Nemesis: Innocence Sold (6 page)

Coughing, the man gasped for air. “Man, let me go. Have you gone insane? I’m . . .”

The rest of the sentence was lost in bright laughter. Katharina Schlegel was standing next to her with two cups of coffee. She tried twice to say something, but was laughing so hard she could only get out incoherent words.

“Would someone tell me what’s going on here?” Stephan Reimers took the coffee cups from Katharina. “Sandra?”

“I thought . . .”

The man struggled to his feet and interrupted her, grinning. “My fault, boss. Apparently my act earlier was absolutely convincing. Detective Lars Hoffman, only occasionally acting as a drug dealer or something similar. Sorry about the stupid remarks earlier, but there was someone sitting in the room next door who was supposed to hear all that. And it worked like a charm. He’s still singing like a bird. That wasn’t bad. Are you a female version of Dirk or what?”

“Dirk Richter?”

“Yes, I still haven’t gotten over how he took on three armed men. There should be a movie about that.” His gaze wandered to his desk. “Damn. I’d love to talk with you some more, but I need to finish this paperwork—if I don’t, the public prosecutor will kill me. Well, if the boss leaves her anything. Since we’ve gotten so close to each other, Sandra, we can address each other informally. I hope I’ll see you again.”

Stephan’s expression was impenetrable. “Good instincts, Sandra. I’ll be in touch.”

If that was supposed to be praise, the tone didn’t fit, and she could hardly have gotten kicked out in a more obvious fashion. She would have loved to have apologized to Lars and heard about his encounter with Dirk. But she’d spoiled her chance. She managed to smile at Katharina and then headed for the door with her head held high. She felt her colleagues looking at her back and sensed they would start talking about her as soon as she had closed the door behind her.

She carefully looked around the hall. No one in sight. Good. She slammed the palm of her hand into the wall. How on earth could she have been so idiotic as to spoil a chance like this with such careless behavior? She wouldn’t accept nervousness and lack of sleep as excuses. She had no plan B, meaning she would have to return to her shitty superior.

CHAPTER 6

Stephan was unenthused as he chewed on his steak despite the fact that there was nothing wrong with it. Normally he enjoyed his get-togethers with Dirk and Sven at the steak house, but his job was getting to him. He liked being the department head, but he could have done without the human resources aspect. He felt a trace of envy as he thought of Mark, whose team had been composed of the same people for years. This brought him to the next matter that was bothering him. Why hadn’t they heard anything from Daniel? They’d agreed he would call when he had made his decision. Stephan’s conviction that Daniel wouldn’t leave Mark’s team under any circumstances became more uncertain with each passing minute.

As if that were not enough, there was Dirk’s tense expression. He could have used Dirk’s dry humor as a distraction.

“What’s with you? You’ve taken care of the coordination issues, right? The way you’re massacring your steak, I’m afraid you’re going to come after me next,” Dirk said.

Stephan forced a smile. “No. I’ve already said the encounter couldn’t have been predicted. Everything’s all right, and apart from the paperwork, the matter’s settled. However, you haven’t heard about the continuation yet.” Stephan put his fork and knife aside and told the entertaining story of Lars’s performance as a supposed felon and what went down when Sandra discovered him loose in the office.

Sven praised Sandra with a smile. “I’d call that initiative, albeit pretty over-the-top.” He snatched a French fry from Dirk’s plate.

“Hands off. I’m still eating those. Not bad. I’d have liked to have seen Lars’s face. How did the interview go?”

“Good start, then it drifted off course. Lars and Kat worked on me subtly but obviously afterward—they’d like to have Sandra on the team. But I’m not convinced. No, most likely not.”

“What do you mean? You’re talking in riddles.”

“She has a good eye and a good feel for situations, but her heart wasn’t in it. I believe she just wants to get away from her current job and doesn’t care where she ends up. I don’t need people like that.”

Sven eyed the French fries on Dirk’s plate and grinned when Dirk nodded, rolling his eyes. “Before you starve to death, partner . . .”

“There’s a real danger of that. Britta thinks she’s going to start losing weight. You have no idea what ends up on the table at our place.”

