Dead Woods (28 page)

“Excuse me?” Daniel Vogler lifted his head. He sounded genuinely surprised. “Where did you get that information?”

Max’s voice became softer. “Herr Vogler, our witness is absolutely reliable. We know what Philip Birkner and Julia Munz did to you then, about a year before you graduated.”

Daniel Vogler frowned. “Sorry, can’t help you there. They teased me, sure, but ‘abused’? That, I can’t remember.”

Max looked thoughtful. “You were alone; there were six of them. It happened next to the large meadow in City Park. You really can’t remember?”

Daniel frowned. “Oh that . . . I think I know what you’re referring to. I hate to disappoint you, but Philip didn’t rape me; he raped a friend of mine.”

Lina raised an eyebrow and Max tilted his head.

“I only listened to what was going on. My friend was in City Park when that gang ambushed him. He had a cell phone already then; he was one of the first. He had just called me. At one point he said, ‘Listen, Julia and Philip and their entourage are here. Can you hold on for a moment?’ He didn’t turn off the phone and so I could hear everything.” Daniel Vogler swallowed. “There was nothing I could do.”

Lina leaned back and took a deep breath. Was it possible? Could Björn Boysen have identified the wrong boy as the victim? It wasn’t completely out of the question since he went to a different school and, according to his statement, didn’t even know the last name of the boy who was raped that night. But there were also the statements of Lukas and Sonja Birkner, which indirectly confirmed the doctor’s testimony.

“What’s your friend’s name?” Max asked gently.

“Holger Thies,” Daniel Vogler said.
“He died thirteen years ago of muscular dystrophy.”

“Was he a classmate of yours?”

‘No. We both were interested in computers. That’s how we got acquainted.”

Max nodded. “Did you later discuss the incident with your friend?”

Vogler shook his head. “No. He didn’t want to talk about it. I tried to have him go to the police, but he didn’t want that, either.”

Max nodded again. “Do you know exactly who was there that night?”

Vogler frowned. “Philip Birkner and Julia Munz, Miriam and Maike—I don’t know their last names—Christian Bischoff and someone else, a friend of Miriam’s. Holger knew him by sight only.”

“He told you that?”

It was the first time Daniel Vogler seemed uncertain. “Yes . . . No, well, I heard their voices over the phone.”

Lina tried to imagine the scene: a meadow in City Park darkened by twilight, a chaotic swirl of howling, giggling, and shouting. The cell phone. Where was it? In the grass? In the boy’s knapsack? How good were the microphones of those first cell phones? And now Daniel Vogler claimed he could identify voices. Lina straightened up and was about to confront Vogler with all these improbabilities, when she caught a warning glance and an almost imperceptible gesture from Max. She kept her mouth shut and instead picked up her notebook.

“All right, Herr Vogler. We have no further questions right now,” Max said in a friendly tone and got up. Lina did the same.

Vogler just shrugged.

On the way back to police headquarters, Max said, “We’ve got to find the other clique members as fast as we can. Either Vogler’s giving us the runaround, or . . .”

Lina knew what he meant. Was Vogler aware that he had been the rape victim, or was he really convinced that he had only witnessed it over the phone?

Back in the office, Lina surveyed her desk that was cluttered with notepads, printed forms, flyers, and random notes until her gaze rested on a piece of blue paper. That wasn’t hers; she was sure of that. She grabbed the slip of paper, read the few lines written on it, and frowned. That’s how Max found her when he entered the room surrounded by a whiff of peppermint.

“Here’s your coffee . . . What’s the matter?” he asked.

She handed him the blue slip without saying anything. “In re: Industrial espionage Birkner. A certain Holger Thies is registered as general manager in twelve of the twenty consultation firms used by Markman Solutions. I hope that helps you. Greetings from the second floor, Marita Schön.”

It was evening by then, but Hanno and Sebastian were still busy trying to get hold of witnesses from the past. Alex had to locate current friends and acquaintances of Daniel Vogler, but he announced that you can’t squeeze blood from a stone. Vogler had only saved five numbers in his phone: his grandmother’s, Franziska Leyhausen’s, a car repair shop’s, a Gregor Triantaphilidis’s—a general practitioner, as it turned out—and the direct number of Professor Thelmann at the university.

Hanno and Sebastian were a bit luckier. They had found three former schoolmates of Daniel Vogler and Philip Birkner. They confirmed that Vogler had been harassed by the clique of Julia Munz and Philip Birkner. One woman had added, however, that Daniel hadn’t been the only one suffering their taunts. She said, “He didn’t even leave his own brother alone, this Philip. He was a real creep.” The clique itself seemed to have disappeared.

