There was no news from the hospital; Hanna Herzmann was still not able to be questioned. Kilian Rothemund remained at large, and at the Hanau post office, no one had yet come to pick up the mail from Prinzler’s box.
Since she had nothing better to do, Pia searched all the available social networks, but Wolfgang Matern was not on XING, Facebook, or Classmates.com.
“Do you have any other ideas where I might find information about this man?” Pia asked her colleague.
Kai rattled off a few sites without looking up from his monitor: LinkedIn, 123people, Yasni, CYLEX, firma-24.de.
“Tried them already.” Pia leaned back in resignation, clasping her hands behind her head. “Damn it, this guy was my last hope. Why does it all seem so mysterious? Somebody must know what Hanna Herzmann was working on. Why can’t I find what it was?”
“Did you already check out the daughter?”
“Yeah, of course. But she seems to have almost no presence online.”
“Try Stayfriends,” Kai suggested, looking up. “Oh man, I’m as hungry as a bear. Got any snacks?”
“Nope. You scarfed down my last bag of chips. Go and find some food before you start getting grouchy.” Pia put her fingers on the keyboard again and entered the Web address of Stayfriends: www.stayfriends.de.
“Kebab or burger?” Kai asked, getting up from his chair.
“Kebab. Extra spicy, with double meat and feta,” Pia replied. “I knew it!”
“What?”
“I knew something was fishy about this Wolfgang Matern.” Pia grinned in triumph and pointed at her screen. “He’s actually registered at Stayfriends, just like Hanna Herzmann. And get this: Those two went to the same school, yet he swore that their relationship was only professional. Why would he do that?”
“Maybe he’s afraid of getting involved in something,” Kai guessed. “Be right back.”
Pia focused all her attention on the site. She clicked on the profiles of Hanna Herzmann and Wolfgang Matern as well as the 1982 class photo of the eleventh grade of the Königshofen private high school in Niedernhausen. Since she wasn’t a “gold member,” she couldn’t see any more details on the site, but it didn’t matter. The connection was there, and Wolfgang Matern had lied to Bodenstein. He had known Hanna Herzmann better and longer than he’d claimed. Even more important, he and Hanna had studied at the Ludwig-Maximilian University in Munich and were both members of the same alumni club from their secondary school. Pia spent the next hour and a half going through photos of Hanna Herzmann on the Web; unfortunately, there were thousands of them. She was finishing off the rest of her cold kebab when she found what she was looking for. It was a photo from 1998 that had appeared in an illustrated magazine, and it showed a radiant Hanna in her wedding dress with her second or third husband. On the other side of her stood Wolfgang Matern, and in front of him was Meike as a sullen, chubby preteen.
Wolfgang Matern (34), son of media mogul Hartmut Matern, close friend of the bride and godfather of her daughter Meike (12), acted as witness
read the caption.
“Ha!” Pia exclaimed as she clicked on the photo and sent it to the printer. She was already extremely curious about what the program director of Antenne Pro would say. With the still-warm printout, she went to Bodenstein’s office and almost ran into him in the doorway.
“Look what I—” she began, but Bodenstein interrupted her.
“Kilian Rothemund’s motor scooter was found at the main train station and impounded,” he said brusquely. “And a witness recognized Rothemund. He got on an intercity express to Amsterdam at ten-forty-four this morning. I spoke with our Dutch colleagues, and they’ll be waiting for him when he arrives at five-twenty-two this afternoon. If we’re lucky, we’ll have him in custody in a few hours.”
* * *
Meike had opened all the windows in the apartment to get some air flowing through. She was sweating even though she was wearing only a bra and slip. At the office, nobody had noticed when she took Hanna’s computer home with her. Even the supersmart blond cop chick hadn’t thought of that computer. Since this morning, Meike had found herself with plenty of time on her hands because she no longer had a job. Irina and Jan had promised to keep her on the payroll at the company; everyone else had been forced to take their annual vacation until it was clear whether Hanna would be able to appear before a camera again. Antenne Pro was fair: no replacement show was aired in her time slot; instead, there were reruns of
In Depth.
