Dead Woods (7 page)

Lina only had to think for a moment. “His food arrived shortly before the band began to play, around a quarter to eight. That means he died between a quarter to twelve and a quarter to one.” She cleared her throat. “Did the unknown woman from the Waldschänke come forward?”

Hanno shook his head and Sebastian shrugged. No response, even though local television and newspapers had reported about the case exhaustively since the previous night.

“She either didn’t hear about it or she’s the one who did it,” concluded Sebastian.

“You mean the woman from the joint could have beaten Birkner to death?” Hanno said, looking interested.

“Why not? Maybe he gave her the brush-off once and she was out for revenge. She throws herself at him at the concert, lures him into the woods, kicks him in the balls, and then hits him—first with a club and then with something harder.” Sebastian looked at Lina with a sneer. “I hear there are women like that, who greatly dislike it if one doesn’t pay them sufficient attention.”

“Apparently there’re also women who successfully foil rapists,” Lina said without avoiding Sebastian’s gaze. Everyone present had seen Sebastian hit on Lina two years ago, when she first joined the team. He only stopped when Lina tore him to pieces at a self-defense course they both had to attend. He was limping for three days afterward. Ever since, he had been her dogged enemy.

Before Sebastian could respond, Max said quietly, “But how does that account for the multiple tracks? And don’t forget, the woman had a lot to drink, too.”

Sebastian was about to say something, but Hanno interrupted. “Max, what about Tanja Fischer?”

Shaking his head, Max said, “Unable to reach her, by phone or in person. I went to her apartment again this morning—talked to a neighbor. She said that Frau Fischer is often gone for several days. Business trips, most likely.” Max scanned his notes. “She describes Tanja Fischer as slender and of medium height, early to midthirties, wears glasses.”

“Hm,” responded Hanno. “That would fit the description of the woman in the Waldschänke, no?” he asked Lina.

“Yes, but it’s also true for approximately thirty percent of Hamburg’s women,” she replied.

Hanno sighed. “We’ll have to keep looking. Sebastian, what’s the news from the subway stations?”

“We just received the tapes from the surveillance cameras,” Sebastian said. One could hear that he was still upset. “I’ll look at them right away.”

“Good.” Hanno looked at Max and Lina. “And what about this Jensen? Why did you bring him in? Did he confess?”

“Well, I wouldn’t go that far, but he can’t remember what he was doing Thursday night. And he accused Philip Birkner of ruining him.” Max summarized what had happened at Jensen’s house. After hesitating a moment, he told them about Jensen’s attempted escape.

Hanno frowned. “So you left a suspect unattended?”

“Hanno, the man had a tremendous hangover and could hardly keep his eyes open. And the bathroom was on the second floor.” Max drew a deep breath. “I simply wanted to give him a chance to pull himself together before we brought him in.”

Hanno shook his head. “You are way too soft for this job,” he said, and it was only partly a joke.

“Better too soft than too hard,” Max said quietly.

A short time later, Max and Lina sat facing the suspect in one of the interrogation rooms. Jensen was wearing the shirt, pants, and jacket. Max had lent him a pair of his socks. He always kept an extra pair in his desk drawer. Jensen now resembled a regular human being and held on to the coffee cup that Lina had handed him. In front of him on the table was a plate with a roll that was sliced in half. He was eyeing it as if he didn’t know what it was. When he reached for the first half, bit off a little bit, and slowly started to chew, Max got up and turned on the light. It had started to rain and the interrogation rooms faced north.

He switched on the tape recorder and said his and Lina’s names and the date.

“Herr Jensen, we’re questioning you today as a witness in the murder case of Philip Birkner. I hereby inform you that you don’t have to say anything that might incriminate you. Are you going to use your right to refuse giving evidence?”

Jensen shook his head.

“Herr Jensen, please speak into the microphone. We cannot record gestures.” Max sounded relaxed and polite as always.

“No, I have nothing to hide,” he responded.

“Did you know Philip Birkner?” Max slid a photo of the dead man across the table. Jensen just glanced at it briefly.

“Yes. He was once my boss.”

“When?”

“For five years, from 2004 to 2009.”

“What happened then?”

