The Ice Queen: A Novel (41 page)

*   *   *

“I hardly drank anything,” Bodenstein said later in the car without looking at Pia. “Only a glass of wine. But I felt as though I’d had two bottles. I hardly registered what she told me. Even now I can’t recall large parts of the evening.”

He paused and rubbed his eyes.

“At some point, we were the only ones left in the place. Out in the fresh air, I felt a little better, but I had a hard time walking. We were standing by my car. The people from the restaurant were leaving and driving off. The last thing I can remember is that she kissed me and unzipped my—”

Pia hurried to interrupt. “That’s enough!” The thought of what might have occurred less than eight hours ago in this very car was terribly embarrassing.

Bodenstein’s voice sounded strained when he said, “I shouldn’t have let it happen.”

“Maybe nothing did happen,” said Pia uncomfortably. Of course she realized that her boss was only human, but she never would have believed anything like this of him. Maybe it was also his unusual candor that was confusing her. Even though they worked together on a daily basis, intimate details of their private lives had always been off-limits until now.

“That’s what Bill Clinton once claimed,” Bodenstein said in frustration. “I keep asking myself why she did it.”

“Oh, come on,” replied Pia cautiously, “you’re not exactly ugly, boss. Maybe she was just looking for an adventure.”

“No. Jutta Kaltensee doesn’t do anything without a reason. It was planned. She’s called me at least twenty times in the past few days. And yesterday, she met Cosima for lunch under a flimsy pretext.”

For the first time during their conversation, Bodenstein looked at Pia. “If I’m suspended for this, you’re going to have to lead the investigations by yourself.”

“I don’t think we’ve reached that point yet,” Pia reassured him.

“We will pretty soon.” Bodenstein ran his hands through his hair. “To be exact, as soon as Dr. Engel gets wind of it. She’s just been waiting for something like this.”

“But how would she find out about it?”

“From Jutta Kaltensee personally.”

Pia saw what he meant. Her boss had gotten it on with a woman whose family was at the center of multiple homicide investigations. If Jutta Kaltensee had acted in a calculating manner, then they definitely needed to consider that she would somehow turn this incident to her advantage.

“Listen, boss,” Pia said. “You should get a blood test. She must have put something in your wine or your food to make sure you’d let yourself be seduced.”

“How could she have done that?” Bodenstein shook his head. “I was sitting next to her the whole time.”

“Maybe she knows the restaurant owner.”

Bodenstein thought for a moment.

“You’re right. I’m sure she does. She was on a first-name basis with him and made a big fuss about being a regular there.”

“Then he could have slipped something into your glass,” said Pia with more conviction than she actually felt. “Let’s go right over and see Henning. He can take some of your blood and analyze it right away. And if he does find something, then you can use it as proof that the Kaltensee woman set a trap for you. She can’t afford a scandal that would undermine her ambitions.”

A glimmer of hope brightened Bodenstein’s weary face. He turned on the ignition.

“Okay,” he said to Pia. “You were right, by the way.”

“About what?”

“That the case would develop its own dynamic.”

*   *   *

It was 9:30 by the time the team gathered again at the station to discuss the situation. The confiscated pistol—a very well-preserved Mauser P08 S/42, made in 1938, with a serial number and purchase stamp—and the ammunition from the safe in Nowak’s office were on the way to ballistics. Hasse and Fachinger had taken over answering the phone, which, after the call for assistance from the public on the radio, was ringing off the hook. Bodenstein sent Behnke to Frankfurt to see Marleen Ritter. A patrol had reported that Ritter’s BMW was still in the parking lot in front of
Weekend
’s offices.

“Pia!” Kathrin Fachinger shouted. “Telephone for you. I’ll transfer the call to your office.”

Pia nodded and got up.

It was Miriam. “Yesterday, I visited this old man,” she began without bothering to say hello. “Write down what I tell you. This is the clincher.”

