The Ice Queen: A Novel (28 page)

The letters blurred before his eyes, but Bodenstein forced himself to read to the end of the article. His temples were throbbing so badly that he could hardly think clearly. Who had given this distorted story to the press? He glanced up, straight into the gray eyes of Nicola Engel. She gave him a look filled with both mockery and anticipation. Had she leaked the story to the press in order to bring even more pressure to bear on him?

“I want to know how this story got into the papers!” Chief Commissioner Nierhoff accentuated each word; he was more furious than Bodenstein had ever seen him. Was he afraid of losing face in front of his successor, or of consequences from an entirely different source? He had accepted outside interference and demands for a cover-up in the Goldberg case all too willingly, never imagining that the murder would be followed by two more very similar deaths.

“I don’t know,” said Bodenstein. “You were the one who spoke to the journalists.”

Nierhoff gasped for breath.

“I told the press something altogether different,” he snarled. “And now I see that it wasn’t true. I was counting on you.”

Bodenstein cast a quick glance at Nicola Engel and wasn’t surprised to see her looking rather smug. She was probably behind the whole thing.

“You didn’t listen to me,” Bodenstein replied, looking at his boss. “I was against the press conference, but you were so anxious to see the cases cleared up.”

Nierhoff grabbed the paper. His face was red as a lobster.

“I shouldn’t have trusted you with this, Bodenstein!” he exclaimed, waving the paper in front of his face. “I’m going to call the editor and find out where they got this information. And if you or your people are behind this, Bodenstein, then get ready for disciplinary action!”

He left his successor standing there and took the paper with him. Bodenstein was shaking with rage. The newspaper article was bad enough, but he was more angry about Nierhoff’s unfair insinuation that he had gone behind his boss’s back in an attempt to ridicule him in public.

“What now?” Nicola Engel asked. Her sympathetic query seemed to Bodenstein the height of hypocrisy. For a moment, he was tempted to throw her out of his office.

“If you think you can obstruct my investigations in this way,” he told her, keeping his voice under control with an effort, “then I assure you it’s going to backfire.”

“What are you implying?” Nicola Engel said with an innocent smile.

“That you leaked this information to the press,” he said. “I recall another instance when a rash decision to notify the press resulted in blowing a colleague’s cover. And then that colleague was murdered.”

He regretted the accusation the moment he uttered it. Back then, there had been no disciplinary action, no internal investigation, not even a memo. But Nicola was taken off the case overnight, and for Bodenstein that was confirmation enough. The smile on her face turned frosty.

“Be careful what you say,” she replied softly. Bodenstein knew that he was venturing into dangerous terrain, but he was too insulted and furious to be reasonable. Besides, this case had already been tormenting him for far too long.

“I refuse to be intimidated by you, Nicola.” He looked down at her from his full height of six two. “And I won’t put up with you monitoring my colleagues without consulting me first. I know better than anyone else what you’re capable of when you have a specific goal in mind. Don’t forget how long we’ve known each other.”

Unexpectedly, she retreated. All of a sudden, he felt the balance of power tipping in his favor, and apparently she noticed it, too. She turned abruptly and left his office without another word.

*   *   *

Nowak’s grandmother got up from the plastic chair in the hospital waiting area as Pia Kirchhoff came through the door with the milk-glass panel. She looked about the same age as Vera Kaltensee—but what a difference between the well-groomed lady and this burly woman with short-clipped ice gray hair and work-worn hands that showed clear signs of arthritis. Without a doubt, Auguste Nowak had experienced a good deal in her long life.

“Let’s sit down for a moment.” Pia motioned toward a group of chairs by the window. “Thank you for waiting.”

“I can’t leave the boy alone, though,” replied the old woman. There was a worried look on her lined face. Pia asked her for a few personal details and took notes. Auguste Nowak was the one who had called the police during the night. Her bedroom faced the courtyard, where the workshop and office of her grandson’s company were located. Around two in the morning, she’d heard noises, got up, and looked out the window.

