Forty Hours: A breath-taking thriller Read online

  Ira’s smile faded. “It was more likely to be the sixty thousand marks they had paid for the picture, but that doesn’t matter. As far as I know, after all that drama, the painter never accepted another commission from a church.”

  Faris and Paul looked at each other. “Could the painter be our culprit?” Paul asked.

  Ira immediately dismissed this theory by shaking her head. “He died the year before last.”

  Faris thoughtfully furrowed his brow. “We will need to interview his family. And if he really never again accepted a commission from a congregation, there aren’t any other pictures like this one out there. This means that we need to search for our culprit among those who attend this church, even if Alexander is out of the question.” He nodded at Ira. “That’s good. You have helped us a lot.”

  *

  Ira couldn’t get the terrible photo from Detective Iskander’s phone out of her head. She kept seeing Werner Ellwanger in her mind, crucified like Jesus Christ. Good God! Her stomach wanted to flip over at the mere thought of it.

  After the older of the two police officers, Detective Sievers, had taken a picture of the painting in her church and sent it to his colleagues, he called and filled them in on what Ira had just told them. After that, the officers asked Ira to accompany them to their precinct.

  She hurried back to her office to grab her purse. “I’m ready now,” she informed Detective Sievers afterward.

  “Good.” He waited for her in front of the office, while Detective Iskander went to get the car.

  Ira followed the officers to a dark BMW with flashers on the top. The sight of it made her stomach tingle. She had never been in a police car before, and although she was only a witness, she felt herself growing tense as she approached the vehicle.

  Her gaze fell on Detective Iskander, who was opening the passenger door for her.

  Thomas had always held the door for her too …

  She stumbled slightly as this thought came to her. The moment she caught sight of the young detective, she felt suddenly unsettled. His eyes! They looked so much like those of her ex. Now, in the evening light, this impression intensified, and Ira suddenly realized the reason for this. The two men shared a particular unique expression. In Thomas’s case, she hadn’t noticed it until she had realized that he was going to leave her. Long before he himself had admitted it, she had known that he would leave. His eyes, the hopelessness they had contained, had betrayed this to her.

  And now she once again saw this emotion in Detective Iskander’s eyes.

  Pull yourself together! she warned herself, smiling at him as she took her seat. He smiled back, but the smile never reached his eyes. The slightly macho way he treated her was equal parts pleasant and unpleasant, and the injuries to his face, the cut on his forehead and his split lip, bothered her as well.

  As he climbed into the back seat, she wondered how he had managed to get those wounds. She considered simply asking him, just to jump start a conversation. But she didn’t have a chance, since Detective Sievers then slid into the driver’s seat. As they drove, he asked her detailed questions about Alexander. To her embarrassment, she didn’t know the answer to most of them. “I’m really sorry,” she eventually said. “I’m afraid I won’t be of much help to you.”

  “Don’t worry about that,” Detective Iskander replied from the back seat. “Our colleagues at the precinct are trained to jog your memory.”

  His tone made it sound as though he was being facetious. She looked over her shoulder at him to see if he was pulling her leg.

  Their eyes met. “Oh,” he said. “Please pardon me! That didn’t come out right. What I meant to say was …” He abruptly broke off.

  Detective Sievers grinned. “What Faris meant to say is that we have a couple of good psychologists on the team who will help you to access those memories you might think you’ve forgotten. No need to worry about that.”

  Faris.

  So that was his first name.

  Ira forced herself to smile. “I was thinking …” She left the sentence floating in the air.

  “We have files and lists of names that you can look through,” Sievers explained. “We have reason to believe that the culprit’s motive is connected to a bombing that took place ten months ago. Perhaps you’ll think of something when you read through the list of those victims.”

  “If you think so.” Ira pressed her lips together. Was she mistaken, or was Detective Iskander – Faris – breathing more calmly? An awkward silence suffused the car.

