Dead Woods (5 page)

Chapter 5

“Why is it always me who gets the shitty end of the stick?” Lina asked without looking up when Max sat down at his desk with a cup of tea. The chair was squeaking.

“Because you’re the youngest. Besides, Sebastian is hardly better off: he has to talk with the beat cops and watch videos. You, at least, can investigate your favorite enemy.” He blew on his steaming tea to cool it.

“She isn’t my favorite enemy.”

“But you’d be pleased if you could charge her with something.” Max shook his head. “I wonder what you have against her. Just because she has money doesn’t automatically make her a bad person—even if you don’t like her.” He took a sip of his tea. Lina could smell the herbs: peppermint, lemon balm, and something else she couldn’t identify. “Tell me, are there any people with money you don’t have a problem with?”

Lina looked up and frowned. “How can you say that? Nonsense.”

“Well, we had a similar situation in the Schmehl case, and when we did the investigation in Duvenstedt last year, in that villa, you also acted like this.”

“Coincidence,” Lina said and turned to the copies of advance reservations, which she had gotten in the Waldschänke. “It’s just one of those feelings. Maybe one of the wrong ones,” she added with a crooked smile. She grabbed the phone and dialed the first number on the list before Max could talk the topic to death.

The quiet residential street in Hamburg-Eppendorf was right next to the university hospital. Row houses and duplexes and amid them, an occasional single-family house from the 1920s. Chestnut trees lined the narrow one-way street and traffic noise from the nearby artery wafted over. It was five thirty on a Friday afternoon, the height of rush hour.

The house in which Frank Jensen lived turned out to be half of a duplex with a white facade. A porch with dirty windows jutted out into a neglected front garden. The parking space in front of the house was empty, the garage door was closed, and an ad for a pizza delivery service was sticking out of the mailbox. Max rang the bell. He could hear it ring inside, but nobody opened. He pushed the button again. Nothing.

He stepped back and looked up to the attic windows, but he detected no sign of life there, either. He took the three steps from the porch to the front garden, where the grass was in need of trimming. The windows were too high to peep in. He was about to check if there was a path around the house, when he heard shouting.

“Hello, young man. What are you doing here, if I may ask?”

An old woman was standing behind a sturdy fir in the neighboring garden. Max hadn’t seen her. Leaning on a hoe, she scrutinized him suspiciously. She was working in her garden, which was well taken care of.

“Good afternoon,” Max said and slowly walked toward the woman, trying not to startle her. “I’m Max Berg and I work for the Hamburg Criminal Police. I’m looking for a Herr Jensen.” He showed her his badge, but she waved it away with the comment that she couldn’t read anything without her glasses.

“What has Herr Jensen done?” his neighbor wanted to know.

“Nothing, as far as we know. We think he’s a witness. By any chance, do you know where I could find him?”

“Just check out all the bars around here. He’ll be sitting in one of them.”

“Isn’t he working?”

“Not for at least three years, or is it four already? Let’s see, my eldest had a prostate operation then; that’s when it was, and that for sure was three years ago. But then Jonas—my great-grandson, you know—would be four, since we celebrated his first birthday soon after. But Jonas is only three, isn’t he? Or it was maybe not his first birthday but his second? I’d have to look it up. I wrote it down somewhere.”

Max had patiently listened to the old woman, but now he gently interrupted her, “I don’t think that’s necessary, Frau . . . Sorry, what’s your name?”

“Berger. Elli Berger. I’m eighty-six,” she added so no one got the idea that she was just another youngster.

“Frau Berger, I think I know what you are hinting at. The company for which Herr Jensen worked had to file for bankruptcy. That was more than two years ago.”

The old lady nodded enthusiastically. “As I said, as I said. Horrible story. At first, I didn’t know what was going on, but when Kirsten always ran around teary-eyed and they sold first the large car and soon the small one, also, I did ask the poor thing about it. And she told me that her husband had to go on welfare. It’s awful, the situation. They say he was swindled.”

