Nemesis: Innocence Sold (16 page)

Daniel didn’t respond, although he could have said a few things about the Lübeck police and Berger’s dubious behavior. Rage at the superfluous games flared in him again. He had to make an effort to calmly return Berger’s gaze. Once again, the Lübeck captain seemed to see through him. “The required formalities would be the last straw for you, right? If you like, you can give me your statements later. As far as I’m concerned, you can do it by e-mail. There are enough witnesses, and thanks to your report I have an overview. Where’s Ms. Meinke? In the apartment?”

“No, here,” Sandra said, pushing past the former teacher. Although she was quite pale, she smiled at Berger and held up a pair of plastic gloves. “The crime scene’s unaltered; I just took a quick look around. There are traces of cocaine or a similar substance on the kitchen table, but otherwise there’s nothing remarkable other than a completely smashed laptop. I don’t think the technicians will be able to save anything there.”

Daniel thought of the hard drive in his jacket pocket, and the hate-filled face of their captive spoke volumes. Grinning, Daniel looked down at him. “Another round?” he said, satisfied when Reher looked away with a trace of panic. He had withheld that Pat had found something on him.

There were a number of emergency vehicles parked around the building; it was time to disappear, before the press showed up. “We’d like to accept your offer and will send you our statements by e-mail. It’s getting to be too much for me here,” Daniel said.

“Good—you do that. But we should talk in private as soon as possible.”

That sounded somewhat like a threat, thought it seemed more curious and hopeful. “We’d be happy to,” Daniel said. “But no more games. If we’re going to talk, then no more wasting time.”

Berger nodded. “You’ll hear from me.”

After the stuffy air in the old-town building, even the narrow alley, full as it was with parked police vehicles, seemed like a release. A uniformed policeman who tried to stop them apologized after looking at their LKA identification cards and held the cordon tape up for Sandra so she could pass under it.

“Once the machinery has been started up, it does work,” Sandra said. “The van belongs to the crime scene unit, and the gray one over there is from the coroner’s office. The things look the same everywhere. What did Pat pass off to you?”

“Pass off? Come on, that was a straightforward confiscation of evidentiary material. We just circumvent normal channels in order to get results quicker. A hard drive.”

“I guess this is what Stephan meant by idiosyncratic behavior I should ignore.”

“Why? Are you planning to arrest me for it?” he said.

Although he could tell Sandra was seething, she waited until they had gone around the next corner and were back on the Upper Trave. Taking a big step, she passed him, whirled around, and blocked his path. “I just wanted to know what it was. Have I criticized you or attacked you? Actually, I was going to tell you what a stroke of genius I thought your plan was, although I was so afraid for you that I couldn’t breathe. That was pretty close.”

“Sorry. I overreacted with Pat just now, too.”

“What’s wrong with you? If I’ve done something wrong, then please tell me. Is it because I didn’t fire earlier?”

Daniel had to think for a moment before he realized that Sandra was referencing how the guy had gotten past her. “No. I wouldn’t have fired, either. The guy appeared to be unarmed and was fleeing. I have no idea about German law, but I don’t fire in a situation like that.”

“So what is it?”

The blue sky and the panoramic view of the renovated old-town buildings reflected in the surface of the Upper Trave in front of them conjured up the ambience of a travel brochure but didn’t help Daniel get a grip on his mood. Looking for a distraction, he pointed to some tables and umbrellas set up on the bank. “Back there’s the Italian restaurant I mentioned earlier. Are you still hungry, or has all this crap spoiled your appetite?”

“Do you mean the sight of the body or the girl being taken hostage? Don’t forget that I’m a policewoman. I’m about to starve, but if your mood doesn’t change soon, you’ll be sitting at the next table. Or, better yet, on the other side of the Trave.”

Before Daniel could respond, a man emerged from the shadow of a building entrance with a quiet laugh. “Of course I could go on listening to you for hours, but I’m hungry, too. Is there any reason we shouldn’t eat with Maria? Otherwise you can take this bank, and we’ll take the other.” Pat laid a friendly arm around Sandra’s shoulder. “Pat O’Reilly, as you’ve no doubt already heard. Don’t let yourself get infected by Doc’s mood. We’re already familiar with it. He’s allergic to long discussions or superfluous games; they usually give him a pronounced bad mood.”

Daniel fought the temptation to tell Pat off. “Of course Maria can eat with us. She’s familiar with the case, anyway.” The Irishman’s blue eyes glittered with pleasure, and Daniel groaned inside. When the next opportunity presented itself, he would hear it over how he had failed to notice Pat’s presence. “By the way, why’d you show up earlier?”