“We got an address in Hessen for Christian Bischoff, but no luck reaching him so far,” Hanno said. “He’s receiving long-term unemployment benefits, and I asked our people down there to look for him and question him. With regards to Miriam Haase, we know that she went to study in the United States, and that’s the end of it. Her parents still live in Hamburg, but the last time they heard from her was ten years ago. She had just joined some fundamentalist sect or other.” He looked through his notes. “Maike Haubach has several priors, mostly small property crimes. She’s a drug addict and lives in Berlin. No current address is on record.”

They all looked at each other after this enumeration. “The revenge of fate,” Alex suggested. “Everyone who took part in the rape failed at life.”

“Or they’re dead, like Julia Munz and Philip Birkner,” Sebastian added.

“In which case someone lent fate a hand.”

Hanno silently scanned the ever-increasing list of witnesses, lifted his head, and looked around. “It looks as if we have the killer, but we have practically no evidence against him as long as we’re still waiting for the DNA results.” He stroked his chin. “Max, what’s going on with that Niels Hinrichsen? He’s a possible witness of the crime, isn’t he?”

Max nodded slowly. “True. He could have seen the killer when he came back from the brook with the Aaron’s rod.”

“Is he still unfit to be questioned?”

“As far as I know,” Max replied. “But I’ll look into it.”

Hanno sighed. “Who knows what the hell he’ll tell us once he opens his mouth again. Maybe it’ll just be the same nonsense about knights with swords.”

Chapter 17

Cackling laughter could be heard through an open door. Two rooms down the hall, Max heard a woman call for help. She seemed to have carried on in a monotonous singsong for hours, maybe days. “Help, help, help.” He took a deep breath, but faced with such accumulation of sorrow, even he found it difficult to stay serene. He looked at the young woman next to him, who was guiding him quickly through the hallway of the closed psychiatry ward of the university hospital in Eppendorf.

“Herr Hinrichsen’s neighbor is already here,” the nurse explained and stopped in front of a closed door. She knocked, pushed down the handle, and let Max enter ahead of her.

Niels Hinrichsen sat at the edge of the bed, freshly washed and wearing the clean clothes Max had brought him three days before. The wound on his temple was hidden under a small bandage and he was beaming. He had put both hands under his thighs and he dangled his legs like a little child. In a chair in front of him sat his neighbor, Frau Meyer. She was smiling, and she occasionally patted his knee, a tender gesture that showed how much she cared for the childlike man. Both looked up when Max and the nurse came in.

Niels Hinrichsen frowned when he saw Max, but then was all smiles again. “Today I’m going to the forest again,” he announced with his throaty laugh. “To my deer and my trees.”

Max smiled and nodded. “That’s beautiful, Herr Hinrichsen. I’m happy for you.” And it wasn’t a lie.

After Frau Meyer had come to visit him, Niels Hinrichsen, seeing her familiar face, had calmed down. The old lady had told him patiently and simply where he was and why he had to stay in bed rather than roam through the woods. He had been astonishingly accommodating.
Time
, Max thought—and not for the first time. If you give it as much time as needed, problems mostly solve themselves. But who had such time in the hectic environment of an emergency room, time for someone like Niels Hinrichsen, for whom clocks and schedules meant nothing at all? He had probably even been lucky to end up here, in the psychiatric ward, where they were a little more used to people who stood outside time.

Max nodded to Frau Meyer. “Thank you for calling me.” Ever since Niels Hinrichsen had started to feel better and was no longer sedated, he kept on talking about men running through the forest and fighting for a woman like knights. Frau Meyer had thought the police might be interested in that.

Max turned to Niels, who was still beaming. “How are you, Herr Hinrichsen? Are you looking forward to seeing your forest again?”

Niels nodded, kicking with his legs energetically. “Yes, yes. I’ll go to the woods again.”

“You want to keep a close watch again, so nobody leaves the paths, don’t you?” Max said evenly, hoping not to scare the man by using wrong words.

But Niels just nodded enthusiastically. “Yes! Yes! I watch out for the forest like my gramps used to do.”

“You really take good care of it.” Max paused. “Not just of animals, but plants as well—don’t you?” He hesitated again. “You even replant flowers that might otherwise be trampled, don’t you?”

Niels Hinrichsen nodded again, but he was wary now. Max added quickly, “That’s really nice of you, to pay so much attention to all the plants.” Niels relaxed again.

