The Instinct of the Tennis Player E-Book

Jean Moose

• Herausgeber: Books on Demand
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Seitenzahl: 355

Beschreibung

As a former professional tennis player, Chief inspector Hans Lucarelli had learned to follow his instinct to anticipate the game of his opponents. His capacity becomes relevant when two lovers are found dead in an abandoned car park in the forest on the outskirts of the German city of Freiburg. The double murder strongly resembles the doing of a famous, wanted serial killer. Something, however, does not quite seem to fit. Against all odds and the instructions of his superior Lucarelli investigates the history of the male victim, Henry Huth. It turns out that he held evidence for the involvement of the top management of a giant car firm into a huge fraud with Diesel emissions. Gradually, the inspector is opening doors that were intended to stay shut. "The instinct of the tennis player" is the second novel of the investigative crime series with Inspector Lucarelli, written by Jean Moose.

Leseprobe

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Chapter 58

Chapter 59

Chapter 60

Chapter 61

Chapter 62

Chapter 63

Chapter 64

Chapter 65

Chapter 66

Chapter 67

Chapter 68

Chapter 69

1.

Lucarelli prepared to receive another service as his opponent threw the ball up, took a swing, and hit it with full force. The ball fizzed off the service line like a rocket before hitting the fence with a rattling sound.

“Show-off,” muttered Lucarelli.

Shaking his head, he walked to the back of the court to pick up the ball. As his gaze fell onto the adjacent court, he noticed a young woman, whom he had never seen here before. Her coach was standing at the net with a ball basket, making her chase back and forth at high speed.

Lucarelli watched in awe as the blonde danced across the court. Her legs consistently carried her into the exact position from where she could fire the balls perfectly at the plastic caps set up along the baseline. One by one, the targets were either thrown backward with a dull thud or at least grazed, falling onto their side in no less spectacular fashion.

However, the most fascinating thing about the whole procedure was that the beautiful tennis player didn’t even seem to need to catch her breath. It looked almost as if this famous grid training, feared by all tennis players the world over, was nothing more than child’s play to her. In her lemon-yellow dress and matching hair band, it also looked as though she was on her way to the beach rather than being put through the grinder on the back court of the Freiburg Tennis Club.

Even more reason why Lucarelli now wished he was in better shape. The open-air season had already begun a good three weeks ago, but he hadn’t played once before this Sunday morning. After a long playing break, he would have preferred just to hit a few balls for a while so he could get his rhythm back. However, his opponent Freddy Weller had signed up for a tournament and therefore insisted on training for a match. To make matters worse, Freddy had been practicing his serve all week. Like a machine, he’d been serving one ace after another while Lucarelli was incapable of getting anywhere near the ball.

Another game had just ended, and the players had to change the ends of the court. They sat down next to each other on the bench by the referee’s chair.

“Looks like a pro.” Lucarelli pointed over his shoulder in the direction of the next court.

“At least you still have an eye for that,” Weller smirked.

Weller’s allusion was directed towards Lucarelli’s low success rate at returning his serves. In order to return a serve successfully, the player must be able to sense the direction and spin of the ball in time. To anticipate correctly where the ball will go requires close observation of the opponent. It is important to draw the right conclusions from his habits, the direction and height of his ball throw, his foot position and the swing of his racket. The decision on where to expect a high-speed ball must be made in a fraction of a second. There is no time to think. You need an “eye” to intuitively know how to do the right thing.

However, Lucarelli still had an eye for talent. After a successful career playing international tournaments, his father Silvio had trained the junior league and often took him along. At a certain point, Silvio refused to train girls, though. He claimed that most would decide to stop competing by the age of sixteen or seventeen anyway, and therefore all his efforts would be in vain.

“So, who is the lemon lady?” Lucarelli asked Weller.

“Eileen Carlsson,” he heard a woman’s voice from behind. “If it’s me you’re referring to.”

The blonde must have picked up a ball by the side fence because now she was standing directly behind their bench. Lucarelli looked into two big green eyes. He stood up and took a bow.

“Hans Lucarelli. Nice to meet you.”

“Lucarelli? Related to the coach from Stuttgart?” she inquired.

“My father,” he nodded, “But he didn’t break with his principles at his old age and is now training female juniors, is he?”

“No, I’m past that age. A friend of mine used to train with him,” she smiled.

