Bad Wolf (9 page)

“Well then, have a good time today, sweetie,” she said, and kissed her daughter on the cheek. Louisa dutifully kissed her back and then vanished through the open door to her group, without her usual enthusiasm.

Deep in thought, Emma drove back toward Falkenstein, put the car in the garage, and decided to take a walk around the sprawling grounds and the scattered buildings that belonged to the Sonnenkinder Association. Near her in-laws’ villa, at the heart of it all, stood the administration building; it had seminar rooms, a birthing center, a nursery for the younger children, and day-care facilities for the older children whose mothers were at work during the day. A short distance away was the residence hall for mothers and children, formerly an old folks home. There were various other buildings, the vegetable garden, the workshop, housekeeping, and, at the other end of the park, the three bungalows that formed the rear boundary of the gigantic estate.

In the early morning, the air was still cool and fresh, and Emma felt the need for some exercise. She strolled along the path, which wound through the park in the shadow of ancient oaks, beeches, and cedars, through carefully mown, dazzling green lawns and blooming rhododendrons, to the administration building. She loved the luxuriance of nature, the scent that wafted from the nearby forest on warm summer evenings. Although she’d been living here for six months now, she still enjoyed the sight of all that green, taking it in with all of her senses—a refreshing treat for the eyes compared to the barren, dry landscapes in which she’d lived and worked over the past twenty years. Florian, on the other hand, found the fecundity of nature disturbing. Recently, he’d reproached his father, saying that the waste of water was downright obscene. Upset by the criticism, Josef had replied that the water for sprinkling the lawns came from rainwater cisterns.

Every conversation between Florian and his parents turned into a controversy after only a few sentences. Even the most harmless subject provoked long discussions that usually ended with him getting up and walking out.

Emma found his behavior unpleasant. She’d discovered an opinionated side of her husband that she didn’t like at all. He wouldn’t admit it to her, but she could see that he didn’t feel comfortable in his parents’ house, in his childhood world. She would have liked to know why, because she found her in-laws to be friendly, unassuming hosts who never interfered or showed up unannounced.

“Good morning!” someone called behind her, and she turned around. A bearded man with a ponytail came bicycling along the path and now stopped beside her.

“Hello, Mr. Grasser.” Emma raised her hand in greeting.

Her in-laws called Helmut Grasser the caretaker, but actually he was much more. He was a true jack-of-all-trades and always in a good mood. If her in-laws had to go somewhere, he acted as their chauffeur; he put up shelves and changed lightbulbs. He was also responsible for the maintenance of the buildings and was in charge of keeping up the park and vegetation. Along with his mother, Helga, who worked in the kitchen, he lived in the middle bungalows of the three.

“So, is the TV still working?” he asked, and his dark eyes, wreathed with laugh lines, flashed merrily.

“Oh, it’s so embarrassing.” Emma gave an awkward laugh. The day before yesterday, she had phoned Grasser and asked him to take a look at her television set, which was on the blink. It turned out she had merely pressed the wrong channel on the remote control; that’s all it was. Grasser probably thought she was a real dunce.

“Better embarrassed than a broken TV. This afternoon I want to change the faucet in the kitchen. Will around two o’clock be all right?”

“Yes, of course.” Emma nodded, pleased.

“Great. I’ll see you later, then.” Grasser smiled and set off on his bike.

Just as Emma passed the administration building and was about to turn toward the villa, Corinna Wiesner, the head of administration of Sonnenkinder, came out of the glass door, a cell phone at her ear, and walked rapidly toward her. She looked preoccupied, but when she caught sight of Emma, she smiled and ended the call.

“This party is getting on my last nerve,” she called cheerfully, putting away her phone. “Good morning. How are you? You look a little tired.”

“Good morning, Corinna,” said Emma. “Well, I didn’t get much sleep last night. We had a class reunion.”

“Oh, yes, that’s right. So? Was it fun?”

“Yes. I enjoyed it.”

