though the small, petite woman in front of her hardly looked like a cop.
“Would you mind coming in? I don’t want to talk about it out
here,” she responded after a long pause.
“Of course.” The woman opened the door, pushed the stroller into
the hall, and struggled to remove the shopping bags from the handle.
Lina helped her by taking the bags so that she could carry the child, who so far had not said a word.
27
Maria C. Poets
The apartment was on the fifth floor. They stood silently next
to each other in the elevator, which smelled of a cleaning spray. The apartment was warm and stuffy. Frau Niemann motioned for Lina to
deposit the shopping bags in the kitchen while she brought the child to the living room. Then the television could be heard—some children’s
program—and Antje Niemann returned to the kitchen. She sat down
at the table, took out a package of cigarettes, and lit one. Her artificial fingernails were decorated with tiny rhinestones.
“That boy will be the end of me. Youth Welfare and the fuzz are
here all the time.” She flinched when she realized who stood across
from her. “’Scuse me. I didn’t mean you.”
Lina waved it away. “No problem. I’m not that touchy.” She
sat down next to the woman. “I’m not here because of Marcel.” She
showed her Philip Birkner’s picture. “Have you seen this man before?”
Antje Niemann needed no more than a brief glance. “Sure. Last
night. I noticed him the moment he came in. A real looker. And the
way he smelled!” She sighed. “He paid for his ticket and went in. And later he sat at one of my tables, but unfortunately not alone.” She
sighed again.
“You’re sure he came by himself?”
“Totally.”
“But he’d reserved two tickets. Did you mention that to him?”
“No, he said it himself, that he ordered two tickets but was only
taking one. And he smiled sadly. I knew then that the guy had some
trouble with his sweetie.”
“But he didn’t stay alone for long, did he?”
“You can say that again.” She laughed and sent smoke curls toward
the ceiling. “Guys find consolation fast; they’re good at that, every single one of them.”
She seemed to speak from experience.
28
Dead Woods
“Your colleagues told me that he was sitting with two women. Do
you know who was there first, this man”—Lina tapped the picture—
“or the two women?”
“No idea. I only noticed the two when I saw them sitting at the
same table with that guy. One of the two actually left right away, as soon as the band stopped playing. She just had an apple juice spritzer and looked a little out of it. Then the guy and the other lady really started to enjoy themselves. Three, four glasses of wine—each. And
they topped it off with a grappa at the end.”
“Did they have anything to eat?”
Antje Niemann thought for a moment. “He had a pizza, but
she . . . I think, nothing.”
“Do you remember when he ate the pizza?”
“He ordered before the concert began, and I brought it to him
shortly before the music started. I’d say around a quarter to eight.”
Lina jotted down the time.
“Did you, by chance, hear what the two were talking about?”
Antje Niemann shook her head. “No time for that, and I wasn’t
interested anyway.”
The little kid showed up at the kitchen door. Still without saying
a word, it snuggled up to its mother’s leg. Lina couldn’t determine
whether it was a boy or a girl. The mother patted the kid’s head and said, “Go back in the other room, Charlene. Mama has to talk some
more with the auntie here.”
Charlene didn’t react. She was still sucking on the bottle, which
was almost empty now. Using her mother’s leg as a hinge, she swayed to and fro. Antje Niemann, a cigarette in the corner of her mouth, sighed and picked the girl up.
“And the guy is dead now, you say?” she asked.
Lina nodded.
“Where did you find him?”
“In the Niendorfer Gehege, not far from the Waldschänke.”
29
Maria C. Poets
“Oh, no. So nothing came from their billing and cooing.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, the way they were making out—still in the joint, when most
of the other guests had already left. I had to tell them three times we were closing. Almost seemed as if they wanted to spend the night there.
Finally they left. I can still see them staggering into the forest together.”
“So they didn’t call a cab? Could they have gone to the subway?”
“Don’t know. You can go to the subway through the forest; it’s actu-
ally a shortcut. It’s possible they wanted to go to Niendorf Markt . . . or to Hagendeel, but that’s