Dead Woods (25 page)

“They’d talked about moving in together?”

“I wouldn’t say it that way. Daniel wanted it. He had bought an apartment, somewhere in the west of Hamburg, in a quite chic district. He was pressuring Franka to move in.” She paused and thought about it. “It’s possible this caused the end of the relationship.”

“Do you know how he financed the apartment?” Lina asked.

“Franka once mentioned a little inheritance.” Barbara closed her eyes. “She never felt comfortable there. She found it particularly strange that the only wall decoration in the apartment were photos of her.” She looked at Lina. “She told me once she wasn’t sure if the relationship was over for Daniel. He no longer pressured her to move in, but apart from that . . . she complained that he constantly called her, and she had qualms about telling him to stop.” Barbara Schönbek took a deep breath. “She thought that he had nobody but her—no friends, no family. Other than a demented grandmother, nobody.”

Lina bought another coffee on the way back to headquarters. She took the elevator with a colleague in uniform, who wore her long brunet hair in a ponytail and who gave her a friendly nod. Her name tag revealed that her name was Helms. They were alone in the little elevator, but after a brief greeting, neither of them said anything until the elevator reached the sixth floor and both got out.

“Excuse me,” Officer Helms said, “do you have any idea where I’d find Major Crimes, group 3?”

Lina looked at her with interest. “One-fifth of it, the small one, is standing right in front of you,” she said. “What’s it about?”

Officer Helms hesitated. “You’re on the Birkner case, aren’t you?”

Lina nodded. “Come with me,” she said and brought her to her office. Max was already in. “This is Max Berg and I’m Lina Svenson.” She threw her knapsack on the floor. “Have a seat.”

“Thanks. My . . . my name’s Frauke, by the way. This morning I took statements in the hospital in a domestic violence case. The man had beaten his wife in front of his children. Concussion, bruised ribs, split lip . . . Not a pretty picture.”

Lina nodded and waited. Frauke Helms was trying to speak in a matter-of-fact voice, but it was obvious she would have liked to meet the bastard alone, in the dark. She had a buff body.

“The name rang a bell right away, but the poor woman was barely fit to be questioned, and so I waited until I was back at the precinct and could look up the name. I think she has something to do with your case.”

Alarmed, Lina sat up straight.

“Sonja Birkner. Her husband is Lukas Birkner, the brother of the dead man from the Niendorfer Gehege. My chief thought I should tell you this in person.”

Lina exchanged a glance with Max. When she had visited the couple, Sonja Birkner had been unable to hide her fear. It had been obvious that her husband bullied her. Was there any connection between the current abuse and the murder of Lukas’s brother? She turned to Officer Helms. “I’m glad you came. We know both of them. What did the woman tell you?”

Her colleague had first heard the story from the doctor who had admitted Sonja Birkner in the middle of the night. She hadn’t come in on her own. Her sister had practically forced her to seek treatment after Frau Birkner had shown up limping and bleeding at her door late at night with two terrified children. The sister had put the children to bed, asked a neighbor to watch them, and driven Sonja to the hospital. She knew what was going on. It wasn’t the first time Sonja had sought refuge with her, but Lukas had never done that much damage before. She and the doctor had finally persuaded Sonja to involve the police and press charges against her husband. Officer Helms had just started her shift, and so she was the one who talked with Sonja Birkner. She didn’t get much information since she didn’t want to push the poor woman.

Lina and Max listened without interrupting Frauke. They only wrote down the names of the hospital, the treating physician, and Sonja Birkner’s sister.

“What about her husband? Did you arrest Birkner?” Max asked.

Frauke Helms nodded. She had informed her colleagues while she was still at the hospital. They had found Birkner alone and very drunk in the apartment and had taken him in.

Lina nodded. “Just let the guy stew for a while,” she said. “But before you release him, we’ll have another little talk with him.” She winked at Frauke. Husbands who beat their wives—one of the occasions when police didn’t mind stretching the limits of their authority.

The woman in the hospital bed had her eyes closed. She was pale—apart from the crusted blood on her lower lip and the swelling around her left eye, which would shimmer in all colors in a few days. The left eye was severely bruised.

