The Ice Queen: A Novel (26 page)

The agent heard the sarcasm in her voice and gave her a dark look. He pulled a BlackBerry out of his sports jacket, tapped on it for a moment, and then jotted down the name and address of the owner on the back of a business card. Pia put it in her pocket and looked around the inner courtyard. The property was bigger than it looked at first glance, and the back abutted the spa park. The sagging fence was a poor way to keep trespassers out. A uniformed colleague stood in front of the back door. Pia nodded to him and entered the building after getting rid of the real estate agent. The house looked no better inside than it did on the outside.

“Hello, Ms. Kirchhoff.” The ME, whom Pia knew from other crime scenes, was packing his things. “At first glance, it looks like an inadvertent suicide. He probably has half a pharmacy inside him and at least one bottle of vodka.”

He motioned behind him.

“Thanks.” Pia went past him and said hello to the beat cops who were present. The room with the worn floor planks was pretty dark because of the shuttered windows—and completely empty. It smelled of urine, vomit, and decay. Pia felt the nausea start to rise at the sight of the dead man. He was sitting on the floor, leaning against the wall, and surrounded by bluebottle flies. His eyes and mouth were wide open. A whitish substance covered his chin and had dripped onto his shirt and dried, probably vomit. He was wearing dirty tennis socks, a blood-flecked white shirt, and black jeans. His shoes—brand-new, expensive-looking leather shoes—stood next to him. Thanks to the real estate agent, the body had been discovered before passersby could notice the stench of decay; otherwise, the time of death could have been determined only with the help of an entomologist. Pia’s eyes swept across an impressive number of empty beer and vodka bottles lying next to the body. Beside them were an open backpack, medication packages, and a stack of banknotes. Something in this picture bothered her.

“How long has he been dead?” she asked, pulling on latex gloves.

“Rough estimate, about twenty-four hours,” said the doctor. Pia calculated backward. If that was right, Watkowiak could easily have committed the murder of Anita Frings. Her colleagues from the evidence team came in, said hello to Pia, and waited for instructions.

“Incidentally, the blood on his shirt may not be his own,” said the doctor behind her. “He has no external injuries on his body, as far as I can tell at the moment.”

Pia nodded and tried to comprehend what had happened here. Sometime yesterday afternoon, Watkowiak had broken into the house, loaded down with a backpack, seven bottles of beer, three bottles of vodka, and a shopping bag full of medications. He had sat down on the floor, guzzled enormous quantities of liquor, and then took pills on top of it. As the effect of the alcohol and the antidepressants came on, he’d lost consciousness. But why were his eyes open? Why was he sitting upright against the wall instead of tipping over sideways?

She asked her colleagues to bring in more lights, then went through the other rooms in the house. On the second floor, she found signs that one room and the adjoining bathroom had been used occasionally. A mattress with dirty sheets lay on the floor in the corner, and there was a worn couch and a low table, even a small TV and refrigerator. Articles of clothing were hung over a chair, and in the bathroom were personal hygiene items and a few hand towels. On the ground floor, however, everything was covered with several years’ worth of dust. Why had Watkowiak sat down on the bare floor to drink and not on the couch upstairs? Suddenly, Pia realized what had seemed so odd to her: The floor of the room in which Watkowiak’s corpse lay was clean as a whistle! Watkowiak had hardly swept the floor himself before he doped himself up. When she returned to the room where they’d found the body, she saw a petite red-haired woman looking around curiously. In her elegant white linen suit and high-heeled pumps, she looked very out of place.

“Might I ask who you are and what you’re looking for here?” Pia asked sternly. “This is a crime scene.”

She didn’t need any bystanders interfering with their work.

“I can certainly see that,” replied the woman. “My name is Nicola Engel. I’m Chief Commissioner Nierhoff’s successor.”

Pia stared at her in astonishment. Nobody had told her about Nierhoff’s successor.

“I see,” she said a little more gruffly than was usually her style. “And why are you here? Just to tell me that?”

“No, to support you in your work.” The red-haired woman gave her a charming smile. “I happened to hear that you were holding down the fort alone. And since at the moment I have nothing better to do, I thought I’d drop by and have a look.”

