Emma hadn’t even thought of this option. Her situation, God knows, was no different from that of many other women. The Sonnenkinder Association specialized in helping unhappy women like herself—women who had been left in the lurch by their men. Sure, that wasn’t really any consolation; on the contrary, it made her realize the true extent of her plight. At the same time, an ominous suspicion crept into her mind. Because Florian hadn’t wanted a second child, was he deliberately unloading her on his parents, so that he wouldn’t have to assume any responsibility or have a guilty conscience when he went off with another woman? Was all this a carefully calculated ploy, an elegant solution to get rid of her?
She cast a suspicious glance at this woman who had so easily adopted her as a friend. Maybe Sarah knew about the whole thing. Maybe Corinna and her in-laws did, too.
“What is it?” Sarah sounded genuinely concerned, but that could be feigned, too. Suddenly, Emma felt that she could no longer trust anyone. She opened her wallet, placed five euros on the table, and got up.
“I … I have to go pick up Louisa,” she stammered, and made her escape.
* * *
Instead of the announced intercity express, a regular intercity train rolled into the Hamburg Main Station on track 13 fifteen minutes late. This meant that his seat reservation, which he’d been glad to get, considering the crowds waiting on the platform, was now useless. The train was so full that he couldn’t find a seat and had to stand in the corridor, his backpack wedged between his feet.
The most dependable thing about the German railroad was its lack of dependability. Sure, you could download the tickets to your smartphone and make reservations online, but in reality daily train travel didn’t look much better than it had thirty years ago.
He had never liked being confined in a small space with so many strangers, and he’d always preferred to fly or drive. The woman next to him smelled like she’d taken a bath in a cloying cheap perfume and then washed her clothes in it, too. From the left, a sharp body odor assaulted his nose, and he could tell that one of his fellow travelers had recently eaten garlic.
His hypersensitive sense of smell, which he’d once been so proud of, turned out to be a torment in situations like this.
At least the short trip to the north had been worth it. He had gotten what he wanted. Of course, he’d taken only a couple of quick looks at the photos that were stored on the inconspicuous USB stick, but they showed precisely what he had secretly hoped: thousands of photos and a few video files of superb quality that would be worth a small fortune on the black market. If the cops found the stick on him, his probation would be rescinded, but that was the chance he had to take.
He checked his cell. No calls, no texts. He’d really hoped she’d get in touch.
He took a look around the railway car. In his gray Brioni suit, a relic from his former life, and wearing a shirt and tie, he looked no different from the other business types. No one took any notice of him except for a pretty brunette sitting in the window seat across the aisle; she kept staring at him whenever she thought he wasn’t looking. She smiled coquettishly and a bit invitingly, but he didn’t smile back. The last thing he wanted was to carry on a conversation. Actually, he’d wanted to read or sleep on the way back, but neither was easy to do standing up. Instead, he gave in to daydreams, indulging in pleasant memories that were being clouded by increasing doubts.
Why wasn’t she calling him? This morning, he’d texted her to say that all day he’d be reachable only by phone or text message. Since then, he’d waited nervously for her reply—in vain. The longer his cell remained silent, the greater his doubts. In his mind, he went over every conversation and every sentence, trying to call up in his memory whether he could have somehow offended her, hurt her feelings, or made her mad. The euphoria with which he’d set off this morning on the trip to Hamburg had now disappeared.
Not until half an hour before the train reached Frankfurt did he feel his cell vibrating in his pants pocket. Finally! Only a text, but still. As he read it, he had to smile, and when he looked up, the dark-haired woman’s gaze met his. She briefly raised her eyebrows, turned her head, and demonstratively looked out the window. He was rid of her.
* * *
The stage lights went off; the camera people rolled back their cameras and removed their headsets. The studio audience applauded.
“That’s it, people!” the director called. “Thank you all.”
Hanna took a deep breath and tried to relax her cramped facial muscles after two straight hours of smiling. The ninety-minute summer special on the topic “Fate or Accident,” the season finale, had demanded all her concentration. The guests had been difficult to control. It had been hard work to make sure they all got time to speak, and the director had kept squawking at her in her earbud, until she finally barked at him during the warmup, asking him to please keep his trap shut—she knew what she was doing.