“I haven’t been sleeping very well for years,” the old woman explained. “When I looked out the window, I saw a light in Marcus’s office, and the door to the courtyard was standing open. In front of the office was a dark-colored vehicle, a van. I had a bad feeling and went outside.”

“That was a rather foolish thing to do,” Pia remarked. “Weren’t you afraid?”

The old woman made a dismissive gesture.

“I turned on the outside light from the hallway,” she went on, “and when I went out the door, they were already getting in the van. There were three of them. They drove right at me, like they wanted to run me down, and then they hit one of the concrete planters that are placed there to protect the garden fence. I tried to see the license plate number, but they didn’t have any on the van, those crooks.”

“No license plate?” Pia, who had been taking notes, looked up in surprise. The old woman shook her head.

“What sort of work does your son do?”

“He’s a contractor,” Auguste Nowak replied. “He renovates and restores old buildings. His company has an excellent reputation, and he has plenty of work. But after becoming successful, he’s not very popular anymore.”

“Why is that?” Pia asked.

“How does that saying go?” the old woman snorted contemptuously. “You have to work for envy, but pity is free.”

“Do you think that your grandson knew the men who attacked him last night?”

“No,” said Auguste Nowak bitterly, shaking her head, “I don’t think so. None of the people he knows would dare do anything like that.”

Pia nodded.

“The doctor thinks his injuries resulted from some sort of torture,” she said. “Why would anyone torture your grandson? Did he have something to hide? Had he been threatened recently?”

Auguste Nowak was listening attentively. She might be a simple woman, but she wasn’t slow on the uptake.

“I don’t know anything about that,” she said evasively.

“Then who might know? His wife?”

“I hardly think so.” She gave a bitter smile. “But you could ask her this afternoon when she gets home from work. She thinks her job is more important than her husband.”

Pia noticed the sarcasm in her voice. It wasn’t the first time she’d encountered a profoundly dysfunctional family behind a facade of normality. “And you really don’t know whether your grandson is in any kind of trouble?”

“No, I’m sorry.” The old woman shook her head regretfully. “If he were having problems with the company, he certainly would have told me.”

Pia thanked Auguste Nowak and asked her to go down to the station later for an interview. She ordered an evidence team to go to Fischbach and search the premises of Marcus Nowak’s company, and then she headed for the crime scene.

*   *   *

Marcus Nowak’s company was located on the outskirts of Fischbach, on a street blocked to public traffic, which residents liked to use as a shortcut, especially at night. When Pia arrived at the site, she found Nowak’s colleagues in a heated discussion in front of a building that apparently housed the offices.

Pia held up her ID. “Good morning. Pia Kirchhoff, Criminal Police.” The buzz of voices ceased.

“What’s going on here?” she asked. “Is there a problem?”

“You bet,” said a young man in a checked wool shirt and blue work pants. “We can’t get in, and we’re already late. The boss’s father told us that we had to wait until the police arrived.”

He nodded toward a man who was striding across the courtyard.

“Well, the police are here now.” Pia was pleased that dozens of people hadn’t trampled through the crime scene before the evidence techs could do their work. “Your boss was attacked very early this morning. He’s in the hospital and will probably be there for a while.”

That left the men speechless for a moment.

“Lemme through here!” shouted a voice, and the men instantly obeyed. “
You’re
the police?”

The man looked Pia up and down skeptically. He was big and powerfully built, with a healthy complexion and a neatly trimmed mustache under his bulbous nose. A patriarch used to being obeyed, who had a hard time accepting female authority.

“That’s right.” She showed him her ID. “And who are you?”

“Manfred Nowak. My son owns the company.”

“Who’ll be running the business while your son is on sick leave?” Pia asked. Nowak senior only shrugged.

“We know what we have to do,” the young man put in. “We just need the tools and the keys to the van.”

“Now back off just a minute,” snapped Nowak senior.

“I will not!” retorted the young man hotly. “You probably think you can finally get back at Marcus! But you have absolutely nothing to say about it!”

Nowak senior turned red. He put his hands on his hips and was already opening his mouth for a fierce comeback.

