Bad Wolf (46 page)

“If you help me get out of here,” replied Prinzler, “then I can help you, too.”

“If it were up to us, you could go right now.” Pia gave a rueful shrug. “But there are higher powers involved.”

“It doesn’t bother me to hang around here for a few days,” he said. “There are no warrants for my arrest. My lawyer will appeal, and I’ll even get paid for the days I was here.”

His face with the neatly trimmed beard seemed almost carved out of stone, but the expression in his eyes belied his inscrutable façade. This man had countless hearings and interrogations behind him; he was used to a rough way of speaking and certainly had no scruples. Yet he was worried—very worried. The person he was trying to protect must be someone close to his heart. Pia decided to take a shot in the dark.

“If you’re worried about your family, I can arrange for them to have police protection,” she said.

The thought of police protection for his family seemed to amuse Prinzler; a tiny smile twitched at the corners of his mouth but vanished immediately.

“I’d rather you see about getting me out of here today.” He gave her an urgent and stern look. “I have a permanent residence, so I’m not going to split.”

“Then answer our questions,” Christian told him.

Prinzler ignored him. It showed his great self-confidence that he would let down his guard and practically beg a cop bitch to help him. Men of his caliber normally had nothing but contempt for the police.

“Someone saw you at the site where Ms. Herzmann was found in the trunk of her car. Tomorrow there will be a lineup with the witness.”

“I already told you where I was that night.” Prinzler was avoiding the insults, macho behavior, and biker slang that were doubtless his normal modus operandi. He was an intelligent man who had retired after fourteen years spent handling the daily business of the Road Kings. He now lived in a paradise, far from the strip clubs and dives of the red-light district that had once been his home. Why? What had caused him to change his life like that? Pia guessed he was in his mid-fifties. At the time, he must have been somewhere in his late thirties—not an age at which somebody like Bernd Prinzler would simply retire. And although he seemed to have left his criminal days behind, he was still doing everything he could to remain invisible. Who was he hiding from? And once again, a big “Why?”

Time passed, and for a moment no one said a word.

Pia broke the silence. “Why did Erik Lessing have to die? What did he know?”

Prinzler had his poker face well under control, but he couldn’t help his eyebrows from reflexively rising.

“That’s exactly what this is all about,” he said roughly.

“What do you mean by that?” Pia asked. She didn’t avoid his gaze.

“Think about it,” replied Prinzler. “That’s all I’m saying without my lawyer present.”

*   *   *

She was pissed off—totally pissed off—and insulted.

What was the idea of that asshole, giving her the brush-off like that? Tears of rage were burning in Meike’s eyes as she went down the stairs, her back rigid.

After visiting Hanna, she had driven out to see Wolfgang in Oberursel. She didn’t know why he had become so important to her or why she had the feeling that he was lying to her. Where did the distrust come from? When he told her on the phone that she couldn’t stay overnight at his place because his father had visitors, she hadn’t believed him.

But the driveway and the neatly raked gravel forecourt were both jammed with parked cars—Big fancy ones from Karlsruhe, Munich, Stuttgart, Hamburg, Berlin, even from abroad. Okay, so Wolfgang hadn’t lied. She stood there for a while, trying to decide whether she should simply drive off or ring the bell. Wolfgang knew that she was sitting home alone. If there was a party at his house, he could have at least invited her. Hanna always received an invitation to every occasion.

Meike looked at the big old house that she loved so much. The high mullioned windows, the dark green shutters, the half-hipped roof covered with reddish beaver-tail tiles, the eight front steps leading up to the dark green double door, on which a brass lion’s head knocker was mounted. The lavender bushes in front of the house gave off an intense fragrance on this warm evening, reminding Meike of vacations in southern France. Hanna who had brought back the lavender from Provence for Wolfgang’s mother many years ago.

She had often come here with Hanna, and in her memory the house seemed like the epitome of security and safety. But now Aunt Christine was dead, and Hanna was in the hospital looking more dead than alive. And Meike had nobody waiting for her, nobody she could turn to in order to feel safe and protected. Yet it was true that Wolfgang had developed into the most important person in her life, a sort of father figure, for whom she felt the deepest trust. Her stepfathers had come and gone, viewing her as nothing more than a troublesome but unavoidable appendage to Hanna, and her own father had married a jealous shrew.

