The Ice Queen: A Novel (32 page)

Bodenstein nodded appreciatively. Now Pia told everyone what she had learned half an hour ago from Christina Nowak.

“What was supposed to be in this chest?” asked Ostermann.

“I don’t know. But at any rate, her husband is much better friends with Professor Kaltensee than he would have us believe. Kaltensee and a man named Dr. Ritter, who used to work for Vera Kaltensee, were in Nowak’s office several times after the incident at the mill.”

Pia took a deep breath.

“And here’s the kicker. On Friday at about the time Watkowiak died just before noon, Nowak was at the building in Königstein where we found Watkowiak’s body. He met a dark-haired woman there and later drove off with her. I heard this from his wife, who happened to see him.”

There was silence in the room. With that, Marcus Nowak moved back up the list of prime suspects to a much higher position. Who was the dark-haired woman? What had Nowak been doing at the building? Could he be Watkowiak’s killer? New riddles and inconsistencies emerged with each new development.

“We’ll ask Vera Kaltensee about the chest,” Bodenstein said at last. “But first we have to talk to this Dr. Ritter. He seems to know a lot. Ostermann, find out where the man lives. Hasse and Fachinger, continue following up on Mrs. Frings’s murder. Tomorrow, go and interview more residents of Taunusblick, also the staff, the gardeners, the deliverymen. Somebody must have seen how the old lady was taken out of the building.”

“It’ll take the two of us weeks,” Andreas Hasse complained. “There are over three hundred names on the list, and so far we’ve talked to only fifty-six people.”

“I’ll make sure you get some help.” Bodenstein made a note and looked around the table. “Frank, tomorrow you get to work on the neighbors of Goldberg and Schneider one more time. Show them Nowak’s company logo; you can probably print it from their Web site. Then go to the sports club in Fischbach and ask if anybody saw him there the night of April thirtieth.”

Behnke nodded.

“That wraps it up for now. We’ll meet tomorrow afternoon at the same time. Oh, Ms. Kirchhoff. The two of us will go and see Nowak again.”

Pia nodded. Amid the scraping of chair legs on the linoleum floor, the meeting adjourned.

“And what have you planned for me, Oliver?” Pia heard Nicola Engel ask on their way out. The use of his first name surprised her, so she stopped in the hall behind the open door and pricked up her ears.

“What the heck are you doing here anyway?” Bodenstein’s muted voice sounded angry. “What’s the point of this stunt? I told you that I didn’t want any disruptions while my team is working on these investigations.”

“I’m interested in the case.”

“That’s a laugh. You’re just looking for a chance to catch me making a mistake. I know that’s what you’re up to.”

Pia held her breath. What was all this about? “You think you’re more important than you are,” snapped Engel in a condescending tone. “Why don’t you just tell me to go to hell and to stay out of the investigations?”

Tensely, Pia waited for Bodenstein’s reply. Unfortunately, a couple of colleagues came down the hall, talking loudly, and the door to the conference room closed from the inside.

“Shit,” Pia muttered. She wanted to hear more, and resolved to ask Bodenstein quite casually how he happened to know Nicola Engel.

Tuesday, May 8

There were no security men to be seen when Bodenstein and Kirchhoff showed up at Mühlenhof early in the morning. The big gate stood wide open.

“I guess they’re not worried anymore,” said Pia. “Now that Watkowiak is dead and Nowak’s in the hospital.”

Bodenstein nodded absentmindedly. He hadn’t said a word during the drive over. A wiry woman with a practical short haircut opened the door and informed them that none of the Kaltensees was at home. From one second to the next, Bodenstein seemed transformed. He put on his most charming smile and asked the woman whether she had a couple of minutes to answer a few questions. She did, and the conversation lasted much more than a few minutes. Pia was familiar with this tactic, and in such instances, she let her boss do all the talking. Even Anja Moormann couldn’t resist his concerted charm offensive. She was the wife of Vera Kaltensee’s factotum and had spent more than fifteen years in the service of “the mistress of the house,” as she put it. This outmoded term elicited an amused smile from Pia. The Moormanns lived in a small house on the extensive grounds and enjoyed regular visits from their two grown sons and their families.

“Do you happen to know Mr. Nowak, too?” Bodenstein asked.

