Bad Wolf (3 page)

“Shit,” Hanna muttered. Once something was on the Internet, it was impossible to delete. She bit her lip and thought hard.

Unfortunately, the article was close to the truth. Hanna had a real knack for finding interesting topics, and she wasn’t afraid to ask embarrassing questions and stir up dirt. In doing so, she basically couldn’t care less about the people and their often tragic fates. She secretly had nothing but contempt for most of them and their urge to bare all in return for fifteen minutes of fame. Hanna managed to coax the most intimate secrets out of people in front of the camera, and she was a master at pretending to be sympathetic and interested.

Besides, the true story was often insufficient, so a little dramatization was necessary. And that had been Norman’s job. He had cynically called the show
Pimp My Boring Life
and was happy to distort reality, regardless of how painful it might prove to be. Whether that was morally acceptable or not wasn’t Hanna’s concern; in the end, the show’s success in the ratings validated his tactics. Of course, the letters of complaint from disgruntled guests filled several file folders. They often didn’t understand until later, when they were subjected to public mockery, what sort of embarrassing things they’d said in front of a television audience. As a matter of fact, complaints arose only seldom, and that was due to the polished, absolutely airtight legal contracts that each person who wanted to speak on her broadcast had to sign in advance.

A car honked behind her, startling Hanna out of her reverie. The traffic was moving again. She raised her hand in apology and stepped on the gas. Ten minutes later, she turned down Hedderichstrasse and then into the back courtyard of the building where her company was located. She put her smartphone in her shoulder bag and stepped out of the car. In the city, it was always several degrees warmer than out in the Taunus region; the heat built up between the buildings until it felt like a sauna. Hanna fled into the air-conditioned foyer and stepped into an elevator. On the way to the sixth floor, she leaned against the cool wall and took a critical look at herself in the mirrored surface.

In the first weeks after her breakup with Vinzenz, she had looked terribly harried and exhausted, and the girls in Makeup had had to muster all their professional skill to make her look the way the television viewers expected. But now Hanna found her appearance quite passable, at least in the dim light of the elevator. She’d colored her hair to cover the first silver strands, not out of vanity, but from a sheer instinct for self-preservation. The TV business was unforgiving: men could have gray hair, but for women, that would mean eventual banishment to the afternoon cultural and cooking shows.

Hanna had hardly stepped out of the elevator on the sixth floor when Jan Niemöller appeared out of nowhere. In spite of the tropical weather outdoors, the manager of Herzmann Productions was wearing a black shirt, black jeans, and even a scarf around his neck.

“All hell has broken loose!” Niemöller trotted along beside her excitedly, waving his skinny arms. “The phones are ringing off the hook, and nobody can reach you. And how come I have to hear from Norman that you fired him with no notice? Why didn’t you tell me? First you give Julia the boot, now Norman—who do you think is going to do the work?”

“Meike is going to fill in for Julia during the summer; that’s already been set up. And we’re going to be working with an independent producer.”

“And you don’t even ask me about it?”

Hanna looked Niemöller up and down.

“Hiring and firing is my job. I took you on to deal with the business stuff so I wouldn’t have to worry about it.”

“Oh, so that’s how you see it?” He was insulted, of course.

Hanna knew that Jan Niemöller was secretly in love with her, or, rather, with all the glory surrounding her, which also spilled over onto him as her associate. But she viewed him solely as a business partner—as a man, he was not her type. Besides, he’d been acting so possessive lately that she needed to put him in his place.

“That’s not just the way I see it; that’s the way it
is,
” she said with a tad more coolness. “I appreciate your opinion, but I’m the one making the decisions.”

Niemöller opened his mouth to protest, but Hanna cut him off with a wave of her hand.

“The network hates this sort of publicity. We’re no longer in a very strong position. With the shitty ratings in recent months, I had no choice but to kick Norman out. If they take us off the air, all of you can go scrambling for another job. Do you get it?”

Irina Zydek, Hanna’s assistant, appeared in the hallway.

“Hanna, Matern has called you three times. And almost every newspaper and TV news desk, except for Al Jazeera.” Her voice had an anxious undertone.