Meike cast a last look at the house; then she turned around to leave. At that moment, a black Maybach drove up the driveway and stopped right in front of the steps. A slim white-haired man got out, and his eyes met hers. She smiled and waved and registered with astonishment the expression of displeasure that passed over the suntanned face of Peter Weissbecker. Peter was an old acquaintance of Hanna, an actor and master of ceremonies who was a legend on German television. Meike had known him all her life. Of course she found it a bit silly to call him Uncle Pitti now that she was twenty-four, but that’s what she’d always called him.

“Little Meike! How wonderful to see you,” he said with feigned enthusiasm. “Tell me, is your mother here, too?” He gave her a clumsy hug.

“No, Mama is in the hospital,” she said, linking arms with him.

“Oh no, I’m so sorry. Is it something serious?”

She walked up the steps with him. The front door swung open and there stood Wolfgang’s father. She could see from his expression that he, too, was not happy to see her. At least he made no pretense about his displeasure, unlike Uncle Pitti, the professional stage actor.

“What are you doing here?” Hartmut Matern reproached Meike.

A slap wouldn’t have hurt more than this surly greeting.

“Hello, Uncle Hartmut. I happened to be in the neighborhood,” Meike lied. “I just wanted to stop by and say hello.”

“This evening is not a good time,” said Hartmut. “I have guests, as you can see.”

Meike stared at him, dumbfounded. He had never before spoken to her with such rudeness. Wolfgang came up behind him. He seemed nervous and tense. His father and Uncle Pitti went inside the house, leaving her standing there like a stranger without saying good-bye or even sending a greeting to Hanna. Meike was deeply hurt.

“What’s going on here?” she asked. “Some sort of stag party? Or was Mama invited, too?”

Wolfgang grabbed her by the arm and ushered her down the stairs.

“Meike, please. Today is a very bad time.” He spoke quietly, as if he didn’t want anyone else to hear. “It’s sort of … sort of a shareholders’ meeting. To discuss business.”

It was a smooth attempt to lie, but so obvious that it hurt her more than the humiliating feeling of being more or less thrown out.

“Why don’t you answer the phone when I call?” Meike hated the tone of her own voice. She wanted to be cool, but she sounded like a hysterical, jealous bitch.

“In the past week, I’ve had so much to do. Please, Meike, don’t make a scene,” he implored her.

“I most certainly will not make a
scene,
” she snorted in fury. “I just thought you meant what you said, that I could come here anytime.”

Wolfgang hemmed and hawed, stammering something about a crisis meeting and restructuring. What a lame excuse.

Meike yanked her arm away from his grasp. She was hugely disappointed.

“All right, I get it. It was all just talk to ease your guilty conscience. Actually, I don’t give a shit. Have fun tonight.”

“Meike, wait! Please. It’s not like that.”

She kept walking, hoping that he would follow her and apologize or something, but when she melodramatically turned around to forgive him, he’d gone back inside the house and closed the door. Never before had she felt so alone and shut out. It was devastating to realize that these people had never felt any real affection or friendliness for her. They had merely accepted her because she was the ugly, irritating daughter of the famous Hanna Herzmann.

Meike trudged along the driveway, fighting back tears of rage. Before she went out to the street, she shot a few photos of the parked cars with her iPhone. If this was a shareholders’ meeting, then she was Lady Gaga. Something was going on here, and she was going to find out what it was. Fucking idiots!

*   *   *

“Good God!” Pia tilted her head back and gazed up at the façade of a gray apartment block on the Hattersheimer Schillerring. “I had no idea he lived here now.”

“Why? Where did he live before?” asked Christian Kröger. He was standing at the street door, squinting at the long list of tenants.

“In an old building in Sachsenhausen,” Pia recalled. “Not far from the apartment where Henning and I used to live.”