At least her team had worked well together. Meike and Sven, the new producer, had done a perfect job in rehearsal. Hanna escaped to her dressing room before the audience could storm her with requests for autographs. She didn’t feel much like going to the wrap party on the roof terrace, but her team and the guests deserved to see her for at least half an hour. Her makeup was itching, and thanks to the heat of the spotlights, she was drenched in sweat. She’d gotten almost no sleep the night before, yet her body was buzzing with energy and a zest for life. For days, she’d felt as if she were standing underneath high-voltage lines, and the whole hassle with Norman was long forgotten.
Hanna reached for her cell phone, fell into an easy chair, and took a couple of swigs of lukewarm mineral water. Shit, no reception again in this fallout shelter! The studios of Antenne Pro and the other stations that belonged to the holding company were located in an ugly industrial section of Oberursel. The editors, finance people, and other office workers had their offices on the second floor, but management had outsourced themselves to a property more suitable to their status—for the past two years, the big shots had been housed in an Art Nouveau villa in Palmengarten, in the Westend of Frankfurt.
“Hanna?” Meike came in, as usual without knocking. “Are you coming up? The guests are already asking for you.”
“Ten minutes,” replied Hanna.
“Five minutes would be better,” said Meike, slamming the door behind her.
There was no point in changing clothes. Up on the roof terrace, it was probably still over eighty-five degrees. And if she wanted to go home soon, it would be better to go up there right now, before everybody got tipsy and wouldn’t let her leave. Hanna exchanged her high heels for flat ballerina slippers, grabbed her purse, and left the dressing room.
On the roof, there was a party going on, and it was a bigger celebration than usual. The summer and Christmas specials were always a huge challenge for all the staff; unlike on the normal show, the guests were prominent individuals and a lot more demanding than the no-names, who were so intimidated by the whole television scene that they made no demands at all.
On the stairs, the cellular reception improved, and Hanna’s smartphone woke up. She stopped on the landing below the roof terrace and scanned her messages. Congratulations from Wolfgang for the successful show, a callback request from Vinzenz, and various other texts and e-mails, but not the one she was waiting for. Hanna felt a pang of disappointment. Patience was not one of her character traits.
“Hanna! Wait up!” Jan Niemöller always took two steps at a time. “That was really a super show. Congrats!”
“Thanks.”
Breathless, he stood next to her and made an attempt to hug her, but Hanna retreated.
“Please don’t,” she said. “I’m a sweaty mess.”
The smile vanished from Niemöller’s face. She walked the rest of the way up the stairs, and he followed.
“Have you already talked to Matern?” he asked.
“No. Why?”
“He called me this afternoon and sounded a little weird. Did you guys have a fight?”
“What makes you say that?”
“Well, he was sort of hemming and hawing. Something about the first show after the summer hiatus.”
“Oh, really?” Hanna stopped and turned around. Hadn’t she told Wolfgang expressly not to mention a word about that matter?
“What’s going on? What’s it all about?” Niemöller looked at her with a mixture of envy and mistrust. “For days, you’ve been almost unreachable.”
“I’m working on a big deal,” said Hanna, relieved that Wolfgang had apparently kept his mouth shut. But she was really going to take him to task. “It could be huge.”
“So what’s it about?”
“You’ll find out when I know more.”
“Why all the secrecy?” her comanager complained, looking suspicious. “Usually, we make decisions together about what to do on the show. Or is something going on behind my back?”
“There’s nothing going on,” Hanna snapped. “And things haven’t proceeded far enough to talk about it yet.”
“But you’ve already told Matern—” Niemöller began, offended like a prima ballerina who has lost the role of the black swan to a rival.
Hanna interrupted him. “Jan, don’t be childish. You’ll find out everything soon enough. And Wolfgang happens to be not only the program director but also a good friend.”
“I hope you’re not making a mistake,” Niemöller grumbled enviously.
Hanna glanced one last time at her smartphone before she stuck it back in her bag, then switched on her professional smile.
“Come on,” she said, trying to be conciliatory as she linked arms with him. “Let’s go celebrate. We all deserve it.”