  “That thing you said the caller …” Ira didn’t know exactly how she should put it. She plucked up her courage and turned so that her back was half-leaning against her door. “That thing about his father spanking him too often.” She held her cardigan closed across her stomach. “It was pretty disturbing, to be honest.” She wondered for a moment which had unsettled her more: what Faris had implied or the hardly contained anger that had sparked from his eyes. The anger that had now vanished behind the smooth facade and the haunted expression.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. For a few seconds, he held her gaze, but then he glanced back out the side window. “I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

  Heavens, those eyes! she thought. He looked tired.

  They were about to turn left, and Detective Sievers changed lanes to prepare for that. The clicking of the turn signal sounded loud in the silence of the vehicle.

  “Are you Muslim?” She put this as a question, recalling the bracelet around his wrist she had caught sight of in her office. Arabic letters. While in college, she had taken several semesters of Arabic, just because it interested her. But her knowledge had grown rusty over the years. The dark leather contained two words, that much she could still make out.

  “Yes.” His answer was very curt, and Ira sensed that this wasn’t a good topic. Her curiosity about this man increased. Faris. A nice name. She thought she remembered that this word meant knight. And caught herself wondering if the name suited him or not.

  *

  It was shortly after nine in the evening when they reached the War Room on Keithstraße. The first thing that caught Faris’s eyes was the countdown on the white case wall.

  27 hours.

  Gitta was taking care of them like a mother hen tending to her chicks. Faris and Paul had hardly sat down before she was handing them two mugs of steaming coffee and asking Ira Jenssen if she wanted one too. Before she could set off to fetch the third coffee, Faris asked Gitta to hang Alexander’s picture up on the case wall and to show Ira the list of victims from the museum bombing.

  While the two women retreated into Gitta’s glass office and Faris sipped cautiously on his coffee, he studied the other people in the room. At that moment, it was fairly quiet. Marc was still at the Ellwangers’ apartment, and Gerlach, their contact from Department 5, and even Tromsdorff seemed to be off somewhere. Besides Faris, the only people here were Ben, Paul and Shannon. Ben was sitting behind his computer. Faris had no idea what he was doing, but he looked extremely focused.

  The sight reminded him of Hesse, and Faris suddenly recalled that he was running a trace on the email. He considered calling the reporter to check on it, but that would presumably just be a waste of time. Hesse’s computer had been destroyed in the explosion. They wouldn’t get any closer to the culprit down that trail.

  Faris stared thoughtfully ahead and observed Shannon as she paced back and forth in front of the case wall. She was studying a color printout of a scene from the crucifixion video. From where he was sitting, Faris recognized the man in the hood who had securely nailed Werner Ellwanger in place. The picture showed him in profile, but the hood was pulled low over his face so nobody could see any part of his face except the tip of his nose.

  Following a hunch, Faris stood up and asked Shannon if he could borrow the printout. He then walked up to Gitta’s open office door and knocked on the doorframe. “Excuse me, Ms. Jenssen,” he said. “Could you please take a look at this and tell me if the man could p
ossibly be Alexander?” He handed the picture.

  She gazed at it for a long time, and Faris suspected that she couldn’t take her eyes off the hammer that the hooded figure was holding in his hands. After swallowing hard twice, she finally handed the paper back to Faris. She shook her head regretfully. “I’m sorry. There’s so little of him visible here, but the stature would be right.”

  “The hoodie,” Faris pressed. “Have you ever seen Alexander wear that to a service?”

  Any little clue could help, he thought, but he knew he was grasping at straws.

  Ira took the picture back from him. She needed another few seconds before she replied. “It’s just black. I’m sorry, Mr. … Iskander.”

  “That’s okay.” He took the paper back from her. “Thank you anyway.”

  In the meantime, Shannon had turned to one of the lists and was brooding over it. Faris pinned the printout back on the case wall and returned to his coffee. The desk chair groaned as he dropped back into it.

  Paul had propped his arms on the tabletop and was sipping his coffee in silence. However, when he noticed that Faris was studying him, he smiled at him wearily. A warm feeling spread through Faris’s chest. He realized that these people here were his family, and then he recalled the caller’s words.

