The Ice Queen: A Novel (6 page)

*   *   *

“Come on, we have to drink a toast to finding each other again!” Miriam pulled Pia toward the bar and ordered two glasses of champagne.

“Since when are you back in Frankfurt?” Pia asked. “The last I heard, you were living in Warsaw. That’s what your mother told me a couple of years ago when I ran into her.”

“Paris, Oxford, Warsaw, Washington, Tel Aviv, Berlin, Frankfurt,” Miriam rattled off with a laugh. “In every city, I met the love of my life and left him again. I guess I’m just not suited for a steady relationship. But tell me about yourself. What are you doing, anyway? Job, husband, kids?”

“After three semesters of studying law, I joined the police force,” said Pia.

“You’re kidding!” Miriam’s eyes widened. “How come?”

Pia hesitated. She still found it hard to talk about, even if Christoph thought it was the only way to work through the trauma she’d endured. For almost twenty years, she hadn’t told anyone about the worst experience of her life, not even Henning. She didn’t want to keep being reminded of her weakness or fear. But Miriam was more capable of empathy than Pia had thought, and all at once she turned serious. “What happened?”

“It was the summer after I graduated,” Pia said. “I met a man in France. He was nice. It was a summer flirtation. We had fun. After vacation, it was over for me, but, unfortunately, not for him. He started following me, terrorizing me with letters and phone calls. He stalked me everywhere. And then he broke into my apartment and raped me.”

Her voice was calm, but Miriam seemed to sense how much it cost Pia to talk about the matter so calmly and with apparent nonchalance.

“Oh my God,” she said softly, taking Pia’s hand. “That’s just horrible.”

“Yes, it was.” Pia gave a wry smile. “Somehow I must have thought that as a police officer I wouldn’t be so vulnerable. Now I’m in the Kripo, the criminal police, in the homicide division.”

“So what else have you done to deal with it?” Miriam asked.

Pia understood what she meant. “Nothing.” She shrugged. Now that she’d begun talking, it seemed surprisingly easy to tell Miriam about the chapter in her life that had previously been taboo. “I never even told my husband. Somehow I thought I’d get over it soon enough.”

“And that didn’t happen.…”

“Oh yes, it did. For a while, I did pretty well. But then last year, the whole thing finally caught up with me.”

She gave Miriam the short version of the two murder cases from the previous summer, and the investigations, during which she had met Christoph and confronted her past.

“Christoph wants to persuade me to sponsor a self-help group for rape victims,” she said after a pause. “But I don’t really know if I should.”

“Of course you should! No question,” Miriam insisted. “A trauma like that could destroy a woman’s whole life. Believe me, I know what I’m talking about. When I worked in Wiesbaden at the Fritz Bauer Institute and the Center Against Expulsions, I heard about the terrible fates of women in the eastern provinces after World War Two. The things these women lived through were unspeakable. And most of them never talked about what happened to them. It destroyed them emotionally.”

Pia was watching her friend attentively. Miriam had changed a lot. There was no trace of the carefree, superficial girl from a privileged family. Twenty years was a long time.

“What sort of institute is it that you work for?” she inquired.

“It’s a center for studying and documenting the history and effect of the Holocaust, connected to the university,” Miriam explained. “I give lectures there, organize exhibitions, and so on. Pretty crazy, don’t you think? Earlier, I always thought I’d own a disco or compete in show jumping.” Miriam giggled. “Can you imagine how shocked our teachers would be if they knew we’d both turned out to be so respectable?”

“Especially since they always prophesied that someday we’d both wind up in the gutter, at the very least,” Pia said with a grin. She ordered two more glasses of champagne.

“What’s the deal with Christoph?” Miriam asked. “Is it serious?”

“I think so,” replied Pia.

“He must really be in love.” Miriam winked at her and leaned forward. “He can’t take his eyes off you.”

Pia instantly felt the butterflies in her stomach again. The champagne arrived, and they clinked glasses one more time. Pia told her about Birkenhof and her animals.

“Where are you living now?” she inquired. “Here in Frankfurt?”

Miriam nodded. “Yes. In my grandmother’s house.”