Corinna was a bundle of energy and had an unshakable composure and a memory like a computer. She was never in a bad mood, even though as head of administration she had a mountain of responsibilities: She had to worry about the staff, purchasing, organization, cooperation with the social and youth authorities. And she knew every single resident in the mothers’ residence hall and every child in the shelter. Corinna always had time to lend an ear. In addition, she had four kids of her own. The youngest was two years older than Louisa. Emma was always astounded at how Corinna managed the workload, seemingly without ever resting. She and her husband, Ralf, were themselves products of the Sonnenkinder; Ralf had been a foster child of Emma’s in-laws, and Corinna had been adopted by them as an infant. They were both among Florian’s best and oldest friends.

“Well, it doesn’t look to me as though you had such a fun evening.” Corinna put her arm around Emma’s shoulders. “Hey, what’s wrong?”

“I’m a bit worried about Louisa,” Emma admitted. “She’s been acting strange for a few days now. She says she has a stomachache and seems very listless.”

“Hmm. Have you taken her to the pediatrician?”

“Florian examined her but couldn’t find anything specific.”

Corinna frowned.

“You should keep an eye on her,” she advised. “But you’re doing all right, aren’t you?”

“Well, yes … but I wish the baby would come soon. This heat is hard to take. The past few weeks have been difficult, but at least Florian is starting to feel better.”

A while ago, she had talked to Corinna about the change in Florian’s behavior, and Corinna had advised her to be patient. For a grown man, it’s never easy to return to his parents’ house, she said, and especially not for someone who had spent years in conflict areas. After all that stress, he had suddenly landed in a world of great abundance.

“Glad to hear it.” Corinna smiled. “Maybe we’ll have a chance to get together for a barbecue before the baby arrives. I haven’t seen Flori in ages, even though he lives less than half a mile away.”

Her cell phone rang, and she glanced at the display.

“Oh, excuse me, I have to take this. I’ll see you later at Josef and Renate’s. We have to go over the guest list for the reception and party.”

Bemused, Emma watched her go, noting the way she strode over to her mother’s house. Why did she say she hadn’t seen Florian in ages? Hadn’t he been over at their house just last night, having a beer with Ralf?

In a marriage like theirs, when they were so often apart and sometimes for long periods of time, trust had to take top priority. Emma trusted her husband, and jealousy was foreign to her. She never doubted his word. But suddenly, a tiny flame of mistrust flickered up inside her and settled in her mind. The suspicion that he might have lied to her aroused an oddly empty feeling in her.

Emma slowly continued on.

There had to be a simple explanation for why Corinna hadn’t seen Florian yesterday. After all, it was already very late when Florian left the house. Maybe Corinna had gone straight to bed after a hard day at work.

Yes, that certainly seemed plausible. Because why would Florian lie to her?

*   *   *

He hung up the phone and stared at the TV screen, which displayed a shot of red-and-white police crime-scene tape, grim-looking officers in front of it, assigned to keep curiosity seekers from entering the crime scene. The evidence team was still working, searching for relevant clues, but they wouldn’t find any there. Not in Eddersheim. The locks were only a mile or so downstream from here. He knew where it was.

Cut.

The Frankfurt Forensic Medicine Lab on Kennedyallee. Standing in front, a female reporter was speaking into the camera with a serious expression on her face. Dissolve to a photo of the dead girl, and he swallowed hard. So pretty, so blond, and so … dead. A tender young face with high cheekbones and full lips that would never laugh again. In the forensics lab, they had obviously gone to a lot of trouble. She didn’t really look dead—more like she was sleeping. Seconds later, she was staring out from the TV screen, her eyes almost reproachful. His heart jumped in fright before he realized that it was a facial reconstruction, a computer-generated animation, but the effect was incredibly realistic.

He reached for the remote and turned the sound back on.

“… estimated her age at around fifteen or sixteen. The girl was dressed in a denim miniskirt and yellow top with spaghetti straps, size four, from H&M. Does anyone recognize this girl? Or can you provide information on where she was living in recent days or weeks? Any police department will welcome useful tips from the public.”

He was somewhat surprised that the police were already asking the public for help so soon after the body had been found. Obviously, the cops had no idea who the girl was. They were depending on Inspector Coincidence.

Unfortunately—as he knew from the phone call he’d just received—it was fairly certain there would be no single useful tip that would lead to solving the case. Every busybody would feel obligated to call the police to claim they had seen the girl somewhere, and the cops would then have to check out hundreds of useless leads. What an absolutely senseless waste of time. A squandering of important resources!