“His company Inoware had to declare bankruptcy and he had to let go of all the employees.”

“When we questioned you in your house, you said that Philip Birkner ruined your life. Do you stand by that statement?”

Jensen nodded. “Yes.”

“Please explain your assessment,” Max said, matter-of-factly.

Frank Jensen took a deep breath. “Philip Birkner hired me right after he started his business. I’m a programmer, and so was he. Initially we wrote the software together, but later he was concentrating on clients and customer acquisition. He was . . . He just knew how to wrap people around his little finger.” He continued by stating that the company grew, Philip hired more people, and orders came rolling in, and the business became larger. About a year before the bankruptcy, he landed a huge order. Wesseling & Kröger, a midsize metal processing company with more than five hundred employees and branches in India and Ireland, wanted Inoware to develop a new, customized software package for internal communication and data management. It had to be absolutely safe from outside attacks. “Of course,” Jensen explained, “there’s no such thing as absolute security. Even the best software becomes outdated in no time at all; hackers don’t sleep, you know. But that’s not something Philip told those people. He pretended there was no problem with their request at all.” Frank Jensen went on to say that he not only came up with the concept, but also did most of the programming. Finally the new software was installed and running. It ran very well. The client was enthusiastic and so was Philip Birkner. Jensen got a bonus and his salary was increased substantially after he told Birkner that headhunters were after him with offers for more lucrative employment. He let Birkner persuade him to stay with his company for the time being.

Jensen put down the empty coffee cup and rubbed his forehead. “Could I please have some water and an aspirin?” he asked. Lina got a bottle of water from the machine in the hallway and rummaged around for a tablet in her desk drawer. When she came back, Jensen had finished the second half of the roll.

“Thank you,” he said, after swallowing the pill. His eyes were no longer bloodshot, only small and tired. A lock of hair fell over his forehead and his skin was blotchy.

“So how did Philip Birkner bamboozle you?” Max finally asked, to get Jensen back on topic.

Jensen shrugged. “A hacker got in the software for Wesseling & Kröger, and Philip blamed me for that. But I hadn’t done anything wrong. I swear I had no idea who got involved. It all started after the five-year anniversary of the firm. I remember it exactly. Large reception at the Steigenberger Hotel, more than a hundred guests, enormous buffet, free cocktails . . .The president of the Chamber of Commerce said a few words. Rumor had it that Philip was going to be honored as the most successful young entrepreneur in the city.” Jensen drank some water out of the bottle. “Philip ran around in a super mood for days. Those were a beautiful few days.” He took another sip and then wiped his mouth with a hand.

“Our client’s system was hacked soon after that party. That was bad in itself since Wesseling & Kröger had paid good money to prevent exactly such a thing. But it got worse. Apparently the hacker was after the data for a new product that was about to be patented. And shortly afterward, a rival company applied for a patent on a product that was damn close to the prototype Wesseling & Kröger had developed over several years. They suffered a loss in the hundreds of millions.” He stopped and looked out the window.

Raindrops were racing down the windowpane and beyond one could see the skyline of City Nord. “My software was called the point of entry for the hacker attack. I couldn’t believe it when they told me. I knew I’d done good work. The mistake must have been made by the client. An unauthorized user or a mole for the rival company must have played around with the settings. Or the competition had found another way to get hold of the data.” He sighed. “The matter was, of course, investigated. It was established that the . . . mistake was made on our side. And I was the person responsible for the security loophole.”

“Why was the mistake not discovered earlier?” asked Lina. “With such an important order, didn’t you check the program one more time before handing it over to the client?”

Jensen slowly raised his head. “It’s not that simple. A program like that is incredibly large and consists of thousands of individual sequences. I didn’t write every single one of them myself, of course, but made use of existing modules for part of them—customizing them for the client. And Daniel Vogler, our second programmer, also looked at the source code every now and then. After all, it’s clear to everyone that mistakes can happen. But he never noticed any problem.”

“And why,” Max interjected, “do you accuse Philip Birkner of having ruined you? He was the one, after all, who had to declare bankruptcy. He could just as well have blamed you for ruining him.”

