to hear that his guests are plastered. Doesn’t fit with the ambiance he wants to maintain.”
“When did the two leave?”
The women looked at each other. “We were out of here at twelve,”
Sabrina said. “That means that the doors were closed at half past.
Which means, they left a little before eleven thirty.”
Jule nodded. “They were made to leave,” she added.
Lina silently went through the notes she had taken. “Were you able
to catch any of their conversation?”
Sabrina shook her head. “I was busy early in the night since I also
had Antje’s tables. Later on I was serving in a different section.”
“Could you give a description of the woman who was on such
good terms with the man?” Lina asked.
“Hm. Long hair, but she wore it up,” Sabrina replied. “A mousy
blond, I’d say. Maybe brown. Rather small; at least smaller than him.”
She pointed at the photo.
“Did you notice anything else? Was she wearing glasses? Did she
have piercings? Makeup?”
“No, I don’t think so. Nothing unusual.”
“Wait a moment,” Jule cut in. “She wore glasses, didn’t she?
The kind you can’t easily see, with wireframes.” Jule rested her arms on the counter and continued, “And her hair was black, medium
length. She wore a fleece jacket and jeans. And clunky shoes.”
“No, she didn’t have glasses. I’m quite sure,” replied Sabrina.
25
Maria C. Poets
“Yes, she did. I swear!”
Lina rolled her eyes. What witnesses said was usually about as reli-
able as the weather report for the coming week.
“How old was the woman? What’s your guess?” Lina asked, trying
to refocus the two women.
“Maybe thirty. Or . . . what do you think, Sabrina?”
Her colleague nodded. “Sounds about right.”
Lina finished her notes on what the two had told her and then
closed her notebook. She slid off the barstool. Amazed, the two
employees looked down at her. Lina suppressed a grin and handed a
business card to each of them. “Thank you very much for your help. If you remember anything else, please give me a call.”
When Lina was in the parking lot, her stomach started rumbling. She
briefly considered going back in and treating herself to a hot meal, but then thought that would be too much for breakfast. She looked
at her watch and then checked her notebook, where she had marked
down the addresses of Ulrike Vogt and Antje Niemann. Niemann lived
nearby, so Lina decided to take a chance—and to stop at a bakery on
the way there.
Not long after, with a chocolate croissant in a paper bag on the
passenger seat, she was looking for the right house number in a lit-
tle wooded neighborhood. All around her were multistoried redbrick
buildings from the 1880s with large green lawns, parking lots, and those pathetic playgrounds that make children wither like marsh marigolds
in the desert. Lina parked and followed a narrow footpath. She found 5C at the last entrance and the name Niemann on the top nameplate.
She pressed the button. Nothing happened. She pressed it again. Finally she took out her phone and called the number Bertram Vogt had given
her. While it was ringing, she looked around. A woman with a stroller 26
Dead Woods
was coming from the other end of the path, from the direction of a
little pedestrian zone and the Tibarg Center. She stopped and started to fumble through her handbag. When she opened her cell phone, Lina
heard a slightly hoarse voice say, “Yes, hello.”
“Frau Niemann? This is Lina Svenson from Major Crimes,
Hamburg. I am standing in front of your building right now.”
The woman with the stroller looked up. She said nothing more,
but flipped her mobile phone shut and slowly walked closer. Her black miniskirt revealed long, slender legs. Her tight top and lilac-colored jacket of artificial leather seemed to be a bit much for a Friday morning.
“What do you want?” she asked. Now, when she was standing
directly in front of her, Lina saw the blue eye shadow and heavily
applied mascara, which could not hide the tiredness in her eyes. Her hair was tied in a loose ponytail. The child in the stroller was sucking on a bottle and staring at Lina.
“Is it about Marcel? What has he done now?”
Lina shook her head. “As far as I know, he hasn’t done anything.”
Whoever this Marcel was, the woman in front of her seemed to have
reasons to expect the worst. Lina held out her badge. “I’m investigating a murder. The victim attended last night’s concert at the Waldschänke, and I’d like to ask you a few questions, since you’re a witness.”
This apparently didn’t make the woman more comfortable. She
seemed uneasy about being interrogated by the police in the middle