“Do you still remember when you first replanted something? That was in the middle of the night, wasn’t it?” Max was slowly breathing in.

Niels Hinrichsen frowned. “Yes, it was very dark. And the plant was very dirty because the evil man puked on it.”

“That really wasn’t nice of him,” Max confirmed. “But why did he throw up?”

“Well, the woman was mad at him and so she kneed him.” Kneed, not beat.

“She kneed him? How? Did you see it?”

Niels Hinrichsen nodded vigorously. “I stood behind a tree and saw it all. The man tried to grope her, but she didn’t want that even though she’d laughed with him before, quite loud. But she got more and more upset, and then she kneed the man.”

Surprisingly agile, Niels jumped up, grabbed Max’s shoulders, and quickly lifted his knee. Max managed to swerve just in time and so avoided feeling what Philip Birkner felt shortly before he died. He gladly did without the experience.

“Niels, one doesn’t do that,” Frau Meyer said, startled and slightly scolding. “Apologize to this nice gentleman at once!”

Looking guilty, Niels lowered his head. “’Scuse me,” he mumbled, and then sniveled. Max saw a tear rolling down his cheek.

“That’s all right,” he said soothingly. “Nothing happened, and I’m not mad at you.” When Niels didn’t react, he added, “Actually it’s very good that you showed me what the woman did to that man.” Again, it wasn’t a lie.

Niels lifted his head and quickly looked at Max, as if he weren’t sure he could believe him. Max smiled. “And then? After the man threw up on the plant? What happened then?”

Niels looked at Frau Meyer, who was also smiling encouragingly. “Tell the nice man what you’ve seen, Niels.”

“Then I dug up the flower,” Niels said quietly. “The evil man tried to grab me and I got afraid and hit him. And then I quickly ran away and gave the flower a bath, in the brook, in the water.” He looked to the ground again, tucking his head between his shoulders.

“And afterward you planted it again, didn’t you?” Max said. “That was nice of you.” When Niels remained silent, Max asked in a low voice, “Did you see another man then, Niels? When you came back from the brook?”

Niels didn’t say anything.

“Come on, Niels. You’ve told me that there was a second man,” Frau Meyer said. “Why don’t you tell this nice man what you’ve told me?”

“Don’t know,” Niels mumbled. “Don’t know anything.” One could hardly understand what he was saying. His fingers played with the hem of his trousers, and he shuffled his feet.

Max sighed quietly and looked at Frau Meyer. She shook her head. Nobody would find out anything else from him now.

“I just saw the mother of this Holger Thies,” Lina said as she leaned against the railing of the bridge, looked down on the Alster, and held her cell phone against her ear. “Daniel Vogler’s friend, the alleged victim of the assault seventeen years ago. He did indeed die thirteen years ago, as Vogler said.”

She heard Max sigh and knew how he felt. It was Saturday afternoon and the sun was radiant in a blue sky, a rarity this summer. Lina suspected that she wouldn’t be able to enjoy much of it. Below the bridge, sun worshippers were fighting for good spots.

“And? What else did she say?” Max asked when Lina’s dramatic pause had lasted too long.

“Her son suffered from a genetic disease which relegated him to a wheelchair since puberty. When the attack in City Park occurred, he was sixteen and practically never left the house anymore.” She shivered despite the warm sun when she realized that Holger Thies only made it to age twenty.

“Frau Thies still remembers Daniel well. He’d been more or less Holger’s only friend. Both were obsessed with technology and spent hours on their computers.” Lina heard Max using the car’s turn signal. “Holger was mostly interested in audio equipment. His mother said that he had an almost complete recording studio in his room.”

“Interesting,” Max said. “If we assume that he was an ‘earwitness’ to Vogler’s rape, he could have easily taped it all, reworked it a little, and made individual voices recognizable.”

Lina observed walkers, joggers, and bicyclists slowly wending their way along the broad gravel path below. “That could have made it possible for Daniel to keep Birkner’s clique away from him,” Lina said pensively. “He also had Philip Birkner under his thumb, so he couldn’t blame Daniel for the software mistake at Inoware.”

“Did the mother mention the attack at all? Did she hear about it then?” Max asked.

“No, she didn’t. She said that the two boys had always kept to themselves, especially Daniel. She really only ever saw him when she opened the door and let him in. He hardly ever talked to her.” An elderly gentleman was scolding the back of a bicyclist who had almost run into him. His choice of words and his tone would have been more fitting coming from a fish seller at the Hamburg market than the elderly gent with graying temples. “If Holger Thies has been dead for thirteen years, he can hardly have founded twelve consulting firms these past two years.”