“Really?” Max said

“Sure. You know”—Frau Berger bent a little more across the hedge that reached up to her chest—“Frank is one of those Com-pu-ter-spe-cial-ists.” She enunciated each syllable separately, as if the words didn’t belong to her usual vocabulary. “I don’t know anything about such things; what do I need it for at my age? No. No. But Frank, he worked in such a company and then they conned him.”

“Really?” Max repeated. “And what happened then? Couldn’t he get another job?”

“No, as I’ve been saying all along. He was duped and then he was unemployed.” She motioned with her head toward the Jensen house. “Ever since then, he sits around at home. Sits at home and stares at the wall.”

A computer monitor probably was in front of the wall, Max thought.

“But he isn’t home now?” Max asked.

“No. He’s probably getting drunk in some bar. That’s what he does ever since Kirsten moved out with the kids. That was three weeks ago; or was it four? I should look it up. I wrote it down somewhere . . .”

“That’s all right, Frau Berger. I don’t need to know the exact time. But would you happen to know where Frau Jensen lives now?”

“She wrote it down for me. Wait a moment. I’ll check. I must have the note somewhere . . .”

Without looking at Max, the old woman turned around and sauntered to her front door. Max noticed only now that the apron she wore over her dress was tied the wrong way around, and that she wore two different socks. He followed her, and even though he took the longer way, on the sidewalk, he arrived at the door before her. The old woman unlocked the door and went in. The hallway was painted in a light color, photos of nature scenes hung on the walls, and it smelled pleasantly fresh. It was not what he had expected to find in the house of an old lady.

“My grandson did those,” Frau Berger said proudly and pointed to the pictures. “He lives with me, with his girlfriend.”

“And Jonas?”

“Jonas? What Jonas? I don’t know a Jonas.”

She was standing in her hallway and looked at Max with a mixture of confusion and fear.

“And who are you, by the way? What do you want here?”

“Frau Berger, I’m Max Berg from Major Crimes, Hamburg. I’m here because you were going to give me the address of your neighbor, Frau Jensen.”

“My neighbor’s address? You’re talking nonsense, young man. She lives next door, of course. Why don’t you just go there if you want something from her? What an outrage! And in the middle of the day. Scram, before I call the police. What gall! Honestly . . .”

Max slowly stepped back, smiling, talking to the old lady in a soothing tone.

“Yes, Frau Berger, I’m leaving. And you don’t have to call the police. I’m from the police myself. Don’t worry. I’m out of here.”

The old woman watched him suspiciously and slammed the door shut after him, grumbling loudly.

Max sighed and looked at his watch. With some luck he might still be able to talk with someone at the forest ranger’s lodge in the Niendorfer Gehege. It wouldn’t take him long to get to the little forest. He took his phone out of his jacket and dialed the number, which he had saved earlier. He was lucky. Herr Behnke, the forest ranger, picked up after the second ring. He was still in the woods and promised to wait for him.

Twenty minutes later, after GPS had guided him unerringly through the Niendorfer Gehege, Max parked in a yard that was surrounded by small red wooden houses. The flat buildings seemed to be mostly sheds. A tall, sturdily built man with fashionably neat stubble came out of one of the buildings. He was in jeans and a T-shirt. His face and arms were tanned. Max guessed he was not older than twenty-nine. His deep voice had made him sound older on the phone.

“Herr Behnke?” Max shouted and went toward him. Behnke nodded and quickly took in Max’s jacket and good shoes. Max introduced himself and shook the young man’s hand. He had a warm, strong handshake, neither too firm nor too weak.

“Freaking shit, the dead man,” Behnke said, managing the feat of not appearing disrespectful.

Max nodded. “I wanted to ask you whether you’ve noticed anything out of the ordinary today or recently—in the forest in general and especially near the scene of the crime.”

Tobias Behnke was laughing. “You couldn’t have formulated the question in more general terms, even if you’d wanted to.”

