Forty Hours: A breath-taking thriller Page 20

  He felt sick, gagged. And he felt ashamed.

  “IT’S OKAY,” the angel said. “YOU DON’T NEED TO FEEL ASHAMED.”

  But he still felt ashamed. For his own weakness.

  “WHAT HAPPENED AFTER THAT?” the angel asked.

  “After that?” Alexander’s knees trembled, but his nausea had disappeared, making room for something else. Cold horror that squeezed his heart like a hand. “After that, everything was much worse,” he whispered.

  Chapter 21

  Ellwanger’s apartment resembled a museum.

  A museum for Christian art.

  Oil paintings hung on all the walls, all of them depicting crucifixion scenes. There were crucifixion icons, crucifixions in oil, etchings, and modern crayon sketches that almost looked more brutal than the more objective representations, because of their stark color contrasts.

  While Ben scrolled through one photo after the other of this macabre private collection, Ira kept her hand pressed over her mouth. “I knew he was a little off,” she murmured as the slide show came to an end. “But that he was …” She broke off in a mixture of bewilderment and horror. “That’s horrifying!” she whispered.

  “Those were all the pictures from the living room,” Marc explained. “Now comes Alexander’s bedroom.”

  The pictures shifted, no longer showing the gloomy room with the dark furniture and the awful paintings but a chamber with a plain pinewood bed, bare walls, and an unusually neat desk, which held nothing except a paper desk pad, a very thin silver laptop, and a small bronze crucifix. The subsequent pictures showed the room from all possible angles. Its bleakness was almost creepier than the clutter in the living room. To Faris, it looked like a silent scream.

  “In that apartment, you couldn’t help going insane eventually,” Ira mumbled.

  “The computer,” Ben said. He clicked back several pictures before pointing at the silver laptop on Alexander’s desk. “It might hold something we could use. Did you bring it with you?”

  Marc pulled the thin device out of his box. “Here it is.”

  Ben took it from him, opened it, and plugged it into a power cord. As he started to search through the hard drive, Shannon began to go through the books that were also in the box. “A bunch of fundamentalist stuff,” she said. She pulled out a book that was adorned with hundreds of yellow and green sticky notes. “This looks promising.” Without another word to the rest of the team, she carried it over to her own, disorganized, desk. Ira relinquished Shannon’s desk chair to her. After picking her tennis ball up, Shannon opened the book at the first of the marked pages.

  “There was nothing else of interest in the apartment,” Marc explained. “The cellar was extremely neat, and all that was down there were two bikes. However, we found one other thing. A rental contract for an allotment garden.”

  An electric shock went through Faris. “Ellwanger has a garden plot?”

  March pulled a notebook out of his pocket, flipped through it, and found the page he was looking for. “Yes. At the Garden Colony at the Airport. That’s the name of the organization. It must be somewhere close to Tempelhof.”

  Faris and Paul exchanged a look.

  “If we’re lucky,” Paul said with deliberate calm, “we might find the cross out there.”

  “Exactly.” Faris stood up. “I suggest we go take a look!”

  *

  Alexander

  “WHAT WAS WORSE?” The voice of the angel was very soft, and yet Alexander was trembling under the relentless pressure he was under to relive all the horrible things that had happened.

  “Why are you doing this?” he asked.

  He didn’t understand the answer he received. “SO THAT THE WORLD CAN FINALLY UNDERSTAND. NOW TALK. WHAT WAS WORSE?”

  “He didn’t beat me,” Alexander reiterated. “That would’ve been easier to take. But he wouldn’t do that even when I begged him.”

  “No!” Father gasps. “I can’t do it anymore. You have to do it for me!” The whip dangles from his hand, the blood on it long dried because it has been many days since it was last used.

  Alexander falls back a step. “No, Papa. Please, not that!”

  But Father presses on. His face is gray and haggard. Alexander can see the devil lurking behind his eyes. He reluctantly holds out his hand, takes the whip.

  It weighs heavily in his grip.