“Then go get your own groceries, or grab your son and flee to McDonald’s. Stop whining—this is the third time today you’ve told me about that. I’m interested in what’s up with Sandra. You’re not describing the woman I know. If she works for something, then she gives 100 percent, and she’s always wanted to come to the LKA. Sven? Preferably narcotics, right?”

“Yes. Something’s gone wrong between you. But if the right chemistry isn’t there, there’s nothing you can do.” Sven had spoken with his mouth full, and his words had barely been comprehensible.

Stephan pondered Sven’s words. He had noticed how Sandra had helped his unit outside the dictates of protocol, and at first the good impression he’d had of her had been confirmed. What, then, had gone wrong?

“Where does she live, by the way? I don’t really remember her file all that clearly.”

“Ahrensburg. But quite some distance from us. She has an apartment close to Daniel. Why?” Sven asked.

“I want to resolve the matter, and I can’t ask her to come to the office again, so I need to figure out a way for us to accidentally run into each other.”

Sven had finally sent Dirk’s French fries where they were supposed to go. “Just call her and drive over to see her. It might be unusual, but it’d be appropriate here. By the way, have you heard anything from Daniel?”

“No, I still haven’t.”

His brow furrowed, Dirk emptied his glass of cola. “What a mess. I hope that doesn’t mean he’s decided in favor of sunny California. Mark’s already about to go crazy, thinking about the possibility that his team could break up. I’m glad that apart from my sometimes intolerable partner, I don’t have anything to do with HR.”

“Hey . . .”

“Calm down. When Dirk’s right, he’s right. Another topic, before I have to head back to the office: What’s up with Tannhäuser? Has he supported you in your investigation of the . . . you know.”

“The bastards who use children to get a hard-on?” Dirk said. “The appointment’s been postponed until tomorrow. His wife had to be hospitalized. Nothing serious, but he’s not at the office today.”

Sven looked at the empty plate with regret. “Damn. I think that’s all for today.”

Stephan held out a piece of garnish to Sven. “Would you like to eat this, too?”

Sven snorted and drew back. “I’ll let you know if I get to that point.”

Satisfied, Stephan laid the spurned greenery back on his plate. At least Dirk was a little more relaxed after the friendly banter.

Tired from the long flight and the time difference, Daniel pushed open the door of his half of the duplex and blinked, surprised. With a leap he was in the hall and closed the door behind him. Tom was certainly not fanatical about cleanliness, but an assault rifle lying in the hall alongside a machine pistol and boxes of ammunition was unusual and violated a few of the German authorities’ regulations. Daniel whistled softly and was surprised when no answer came. Usually when Tom went out he took the black Mercedes station wagon, and when Daniel had seen the car parked in front of the building, he had assumed Tom was home. Daniel threw his duffel bag in the corner and checked the other rooms. In the bathroom a pile of dirty clothes was on the floor, along with a bulletproof vest; the bedclothes in the bedroom were in disarray.

Completely baffled, Daniel got his laptop out of his backpack and sat down at the desk, ignoring the chaos around him. It looked like an unexpected mission had come up, but why were the guns lying in the hall? He glanced through his in-box and then logged on to the Navy’s server. Nothing revealed to him where his team was. He hesitated, unable to decide what to do. He should have contacted Mark long ago. In the beginning he had simply been angry and would have sworn that his team leader had known of Russell’s true motives and had supplied him with their mission reports. Once he had realized that this would have been completely atypical for Mark, it was already too late, and he didn’t see any sense in sending an e-mail or making a call when they’d be able to speak to each other in person only a few hours later.

No wiser than before, he closed the laptop and quickly restored order. The refrigerator was empty, and the freezer didn’t offer anything appetizing. After a brief search, Daniel found the car keys in the bedroom on the nightstand and decided to make a quick shopping run. First he would eat, then he’d sleep, and sometime after that he’d make the long-overdue call to his boss.

Daniel’s gaze swept from the meat counter to the deep freezer. If he knew when he could expect Tom to return, there’d be no reason not to heat up the grill on the terrace, but as it was, pizza was clearly the better alternative. He groaned when he saw that the freezer was practically empty. A woman, obviously irritated, was looking through the shockingly small pile in search of an acceptable kind of pizza. When he unexpectedly discovered a package of pepperoni pizza, he grabbed it, provoking a quiet curse.

“Great. I’m freezing my fingers off here, and then you come along . . .”

