away from forensic medicine, so in the past Pia had often volunteered to take over the task. As soon as a body lay here on the shiny stainless-steel dissection table under the glaring fluorescent light, it lost all power to terrify her. There was nothing sinister or mysterious about an autopsy; the court-ordered dissection followed a strict protocol, which began with the external postmortem examination.

*   *   *

Riding the motor scooter was like traveling halfway around the world. Although his butt burned like fire after an hour and a half on the plastic seat, he enjoyed the ride. The warm wind caressed his face; the sunshine on his bare arms did him good. He felt young. For many years, he’d had no time or opportunity to take a trip on his scooter. It must have been twenty years ago that he took off with his best buddy, the one he remembered so fondly. They had actually made it all the way to the North Sea on the 80cc motorbikes, keeping to country roads. At night, they’d slept in a tent, or sometimes out under the clear starry sky when they were too lazy to pitch the tent.

Of course, they didn’t have much money, but they were freer than they’d ever been before, or would be ever again. That summer, he met Britta on the beach at St. Peter-Ording and fell in love at first sight. She was from Bad Homburg, and after vacation they’d gotten together again. He was a law student and had just passed his first state exam; she had recently finished her training as a retail and wholesale buyer and was working in a department store in the women’s outerwear department.

Less than six months later, they got married. Their parents splurged to give them a dream wedding. Registry office, church, a coach with four white horses. A reception with two hundred guests at the Bad Homburg Castle. Wedding pictures in the park beneath the mighty cedars. Honeymoon on Crete. After passing the second state exam, he got a job with one of the best law firms in Frankfurt, specializing in business and tax law. His salary was good enough for them to buy a lot and build their dream house. Then their daughter was born, and he was crazy about her. Later, they also had a son. Everything was perfect. On summer evenings they barbecued outdoors with friends, in the wintertime they went skiing in Kitzbühel, and they traveled to beaches in Majorca or Sylt in the summer. He’d been promoted and made partner—at the young age of thirty—and began focusing on criminal law. His clients were no longer tax evaders or misguided CEOs; now they were murderers, kidnappers, blackmailers, rapists, and drug dealers. His in-laws weren’t pleased, but for Britta, it didn’t make any difference. He made more money than the husbands of her friends, and she could afford to buy whatever she wanted.

Yes, life had been great, even though he had to work eighty hours a week. Success had intoxicated him; he was the most famous defense attorney in Germany. He moved with ease in the circles of his prominent clients, and was invited to birthday parties and weddings. Without batting an eye, he had billed a thousand D-marks per hour, and to his clients, he was worth every penny.

But all that was long gone. Instead of driving a Maserati Quattroporte and a Porsche 911 Turbo, he was now relegated to an ancient motor scooter. The villa with gardens, pool, and every imaginable luxury had been replaced by a trailer. But even though the outward appearance of life had changed, the man inside him had remained the same, with all his secret wishes, dreams, and longings. Most of the time, he succeeded in controlling them, but not always. Sometimes his inner urge was stronger than any sense of reason.

He had left behind the last buildings of Langensebold. Now there were only two miles to go. The estate wasn’t easy to find, which was precisely the intention of its residents. Back then, they had searched for a long time before they found a suitable property: a run-down farm with extensive grounds behind a stretch of woods, not visible from any road. It was years since he’d been there, and he was impressed when he saw what they’d made of it. He stopped the scooter by a spike-topped wrought-iron gate seven feet high. The motion-activated cameras spotted him at once, zooming in on him. The property had been converted into an impregnable fortress, surrounded by a fence that was covered with an opaque façade. He took off his helmet.

“Benvenuto, Dottore Avvocato,”
a voice croaked from the speaker. “You’re just in time for dinner. We’re behind the barn.”

The double gate swung slowly open, and he drove through. Where once cowsheds and pigsties had stood along with tons of old manure, he now saw a junkyard. The carefully renovated barn contained the workshop. On the paved forecourt stood rows of Harley-Davidsons gleaming with chrome; beside them, his miserable motor scooter looked like a poor relative. On the other side, two Staffordshire bull terriers were barking in a big kennel behind confidence-inspiring, solid-looking fence posts.

He stuck the cardboard box under his arm and went around to the back of the barn. Maybe he would have been shocked if he hadn’t known what to expect. Steaks were cooking on a big suspended grill, and at least a thousand years’ worth of prison time was sitting at the tables and benches. One of the men, a beefy giant with a carefully trimmed beard and wearing a head scarf, got up from his spot in the shade and came over to him.

“Avvocato,”
he said in a gruff bass voice, giving him a quick hug with his muscular arms, which were tattooed from shoulder to fingertips. “Welcome.”

“Hey, Bernd.” He grinned. “Great to see you again. It must be ten years since the last time I was here.”

“It’s your own fault for not stopping by. The business is going really well.”

“You always were a gifted gearhead.”

“Whatever. And I’ve got a couple of really good boys.” Bernd Prinzler lit himself a cigarette. “Have you already eaten?”

“Thanks, but I’m not hungry.” The mere smell of grilled meat turned his stomach. Besides, he hadn’t rattled thirty miles along a country road to come here and eat. The tense anticipation that he’d only barely managed to keep under control since Bernd’s phone call last night now flared up, making his heart beat faster. He’d been waiting so long for this! “On the phone, you said you had something new for me?”

“Yep. A lot. It’ll blow your mind.” The giant squinted his eyes. “I bet you can’t wait, eh?”

“Honestly, no,” he admitted. “I’ve had to wait long enough already.”

“Well, come on, then.” Bernd put his arm around his shoulders. “I just have to go and pick up the kids at school. But I’m sure you’ll be able to manage on your own.”

*   *   *

“Ninety-one and a quarter pounds at a height of five six,” said Professor Kronlage. “That is massive undernourishment.”

The emaciated body of the girl was covered with scars, old ones and relatively fresh ones. In the glare of the fluorescent lights, they were clearly visible: the burns, bruises, scratches, and hematomas—shocking evidence of the years of abuse that the girl must have suffered.