“Could you show me some ID?” Pia was suspicious. She asked herself whether Bodenstein knew about a successor to the chief, or whether this was all some sort of crass trick by a daring reporter to get a look at a corpse. The woman’s smile remained charming. She reached into her handbag and presented Pia with a police ID. “Commissioner Dr. Nicola Engel,” Pia read. “Aschaffenburg Police Headquarters.”

“All right, if you’d like to take a look around, be my guest.” Pia handed her back the ID and forced a smile. “Oh, yes, I’m Pia Kirchhoff from K-11 at the Hofheim station. We’ve had a few tough days, so please excuse me for not being more polite.”

“No problem.” Dr. Engel was still smiling. “Please go back to what you were doing.”

Pia nodded and turned back to the dead body. The photographer had taken pictures from every angle, also of the bottles, the shoes, and the backpack. The evidence techs began to bag up everything that might be of interest. Pia asked a colleague to turn the body over on its side. That proved to be rather difficult, because rigor mortis had already set in, but they managed it at last. Pia squatted down next to the body and inspected the back, backside, and palms of the dead man. All covered with dirt. That could only mean that somebody had cleaned the room
after
Watkowiak had been deposited there. It also meant that she might not be looking at a successful suicide. It might be murder. She didn’t mention her suspicion to Dr. Engel. Instead, she searched the contents of the backpack, which seemed to confirm Nierhoff’s theory of Watkowiak as a murderer. She found a knife with a hooked blade and a pistol. Were these the weapons used to kill Monika Krämer and the three old people? Pia rummaged further and found a gold chain with an old-fashioned medallion, a collection of silver coins, and a massive gold bangle. These valuables might have belonged to Anita Frings.

“Three thousand four hundred sixty euros,” Dr. Engel announced, after counting the money. She slipped the bills inside a plastic bag that an officer handed to her. “What’s that?”

“Looks like the knife used to kill Monika Krämer,” Pia replied somberly. “And this might be the weapon used to shoot the three other victims. It’s a Luger oh eight.”

“Then this man could be the murderer you were searching for.”

“It looks that way at least.” Pia frowned as she pondered the scene.

“Do you have doubts?” asked Engel. She had put aside her amiable smile and seemed attentive and concentrated. “Why?”

“Because it seems too easy,” said Pia. “And because something is fishy here.”

*   *   *

Pia considered whether she ought to disturb her boss at his family celebration, then decided to give him a call. She didn’t feel able to make polite small talk, so when Bodenstein’s son picked up the phone, he passed Pia over to Oliver. She concisely told him about her visit to Elard Kaltensee, about the discovery of the body, and her doubts that Watkowiak had committed suicide.

“Where are you calling from?” he asked. Pia was afraid he was going to invite her to drop by for dinner.

“From my car,” she said. She could hear loud laughter in the background, but it grew fainter, and then a door slammed and it was quieter.

“I’ve learned a couple of interesting things from my mother-in-law,” Bodenstein told her. “She’s known Vera Kaltensee for years, since they move in the same social circles. She was also at Vera’s birthday party last Saturday, although they aren’t exactly bosom buddies. But my mother-in-law’s name is always an impressive addition to any guest list.”

Pia knew that Cosima von Bodenstein’s blood was even a bit bluer than that of her husband. Her paternal grandparents had known the last Kaiser personally, and her maternal grandfather had been an Italian prince with a claim to the throne.

“My mother-in-law had some rather negative things to say about Vera’s late husband,” Bodenstein went on. “Eugen Kaltensee made a fortune during the Third Reich supplying the Wehrmacht. Later, he was classified as a collaborator, but after 1945, he was soon back in business. He had transferred his money to a Swiss bank during the war, just as Vera’s family had done. When he died in the early eighties, Elard Kaltensee was suspected of having killed his stepfather. The investigation fizzled out and his death was later judged an accident.”

Pia shuddered involuntarily when she heard the name Elard Kaltensee.

“After an internal family dispute, Siegbert had to go to the States in 1963, where he attended a university. He didn’t return until 1973 with his wife and daughter. He is the sole managing director of KMF. During her student years, Jutta Kaltensee allegedly had a lesbian relationship, which she ended by taking up with a man who worked for her mother, of all things.”

“Have you found anything other than family gossip?” Pia asked with slight impatience. “I still have to get hold of the DA about the autopsy of Watkowiak’s body.”