  If you don’t do what I say, somebody who matters more to you will die …

  The warmth in his chest evaporated and was replaced with a feeling of oppressive tightness. What would he do if the bastard did something to one of his co-workers? He swallowed, but the pressure pushing down on him remained. Gitta’s eyes met his through the glass pane of her office wall. She nodded encouragingly.

  Ira’s back was turned to him. She looked lost in these unaccustomed surroundings. Faris struggled against a resurgence of his doomsday feelings, which threatened to drag him under again.

  He concentrated on the photo of the man on the cross that Ben had printed out and pinned to the case wall. Right underneath it, at the very end of the list titled culprits, stood Alexander Ellwanger’s name. Someone had underlined it in thick marker and adorned it with an energetic exclamation mark, which Faris thought looked a little too optimistic.

  His stomach protested against the bitter coffee with a slight cramp, and he realized that he hadn’t had anything decent to eat all day. He wasn’t hungry in the slightest. He pointed at the color printout of the man in the hood. “We should assume that this is Alexander.”

  Instead of replying, Shannon reached for an eraser and wiped away the exclamation point. “I think so, too. But is he our caller as well?”

  Paul set down his mug. “The caller said ‘my father’, which makes me think, yes. We checked: Werner Ellwanger has only one son.”

  “On the other hand, Ms. Jenssen doesn’t think he would be capable of plotting such an attack,” Faris interjected.

  Gitta heard what he said. “Ms. Jenssen is right,” she said over the head of the pastor, who was focused on the list of museum victims and only glanced up briefly. “I just got done talking to one of Alexander’s former teachers. She agreed that Alexander was developmentally challenged.” She consulted a pad sitting next to her computer. “When he was fifteen, they measured his IQ. He came in at just over ninety.”

  “But the caller isn’t challenged like that,” Faris murmured. “Not at all!”

  Before they could further discuss these findings, the door to the War Room opened, and Tromsdorff and Gerlach stepped inside. They both looked tired and exasperated, but there was also a look in Tromsdorff’s eyes that Faris hadn’t seen even once during this case.

  It was a faint flash of hope.

  “The APB is out for Alexander Ellwanger,” Tromsdorff explained. “No results so far, but sooner or later, we’ll get him. A dozen officers are out questioning people who know Ellwanger. Hopefully we’ll hear something soon about where the damned cross might be.” He stopped in the middle of the room. “Good work, people!”

  Faris shook his head in disagreement. “The caller isn’t Alexander.”

  “That’s possible, but let’s focus on him. He might lead us to our unknown caller with the distorted voice.”

  Tromsdorff walked up to the case wall, removed one of the magnets, and tossed it into the air. This was the only sign of nervousness he showed, and yet Faris thought he could feel his tension and the responsibility that rested on his shoulders.

  That rested on all of their shoulders.

  “The canine units have now done two sweeps of every corner of the Olympic Stadium,” Gerlach now cut in. “No explosives were found.” His expression suggested he didn’t think this was good news, and Faris immediately heard why. “According to information from our colleagues in the state police, there are some new types of explosive out there that the dogs can’t detect. We can’t say with one hundred percent certainty that the stadium is free of explosives.”

  Faris reached for his mug and drained it in one gulp. His stomach cramped painfully, but by now, the caffeine had hit his bloodstream. The headache that had been plaguing him was now better. “Has the explosives residue from the other bombings been analyzed yet?” he asked.

  This seemed to get Ben’s attention. He glanced up from his laptop, exhaling noisily like somebody who has worked himself to the verge of collapse. “They’re still working on the analysis.”

  “Good.” Gerlach straightened his shoulders. With his gray hair and slightly raised chin, Faris suddenly thought he looked rather like a military man.

  In Gitta’s office, Ira leaned back and sighed. “I’m sorry,” Faris heard her say. She stood up and appeared at the office door.

  “Did you discover anything?” Paul inquired.

  She shook her head.

  Paul offered her Shannon’s seat, and she sat down hesitantly.