Pat pointed to a balcony. “Because I saw you from up there and thought a little backup couldn’t hurt. I had a bad feeling.” He grinned at Sandra. “An inheritance from my Irish grandmother upon which I can usually depend. Now, for example, it’s telling me I’ll have trouble with Doc if I don’t remove my hand from your shoulder, but it’s worth it.”

Sandra laughed and nuzzled against Pat. “I’ll protect you. If necessary, I’ll just arrest him.”

“Damn it, you’ve only known each other a few minutes—you don’t have to stick to each other like barnacles,” Daniel said, feeling jealous, but his good humor returned when he saw Maria, who waved at them from their usual table. He could play at this game, too. “Keep him, Sandy. As a doctor, Maria is much too good for Pat, anyway. I’ve always said that she and I were a much better match.”

He liked the two outraged snorts he heard in response. The meal would be nice and distracting for him. There was just one more piece of unpleasant business to take care of. “Wait with the next round until I’ve brought Dirk and Sven up to speed.”

CHAPTER 16

Dirk hoped his sunglasses hid his swelling rage at least to some extent, but if he was interpreting Sven’s concerned look correctly, his partner had already seen through him.

“It sounded like Doc was in a pretty bad mood,” he said, making an evasive maneuver on the road, changing lanes to pass a slow-moving vehicle. There were still some miles of autobahn in front of them before they reached the famous arched bridge that would bring them to the island.

“That’s nothing new. Such things always cause our medical expert to grind his teeth. For him it always has to be nice and straightforward, preferably black and white.”

“Someone should explain to our California beach boy that that’s not how it works.”

“He knows that—he’s not stupid—which is probably what makes him so angry. Why are you putting yourself through this crap? I can tell you’d like to kill somebody.”

“I would, but I haven’t yet decided whether I’m going to start with Berger or Röhrich. Maybe those two apes who are inexplicably allowed to call themselves police officers.”

Dirk’s hope that his partner would be satisfied with this explanation died when Sven loosened his seat belt, turned to him, and said, “I can understand that, and I’ll spare you a lecture about self-control and so on. We could have taken care of our inquiry regarding the halfhearted missing-persons report by phone, and I don’t expect to get anything out of doing it in person. Are you expecting them to confess that they screwed up? That will never happen. Why do you want to make yourself go through confronting the parents of the boy? I don’t have the slightest desire to meet them, and I’d have expected you’d have felt similarly about that—maybe even worse.”

Ignoring the speed limit, Dirk pushed the accelerator all the way down. The Audi sped up greatly, and Dirk suppressed the thought of the unmarked cars that carried out daily radar speed checks on this stretch of road. “I’ve long ago learned to live with the possibility that I, or one of us, could get killed, though I hope we never experience that. But no one attacks my family, Sven. Whiskey has not helped me deal with my fears about Tim, but I have realized I need the good feeling of having put the people responsible out of action. Take a look at the desks in stations and detectives’ offices. Police work’s degenerating more and more into administrative tasks, and the number of cases that get solved is decreasing steadily.”

When his friend gave signs of protest, Dirk raised his hand. “Forget it. I know what you want to say. Thanks to Tannhäuser, we have a comfortable special status, and that does not apply to us. But Eric’s parents are not going to know that. I’m not sure whether it will help them . . . whether Eric’s father thinks the way I do at all, but I want to give him the feeling that I’ll dedicate myself to the case 100 percent, regardless of what it costs and how long it takes. We have some clues, and although I don’t have an overview yet, I know you’ll see through the chaos. This is all I have for the parents. It’s not much, but it’s better than nothing, and I’d never be able to communicate it over the phone.”

Rubbing his eyes, Sven leaned back again, and Dirk heaved a sigh of relief when he was no longer subjected to his friend’s penetrating gaze. There were a lot of advantages but also a few disadvantages to their blind understanding of each other.

Sven nodded. “You’re right. I could have thought of that myself. None of us have slept very well since the thing with Tim, and you know that I . . . But Mark . . . You and he . . .” Sven cursed.

Dirk waved a hand. “I know you’d have been there for me, too.”

“All right. At this speed, we should be there in under twenty minutes. I’ll turn on the navigation system. The route description sounds like ‘keep going straight, and turn left at the city park,’ but the devil’s in the details.”