Though she couldn’t see it, she could imagine that Max was nodding. “Where are you hiding out?” he asked.

“At the Alster, Krugkoppelbridge.”

“Should I get you and we’ll talk with Vogler again?”

She closed her eyes and held her face against the sun. “Sure,” she said. “What else would I do on such a boring summer day?”

Daniel Vogler was already sitting in one of the interrogation rooms at the Holstenglacis, and he didn’t look up when Max and Lina came in. Unlike the day before, he sat slumped, staring at the desk in front of him.

“How are you, Herr Vogler?” Max asked.

No response.

Lina observed the man carefully and then said, “Herr Vogler, Frau Thies asked me to say hello to you.”

Daniel finally looked up. His gaunt face was pale and the blond stubble made him look older. He looked at Lina, but remained silent.

“She told me about her son, Holger, your friend.” Lina chose her words carefully. “She described his illness to me and said that he had problems with walking even as a child.” She paused. “That he had to use a wheelchair from an early age.”

Daniel looked down again.

“Seventeen years ago he was sixteen, one year older than you, and by then he’d been consigned to a wheelchair for years.” She paused again. “He couldn’t have been in City Park on the evening of the assault, Herr Vogler.”

Nothing moved on Daniel’s face, but he started to scratch a knuckle of his left index finger with the nail of his right thumb. It was quiet in the room. The only sound was the breathing of three people.

“Considering this, do you stand by yesterday’s statement that it was Holger Thies who was the rape victim of Philip Birkner and others, and not you?” Max asked softly.

At first it seemed as if Daniel Vogler would continue to ignore them, but then he slowly closed his eyes. Lina held her breath. “I . . . I don’t know. When you say it like that. If Holger’s mother says so.” He inhaled—not deeply, not forcefully, but rather cautiously—as if he didn’t dare take the ultimate step that would force him to face his memories. “But it’s true; I’ve only known Holger in his wheelchair. He could hardly move his arms anymore, and at one point he could only type with one finger.” He twisted his mouth, and it took Lina a moment to realize that he was smiling. “That’s the reason why he had such an interest in audio engineering and language software. That was still in its infancy then. It wasn’t really my thing, but I went along for his sake, and I always got him the most up-to-date equipment as it came on the market.”

“Did he use this technology to record what he heard going on in the park?” Max asked.

Daniel Vogler was quiet for a moment. “Yes. Then he worked on the recording. In the beginning, there was just a lot of static, but Holger managed to isolate individual voices, and when he was done, you could quite clearly understand what was going on.”

“What happened to this recording?” Lina asked.

It was the first time that Vogler looked straight into Max’s eyes. “We used it to protect ourselves.”

“You mean you sent copies to Philip Birkner and his friends?”

Daniel Vogler nodded again. “We made cassettes. At that time not many people had a computer, so we sent them to the clique by mail. After that, they left us alone.”

“Was Holger Thies bullied by the clique the way you were?” Max was watching the man carefully.

“Yes.”

“How did your friend know this clique? He wasn’t leaving his house anymore because of his illness.”

Daniel Vogler frowned. He seemed to be thinking, but when he couldn’t come up with an explanation for this obvious discrepancy, he started to look around aimlessly until he focused on his hands in his lap. Lina saw him brace his shoulders. “I . . . I haven’t thought about this for a long time. I . . . I always thought that they mainly . . . pestered Holger.” The movements of his thumb became more and more hectic, and Lina saw that he was already bleeding. His face was even paler than before and a thin layer of perspiration gave his skin a waxy appearance.

Max took a few deep breaths and exhaled slowly. Lina could feel that Daniel Vogler became calmer. And it wasn’t just him: only after slowly opening her fists did she realize that they had been clenched.

“You wanted to take revenge on Philip Birkner, didn’t you?” Max said at last. “For what he’d done to you . . . and your friend.”

“Just as you took revenge on Julia Munz,” Lina added.

“I didn’t have anything to do with Julia’s death,” Vogler replied.

“But with Philip Birkner’s death . . .” Max pressed.

Daniel Vogler said nothing.

“Is that why you applied to Inoware, to take revenge?”

No response.

“Did Philip Birkner hire you without hesitation? I mean, he must have guessed that you weren’t necessarily his friend.”

A shrug. “He just hired me.”

“And why did he never suspect it was you who manipulated the software for Wesseling & Kröger? That would’ve been more obvious than accusing your colleague, Frank Jensen.”