“Everybody calm down!” said Pia. “Please open the door. Then I’d like to discuss with you and your family exactly what went on here earlier today.”

Nowak senior gave her a hostile look, but he did what she asked.

“You’re coming with us,” she told the young man.

The office had been completely tossed. Document binders had been torn out of bookshelves; drawers and their contents had been dumped all over the floor; the computer monitor, printer, fax, and copier were all smashed; cabinets were standing open and had been ransacked.

“Holy shit,” the foreman exclaimed.

“Where are the keys to the vehicle?” Pia asked him. He pointed to a key box to the left of the office door, and Pia allowed him to enter the room. When he had taken all the necessary keys, she followed him down a hall and through a heavy security door into the workshop. At first glance, everything seemed to be in order in here, but the young man uttered a suppressed curse.

“What is it?” Pia asked.

“The storeroom.” The man pointed to a door that was wide open on the other side of the shop. A moment later, they were standing in the midst of a mess of tipped-over shelves and destroyed material.

“Did you mean it when you said that Manfred Nowak could finally get back at his son?” Pia asked Nowak’s foreman.

“The old man is absolutely furious with Marcus,” explained the young man with undisguised dislike. “He was really pissed that Marcus wouldn’t take over the construction company and all the debts. I can understand it. The company was broke because everybody had their fingers in the till and had no clue about bookkeeping. But Marcus is cast in a different mold than the rest of them. He’s really clever, and he knows what to do. It’s a pleasure working with him.”

“Does Mr. Nowak work with his son in the business?”

“No, he refused.” The young man snorted disparagingly. “Just like Marcus’s two older brothers. They’d rather go to the employment office.”

“Strange that nobody from the family seems to have heard anything when Marcus was attacked,” Pia said. “There must have been a hell of a racket.”

“Maybe they didn’t want to hear it.” The young man didn’t seem to think much of his boss’s family. They left the storeroom and walked back through the workshop. Suddenly, the foreman stopped short.

“How’s the boss doing, anyway?” he asked. “You just said he’d be in the hospital for a while. Is that right?”

“I’m no doctor,” replied Pia, “but as I understand it, he’s been seriously injured. He’s in the Hofheim Hospital. Will you be able to get along without him?”

“For a few days, sure.” The young man shrugged. “But Marcus has an important job coming up. He’s the only one who knows anything about it. And at the end of this week, there’s a big deadline.”

*   *   *

The behavior of Marcus Nowak’s family ranged from hostile to indifferent. No one thought of inviting Pia into the house, so the questioning took place outside the front door of the big house, which was situated right next door to the company. A stone’s throw away stood a little cottage in the middle of a neat garden. Pia was told that Nowak’s grandmother lived there. Manfred Nowak took it upon himself to answer every question that Pia asked, no matter to whom she was speaking. Unanimously, if apathetically, the others nodded to confirm each of his statements. Manfred’s wife seemed careworn and prematurely aged. She avoided all eye contact and kept her narrow lips pressed together.

Marcus Nowak’s brothers were around forty, both stout, somewhat awkward, and physically exact copies of their father. Yet they lacked his self-confidence. The older brother, who had the watery eyes of an alcoholic, also lived with his family in the big house next to the company grounds; the other brother lived two houses away. Pia now knew why they were at home at this time on a Monday morning and not at work. Neither of them admitted to noticing anything at the time of the attack; apparently, all the bedrooms faced the rear, toward the edge of the forest. Not until the ambulance and police arrived did they realize that something must have happened.

Unlike Auguste Nowak, her son immediately had several suspects in mind. Pia wrote down the names of a belligerent tavern owner and a colleague who had been fired, but she thought it would be useless to check them out. As the doctor at the hospital had remarked, the attack on Marcus Nowak was the work of professionals. Pia thanked the family for their help and went back to Nowak’s office, where her colleagues from the evidence team had begun their work. The words of Auguste Nowak popped into her head: “You have to work for envy, but pity is free.” How true.

*   *   *

When she returned to the station two hours later, Pia noticed at once that something must have happened. Her colleagues were sitting at their desks with tense expressions and hardly looked up.