Sven’s calculation was accurate; not fifteen minutes later, Dirk stopped the Audi in front of the central police station in Burg on Fehmarn. “
Emergency Vehicles
. That’s sure to mean us, right?” he asked, squeezing the Audi into a narrow parking space between two patrol cars.

The reception they received from their colleagues was cool, but they had expected that. After a discussion between two plainclothes officers and a brief phone call, one of them, with a forced smile, came over to them. “Please come through with me. Ms. Liebe will make time for you.”

Neither Dirk nor Sven reacted to the obvious implied reproach that they were wasting their colleagues’ time. They followed the policeman into an office in which no one was present but which deviated from the standard public-agency look due to the skilled placement of a few personal objects. Dirk looked at a paper flower with fringed ends that had obviously been cut out by a child and was stuck to the monitor with tape. He could almost see his own son concentrating and struggling with a sheet of paper and scissors. When he also discovered the pictures of two preschool-age girls on the desk, his decision was made. Discussion with Sven was superfluous. The same thoughts had occurred to his friend; he was already nodding and looking at the child’s drawing of a sailboat on the wall.

Footsteps sounded in the hall, and a few seconds later the door opened. A woman in her forties balanced a tray with a thermos and some cups and closed the door behind her with a well-aimed kick.

“Hello. Captain Angela Liebe. So now we are also getting important visitors from Hamburg because of Eric. Sit down. Do you like tea? Black, fresh brewed, not crap in a bag. You’ll have to get your own coffee; I don’t drink it anymore. What brings you to our island?”

Dirk didn’t have to force himself to smile. The woman’s direct and unceremonious manner appealed to him; the uncomfortable chair in front of the desk appealed to him less. Nevertheless, he sat down and suppressed a grin when Sven also had difficulty finding a reasonably comfortable position for his legs.

The fine wrinkles in her face indicated that she had already celebrated her fortieth birthday, but her lively blue eyes, which watched them from under strands of blond hair, and her slender figure made her seem younger.

“Black tea sounds good. Dirk Richter and my partner, Sven Klein, LKA, Hamburg.” He consciously abstained from mentioning their titles; there was no reason to bicker over authority. “We believe the case overlaps with one of ours and need your help. This is only about a few details; we have no intention of interfering in your investigation.”

“Our investigation?” Liebe blew a strand of hair away from her face. “That’d be nice. The case has been taken away from us and is now being investigated by the Oldenburg criminal investigation field office in cooperation with the Lübeck District Office of Criminal Inspection. Actually, you’re visiting the completely wrong person,” she said while she filled two cups.

Now Sven got involved. “What’s important to us is to talk to the people who are familiar with the case.” His objective statement avoided giving any impression of flattery and caused a brief smile to appear on the woman’s face.

“Man oh man, that sounds really reasonable for something coming from the LKA. What’s your case about?”

Dirk took his wallet out of his leather jacket and opened it. He held a photo of Tim out to her. The captain understood immediately. “Your son? He could be Eric’s brother.”

“A few hours prior to Eric’s disappearance, an attempt was made to kidnap him. At first we thought about a connection to my job, an act of revenge or something like that, but then we found out something entirely different could be behind it.”

Liebe blew over the edge of her cup and then cautiously sipped her tea. “Oh, boy, I don’t like that at all. You mean something like kidnapping per order? Would you care for a blond boy with brown eyes? And if it doesn’t work out with the first one, take the next one? Bad.”

The captain was fast, very fast; Dirk nodded. “That’s exactly what we mean. We already have some indications that there are connections between the two cases, but don’t yet have anything that would count as proof. That’s why we’re here.”

“What kind of connections?”

“Similar appearance of the children, same procedure used by the kidnappers—except in the case of Eric the chloroform was deadly, due to his asthma. Also, we have a coded reference to the delivery of a child with blond hair and brown eyes. This brings us to the point. If the boy’s appearance had been described in greater detail in the missing-persons report, we would have gotten involved immediately. As it was, the connection between the two cases only became obvious to us when the body was found.”

“You found the boy?” Her gaze rested on Dirk for seconds. “Reading the report already turned my stomach, and I have two girls. I wouldn’t like to know what you . . .” She jumped up so fast her desk chair rolled back and struck a cabinet. “I’ll be right back.”

When she came back, she held out a fax to him. “Press reports go out via Lübeck.”

Sven was faster. Dirk’s raised eyebrow didn’t hinder him from glancing over the page before she handed it to Dirk. “I don’t like this” was his comment on the detailed description his Fehmarn colleagues had sent out.