The rest of the staff appeared in the doorways of their offices, and their concern was palpable. The news had obviously gotten around that she’d fired Norman without notice.

“We’re meeting in half an hour in the conference room,” Hanna said as she walked by. First, she had to call Wolfgang Matern back. She couldn’t afford any trouble with the network at the moment.

She stepped into her office at the end of the corridor; it was flooded with light. She dropped her shoulder bag on one of the visitors’ chairs and sat down behind her desk. As her computer booted up, she leafed quickly through the callback messages that Irina had written on yellow Post-its, then picked up the phone. She never liked to put off unpleasant tasks for long. She hit the speed-dial number for Wolfgang Matern and took a deep breath. He picked up in a matter of seconds.

“It’s Hanna Heartless,” she said.

“Good to hear you’ve still got a sense of humor,” the CEO of Antenne Pro replied.

“I’ve just fired my producer without notice because I learned that for years he’s been doctoring the bios of my guests if he found the truth too boring.”

“You mean you didn’t know that?”

“No!” She put all the indignation she could into this lie. “I’m stunned. I couldn’t check out every story, so I had to depend on him. That is—or was—his job.”

“Please tell me that it won’t turn into a bloodbath,” said Matern.

“Of course not.” Hanna leaned back in her chair. “I already have an idea for how we can turn this thing around.”

“What is it?”

“We’ll admit everything and apologize to the guests.”

There was a moment’s silence.

“Retreat disguised as an advance,” Wolfgang Matern said at last. “That’s precisely why I admire you. You don’t run and hide. Let’s talk about it tomorrow over lunch, okay?”

Hanna could almost hear his smile, and a weight lifted off her heart. Sometimes her spontaneous ideas were the best.

*   *   *

The Airbus had not yet come to a stop when people started undoing their safety belts and getting up, ignoring the instructions to remain seated until the plane reached the gate. Bodenstein stayed in his seat. He had no desire to stand in the jammed aisle and get jostled by the other passengers. A glance at his watch assured him that he had plenty of time. The plane had landed precisely at 8:42
P.M.
after a forty-five-minute flight.

Ever since this afternoon, he’d had the feeling that he was finally putting his life in order after two turbulent, chaotic years. He’d made the right decision to attend the trial of Annika Sommerfeld in Potsdam and draw a line of finality under the whole matter. He felt that a load had been lifted off his shoulders. He’d been carrying it around since last summer—no, actually from that day in November two years ago when he’d been forced to acknowledge that Cosima was cheating on him. The breakup of his marriage and the fling with Annika had thrown him for a complete loop emotionally and caused serious damage to his self-esteem. In the end, his private misery had affected his ability to concentrate on his work and led him to make mistakes that he never would have made before. Although in the past few weeks and months, he had also recognized that his marriage to Cosima had not been nearly as perfect as he’d convinced himself it was during their twenty-year relationship. Far too often he’d backed down and acted against his will for the sake of harmony, the children, and outward appearances. Now that was all in the past.

The queue in the aisle finally began to move. Bodenstein stood up, retrieved his bag from the overhead compartment, and followed his fellow passengers toward the exit.

From Gate A49, it was a real hike to the terminal exit. At one point, he followed the wrong sign, as he often did in this gigantic airport, and ended up in the departure hall. He took the escalator down to the arrivals level and stepped outside into the warm evening air. A few minutes before nine. Inka was supposed to pick him up at nine. Bodenstein crossed the taxi lane and stood in the short-term parking area. He spotted her black Land Rover in the distance and smiled in spite of himself. Whenever Cosima had promised to pick him up somewhere, she would always show up at least fifteen minutes late, making him very annoyed. Things were different with Inka.

The SUV pulled up next to him and he opened the back door, heaved his roller bag onto the seat, and then climbed in the front.

“Hi.” She was smiling. “Have a good flight?”

“Hello.” Bodenstein was smiling, too, as he fastened his seat belt. “Yes, wonderful. Thanks for picking me up.”

“No problem. Anytime.”