Yesterday had been one of the best in Meike’s life: breakfast at the magnificent villa in Oberursel, lunch at the Schwarzenstein fortress in the Rheingau, riding in the Aston Martin convertible, and champagne in the evening on the terrace of the Hotel Frankfurter Hof with a view of the illuminated bank skyscrapers. Meike had never experienced anything like it. She had noticed people casting curious glances in her direction, obviously wondering whether she and Wolfgang were a couple. An age difference of more than twenty years was nothing unusual; lots of women dated much older men. Wolfgang was her godfather; she’d known him ever since she could remember, and had never viewed him in any other way. Until today. Suddenly, she’d noticed what nice hands he had and how good he smelled. She’d had to force herself not to keep staring at his lips and his hands. Once she started thinking about what it must be like to kiss him and sleep with him, she couldn’t get the idea out of her mind. She’d never been truly in love. She hadn’t even had a serious boyfriend, and she didn’t have much to be proud of when it came to her few adventures with the opposite sex. Yesterday, she’d gotten a glimpse of how wonderful it could be to belong to someone. Wolfgang was so solicitous and charming: he’d opened the car door for her, pulled out the chair for her, focused all his attention on her, his arm around her shoulder.
She’d lain awake half the night analyzing every word that Wolfgang had said. He had held out the prospect of an internship at Antenne Pro, although she had not yet completed her studies. But he thought she would be perfect for the position, since she’d already gained a great deal of experience by working at a TV station. Why had he done that? Because she was Hanna’s daughter? If Meike thought carefully about it, he hadn’t really said or done anything that could be interpreted as an expression of love. He had simply been nice to her. The euphoric feeling of happiness in which she had indulged herself all day had then turned to disappointment. Her hormones went crazy as soon as a man was nice to her. Clear proof of her own shortcomings.
“Ouch!” Meike hit her head as she was untangling the cables underneath the desk and fumbling the right plugs into the right slots on the back of Hanna’s computer. Fortunately, the friend whose apartment she was looking after had left her own computer along with the monitor, mouse, and keyboard on her desk. Meike rubbed the sore spot on her head and booted up Hanna’s computer. It worked. She clicked on the menu and configured the WLAN in the system settings. In a few moments, she was online. First, she checked her mother’s Facebook fan site, which Irina managed and supplied with content. No word of the attack or the hospital. Irina would certainly delete any posting that might mention such details. On Google, she found no new entry, either; the latest update referred to the broadcast with the ridiculed candidates and the summer special. Next in line were the e-mails. Over a hundred new messages were waiting in the in-box of the business account, and fourteen had come into the private address. One name instantly caught Meike’s eye, and she stopped short. Kilian Rothemund! What did her mother have to do with that child molester?
She clicked on the e-mail and read the brief text, which had been sent on Saturday at 11:43
A.M.
Hanna, why don’t you answer? Did something happen? Did I say or do something that made you mad? Please call me. Unfortunately, I can’t talk to Leonie anymore. She’s not answering, either, but on Monday I’m still going to go to A and meet with the people with whom B got in contact. They are finally ready to talk to me. I’m thinking of you. Don’t forget me. K.
What the hell did all that mean? Meike stared helplessly at the screen, reading the mail over and over.
I’m thinking of you. Don’t forget me.
What was going on between Rothemund and her mother? She had no doubt that “K” stood for Kilian Rothemund, who had put the note with the address of that rabid biker gang in Langensebold in Hanna’s mail slot, but none of it made any sense. What did Leonie Verges have to do with Kilian Rothemund and Hanna? Had Hanna been working on a story about the Frankfurt Road Kings? Rothemund used to be a lawyer, and he knew the bikers because he’d represented them. But this lying therapist didn’t fit in the picture.
Meike rested her chin on her hand to think. Should she call up Wolfgang and tell him about the e-mail? No. This morning,
he
had promised to call
her.
She wasn’t going to play the fool and keep calling him like some infatuated teenager.
Maybe there were more e-mails. Normally, Hanna downloaded her mail to her laptop, but with luck, she hadn’t done so since Thursday. Meike carefully went through all the folders on the computer. Her mother was the type of user who was a horror for computer nerds. She almost never deleted anything, and she backed up data according to a system that was purely intuitive and illogical. After an hour, Meike gave up in disappointment. For a few minutes, she sat there thinking. If she wanted to find out more, then she would have to go talk to that therapist again.