Pia grabbed a notepad and pen. When Ryszard Wielinski was twenty-two, he arrived as a forced laborer at the estate of the Zeydlitz-Lauenburg family. His short-term memory was no longer the best, but it was razor-sharp about events from more than sixty-five years ago. Vera von Zeydlitz had been at a boarding school in Switzerland, and her older brother Elard was a pilot in the Luftwaffe. During the war, neither of them visited their parents’ estate very often, but Elard had a love affair with the steward’s pretty daughter, Vicky. Their liaison produced a son in August 1942. Elard had wanted to marry Vicky, but every time the wedding date approached, he was arrested by the Gestapo—the last time in 1944. Presumably SS Sturmbahnführer Oskar Schwinderke, the son of the paymaster of the Lauenburg estate, had denounced him in order to prevent the marriage. Schwinderke’s ambitious younger sister Edda was madly in love with the young count and insanely jealous of Vicky and her close friendship with Elard’s sister. During the war, Schwinderke visited the estate often because he was a member of the Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler division and had served in the nearby Wolf’s Lair, Hitler’s eastern headquarters. In November 1944, Elard came home with a serious injury. On January 15, 1945, the official retreat order was issued, and the entire population of Doben set off on the morning of January 16 in the direction of Bartenstein. Staying behind on the estate were the old Baron von Zeydlitz-Lauenburg, his wife, the wounded Elard, his sister Vera, Vicky Endrikat with three-year-old, Heinrich, Vicky’s sick mother, her father, and her little sister Ida. They were planning to follow the others on the trek from Doben as soon as possible. In the vicinity of Mauerwald, those on the trek approached a jeep. SS Sturmbahnführer Oskar Schwinderke was at the wheel; next to him sat another SS man, whom Ryszard Wielinski had seen several times at the Lauenburg estate. In the backseat were Edda and her friend Maria, who had both been working since 1942 in a prison camp for women in Rastenburg, one as a guard, the other as secretary to the camp commander. They spoke briefly with Oskar’s father, paymaster Schwinderke and then drove on. That was the last time Wielinski saw those four people.

On the evening of the following day, the Russian army ran down those on the trek from Doben. All the men were shot; the women were raped and some of them were carried off. Wielinski survived only because the Russians had believed him when he said he was a forced laborer from Poland. Several years after the war, Wielinski returned to the region. He had often wondered about the fate of the Zeydlitz-Lauenburg and Endrikat families, because they had treated him well, and Vicky Endrikat had regularly studied German with him.

Pia thanked Miriam and tried to collect her thoughts. In the account she had read about Vera Kaltensee, it said that her entire family had perished during the escape attempt in 1945 or was listed as missing. If what the former forced laborer had reported was true, then they hadn’t left the estate at all on January 16, 1945. What had Oskar Schwinderke—who was doubtless the phony Goldberg—done there, along with his sister and his friends, so shortly before the Red Army moved in? The events of that day held the key to the murders. Was Vera really Vicky, the daughter of estate steward Endrikat? If so, was Elard Kaltensee the son of the pilot Elard? Pia took her notes with her to the conference room. Bodenstein called in Fachinger and Hasse, as well. In silence, they listened to Kirchhoff’s story.

“So Vera Kaltensee might actually be Vicky Endrikat,” Fachinger began. “The old man from Taunusblick told me that Vera had certainly come far for ‘a simple girl from East Prussia.’”

“In what context did he say that?” Pia asked. Kathrin took out her notebook and found the correct page.

She read aloud: “‘They called themselves “the Four Musketeers.” Twice a year, they would meet in Zürich, even after Anita and Vera had buried their husbands.’ When I asked him who the Four Musketeers were, he said, ‘The four old friends from before. They’d all known one another since childhood—Anita, Vera, Oskar, and Hans.’”

For a moment, no one spoke. Bodenstein and Pia looked at each other. The pieces of the puzzle were suddenly falling into place.

“‘A simple girl from East Prussia,’” said Bodenstein slowly. “Vera Kaltensee is Vicky Endrikat.”

“Back then, she saw her chance to join the aristocracy virtually overnight, after her prince left her pregnant but didn’t marry her,” Pia added. “And she pulled it off. Until today.”

“But who killed her three friends?” Ostermann asked, baffled. Bodenstein jumped up and grabbed his jacket.

“Ms. Kirchhoff is right,” he said. “Elard Kaltensee must have found out what happened back in 1945. And he isn’t finished with his campaign of revenge. We have to stop him.”

*   *   *

The two magic words
imminent danger
convinced the presiding judge to sign three arrest and search warrants within half an hour. Meanwhile, Behnke had spoken with a completely desperate Marleen Ritter. The day before around 5:45, she had phoned her husband from her office to make a date to go out to eat that evening. When she arrived home at 7:30, she found her apartment ransacked, and no trace of Ritter. He didn’t answer his cell phone, and from midnight on, it was turned off. Marleen Ritter had notified the police, but they’d told her that it was too early to file a missing person’s report; her husband was a grown man, after all, and had been gone for only six hours. In addition, Behnke reported that Elard Kaltensee’s Mercedes had been found parked in front of the departure hall at the Frankfurt airport. The passenger seat and inside of the door were covered in blood—probably Marcus Nowak’s. It was being analyzed right now in the lab.