“I don’t either. My assistant was enraged when the first reports appeared. Then we got in touch with some reporters and editorial staff ourselves and made improvements. But something tells me you’re here because of this. You don’t look particularly surprised.” She drank the rest of her tea in one gulp and set her cup down on the table. “What’s going on in Lübeck? Why’s Hamburg getting involved?”

Dirk left it to his friend to answer. Speaking openly about their own case was one thing; their assessment of their Lübeck colleagues was another thing entirely.

Sven bought some time with a sip of tea. “That’s really good,” he said, then responded openly to her impatient look. “We’ve become involved from Hamburg because through Tim we’re directly affected; also, a colleague had already made some progress in the matter. This being the case, it made sense to push the investigation. In regard to Lübeck . . .” He shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t know our colleagues there well enough to allow myself to pass judgment. Maybe there are just some people there who are sleeping on the job; I have a good idea about some of the others.”

“All right. Let’s leave this point for the time being.” Liebe flipped a pirate-themed pencil back and forth between her fingers. “My colleague told me you’d asked about Eric’s parents. What do you want from them? They’re still on the island, but we’ve housed them in a bed-and-breakfast to protect them from the press.”

“We suspect a Lübeck photographer of having been involved in the selection of the children. The connection to Tim is proven. A colleague discovered that a picture of Eric appeared in the
Lübecker Nachrichten
. The photographer’s already worked for the newspaper a number of times. Perhaps the parents noticed him.”

“Why don’t you ask the guy directly? The parents have gone through enough.”

Sven took a deep breath. “We’re not interested in bothering the parents. We can no longer talk to the photographer. He was found murdered this morning. We’ve arrested the presumed perpetrator—or, to be precise, our colleagues in Lübeck have done so. You know how it is: right now there’s not much contact with the public prosecutor’s office, and we’re operating a bit off the official track.” Dirk suppressed a grin; probably Berger would find a less harmless explanation for their behavior. “We urgently need airtight proof; without it we have a problem.”

Silence spread among them; then the policewoman’s desk chair once again crashed against the cabinet. “All right, but something tells me you would proceed even without the consent of the public prosecutor’s office. If we can leave it at a conversation and if you will forgo an official interrogation, we can move forward.” Sven agreed. “Very good. Take your car, and follow me.”

In front of the police building, she stopped in front of Dirk’s Audi. “Regarding your parking habits:
Emergency vehicles
refers to our vehicles, not visitors. Understood?”

Dirk casually raised two fingers to his forehead. “Yes, ma’am.”

“If you continue like this, she’ll give you a ticket,” Sven warned, grinning before he dropped into the passenger seat.

“I don’t think she will. I like her, but she’s still holding something back. I hope she’ll give it to us in the end.”

“She will. If necessary you can turn on your irresistible charm.” With years of practice, Sven effortlessly avoided a jab in the ribs.

Once they had left the city, Dirk had to make an effort not to lose sight of the police car. Liebe steered the car through the narrow streets like a madwoman. When the road was too narrow for her and a tractor approaching from the opposite direction, she drove onto the dirt shoulder without slowing down.

Dirk cursed and followed her example, ignoring the rattling sounds made by the small stones that struck his Audi. “A few more missions like this and I’m going to apply for an all-terrain vehicle,” he said and repeated the maneuver to get around a combine harvester without incident. “Where are we going? What does the navigation system say?”

After examining the display, Sven laughed. “‘Off road.’ No idea where we are. Somewhere between Burg and nothing.”

Sven had been wrong: after rounding a sharp bend, they reached an idyllic village. In front of a farmhouse whose front garden was striking due to a large number of blooming plants, the captain stopped. It didn’t surprise Dirk that her way of braking resulted in a large cloud of dust. He intentionally stopped the Audi a few inches behind her trunk.

“If I have to get in there, you’ll have to back up,” she told him, smiling. “Had driver training?”

“You, too, no doubt—or is that the usual style of driving around here?” Dirk asked.

“No. I had to think.”

Sven gasped and looked at the house.

“Come on. We’ll probably find them in the garden. The Baltic is barely five hundred yards from here, but no reporters come out here, and the inhabitants stick together.” Two girls came running around the house toward them, talking at the captain. Laughing, she raised a hand. “Slow down. Talk in turns, and don’t say a word before you’ve greeted these gentlemen. And no, I’m not done with work yet, but my colleagues need to speak with Eric’s parents about something.”