He was about to turn off the TV and get to work, when the face of a man came on the screen. The sight gave him a start. A flood of long-suppressed emotions shot through him. He started shaking.

“You filthy pig,” he muttered, feeling the familiar helpless rage and the old bitterness rise up. His hand clenched the remote so hard that the battery lid popped off and the batteries fell out. He didn’t even notice.

“We are in the very early stages of the investigation,” said State Attorney Markus Maria Frey. “Until the results of the autopsy are in, we cannot say whether we’re dealing with an accident, a suicide, or even a murder.”

The angular chin, dark hair combed straight back, revealing the first strands of gray, the empathetic, cultivated voice and the brown eyes, which inspired confidence and seemed so friendly. But that was his trick. “Don Maria,” as he was known internally at the Frankfurt state attorney’s office, was a man with two personas: With wit and eloquence, he would turn on the charm for those who might prove useful, trying to wrap them around his little finger, but he could also be entirely different.

He had often looked into those eyes, deep into that black soul that was consumed by ambition. Frey was a ruthless power freak—arrogant and craving admiration. So it was not surprising that he’d snatched the investigation for himself. The case promised to attract huge attention, and Frey was addicted to being in the spotlight.

The cell phone rang again, and he took the call. It was his boss from the fast-food stand, and his voice was seething with anger.

“Have you even looked at the clock, you lazy bum?” Fatty squawked. “Seven o’clock means seven o’clock, and not eight or ten! You’d better be here in ten minutes or you can—”

His decision had been made for him the instant that State Attorney Frey came on the TV screen. He could always find another job like the one in the fast-food stand. Right now, something else had priority.

“Kiss my ass,” he said, interrupting the fat creep. “Find yourself some other idiot.”

Then he punched off the call.

There was a lot to do. He had to prepare himself for the arrival of the police. Sooner or later, they’d appear, ready to toss all his belongings and turn the trailer upside down. No surprise, now that Don Maria had taken over. And the man had a memory like an elephant, especially for things that affected him personally.

He knelt down and pulled a cardboard box out from under the corner bench. Carefully, he set it on the table and raised the lid. On top lay a plastic sleeve containing a photo. He took it out and looked at it reverently. How old was she when that photo was taken? Six? Seven?

Tenderly, he stroked the sweet face of the child with his thumb and finally kissed it before he stowed the photo in a drawer underneath a pile of underwear. Longing stabbed him like a knife. He took a deep breath. Then he closed the box, stuck it under his arm, and left the trailer.

*   *   *

Bodenstein and Pia left the ready room on the ground floor of the Regional Criminal Police station, which had almost overnight been converted into the headquarters of the Special Commission. It was the only large room in the building. Under the aegis of Chief Commissioner Nierhoff, it had been the site of many spectacular press conferences; Dr. Nicola Engel’s predecessor particularly enjoyed talking to the media. During the whole turbulent discussion, Pia had been trying to remember what it was she wanted to tell her boss. It was important, she knew that, but she couldn’t put her finger on it.

“Engel was fantastic today,” said Pia as they closed the security gate behind them and walked across the parking lot.

“Yep, today she was certainly in fine form,” Bodenstein confirmed.

Shortly before nine o’clock, a young, overeager representative from the Frankfurt SA’s office had made a dramatic entrance worthy of a movie. Along with two colleagues, he’d burst into the conference room, flamboyantly taken the floor, and confronted Pia in front of all the officers of the “Mermaid” Special Commission because, in his view, she had been too rash in going to the press and revealing too much information. Clearly overstepping his authority, he had even demanded that he and his office should take charge of the investigation. Before Pia could say a word, Dr. Engel had stepped in. Recalling how she put the little shit in his place with a few cool words, Pia had to smirk.

Dr. Nicola Engel was a petite woman. She seemed almost girlish in her white linen suit among all the men and uniforms, maybe even delicate, but that impression was deceptive. People were always making the fatal mistake of underestimating her, and the young SA gofer was one of those arrogant types of men who underestimated women as a matter of course. Nicola Engel might follow along with a discussion in silence, but when she finally spoke, her words would hit home with the unfailing precision of a computer-guided intercontinental ballistic missile, usually with similar annihilating effect.