“I don’t feel like partying,” said Niemöller, pulling away. “I’m going home.”
“All right.” Hanna shrugged. “Good night, then.”
If he thought she was going to beg him to go along, he was wrong. He was really getting on her nerves with his possessiveness. Maybe she ought to look for another man to take over the job, or better yet, a woman.
* * *
The guest list of people assembled in the park of the magnificent city palace of Miriam’s grandmother in the posh Holzhausen district read like a who’s who of Frankfurt and Lower Taunus society. Old names, new names, old money and new money amused themselves side by side; they were in a generous mood. When Charlotte Horowitz sent out invitations to a performance by talented new musicians, everybody came. Today, a seventeen-year-old pianist was the center of attention. Because of the episode at the Main-Taunus Center, Pia arrived late and caught only the last few bars of a truly virtuoso presentation.
She wasn’t really disappointed, because she was mainly concerned with the exquisite food. You could always count on the quality of Grandmother Horowitz’s spread.
At the buffet, she ran into Henning.
“So, fashionably late once again?” he remarked archly. “That’s eventually going to attract attention.”
“Only from you,” Pia replied. “Nobody else is keeping tabs on me. Besides, I’m not that crazy about piano noodling.”
“Pia is a Philistine,” said Lilly in her know-it-all voice. “Grandpa told me that yesterday.”
“How right your Grandpa is,” said Henning with a grin.
“I admit it.” Pia’s eyes roved over the tempting delicacies, and she tried to decide where to start. She was starving.
Miriam came up to her with arms outstretched and kissed her on both cheeks.
“Chic dress,” she remarked. “New?”
“Yeah, picked it up today at Chanel,” Pia joked. “A steal at two thousand euros.”
“That’s not right,” Lilly put in excitedly.
“It was a joke,” Pia said. “Why don’t you tell Miriam about our adventure today, which is why we arrived late and missed this
wonderful
pianist.”
She winked at her friend. Miriam knew she couldn’t care less about her grandmother’s musical protégés. Lilly recounted the adventurous shopping center story in detail, not forgetting to mention the price of Pia’s dress—9.95 euros. That was approximately the cost of two square inches of Miriam’s dress.
“This child is going to send me to an early grave.” Pia rolled her eyes.
“Pia, look at that boy—I know him from the Opel Zoo.” Lilly pointed to a couple standing with a group of people; their son seemed to be about eight.
“Don’t point your finger at people,” Pia scolded.
“What should I point with, then?” Lilly asked.
Pia took a deep breath and shrugged.
“Forget it. Go and play. But please stay close by and check in with me every fifteen minutes.”
The girl took off obediently, heading straight for the boy. She certainly wasn’t shy.
“Tell me, Henning, the man standing next to the boy, isn’t that State Attorney Frey?” Pia asked, squinting her eyes. “What’s he doing here?”
“Markus Frey is on the board of the Finkbeiner Foundation,” Miriam explained before Henning could reply. She was spooning an iced cucumber soup with a caramelized shellfish crust from a little shot glass. “Do you know him?”
“Do I ever. I know all the state attorneys in Frankfurt,” replied Pia. “He showed up recently at the scene where a dead body was found, and then he attended the autopsy.”
“Have you made any progress in the case?” Henning asked, then lowered his voice. “By the way, here comes Charlotte. Better act fast. Don’t try to hide it—I can tell that you’re lusting after all that food.”
Pia gave him a withering look. But it was too late. Miriam’s grandmother had spied her. For unknown reasons, the old lady had taken a liking to Pia many years before, and after she’d cleared up the murder of a close acquaintance a few years ago, she invited Pia on every conceivable occasion. It was half an hour before Pia got anywhere near the buffet.
The air had turned oppressive, and the mosquitoes were exasperating. The weather report had predicted a powerful storm for that evening, and Pia wanted to get home before it broke. She hurried to load up a plate with delicacies and went in search of Miriam, finally finding her with Henning and a few other acquaintances in one of the pavilions beneath the magnificent old chestnut trees in the garden. The mood was cheerful; they all knew one another, and teasing repartee flew back and forth. Once more, Pia’s dress was the preferred target of Henning’s snide comments, and finally she’d had enough.