Max and Lina had softly knocked and entered before being asked in. Sonja Birkner opened her eyes only when Lina stood next to her bed and quietly said her name. When she recognized Lina, she closed them again.

Max got two chairs and they sat down next to the patient. The silence in the room was oppressive, like a pustule of suppressed words and emotions just waiting to burst. Lina silently observed the woman and wished that this might be the turning point in her life, in which something had obviously gone off-kilter.

“Frau Birkner,” she said in a soft voice. “I know that it’s difficult for you to speak, but I’m asking for your help.”

Frau Birkner breathed laboriously without opening her eyes. Finally she slowly nodded her consent.

“What your husband did to you . . . Was it connected to the questions we asked you?” Lina asked.

Hesitation, and then a cautious nod.

“But you didn’t say anything when we were at your house . . . What upset your husband to such an extent?” Lina was being unfair and knew it. The tiniest reason could make an abusive husband, someone prone to beating his wife, snap.

Sonja Birkner opened her mouth and licked her lips. She winced with pain when she touched the wound. “He thought I might have told you something on Monday, when you came by yourself,” she whispered.

Lina and Max looked at each other. “Is there something you could have told us?” The woman in the bed did not react until Lina finally asked, “Does it have anything to do with the clique of Julia Munz and the two Birkners?”

For the longest time, Sonja Birkner just lay there with closed eyes, but at length she nodded. “That clique was quite an arrogant bunch,” she said. Lina saw how difficult it was for her. “They thought they were better than everyone else, looked down on all other students, and mercilessly pestered those who couldn’t defend themselves.” She opened her eyes and slightly turned her head so Lina could look at her. “Julia and Philip were the worst. They had an actual fan club, people who idolized them and would have done anything to belong to their clique, but they hardly let anyone in. You really had to earn such an honor.” She closed her eyes and swallowed with difficulty. “May I have some water?”

Lina carefully held a glass to her injured lips, and Sonja took a few sips. Then she slowly lifted her left arm to her mouth to wipe away every last drop of moisture. She gently tapped her burst lips with her fingers and grimaced. “That bastard,” she whispered. Her eyes were suddenly filled with tears. She inhaled deeply and continued.

“Lukas was only allowed to participate because he was Philip’s brother. He wasn’t a bad guy. When Philip wasn’t there, he was a really nice guy. But he admired his brother more than was good for him.” She shook her head. “I was never allowed to voice the tiniest criticism of my brother-in-law; Lukas would immediately flip out. Philip was his hero, the white knight in shining armor.” She tried to laugh mockingly, but didn’t manage it. “Yesterday . . . yesterday he accused me of having spoken ill of Philip in front of the police by telling lies about him. He was so upset that he didn’t even listen to what I said. At one point he began to hit me. The kids were already in bed, but the noise woke them up, and they came to the living room.” She closed her eyes again. “I saw how horrified they were when they saw Lukas hitting me,” she said quietly. “That was almost worse than the blows.” Tears were streaming down her face. She wiped them away with her left hand.

“Frau Birkner,” Lina said gently after a while, “is there anything you can tell us about what happened in the past?” The woman nodded but was silent. With a little more emphasis, Lina continued, “So, the clique of Julia Munz and Philip Birkner bullied other students, among them Daniel Vogler. Do you know what they specifically did to him?”

Sonja Birkner shook her head. “I just know the usual stuff,” she said in a low voice. “Stupid remarks, maybe some shoving in the schoolyard. Things like that.” She looked at Lina. “But something really bad must have happened one day. Daniel was absent from school for a few days, and afterward he was completely withdrawn. You know, he was always a geek. He’d correct everyone, even the teachers, and everyone in our school knew that. But now, he suddenly just sat there and said nothing.”

“When was that?”

Sonja Birkner was about to frown, but the huge bruise around her eye made her stop. “That was the summer before we started eleventh grade and Daniel skipped to the twelfth.” She nodded. “After that I lost sight of Daniel since he was one year above me.”

“And the clique of Julia Munz and your brother-in-law?”