For someone who didn’t know Miriam’s family background, that would not have sounded impressive, but Pia knew better. Miriam’s grandmother Charlotte Horowitz was the grande dame of the cream of Frankfurt society. Her “house” was a magnificent old villa on a gigantic estate in the Holzhausen district, which brought tears of avarice to the eyes of every real estate speculator. A thought suddenly occurred to Pia.

“Tell me, Miri,” she said to her friend, “does the name David Josua Goldberg mean anything to you?”

Miriam gave her a puzzled look.

“Of course it does,” she said. “Jossi Goldberg is one of Oma’s oldest friends. His family has supported projects in the Jewish community in Frankfurt for decades. Why do you ask?”

“Just because,” Pia said evasively as she saw the curiosity in her friend’s eyes. “At the moment, I can’t say any more.”

“Police business?”

“Something like that. I’m sorry.”

“No biggie.” Miriam raised her glass again and smiled. “To our reunion after such a long time. I’m so happy!”

“Me, too.” Pia grinned. “If you want, come and visit me. We could go for a ride, the way we used to.”

Christoph came over to them at the cocktail table. The nonchalance with which he put his arm around Pia’s waist made her heart leap with joy. Henning had never done anything like that. He regarded tender touches in public as a “tasteless display of a primitive pride of ownership” and awkwardly avoided them. Pia didn’t share his opinion. The three of them drank another round of champagne, and then another. Pia told the story of her outing to the maternity-wear department at H&M, and they laughed so hard, they cried. It was half past midnight before she knew it, and Pia said she hadn’t had such a relaxing and fun time in ages. Henning would have wanted to go home by ten o’clock, or else return to the institute. Or he would have become engrossed in some important conversation in a corner of the room, having automatically excluded her. This time, it was different. In Pia’s secret rating system, Christoph had scored ten out of ten in the category of “going out.”

They were still laughing when they left the zoo reception hall and made their way back to the car, walking hand in hand. Pia knew that she couldn’t be happier than she was at that moment.

*   *   *

Bodenstein gave a start when Cosima appeared in the doorway to his workroom.

“Hi,” he said. “So, how did your discussion go?”

Cosima came closer and bent down. “Extremely constructive.” She smiled and kissed him on the cheek. “Don’t worry, I don’t personally intend to go climbing through the jungle. But I did manage to land Wilfried Dechent as expedition leader.”

“I’ve been asking myself whether you planned to take Sophia along or whether I had to apply for a leave of absence,” he said, concealing his relief. “What time is it anyway?”

“Twelve-thirty.” She leaned forward and looked at the screen of his laptop. “What are you doing?”

“I’m looking for information on the man who was shot.”

“And?” she asked. “Did you find anything?”

“Not a lot.” Oliver gave her a brief rundown of what he’d found out about Goldberg. He liked talking to Cosima. She had a sharp mind and enough distance from his cases to help him make the leaps when he could no longer see the forest for the trees during prolonged investigations. When he told her about the result of the autopsy, her eyes opened wide in astonishment.”

“I don’t believe it,” she said emphatically. “That could never, ever be true.”

“I saw it with my own eyes,” he replied. “And Kirchhoff has never been wrong. At first sight, there was nothing to indicate that Goldberg might have had a sinister past. But in over sixty years, he could have hushed up a lot of things. His appointment book told me nothing, a few first names and abbreviations, that’s it. But under today’s date, there was a name and a number.”

He yawned and rubbed the back of his neck. “Vera and the number eighty-five. Sounds like some sort of password. My Hotmail password, for instance, is Cosi—”

“Vera eight-five?” Cosima interrupted him and straightened up. “This morning, something dawned on me when you mentioned Goldberg’s name.” She tapped the side of her nose and frowned.

“Oh yeah? What was it?”

“Vera. Vera Kaltensee. Today she celebrated her eighty-fifth birthday at Quentin and Marie-Louise’s place. Rosalie told me about it. Even my mother was invited.”

Oliver felt his fatigue abruptly vanish.
Vera 85.
Vera Kaltensee, eighty-fifth birthday. So that was the explanation for the cryptic note in the dead man’s diary. Naturally, he knew who Vera Kaltensee was. She had received numerous honors and awards for her philanthropic efforts, but also for her magnanimous social and cultural involvement. But what did this woman of irreproachable reputation have to do with a former SS officer? If connected to this man, her name would lend even greater shock value to the case, which was something that Bodenstein would have preferred to avoid.