That was the address the computer had spit out as Frank Behnke’s current place of residence. She had told her boss she was going home, but she and Christian had met twenty minutes later in the parking lot of the Real Market in Hattersheim. It caused her no great pangs of conscience to keep secrets from Bodenstein. Whatever role he might have played in this story, she was sure that he had not been directly involved. So in that respect, it was none of his business if she decided to question a few people behind his back.

“Okay, I found him,” said Christian. “What should I say?”

“Just tell him your name,” Pia suggested. “You’ve never had any trouble with him.”

Her colleague pressed the doorbell, and seconds later someone croaked “Hello?” and Christian answered. The door opener buzzed, and they went into the foyer, which may have been old but was kept up better than the ugly concrete block would suggest from the outside. The elevator was vintage 1976, according to the manufacturer’s nameplate, and the sounds that it emitted on the trip to the seventeenth floor did not arouse confidence. The hall smelled of food and cleaning products; the walls were painted in a hideous ocher color, which made the windowless corridor look drearier than it was.

Pia, who remembered all too well Behnke’s profound abhorrence of these kinds of housing projects and their inhabitants, felt a hint of sympathy at the thought that he was now living among them.

A door opened and Behnke appeared in the doorway. He was wearing gray sweatpants and a stained T-shirt; he was unshaven and barefoot.

“If you’d told me that she was coming along, I wouldn’t have let you in,” he said to Christian. His breath smelled strongly of booze. “What do you want?”

Pia ignored the unfriendly greeting. “Hello, Frank. Are you going to let us in?”

“Please come in. It’s an honor to welcome you to my luxury penthouse,” he said sarcastically. “Unfortunately, I’m all out of champagne, and my butler has already gone home.”

Pia entered the apartment and was shocked. It consisted of a single room of about 375 square feet, with a tiny open kitchen and a sleeping alcove separated off by a curtain. She saw a worn couch, a coffee table, and a cheap pine sideboard with a small TV sitting on top. It was on, but the sound was turned off. In the corner was a clothes rack with shirts, ties, and suits. A few pairs of shoes stood underneath, along with a vacuum cleaner. Every free surface was covered with something, and with three adults in the room, the place felt jam-packed. With each step, they ran into some piece of furniture. The only thing that was really beautiful was the distant view of the Taunus from the balcony, but that was no consolation. What a depressing way to live.

“Are you two the new dream team?” Behnke asked spitefully.

Pia saw pure hatred glittering in his watery, red-rimmed eyes. In the past, Frank had shown misanthropic tendencies, but it was clear that lately he had come to loathe all humanity without exception.

“I’m sure this isn’t a courtesy call. So, tell me what you want, and then leave me in peace.”

“We’re here because we want to hear from you about the whole Erik Lessing case.” Pia knew that it made no sense to beat around the bush, so she got straight to the point.

“Erik who? Never heard of him,” Behnke declared without batting an eye. “Is that all? Then you can leave now.”

“In our current investigations, the names of two people have come up—people who also played a role in the Lessing incident,” Pia went on, unfazed. “We think that there may be a connection.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Behnke crossed his arms. “And I don’t give a shit.”

“We know that you shot three men in a brothel in Frankfurt. And not in self-defense, but on someone’s express orders. They used you and didn’t tell you the truth in advance. You’ve never gotten over the fact that you shot a colleague to death.”

Behnke first turned red, then pale. He balled his hands into fists.

“They ruined your life, but that didn’t mean shit to them,” Pia said. “If we find out who was behind it, we can bring them to justice.”

“Get out of here,” Frank snarled between clenched teeth. “Beat it and don’t let me see you here again.”

“You were a soldier before you joined the police force,” said Christian, taking over. “You were trained as a sharpshooter and were a member of a special unit. You were really good. They chose you for this action because they knew that you’d obey and wouldn’t ask questions. Who gave you the order? And above all, why?”

Frank Behnke looked from Pia to Christian.

“What the hell is the meaning of this?” he said furiously. “What do you want from me? Don’t you think my life is shitty enough already?”

“Frank! We’re not here to hassle you,” Kröger protested. “But people are dying. A girl was brutally raped and murdered. Then they just tossed her into the Main. A little while ago, we spoke to the man who owned the car in which the weapon was found after Lessing died. This man and his lawyer from back then are both involved in at least two current cases.”