Jensen laughed bitterly. “He has. He accused me of creating the security gap on purpose.” He inhaled deeply. “But I didn’t. After all, I’m no novice and I know what’s what. I’d never have made such a stupid mistake, but Philip didn’t believe me and even reported me to the police when the patent theft became public knowledge. But I didn’t do it,” he repeated.

“Is there a way to establish that the mistake was made on purpose?” Lina asked. “I mean, everybody can make a mistake, and—”

“Sure, everybody makes mistakes,” Jensen said mockingly, “but I swear, I would’ve noticed a mistake like that. Even a first-year student would’ve noticed it. Besides, why did the rival firm hack the system exactly then? The mistake would have been detected at the next scheduled update, at the latest.” He drew another deep breath. “Someone must have manipulated the source code when the software was already installed at the customers’ site but before the first update. That left only Philip, Daniel, and me. Since it wasn’t me, there’s only Philip and Daniel.”

Max and Lina exchanged a glance. This man was quite convincing as a wrongly accused victim, but was that what he was?

“Wesseling & Kröger demanded compensation for the entire loss from Philip,” Jensen continued, “and repayment of what they had paid for the lousy software—even though it ran perfectly. Philip tried to blame me for everything, but Inoware went under nevertheless.” Frank Jensen was staring at the table in front of him without actually seeing anything. “Four months after the five-year jubilee, the business was gone. All twelve employees were out on the street. Philip was the first to get a new job.” Jensen laughed bitterly. “Philip of all people.”

All other staff members eventually found employment, but it looked bleak for Frank Jensen. The disaster was widely discussed in the industry and the name that was mentioned in the same breath with
patent theft
was Frank Jensen. It didn’t matter how loudly he protested his innocence. If it even came to a job interview, the moment Inoware was mentioned, he could hear the “click” on the other side of the table and it was over. It did not help that he was still under investigation for industrial espionage.

“Why was Philip Birkner so sure you were the one who manipulated the data?” Max asked. “Couldn’t it also have been your colleague, Daniel Vogler?”

“That’s what I tried to explain to Philip, but he said that there was no way Daniel was involved; money and a career supposedly didn’t interest him. He couldn’t be tempted. Well, I agree that Daniel is a total nerd. He gets his thrills from beautiful code, gets as excited about it as other people get when they look at a beautiful painting.” Jensen shrugged. “That would leave Philip himself.”

“But what would have been Herr Birkner’s motive?” Lina wanted to know.

Jensen looked at her. “Have you ever been in his apartment? Best location, huge rooms, designer furniture—everything top-notch. He bought it with Frau Ansmann shortly after the Wesseling & Kröger project was secured.” Laughing bitterly again, he added, “He charged them an enormous fee, but not that enormous.”

“So you suspect that he took money from a competitor of his own client to build in a security gap after the system was installed?” Lina asked.

“Why not?” Jensen said, raising his shoulders. “Maybe he relied on the insurance to pay for everything. Who knows, maybe he did the scam together with his girlfriend.” He sighed. “To be honest, I don’t know what to believe anymore.”

Max frowned. “You know Frau Ansmann?”

“Sure. Philip brought her firm in as consultants, especially for personnel questions, about a year before the bankruptcy. We all had to participate in a staff training session. The topic was ‘How to Handle Important Clients.’” Jensen shrugged. “I cannot imagine what attracted Philip to her. All right, she looks great, probably has a lot of dough, but I always thought she was an iceberg. And I also felt that she was a few sizes too large for him. You know, the way she talks and dresses . . . She definitely has style.”

Lina doodled on her notepad.

“I bet that she was the one who got him the new job.” He snorted. “I, on the other hand, got nowhere. Who wants to hire someone who writes programs that make patent theft easy as pie? My wife went back to work full-time so we could pay the bills. But it wasn’t enough. And yes, I also tried to open my own business.” His laugh grew more and more bitter. “I even got an order, once: managing the member list for the Poppenbüttel Knitting Club. A member forum, too; just enough money for one tank of gas.”

It was again silent in the small room. Lina noticed only now how stuffy it was. She got up and tilted the window open. Light rain was falling. She studied Frank Jensen while walking back to her seat. He was more alert than this morning, more awake and more angry. If his version of the story was true, he had every reason to be angry.