Sonja Birkner looked at Lina. “It was somehow falling apart. I mean, Julia was still with Philip, and they were still arrogant and snooty, but as far as I could see, they stopped bullying other students. And with Daniel, they actually avoided him—and I wasn’t the only one who noticed it. But by then we were all already older, at least sixteen, and maybe things quiet down by themselves at that age.” She shrugged and grimaced in pain. “I don’t know, but I myself never heard anything really bad after that.”

Lina looked at the woman. If her husband battered her like that because of something that happened more than fifteen years ago, it must have been really bad. “And your husband?” she asked. “Was he involved when the bad thing happened?”

Frau Birkner turned her head to the window. “I don’t know,” she said quietly. “We’ve never talked about it; certainly not about that particular event.” She looked at Lina again. “You know, we only hooked up after Julia’s death, a few months before the exit exam. Nobody wanted to say anything bad about her then. A few years later when we were in a nostalgic mood one time, I started to talk about it, how Julia and Philip had been quite nasty at times . . . Lukas completely snapped.” She stopped talking. “I think that was the first time he hit me. Just a slap in the face. It didn’t even hurt, and he apologized immediately.” She paused again. “But that started a pattern. I wasn’t allowed to say anything against Philip. If I followed that rule, everything was fine. But I better not dare criticize him . . . I eventually got it and kept my mouth shut. Philip could get away with everything, and Lukas wouldn’t allow anyone to push him off the pedestal he had placed him on.”

Lina and Max looked at each other. “What kind of things did your brother-in-law get away with?” Max asked. Frau Birkner gave him a surprised look as if she hadn’t noticed his presence until then.

“His showing off, for instance. He constantly rubbed Lukas’s nose in the fact that he’d found a winner with his Katja, and what they’d just bought: the expensive designer sofa, the new stereo system, the new kitchen, and the fat BMW.”

Max frowned. “I thought Philip wasn’t that interested in money. Wasn’t it mostly his partner who insisted on all the luxury and the expensive apartment?”

Sonja Birkner laughed mockingly, and actually managed to pull it off this time. “When Philip said, ‘Well, you know, I could live without it,’ Lukas bought every word he said. And he never noticed the arrogant attitude, the turned-up nose when he visited us or his parents . . . He never saw that; didn’t want to see it. Lukas defended his brother again and again, made excuses for him—it didn’t matter whether Philip had just humiliated him or had stood him up for yet another get-together. Philip was his hero, he was successful, he had made it, and, of course, through it all, Philip had remained as modest and nice as ever.” Her voice was dripping with sarcasm. “And Lukas tried to match his big brother in every respect. If Philip had a BMW, Lukas had to have one, too, even if we could only afford a used one.”

“Could you imagine that he cheated on his domestic partner?” asked Lina.

“I’m sure he did.” The reply came quick as a shot. Sonja Birkner had talked herself into a rage and the adrenaline seemed to alleviate her pain. “I don’t know why Katja didn’t notice anything, but he came on to everything that moved.” She shrugged. “He even tried with me, once, when I was already married to Lukas.”

“How did your husband react?” Lina asked.

“I never even bothered to tell him. I’m sure he’d have accused me of trying to seduce Philip since his brother would never . . .”

Sonja Birkner’s eyes were flashing. Her cheeks had taken on color and she seemed much more awake than half an hour ago. Lina noticed with satisfaction that the woman wasn’t a shy little mouse that would return to her husband after the first shock was gone. She smiled at her encouragingly.

“It’s a good thing you’re pressing charges against your husband, Frau Birkner. You don’t have to pretend any longer.”

Sonja Birkner drew a deep breath and nodded resolutely. “Yes,” she said. “Enough is enough.”

They ran into a traffic jam in Hudtwalckerstrasse, a common bottleneck, on their way back to headquarters.

“So you were right,” Max said and leaned back. “Philip Birkner isn’t the sweet boy he’s made out to be.” He smiled. “In this case, your gut feeling was right on target.”

Lina blushed. He was, of course, referring to her zeroing in on Katja Ansmann as their prime suspect. “That doesn’t mean that his girlfriend’s off the hook. On the contrary,” she added with some stubbornness in her voice, “if Philip cheated on her left and right, she has an additional motive for killing him.”

“Only if she even cared,” Max argued. “She admitted that she knew about Philip’s occasional affairs. Besides, she cheated on him, too.”