“My mother-in-law didn’t particularly like Goldberg and Schneider,” Bodenstein went on, not offended. “She described Goldberg as an unpleasant, inconsiderate person. She called him a sleazy arms dealer and a pompous ass. Supposedly, he had several passports and could travel freely throughout the Eastern Bloc, even during the Cold War.”

“Then she’s in agreement with Elard Kaltensee on that score.” Pia had reached the parking lot in front of the station and turned off the engine. She rolled down the window and lit one of her emergency cigarettes. She’d already smoked twelve of them today. “By the way, I’ve traced the real Schneider. He was a pilot in the Luftwaffe and died in aerial combat in 1944. Our Herrmann Schneider actually came from East Prussia, too; his real name was Hans Kallweit.”

“Interesting.” Bodenstein didn’t seem very surprised. “My mother-in-law is firmly convinced that the four all knew one another from the old days. In later years, Vera used to call her friend Anita ‘Mia,’ and she would occasionally make remarks about folkloric events back home and indulge herself by reminiscing.”

“Someone else must have known about this,” Pia mused. “And I bet it was Elard Kaltensee. He could be our killer, because he obviously suffers a lot from not knowing his origins. Maybe he shot the three friends of his mother out of rage because they wouldn’t tell him anything.”

“That seems a bit far-fetched to me,” said Bodenstein. “Anita Frings lived in East Germany. According to my mother-in-law, she and her husband both worked for the Stasi, the Ministry for State Security. The husband held a rather important position. And contrary to the claims of the director of Taunusblick, they had a son.”

“Maybe he’s already dead,” Pia conjectured. Her cell phone vibrated. She glanced at the display: Miriam.

“I’m getting a call,” she told her boss.

“From South Africa?”

“Excuse me?” Pia was confused for a moment.

“Isn’t your zoo director in South Africa?”

“How do you know that?”

“Well, isn’t he?”

“Yes. But he’s not the one trying to reach me.” Pia wasn’t too surprised that her boss once again seemed so well informed.

“It’s my friend Miriam, calling from Poland. She’s sitting in the city archives in Wegorzewo, the former Angerburg, looking for traces of the real Goldberg and also the real Schneider. Maybe she’s found something.”

“What does your friend have to do with Goldberg?” Bodenstein asked. Pia explained the connection. Then she promised to attend the Watkowiak’s autopsy if it was going to be held the next day, and ended the conversation so she could call Miriam back.

Sunday, May 6

The ringing of the telephone next to her bed jolted Pia out of a sound sleep. It was pitch-dark and stuffy in the room. She pressed the switch on the bedside lamp and fumbled for the receiver.

“Where are you?” her ex-husband grumbled in her ear. “We’re waiting for you! You were the one who was in such a hurry for the autopsy results.”

“Henning, my God,” Pia muttered. “It’s the middle of the night.”

“It’s quarter past nine,” he informed her. “Hurry up, please.”

He hung up. Pia squinted her eyes and looked at the alarm clock. He was right. Quarter past nine. She threw off the covers, jumped up, and staggered to the window. Last night, she must have pulled down the shades inadvertently, and that’s why her bedroom was as dark as the inside of a coffin. A quick shower put some life into her, but she still felt like she’d been run over by a bus.

The DA had granted authorization for an immediate autopsy to be performed on the corpse of Robert Watkowiak, although not until Pia had more or less talked him into it. She’d argued that the medications the victim had taken, either deliberately or accidentally, would decompose and no longer be detectable if they waited too long. Henning had not been happy when Pia called, begging him to do the autopsy the next day. To top it all off, when she’d finally gotten home a little after 9:00
P.M.
, she’d discovered that her two yearlings had broken out of the paddock and were sampling the unripe apples in Elisabethenhof, the next town. After a sweaty chase, she’d managed to get the two prodigals back in the stable and then staggered into the house, totally exhausted. She’d found only a past-due container of yogurt and half a Camembert in the refrigerator. The only bright spot had been a call from Christoph before she collapsed into bed like a dead woman. And now she had overslept and might miss the start of the autopsy. One look in her dresser drawer told her that her supply of fresh underwear had dwindled to nothing, so she hurried to stuff some dirty clothes in the washing machine. No time for breakfast, and the horses would have to stay in their stalls until she came back from Frankfurt. Tough.