She put on the left-turn blinker, glanced over her shoulder, and merged back into the line of slow-moving cars.

Bodenstein hadn’t told anyone why he’d gone to Potsdam, not even Inka, although in recent months she’d become a good friend. He leaned back against the headrest. The episode with Annika Sommerfeld had undoubtedly had one positive result. He had finally begun to think about himself, which had proved to be a painful process of self-realization. He had come to understand that very seldom had he done what he really wanted to do. He’d always yielded to Cosima’s wishes and demands, because of his basic good nature, because it was easier, or maybe because he felt a sense of responsibility, but none of that mattered. The end result was that he’d turned into a boring yes-man, a henpecked husband, and with that he’d lost all his sex appeal. No wonder that Cosima, who hated routine and boredom more than anything, had fallen into an affair.

“By the way, I got the key to the house,” said Inka. “If you like, you could take another look at it tonight.”

“Oh, that’s a good idea.” Bodenstein looked at her. “But first you have to drive me home so I can pick up my car.”

“I can drive you home afterward; otherwise, it’ll be too late. They haven’t turned on the electricity yet.”

“If it’s not too much trouble.”

“No problem.” She grinned. “I’m off tonight.”

“Well then, I’ll gladly take you up on that offer.”

Dr. Inka Hansen was a veterinarian and worked at an animal clinic in the Ruppertshain district of Kelkheim with two colleagues. Through her job, she had found out everything about the house. It was half of a duplex, and the builder had run out of money. For six months, construction had been stopped, and the house had gone on the market at a relatively reasonable price.

Half an hour later, they had reached the construction site and teetered their way across a plank to the front door. Inka opened it and they went inside.

“The stone floor has been laid, and all the wiring is done. But that’s it,” said Inka as she strolled through the rooms on the ground floor.

Then they went up the stairs to the second floor.

“Wow!” Bodenstein exclaimed. “The view is spectacular.” In the distance they could see the glittering lights of downtown Frankfurt to the left and the brightly illuminated airport to the right.

“And nobody can build in front of it to block the view,” Inka declared. “In the daytime, you can see all the way up the hill to Schloss Bodenstein.”

Life certainly took strange detours sometimes. He’d been fourteen years old when he fell in love with Inka Hansen, the daughter of the horse veterinarian from Ruppertshain. But he’d never worked up the courage to tell her. And so it ended in misunderstandings, which had driven him to study far away. There he had met Nicola, and then Cosima. He’d stopped thinking about Inka until they happened to meet during a murder investigation five years ago. Back then, he had still believed that his marriage to Cosima would last forever, and he probably would have lost contact with Inka if her daughter and his son hadn’t fallen in love with each other. The past year, the two had gotten married, and at the wedding he, as the father of the groom, had been seated next to her, the mother of the bride. They’d had a good conversation, then kept in touch by phone and went out to eat a few times. Over several months, a genuine friendship had developed, and the phone calls and dinners soon turned into a regular habit. Bodenstein liked being with Inka; she was easy to talk to and a good friend. Inka was a strong, self-confident woman, who placed great value on her freedom and independence.

Bodenstein was happy with his life now, except for his housing situation. He couldn’t stay in the carriage house at the Bodenstein ancestral estate forever.

In the vanishing daylight, they inspected the whole house, and Bodenstein was warming to the idea of moving to Ruppertshain so he could be closer to his youngest daughter. For the past few months, Cosima had also lived in Ruppertshain. She had rented an apartment in the Zauberberg, the former TB sanatorium, where she also had her office. After months of accusations, counteraccusations, and insults, Cosima and Oliver now got along better than ever before. They shared custody of Sophia, which was the top priority for Oliver. He would have his youngest daughter to himself every other weekend, and sometimes during the week as well, when Cosima had deadlines to meet.

“This is really ideal,” he said enthusiastically when they’d finished the tour. “Sophia could have her own room, and when she’s a little older, she can come over here alone or even ride her bike to my parents’ place.”

“I thought of that, too,” Inka replied. “Shall I put you in touch with the seller?”

“Yes, I’d appreciate that,” Bodenstein said with a nod.