  “Don’t ask me to do this!” he begs. Tears run down his cheeks, wetting his entire face.

  “Do it!” His father gazes at him so imploringly that he finally gives in.

  And raises the whip over his head …

  “HE HOPED TO FIND RELIEF FROM HIS SINS THROUGH THE SCOURGING.” The angel’s voice was very quiet. Mournful.

  Alexander nodded. “But it didn’t work. His burden didn’t grow lighter. And he knew why.” He hesitated, waiting for the angel to speak on his behalf.

  But the angel remained silent.

  “He said that the burden he felt was the burden of the entire world.”

  “HE BELIEVED THAT HE WAS JESUS CHRIST.”

  Alexander shook his head. “No. He tried to explain it to me, but I didn’t understand. Complete identification with Christ, he called it. It was the only way for him to get rid of his sins.”

  “THAT WAS THE MOMENT HE STARTED DEMANDING THAT YOU CRUCIFY HIM?”

  Alexander lowered his head. “Yes,” he whispered.

  *

  Gustav Dellinghaus enjoyed spending his evenings patrolling the gardens of the Garden Colony at the Airport, for which he was chair of the executive board.

  For about half an hour, he simply strolled cheerfully through the darkness down the pebbled paths. “His” gardens sat to the right and left of him – all of them organically cultivated and organized neatly. This was how he liked it! He passed old Mrs. Reiß’ rustic fence. In the light of his flashlight, his gaze fell on the lawn, which was overrun with dandelions. The majority of the yellow flowers were past their peak and had already transformed into white puffballs.

  Dellinghaus stopped moving and leaned down to one of the plants that he could reach through the fence slats. As he pulled it up, the little umbrellas took flight with a lurch. With a disgruntled look on his face, Dellinghaus straightened back up again and made himself a mental note. Tomorrow, he would call Mrs. Reiß and tell her that this was unacceptable. Regardless of the eco-friendly gardening rules, she was obliged to make sure no invasive weeds grew on her parcel. The executive board had just added this stipulation to its rules because the increase in air-borne seeds was a growing problem. Dellinghaus pulled out a handkerchief and blew his nose. It was true that Mrs. Reiß was quite frail, but they couldn’t take that into consideration. If the old woman was now unable to tend to her plot, then her adult daughter should take care of it!

  With a sigh, Dellinghaus continued on his way.

  Over the past few weeks, he had received several complaint calls. The Ellwangers’ garden had long been a thorn in the eyes of their adjacent lessees. Of course, the beds were nicely tended, but something didn’t seem quite right with the summer house. It gave them a weird feeling, one of the neighboring gardeners had tried to explain, and now Dellinghaus was on his way to take a closer look at the situation. He reached one of the path intersections and looked around. The Ellwangers’ plot was located on Cherry Lane.

  Dellinghaus turned left and quickly reached his destination. He aimed his flashlight beam at the allotment.

  At first glance, everything looked completely normal. The grass needed to be mowed again soon, but there were no dandelions or other weeds in sight, and even the summer house was neatly painted. There was no bulk waste on the small terrace, no trash bags lying around to attract pests.

  What could have bothered the neighbors?

  Dellinghaus was about to leave, when something caught his eye.

  One of the summer house’s windowpanes was broken.

  This immediately awoke his sense of duty. He would have to inform Ellwanger. They
couldn’t have any homeless riffraff taking up residence here. It would be best for him to simply check to make sure that hadn’t already happened. He swiftly unclipped from his belt the ring holding the spare keys to all garden gates in the colony. But before he could find the right key, his eyes fell on the thick padlock that had been mounted right above the garden gate’s lock.

  “What the devil?” he mumbled.

  It was forbidden to secure any of the allotments in such a way that members of the executive board could not enter. Dellinghaus’s eyes wandered over to the summer house with the broken window. He suddenly understood what the neighbors had meant when they described having a bad feeling about things over here.

  He felt cold.