“Kirchhoff must have made a mistake,” Cosima said straight out. “Vera would never in her life be friends with a former Nazi, especially since she lost everything because of the Nazis: her family, her homeland, the castle in East Prussia…”

“Maybe she didn’t know,” Oliver responded. “Goldberg had built up the perfect cover story. If someone hadn’t shot him, and if he hadn’t landed on Kirchhoff’s autopsy table, he would have taken his secret to the grave.”

Cosima was chewing pensively on her lower lip. “My God, this is really awful!”

“Above all, it’s really awful for my career, as Nierhoff let me know today in no uncertain terms,” said Oliver with a hint of sarcasm.

“What do you mean?”

He repeated what Nierhoff had said in his office.

Cosima raised her eyebrows in astonishment. “I had no idea that he wanted to leave Hofheim.”

“He does, and there’ve been a lot of rumors going around the station about it.” Oliver turned off the desk lamp. “Nierhoff is probably afraid of diplomatic complications. With a case like this, he isn’t going to win any kudos, and he knows it.”

“But he can’t just prohibit the investigations. That’s obstruction of justice!”

“No, it’s not,” Oliver said, putting his arm around Cosima’s shoulder. “It’s just politics. But the hell with it. Let’s go to bed; tomorrow’s another day. Maybe our little princess will let us get some sleep.”

Sunday, April 29

Chief Commissioner Nierhoff was worried—extremely so. Early Sunday morning, he got an unpleasant call from a high-ranking official in the National Criminal Police, who had given him strict orders to cease all investigations in the Goldberg case, effective immediately. Nierhoff wasn’t keen on bringing himself and his office under the spotlight of criticism because of political intrigues that might easily arise from the murder case, but he was also not happy about the way they had treated him. He called Bodenstein into his office and told the superintendent of the investigative team in confidence what had happened.

“Salomon Goldberg arrived this morning on the first flight from New York,” he said. “He demanded the immediate surrender of his father’s mortal remains.”

“From you?” Bodenstein asked, astounded.

“No.” Nierhoff shook his head indignantly. “Goldberg brought backup: two people from the CIA and the U.S. general consul all showed up at the office of the President of police. Of course he had no idea what it was all about, so he contacted the Interior Ministry and the NCP.”

The interior minister had dealt with the matter personally. Everyone convened at the Institute of Forensic Medicine: Nierhoff; a state secretary from the Interior Ministry; the Frankfurt police president; Professor Thomas Kronlage, head of the institute; two officers from the NCP; Salomon Goldberg, accompanied by the influential chairman of the Frankfurt Jewish community; the American general consul; and the CIA agents. A state of diplomatic emergency was in effect; the demands of the Americans were unambiguous. They wanted Goldberg’s body without delay. From a legal standpoint, of course, no one from the delegation of German and American authorities had the right to interfere in an ongoing homicide investigation, but the interior minister had no interest in a scandal, especially not six months before the election. Barely two hours after Salomon Goldberg showed up, the case was in the hands of the NCP.

“I don’t understand anything anymore,” Nierhoff concluded in consternation. He had been pacing around his office but now stopped in front of Bodenstein. “What’s going on?”

Bodenstein had only one explanation for this unusual action on a Sunday morning at the crack of dawn: “At the autopsy yesterday, a tattoo was observed on the inside of Goldberg’s upper left arm that indicated he was formerly in the SS.”

Nierhoff froze, and his mouth almost fell open.

“But … but … that’s ridiculous,” he countered. “Goldberg was a survivor of the Holocaust. He was in Auschwitz and lost his whole family.”

“At least that was his cover story.” Bodenstein leaned back and crossed his legs. “But I have complete faith in Dr. Kirchhoff’s opinion. And it would explain why Goldberg’s son showed up with a whole entourage less than twenty-four hours after we discovered his father’s body. He wanted to prevent further investigations. Either the younger Goldberg or someone else has connections and an interest in making the mortal remains of his father disappear as quickly as possible. Goldberg’s secret had to stay secret. But we were faster.”

Nierhoff took a deep breath, then sat down behind his desk.

“Okay, I agree that you’re right,” he said after a moment. “But how could Goldberg’s son mobilize all these people so fast?”