Max had to agree. He smiled but did not make his question more precise.

“I thought about it, of course,” said the forest ranger, “when I realized this morning that a dead body was found here, in my forest.” He shrugged. “I know that it’s not ‘my’ forest—but then again, it really is. I’m responsible for it and have to protect and take care of it. And then for such a thing to happen . . .” He trailed off. It felt as if he considered the dead man a blemish that someone had inflicted on the forest—a disgrace, a flaw that would be part of it from now on. He spoke as if the murder had robbed the forest of its innocence. Behnke shook his head. “Let’s take a short walk.” He looked at Max’s shoes, “Or maybe not?”

Max smiled. “They aren’t as delicate as they look,” he said. “Besides, they’re just shoes.”

They passed a few gnarled, overgrown hornbeams and shortly afterward walked by a beautiful house on a huge plot. Max was about to ask the ranger about it when Behnke started to explain. “The forester’s lodge. It’s leased to the Association for the Protection of German Forests and Woodlands, which is subleasing it to a CDU member of parliament. You might have heard about it.”

Max nodded. He had read about it in the paper. “Strange story.”

Tobias Behnke snorted. “You can say that again. The Niendorfer Gehege is probably the only forest in Germany where the ranger doesn’t live in the forester’s lodge.” He added, “And this despite the fact that the likes of us actually are required to live in our assigned territory.” He cast a final look at the redbrick building that was basking in the afternoon sun. “Don’t ask me why the guy is allowed to live here.”

A few steps later, they came upon a partially decayed villa. Max inhaled deeply and smiled when he heard twittering birds. Rays of sun fell on the path ahead of them.

“What a beautiful place of work you have,” he said.

Tobias Behnke nodded. “Almost three hundred fifty acres of mixed woodland and beech forest with all the typical herbs. But since part of the area was developed as a park by Hamburg merchants in the nineteenth century, we also have some rather atypical trees: horse chestnut, sweet chestnut, ginkgo. And directly at the Kollau we have a sprawling plant that is indigenous to India and the Himalayas,
I
mpatiens glandulifera
—also called Himalayan balsam. It can grow to six and a half feet and has pink flowers. It doesn’t look bad, but it’s pushing out the local, much less spectacular, variety.”

Tobias Behnke led Max along a few well-constructed paths, and ten minutes later they stood next to the fluttering ribbons of police tape.

“Not a very large forest, is it?”

Behnke shrugged. “It’s larger than any office in the city.”

Max stood on the spot where the dead man had been and looked at the undergrowth. Little was left of the original tracks since the CSI team had done its work thoroughly. Nevertheless, he carefully searched the area until he found what he was looking for. The plant looked strangely out of place. He pointed to it and asked, “Do you know what kind of plant this is?”

“It’s an
Aaron’s rod,” Behnke answered immediately. “Wow, I’ve never seen one around here. You know, it’s quite a strange plant,” the ranger explained and stepped closer. “It catches flies in its chalice, but not to devour them, like a Venus flytrap would, but to be fertilized by them. It transfers its pollen to the insects when it releases them again.” He fell silent and looked at the plant carefully. “That’s odd. This plant likes the shade and doesn’t do well in full sun.” He did a double take, bent down, and got up again. Shaking his head, he said, “This plant has been . . .”

“. . . replanted. I know,” Max said.

Tobias Behnke looked confused, and that made him look even younger.

“Have you seen that before? I mean, plants replanted in the forest?” Max asked.

The ranger shook his head. “No, never. I have to say, though, that I don’t usually pay that much attention to details. I’m more involved with the big picture.”

“Do you have any idea who might do a thing like that?”

Behnke took another look at the Aaron’s rod and then at Max. “No idea. Certainly none of my guys.”

“Your guys?”

“Five forestry workers are employed here, but the men don’t deal with such small stuff. They only concern themselves with things that are thick enough to be tackled with a chain saw.”