  He assiduously pushed his feelings of discomfort aside. We’ll see about that! He wasn’t the kind of man who let himself be put off by a little barbed wire and a stupid garden gate. He glanced to the right and the left to see if anyone was watching him, before quickly climbing over the fence. He then strode down the narrow path between the beds and onto the small terrace made of washed concrete slabs. The broken window was now right in front of him.

  Again he felt cold, and again he suppressed the feeling. He leaned forward to risk a look through the shattered pane. It was pitch black inside.

  He hesitated.

  But then he shined the flashlight through the hole. For one moment, all he saw were dust particles floating in the sharply defined beam of light. It took only a second though, for the light to illuminate the details hidden in the darkness.

  Dellinghaus dropped his flashlight. It clattered to the ground and rolled across the terrace without going out.

  Dellinghaus couldn’t have cared less.

  His eyes wide with horror, he whirled around.

  And ran as fast as his feet could carry him.

  *

  Since Marc had already been to Werner Ellwanger’s apartment, Tromsdorff ordered him to drive along with Faris to check out the allotment gardens at Tempelhof. However Faris protested and insisted that Paul be allowed to come along as his partner, so ultimately all three of them climbed into the BMW and drove off. Thanks to their flashers and siren, it only took them thirty minutes to cover the distance. When they arrived, they found themselves standing uncertainly in front of the locked barbed wire gate that apparently protected the gardens from undesirable visitors.

  From the path inside the gardens, a flashlight beam struck them. Before they could figure out what was going on, a man in rubber boots and overalls hurried toward them. He opened the gate, then walked past them with a curt nod and a mumbled “Good evening!” Paul caught the gate before it swung shut.

  The three of them had just stepped through the gate when a second man ran toward them. He was short, hardly 5’3”, and about Paul’s age, but while Faris’s partner looked fit despite his slight paunch, this man looked very out of shape. A much-too-short, obviously hand knitted sweater hung over pants that he was holding up with some kind of toolbelt. Tools of various kinds dangled from several loops.

  “Goodness, you’re fast!” he called from several steps away. “I just called you.” As Paul studied him in bewilderment, the man added: “You’re not from the police?”

  “We are.” Paul held out his ID and badge. “The homicide division.” He introduced himself, Faris and Marc.

  The man nodded admiringly. “Murder squad! I knew what I discovered had to be important. Good work!”

  “Wait a second!” Faris raised his hand. “What are you talking about?” He felt the man’s eyes scan him from top to bottom and steeled himself for the wall of prejudice he was about to hit. However, this man seemed to have more important things on his mind.

  He hurriedly gulped several times. “Well, the summer house!” He waved his right hand in the darkness, somewhere behind him. “The Ellwangers’. That’s why I called you! Are you …”

  “Stop!” Faris’s voice was suddenly very sharp. “You mean that you called us … the police … because something’s wrong with the Ellwangers’ summer house?” Adrenaline immediately started surging through his veins.

  “Yes!” The man nodded energetically. “That’s why you’re here, right?”

  “Yes.” Paul now took charge. “First things first, please tell us your name.”

  “Dellinghaus,” the man sputtered. “Gustav Dellinghaus. I’m the chairman of the executive board for this garden colony.”

  “Good. So, what did you discover?” Paul inquired.

  “You have to see it yourself! It is … shocking!” Dellinghaus spun around and hurried back in the direction from which he had come. They followed the dancing beam of his flashlight. At Dellinghaus’s heels, they strode down various paths until they came to an allotment that Faris thought looked just as boring as all the others.

  The summer house walls were white plaster, and the structure was so tiny that Faris could tell instantly the cross couldn’t be in there. So what was the cause of Dellinghaus’s agitation?

  “I had to cut the padlock,” the short man confessed. “Ellwanger won’t be happy about that, but after what I saw in there, I thought …” He broke off as he pushed open the gate. “The lock is the least of our worries.” And with that, he hastened straight across the grass to the massive summer house door, which looked strangely out of place in the small structure. To the right of the door was a window.