If she hadn’t spat the words out as she had, he might have taken pity on her. As it was, he just shrugged. “Maybe there’s another one down there somewhere.”

“I’m sure there isn’t. The absolute high point of a crappy day.” She threw a four-seasons pizza into her cart. “Looks like it’ll have to be this one,” she said and gave Daniel an angry look that categorized him somewhere between an annoying fly and a serial killer. Nevertheless, her bristling manner appealed to him.

“At least there’s pepperoni on that one, too,” he said.

“And spinach. I hate spinach.”

He could no longer suppress a grin. “So do I. Well, take a different one, then.” She gazed at the box in his hand. “Oh, no. I mean from the freezer. I found this one fair and square.”

“Fair and square? After I’d gone through all of them? Typical male logic.”

After giving him another scathing look, she stormed off toward the checkout lanes.

Daniel looked after her in amusement. He had noticed that brown-haired bundle of temperament on a number of occasions at the store. He figured she lived nearby. Maybe the next time he met her he’d have the opportunity to invite her to share a pizza. The prospect of this appealed to him, as did her glittering brown-green eyes and slim figure, which had curves in all the right places.

Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed a movement that brought his thoughts to a sudden end. Two men had also been watching the woman. One followed her down the aisle; the other was hurrying toward the entrance of the store. Coincidence? Was he reading too much into their behavior? Daniel was tired and certainly not in top form, and there could be countless innocent explanations, but he nevertheless followed the man in the aisle. With some difficulty, he carried the pizza, ingredients for a salad, and a bottle of wine to the checkout counter and dropped them onto the conveyor belt. While he paid and loaded his items into a plastic bag, the woman in the next line didn’t let him out of her sight—and she wasn’t the only one. Automatically, he stored a description of the man staring at him: gaunt, late forties, sparse gray hair, well groomed. Under his pushed-up jacket sleeve was part of a tattoo, a kind of banner.

Typical—on an occasion when he wanted to waste time, he got a cashier who performed her work in record time. Daniel was forced to study the little advertisements posted on a bulletin board in the exit area in order to let the woman and her stalker pass by. The woman was occupied with stowing her purchases in a backpack and noticed neither Daniel nor her potential pursuer. Daniel left the supermarket behind the two, keeping a safe distance. His pizza friend brought her shopping cart back to the cart corral and walked to a mountain bike. When she rode off, Daniel turned away in relief and had to grin at his overactive imagination. A strikingly loud engine caused him to turn around. A gray van bore down on the cyclist from the side. Her braking maneuver caused her to fly over the handlebars and hit the ground. The van stopped, and from the supermarket’s entrance area the other man Daniel had noticed ran toward the cyclist. Daniel sprinted that way, too, and was the first to reach her.

“Lie completely still. I’m a doctor!” he shouted to her, not letting the other man out of his sight. If this had been an attempted abduction, it had failed. Too many people had stopped and were watching what transpired. After scrutinizing Daniel, the man jumped into the passenger seat of the van, and the vehicle roared away.

“Did you get the license number?” the woman asked in an uncertain voice.

“Only the first three letters and the last digit. The plate was pretty dirty.”

Groaning, she tried to get up but remained seated and rubbed her ankle. “I told you—such a crappy day.”

“I’d agree with you there, though I don’t know what else you’ve been through today. Should I call the police?”

“No. Nothing would come of it but a meaningless report.”

For the moment he suppressed any reference to the circumstances surrounding the accident and instead felt her ankle. “Daniel Eddings. Nice to meet you, although I’d have preferred other circumstances.”

“So would I. Sandra Meinke. Are you really a doctor? Or are you still a student?”

Daniel was annoyed. He knew all too well that he looked younger than he was. His friends often made fun of him because once he’d been carded at a bar after ordering a whiskey.

“My studies are far behind me. If it would reassure you, I could quote parts of my dissertation. Are you interested in protein compounds?”

“No, thank you. I hated chemistry in school.”

She scrutinized his face, then said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to insult you.”

“You haven’t. I suspect your ankle is sprained—if you’re lucky it’s only a pulled muscle. Cycling is out, and not just because your front wheel looks pretty bent.”

With his help, she stood, adjusted her backpack, and shook her head. Her fighting spirit seemed to have dissipated, and she looked resigned. “A totally successful day.”