Bodenstein and Pia drove to Mühlenhof, again accompanied by a team of officers as well as additional crime-scene techs with a ground-penetrating radar device and corpse-sniffer dogs. To their surprise, they found Siegbert and Jutta Kaltensee there, along with their lawyer, Dr. Rosenblatt. They were sitting surrounded by stacks of documents at the big table in the salon. The aroma of freshly brewed tea hung in the air.

“Where is your mother?” Bodenstein asked, skipping the usual pleasantries.

Kirchhoff discreetly looked at Jutta, but she gave no clue as to what had happened the night before. She didn’t act like a woman who would have sex with a married man in a parking lot at night, but you never could tell about people.

“I told you that she didn’t—” Siegbert Kaltensee began, but Bodenstein cut him off.

“Your mother is in great danger. We suspect that your brother, Elard, shot your mother’s friends and is now going to kill her, too.”

Siegbert Kaltensee froze.

“We also have a search warrant for the house and grounds.” Pia handed Kaltensee the document, which he mechanically passed to his lawyer.

“Why do you want to search the house?” the lawyer asked.

“We’re looking for Marcus Nowak,” replied Kirchhoff. “He disappeared from the hospital yesterday.”

She and Bodenstein had agreed to say nothing at first to the Kaltensee siblings about the arrest warrant for their mother.

“Why would Mr. Nowak be here?” Jutta Kaltensee took the warrant from the lawyer’s hand.

“Your brother’s Mercedes was found at the airport,” Pia explained. “It was full of blood. As long as we haven’t found either Marcus Nowak or your mother, we have to assume that it might be her blood.”

“Where are your mother and your brother?” Bodenstein repeated. When he got no answer, he turned to Siegbert Kaltensee.

“Your son-in-law also vanished without a trace last night.”

“But I don’t have a son-in-law anymore,” replied Kaltensee in confusion. “You must be mistaken. I really don’t understand what the point of all this is.”

Glancing out the window, Siegbert Kaltensee saw the police officers with dogs and the unit with the ground-penetrating radar trudging across the manicured lawns in a broad phalanx.

“You know very well that your daughter married Thomas Ritter ten days ago, because she is expecting a child by him.”

“Excuse me?” Siegbert Kaltensee’s face drained of color. He stood there as if thunderstruck, utterly speechless. He glanced at his sister, who looked astonished.

“I have to make a phone call,” he said suddenly, pulling out his cell phone.

“Later,” said Bodenstein, taking the phone out of his hand. “First I want to know where your mother and brother are.”

“My client has the right to make a phone call,” protested the lawyer. “What you’re doing here is an arbitrary act!”

“Keep out of this,” Bodenstein snapped. “So, what’s it going to be?”

Siegbert Kaltensee was shaking all over, and his pale moon face was gleaming with sweat.

“Let me make a phone call,” he begged in a hoarse voice. “Please.”

*   *   *

At Mühlenhof the police found no trace of Marcus Nowak, Elard, or Vera Kaltensee. Bodenstein still suspected that Elard Kaltensee had killed Nowak and hidden the body somewhere—if not here, then somewhere else. Thomas Ritter hadn’t shown up, either. Bodenstein called his mother-in-law and learned from her where the Kaltensees owned houses and apartments.

“The most probable seem to me to be the houses in Zürich and in the Ticino,” he told Pia as they drove back to the station. “We’ll ask our Swiss colleagues for their interauthority cooperation. My God, what a mess this is!”

Pia said nothing because she didn’t want to rub more salt in his wounds. If he’d listened to her, Elard Kaltensee would have long since been in custody and Nowak might still be alive. Her theory of events was as follows: Elard had had the trunk with the diaries and the Luger 08 brought to him. Since he was not a man to make quick decisions and it might have taken him a while to grasp the importance of the diaries, he had stalled for months before taking action. He had shot Goldberg, Schneider, and Anita Frings with the gun from the trunk because they wouldn’t tell him anything about his past. January 16, 1945, was the day of the trek from Doben, the day on which something drastic had happened. And Elard Kaltensee might have remembered some of it, if only dimly, because at the time he was not one and a half, but already two and a half years old. And Marcus Nowak, who knew about the three murders or had even helped with them, had to disappear because he could be dangerous to Elard Kaltensee.