  Dellinghaus pointed at it with his flashlight. “There!” he exclaimed. “You can look inside!”

  *

  There was no cross inside the summer house. They saw that right away when they peered through the broken window. The single room inside the small building was much too small for that.

  Faris and Paul looked at each other, and without further ado, Paul reached through the shattered pane and opened the window. He immediately climbed through it, followed by Faris and then Marc.

  “Holy shit!” Marc murmured as he located the light switch and a dim light brightened the room. “What next?”

  They were facing the back wall of the tiny structure. A workbench was in front of them and extending above it was one of those metal tool walls covered with holes, into which you could insert hooks and storage holders. But unlike other typical tool walls, no hammers or wrenches were hanging here. Instead, a dozen different whips were mounted on it. Faris saw several multi-corded leather whips, two of which had metal hooks braided into the fine laces. One of the whips was made of arm-length hemp ropes with little balls on their ends. There were also several thick braided leather bull whips, as well as some whose cords weren’t made of leather or rope but a handful of thin chains instead. All of these instruments of torture had one thing in common.

  They were soaked with blood.

  For most of them, the blood was older and had already turned black. Only one of the leather whips seemed to have been used recently. A swarm of flies took off into the air as Paul pulled on gloves and reached for this whip.

  “The man is sick!” Marc murmured. His face had taken on a greenish hue, and he tried to frantically swat away the flies. “I …” He swallowed. “I’ll go out and question Dellinghaus about all this.” He was visibly relieved to be escaping the sight of these instruments of pain, and as he climbed back out through the open window, he almost tripped over his own feet.

  Paul had hung the whip back up on its hook by now and turned his attention to the trunk sitting underneath the workbench. He carefully pulled it out. It was one of those metal boxes people took along with them on desert expeditions and secured with massive spring locks. The eyes that were meant to hold the locks’ hangers were empty. Apparently, Ellwanger hadn’t thought it necessary to lock the trunk.

  “Should I?” Paul asked, his voice sounding tense.

  Faris shook his head. He felt a prickling at the back of his neck. “Better not to. Let’s have a canine unit sent over.”

  Paul took a step back in relief. As he did so, he discovered a box that had obviously been standing behind the trunk. “Look at
this!” He leaned down again and pulled the box out. It was a moving box from a well-known Berlin company, and someone had closed it without sealing it well. One of the cardboard flaps was pointing up in the air so that Faris could take a quick look at the box’s contents.

  “What is all this?” Paul muttered.

  Faris shook his head.

  The box was two-thirds full.

  Of glow sticks, printed with the church conference motto.

  *

  “Thanks a lot.” At Ku’damm, Jenny accepted her change as she smiled at the young woman with the vendor’s tray from whom she had just bought her second glow stick.

  “Thank you!” the woman replied, before turning to the next customer. The slender white objects still seemed to be selling like hot cakes, even this far into the conference.

  “Happy now?” Pia asked. Her arms were folded across her chest, and she was grinning widely.

  Jenny weighed the new glow stick in her hand. Something about it was different from the one she had bought right after her arrival, but she couldn’t have said what it was.

  “Why did you get another one?” Pia wanted to know.

  Because I would like to give it to Dennis, Jenny thought, but she was reluctant to say that. After the two girls and Dennis had finished their city tour, the three of them had gone out for burgers. From that moment on, Dennis made no secret that he preferred chatting with Jenny than with Pia. Pia’s tone had initially turned rather frosty, but then she had pulled herself together and made the most of it. At some point, Dennis’s phone went off, and he had rather sullenly answered it. He said “yeah” several times, and then, “Forget it, Rainer!” With that, he hung up. “My brother,” he explained with a roll of his eyes. He left shortly after that, but before he walked off, he gave both of them a quick kiss on the cheek. Jenny convinced herself that her kiss was slightly longer than Pia’s.

  She quietly smiled to herself.

  Pia guffawed loudly. “You’re in love!” she cried out. And with that, she seemed to overcome her last bit of jealousy.