  “Let’s put all the facts aside,” Paul suggested. “Tell us about Alexander,”

  She didn’t seem entirely happy at this request. As she blinked, Faris suspected that the image of the crucified man had been seared onto her eyelids.

  “Although he’s almost eighteen, his father dominates him completely,” she began. “At least, that is my impression. His father tells him what to eat and drink, and he intervenes in every conversation his son has.” She tucked her hair back behind her ears. “Sometimes, he won’t let Alexander finish a single sentence. Like a mother who doesn’t think her toddler can string a sentence together.”

  Gitta nodded, and even Faris knew that kind of mother all too well. His sister Anisah tended toward that end of the spectrum.

  “I remember, my secretary told me that Ellwanger made his son fast rigorously.” She frowned, as if she found it hard to believe this. “A boy in the middle of adolescence.” Her breathing now grew laborious.

  Appearing in the door to her office. Gitta considered the scene briefly and then walked over to stand beside Ira. Ira turned toward her, and Gitta smiled at her cheerfully. She frequently used this technique. I’ve got your back, she implied. Everything’s alright.

  Ira’s hands were rigidly intertwined. “I still remember how upset Veronika was,” she continued. “She tried to convince Alexander to rebel against his father, but he couldn’t. He could never bring himself to contradict his father even once in public.”

  “He probably never contradicted him at all,” Paul surmised. “Do we know if Werner abused Alexander?”

  “You mean physically?”

  He nodded.

  Ira shrugged. “No. I mean, I don’t think so.” She thought for a moment. “Alexander is practically a grown man. Wouldn’t he defend himself?” She uttered the question before fully realizing what she had said. Her eyes grew large and darted over to the picture of the man on the cross hanging up on the wall. A frightened “Oh!” escaped her lips as the color drained from her face.

  “He did defend himself,” Shannon murmured. “In his own way.”

  Ira covered her mouth.

  “It is quite typical,” Paul said. “A person who has been abused s
ince their childhood reacts in one of three ways.” He held up his fingers and counted them off. “Either he suppresses the bad stuff. Or he becomes a rigorous pacifist. Or, and this happens with some frequency, he himself turns violent.”

  “But … to crucify a person …” Ira’s voice was only a wisp.

  The next moment, the door was shoved open, and Marc hurried inside. He looked harried and sweaty and was carrying a box packed full of books and objects of all kinds.

  “I came right over from Ellwanger’s apartment.” He pushed aside some of Ben’s gadgets and set the box down on the case table. “You wouldn’t believe what it looks like in there!” He pulled out a camera and handed it to Ben. Without asking any questions, the technician connected it to his laptop.

  Only a few seconds later, the projector beamed the first of the photos Marc had taken in Werner Ellwanger’s apartment onto the screen.

  “Oh God!” Ira groaned, and as picture after picture flashed up on the screen, she kept repeating, “Oh God!”

  *

  Alexander

  “THE SUMMER HOUSE,” the angel reminded Alexander. Although he had left some time ago, he now resumed their conversation as if he had only been gone for a few seconds.

  “TELL ME ABOUT THE SUMMER HOUSE!”

  But Alexander couldn’t. His head was buzzing with all the horrible memories he had buried down deep inside, the ones the angel was dredging back up again with his persistent, unrelenting questions.

  He pressed his hands over his ears and squeezed his eyes shut. “No!” he whimpered. “Please don’t!”

  “WHAT HAPPENED IN THE SUMMER HOUSE?” the angel pressed pitilessly.

  “The …” Alexander struggled to force the words through his throat. “The whippings.”

  “DID HE BEAT YOU?”

  “No!” The idea was so absurd that Alexander opened his eyes in astonishment. “He never beat me.”

  The angel was silent. Alexander had the feeling that what he had just said surprised the angel.

  “WHAT DID HE DO?”

  Alexander swallowed. “He whipped himself. As penance for his sins.” The images now flooded his mind. He saw all the blood – on the leather cords, on his father’s back, on the walls. The ceiling.