The digital clock on the toolbar of the monitor showed 8:23
P.M.
Not too late to drive to Liederbach.
* * *
As darkness descended, the ugly terrace of the Main Riviera was transformed under the glow of hundreds of multicolored lights into a grotesque stage set. Schmaltzy Italian pop hits were coming out of the loudspeakers, and the few guests who had wandered in began to think they were on an Italian vacation. Sitting in the bar, the regulars from the trailer park were wearing flip-flops and tracksuits, staring at a gigantic TV screen showing a soccer match. Bodenstein felt like having a cold beer, and his stomach was rumbling. A warm wind had come up that smelled of rain. In the distance, he saw lightning and could hear the roll of thunder, yet he decided to sit at one of the empty tables on the terrace. He ordered a mug of wheat beer. When the waiter set the beer on the table, he made a tick mark on the beer coaster, then handed Bodenstein a menu encased in sticky brown plastic.
“No thanks. I don’t want anything to eat.” Although Bodenstein’s stomach was growling pitifully, he couldn’t force himself to order any food. A glance at the plate on the next table had taken away his appetite: a giant schnitzel, hanging over the edge of the plate, covered with hollandaise, with a pile of fries dumped on top. The salad looked like something mowed off the shoulder of the autobahn, with bottled dressing poured over it. The meal was worlds apart from the artful delicacies that Rosalie had conjured up yesterday, which had earned her third place in the cooking contest of the Chaîne des Rôtisseurs.
“Suit yourself.” The waiter shrugged and vanished.
Bodenstein took a sip of his beer.
His Dutch colleagues had missed Kilian Rothemund in Amsterdam, if he had even been on that train. The itemized list of calls from Hanna Herzmann’s phone had given them only a few helpful tips, because the most frequent numbers on the bill were to or from prepaid cell phones that couldn’t be traced. Bernd Prinzler was still missing. Nobody had emptied his post office box, and none of his contacts in Frankfurt had supplied any concrete information, but that didn’t surprise Bodenstein. The only thing he’d learned was that Prinzler hadn’t had anything to do with the Frankfurt chapter of the Road Kings in years.
The first heavy raindrops splashed on the umbrella.
The people at the table next to him fled inside, and Bodenstein grabbed his glass and beer coaster to follow. He stood in the open doorway, looking out at the rain, which came rushing across the Main like a gray wall, driving a squall of wet wind toward him.
“Hey, there’s a draft! Close the damn door!” called one of the customers. None of the waiters reacted, so Bodenstein closed the sliding glass door. He could feel the regulars giving him suspicious and curious looks, but he pretended not to notice. A goal was scored in the soccer game, and the men at the bar cheered and yelled to one another. The loudest of them was a beefy, red-faced guy in a black undershirt, who paid for his know-it-all bellowing with a violent coughing fit. He slid off his bar stool, stumbled through the bar, and tore open the door that Bodenstein had just closed. Coughing, he staggered outside and leaned against the wall under the eaves, gasping for breath.
“Should I call an ambulance?” asked Bodenstein, who had followed him out. His pals at the bar seemed unconcerned.
“Naw … it’s going away now,” the fat man snorted, waving him off. “It’s this shitty asthma. I shouldn’t get so worked up. Soccer is like poison to me.…”
He snorted and coughed and spat a disgusting yellow loogie into the overflowing standing ashtray next to the door.
“Scuse me,” he said. He wasn’t totally without manners.
“As long as it helps,” replied Bodenstein laconically.
“I worked forty years at the Ticona Mine. That’s where I got it. Ruined my health. The lungs.”
“Ah.” Bodenstein guessed that smoking hundreds of thousands of cigarettes was responsible for the condition of his lungs, not working in the mine. But people tend to blame everything but themselves.
“Tell me…” the fat man said, recovering his breath. He scrutinized Bodenstein. “Aren’t you a cop?”
“Yes, I am. Why?”
“I heard you’re looking for Doc. Anything in it for me if I tell you something about him?” He rubbed his thumb and forefinger together, and his eyes flashed with sly greed.
“A reward has been offered for information leading to an arrest,” Bodenstein confirmed.
One of the waiters stuck his head out the open sliding door.
“Everything okay with you, Karl-Heinz?” he asked. “The boss says don’t croak before you pay your tab.”