about other friends or acquaintances of the victim? Were there old
accounts or quarrels?” She leafed through her notes. “After all, Birkner 208
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was mentioned once on the fringe of a murder case”—she looked
up—“a case that hasn’t been solved so far. Did you talk with witnesses from that case?”
“Yes and no,” Lina said slowly. “I spoke to Birkner’s brother and
sister-in-law, Lukas and Sonja Birkner. They went to the same school, just one year below him. But I didn’t ask them about that case. What I wanted to know was if Lukas Birkner knew that his brother had a lover, or more than one.”
“And? Did he?”
Lina slowly shook her head. “He said he couldn’t imagine it, that
Philip wasn’t the type.” She paused. “But my impression is that he idolizes his brother, excessively so.”
“And you didn’t ask them anything about the Julia Munz murder?”
Brita Michaelis’s tone had a scolding tinge.
“Only briefly.” Lina shrugged. “We’re investigating the Birkner
murder, not the one of Munz.”
“Besides, on Monday it wasn’t clear yet that Daniel Vogler attended
the same school as Philip Birkner, his brother, and sister-in-law,” Max said, coming to her aid.
Brita Michaelis gnawed on her lower lip. “And he used to work in
Birkner’s firm and is a friend of Franziska Leyhausen. Quite a lot of coincidences. Did you check his alibi?”
Max and Lina looked at each other. “No,” Max said. “But he told
us he was logged in to the university’s computer center from home. As far as I know, this is recorded and retrievable.”
The DA made another note and said, “Check it out.” After a brief
glance at the rest of her notes, she asked, “What about the incident with the youngsters?” She looked directly at Sebastian. “You were looking into this, weren’t you?”
Sebastian was shaking his head. “That went nowhere. They showed
up at a fast food joint in Tibarg right after leaving the subway station. I 209
Maria C. Poets
talked with the snack bar operator and he described the five guys quite accurately, probably because they often show up at his place.”
“Five? I thought there were six of them,” said Hanno.
Sebastian looked at Lina. “You dealt with the sixth one, didn’t
you?”
Lina nodded. “His mother got hold of him on her way home from
work, just as the gang was on the way to the snack bar. She took him home with her.”
“Good. We tied up one loose end.” Brita Michaelis sighed. “There’re
still lots of open questions. As long as Frau Leyhausen doesn’t show up, Niels Hinrichsen remains unfit to be questioned, and forensics has no news, I suggest that you concentrate on Birkner’s social circle and his past: friends from now and then, employees of this software firm . . .”
She looked at her notes. “Inoware.”
“You really think that’s necessary?” Hanno asked in a disgruntled
voice. “I mean, everything points to Leyhausen as the killer. Her disappearance seems like a clear admission of guilt, regardless of whether she’s on the lam or did herself in. Shouldn’t we focus on that?”
“First of all,” Brita Michaelis said with a look at Hanno over her
reading glasses, “I’m not at all convinced that Frau Leyhausen killed Birkner. The perp could just as well be Niels Hinrichsen or a third, as yet unknown, person. It’s too early to make up your mind. No, we’ll
continue to follow all leads, wherever they might—”
Someone knocked at the door. Andreas Wilhelms, a colleague
from Team 5 in Murder Investigations, stuck his head in. “May I interrupt for a moment?”
Brita Michaelis grimaced. She hated it when someone burst in on
one of her meetings.
“It’s possible that we’ve found your missing woman,” Andreas said
and entered the room, several photos in his hand. They showed the
pale face of a woman with wide-open eyes and stringy hair. She had
dark, muddy spots on her cheeks. Andreas handed one of the photos
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to the DA. “This morning the body of a woman was found in Jenisch
Park. One of the police patrols noticed that she met the description of your Franziska Leyhausen. We didn’t find any ID on the corpse, but
the forensics guys are evaluating everything.”
Lina looked more closely at the pictures. There was definitely a
similarity, but the faces of people who met a violent end were often hard to recognize, even for close relatives. She looked intently—the eyes, the hair color, the nose with its slightly upturned tip. Lina turned to Alex. “What do you think?”
Alex put the photos on the table in front of him. It was quiet in the room. Finally he nodded. “I think it’s her.”