“Yes, of course.” Anja Moormann nodded eagerly. Her skintight white T-shirt clearly showed her tiny breasts, and her freckled skin was taut across her bony collarbones. Pia guessed her age to be somewhere between forty and fifty.

“I always cooked for him and his people when they were working here. Mr. Nowak is a very nice man. And so good-looking.” She emitted a giggle that did nothing for her appearance. Her upper lip seemed a bit too short, or maybe her front teeth were too big. She reminded Pia of a breathless bunny. “To this day, I can’t understand why the mistress was so unfair to him.”

Anja Moormann might not be the brightest bulb in the chandelier, but she was curious and talkative. Pia was convinced that not much happened at Mühlenhof without her knowing about it.

“Do you remember the day the accident happened?” she asked, trying to decide at the same time what the housekeeper’s regional accent might be. Was she from Swabia? Saxony? The Saar?

“Oh yes. The professor and Mr. Nowak were standing in the courtyard in front of the mill, looking at some blueprints. I had just brought them some coffee, when the mistress and Dr. Ritter arrived. My husband had picked them up at the airport.” Anja’s memory was impeccable, and she was obviously enjoying being in the spotlight, since life had otherwise consigned her to the role of an extra. “The mistress jumped out of the car and flew into a rage when she saw the people in the mill. Mr. Nowak tried to hold her back, but she shoved him away and dashed straight inside and up the stairs. The new clay floor on the second level was still quite moist, and she crashed right through the floor, screaming at the top of her lungs.”

“What was she looking for inside the mill?” asked Pia.

“It was about something in the attic,” replied Anja Moormann. “At any rate, there was a lot of yelling, but Mr. Nowak just stood there, saying nothing. The mistress then dragged herself to the workshop, even though her arm was broken.”

“Why to the workshop?” Pia interjected when Anja stopped for air. “What was in the attic?”

“Oh God, tons of old junk. The mistress never threw anything away. There were six trunks, stored there, all dusty and full of cobwebs. Nowak’s people had brought everything, along with those steamer trunks, down to the workshop before they tore out the floor in the mill.”

Anja Moormann crossed her arms, pensively pressing her thumbs into her impressive biceps.

“There was a trunk missing,” she went on. “The mistress and her family were shouting at one another, and when Ritter got involved, that’s when the mistress exploded. I can’t repeat all the things they were yelling.”

Anja shook her head at the memory.

“When the ambulance arrived, the mistress screamed that if the trunk wasn’t back at the estate within twenty-four hours, then Ritter could look for another job.”

“But what did he have to do with it?” Bodenstein asked. “He’d been abroad with the mis—with Mrs. Kaltensee, hadn’t he?”

“That’s right.” Anja shrugged. “But somebody’s head had to roll. She could hardly throw out the professor. So poor Nowak and Ritter had to take the blame. After eighteen years! She chased him off the estate in disgrace. Now he lives in a shabby studio apartment and doesn’t even have a car. And all because of a dusty old steamer trunk!”

A vague memory suddenly stirred in Pia’s mind, but she couldn’t recall what it was about.

“Where are the trunks now?” she wanted to know.

“Still in the workshop.”

“Could we look at them?”

Anja thought for a moment, then came to the conclusion that it didn’t matter if she showed the trunks to the police. Bodenstein and Kirchhoff followed her around the house to the low farm buildings. The workshop had been meticulously cleaned up. On the walls above wooden workbenches hung a multitude of tools, whose outlines had been carefully drawn with black marker. Anja opened a door.

“There they are,” she said. Bodenstein and Pia entered the adjoining room, a former cold-storage space, judging by the tiled walls and the pipe channel running along the ceiling. Five dusty steamer trunks stood in a row. All at once, it dawned on Pia where the sixth one was. Anja chattered on cheerfully, telling them about her last encounter with Marcus Nowak. Shortly before Christmas, he’d appeared at Mühlenhof, ostensibly to deliver a present. After he used this pretext to gain entry into the house, he headed straight for the great salon, where the mistress and her friends were holding their monthly ‘homeland evening.’”

“Homeland evening?” Bodenstein asked.

“Yes.” Anja Moormann nodded eagerly. “Once a month they met, Goldberg, Schneider, Frings, and the mistress. If the professor was away, they would meet here; otherwise, they met at Schneider’s place.”

Pia glanced at Bodenstein. That was certainly informative. But at the moment, they were interested in Nowak.

“I see. And what happened then?”

“Ah yes. Well.” The housekeeper stopped in the middle of the workshop and scratched her head. “Mr. Nowak accused the mistress of owing him money. He said it very politely—I heard it myself—but the mistress laughed at him and gave him an earful, like—”

She broke off mid-sentence. Around the corner of the house glided the black Maybach limousine. The tires crunched on the newly raked gravel as the heavy vehicle drove right past them and stopped a few yards farther on. Pia thought she could make out someone sitting in the backseat behind the tinted windows, but the horse-faced Moormann, today in his proper chauffeur’s uniform, got out alone, locked the car with the remote, and came over to them.

“The mistress is unfortunately still indisposed,” he said, but Pia was sure that he was lying. She noticed the brief glance he exchanged with his wife. How must it feel to be a servant of the rich, to lie for them and keep so many secrets? Did the Moormanns hate their boss? After all, Anja hadn’t displayed much loyalty in the way she had behaved.

“Then please give her my heartfelt greetings,” said Bodenstein. “I’ll call again tomorrow.”

Moormann nodded. He and his wife remained standing in front of the door to the workshop and watched Bodenstein and Pia go.

“I know he’s lying,” Pia said quietly to her boss.

“Yes, I think so, too,” said Bodenstein. “She’s sitting in the car.”

“Let’s go open the door,” Pia suggested. “Then she’ll make a fool of herself.”

Bodenstein shook his head.

“No,” he said. “She’s not going anywhere. Let her think we’re a little dim-witted.”

*   *   *

Dr. Thomas Ritter had proposed the Café Siesmayer in the Frankfurt Palmengarten as the site for their meeting, and Bodenstein assumed that he was ashamed of his apartment. Vera Kaltensee’s former assistant was already seated at one of the tables in the smoking section of the café when they came in. He stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray and jumped up as Bodenstein headed directly toward him. Pia guessed he was in his mid-forties. With angular, slightly asymmetrical facial features, a prominent nose, deep-set blue eyes, and thick, prematurely gray hair, he was not ugly, but not conventionally handsome, either. Yet his face had something that might cause a woman to take a second look. He looked Pia up and down briefly, seemed to find her uninteresting, and turned to Bodenstein.

“Would you rather sit at a nonsmoking table?” he asked.

“No, this is fine.” Bodenstein took a seat on the leather banquette and got straight to the point.

“Five members of your former employer’s social circle have been murdered,” he said. “In the course of the investigations, your name has come up several times. What can you tell us about the Kaltensee family?”

“Who do you want to know about?” Ritter raised his eyebrows and lit another cigarette. There were three butts in the ashtray already. “I was Vera Kaltensee’s personal assistant for eighteen years. So naturally I know a great deal about her and her family.”

The waitress arrived at the table, handed out menus, and had eyes only for Ritter. Bodenstein ordered a coffee, Pia a Diet Coke.

“Another latte macchiato?” the young woman asked. Ritter nodded casually and cast a quick glance at Pia, as if wanting to make sure she’d noticed what effect he had on the opposite sex.

Stupid fool, she thought, giving him a smile.

“What led to the disagreement between you and Dr. Kaltensee?” Bodenstein asked.

“There was no disagreement,” Ritter insisted. “But after eighteen years, even the most interesting job eventually loses its appeal. I simply wanted to do something else.”

“I see.” Bodenstein acted as if he believed the man. “What line of work are you in now, if I may ask?”

“You may.” Ritter smiled and crossed his arms. “I’m the editor of a weekly lifestyle magazine, and I write books, as well.”

“Oh, is that so? I’ve never met a real writer before.” Pia gave him an admiring look, which he registered with unmistakable satisfaction. “What sort of things do you write?”

“Novels, mainly,” he replied vaguely. He had crossed his legs and tried in vain to give an impression of nonchalance. His eyes kept straying to his cell phone, which was lying next to the ashtray on the table.

“We’ve heard that your parting with Mrs. Kaltensee was not quite as amicable as you want us to believe,” Bodenstein said. “Why, exactly, were you let go after the accident at the mill?”

Ritter didn’t reply. His Adam’s apple twitched up and down. Did he honestly think the police were so clueless?

“In the dispute that led to your termination without notice, apparently a trunk with unknown contents was involved. What can you tell us about that?”