She looked Lucarelli up and down. “And how about you? Do you also have something against women?”

“Why should I? They generally offer better odds on an occasional ball exchange than this service machine here.”

Lucarelli pointed to Weller, who obviously took it as a compliment. At least he stuck his chest out a little bit.

“Well,” Eileen laughed, “I wouldn’t mind a halfway civilized partner right now either. Do you have time later?”

Before Lucarelli could answer, they were interrupted by a vibrating, buzzing sound. It came from the referee’s chair where he had placed his vintage tennis bag.

The bag was a model from the seventies. The upper and lower sides were made of blossom-white imitation leather and had a wooden handle and three silver-colored buckles—the middle one was lockable.

Eileen watched Lucarelli in disbelief as he turned the bag on its side and let the buckles pop the case open. She laughed again: “All that’s missing now are the wooden Dunlop rackets and a pair of white canvas shoes.”

“And then we’ll call him Fred Perry,” Weller suggested.

The vintage tennis bag had a story, of course. Before his coaching career, Lucarelli’s father had been one of Italy’s best players. After moving to Germany, he continued to take part in local tournaments for a while. To his dismay, he was presented with this spotless white tennis bag at an award ceremony somewhere in the Swabian province. Lucarelli Senior was bewildered at the sight of his prize because he had lived in Italy long enough to find this bag in such poor taste that it was a disgrace and an insult. He was about to furiously sink his trophy into the garbage can of the club restaurant when Lucarelli’s Swabian mother Helga quickly intervened. It was thanks to her energetic efforts that the bag did not end up in the trash but was carefully wrapped into a blanket and stored in the attic, where it survived for more than forty years. When the parents’ house was cleared out, it fell into Lucarelli’s hands. In his eyes, the ugly bag in the attic had transformed itself into a remarkable vintage model, like how unassuming cars suddenly emerge out of garages after a few dull decades as rarities to be admired at elaborately staged classic car rallies.

Above all, though, this tennis case was a reminder of his father’s mastery of the game—a man who had played against the Italian tennis idols Adriano Panatta and Paolo Bertolucci and was thus respectfully referred to as the Apulian Saw, after his undercut slice.

Lucarelli pulled the phone out of the inside pocket of the case and answered the call. There had been a murder in the forest near St. Ottilien. The crime scene was only a few hundred meters from the tennis court.

The inspector hurriedly stuffed his things into his suitcase, apologized, and rushed to the changing rooms.

2.

Anarrow road led from Carthusian Street to the chapel of Saint Ottilien. It was the fastest way to get from the city area to the Black Forest. As soon as Lucarelli had taken the turn-off, dense trees started lining the roadside on both sides. He had to drive in second gear. It was the only way for his old Triumph Spitfire to make it round the steep bends. After a hilltop, he was waved down by a uniformed colleague.

Lucarelli parked the car and followed his colleague down a narrow path through dense forest. As soon as they reached the clearing, Lucarelli saw a luxurious limousine surrounded by forensic specialists. In their white protective suits amid the green of the trees, they looked like visitors from another planet. Lucarelli slipped under the blue and white barrier tape. Thanks to Arens, two-meter height, he could always spot him from a distance.

Lucarelli’s deputy Arens had his hands tucked into the pockets of a pair of slightly too bulky, black trousers and was talking to Peter Mitzler, Head of Forensics. Mitzler waved over briefly before disappearing in the direction of a group searching the forest, with his cell phone clung to one ear.

“Mahlzeit” murmured Arens in greeting. “Two dead.”

“Two?” Lucarelli asked in surprise.

“A man and a woman. In flagranti or so it seems.”

They walked a few steps until they stood side by side in front of the dark blue metallic limousine. They immediately saw a man with thick, greyish hair lying on the ground near the hood of the car. He looked as if he could have been in his fifties. He had a wound on the back of his head, and his half-unbuttoned, light blue shirt had turned scarlet from the leaking blood. His trousers, visibly pulled down, grazed his ankles. A carefully polished, black shoe was sticking out underneath one pant leg, and a swarm of blue-green flies buzzed about excitedly around his bare legs.

“Gunshot to the back of the head,” Arens said, “at close range.”

Lucarelli looked at the scene. He thought of how some men allegedly wished they could spend their last living moment in a woman’s arms. Would it affect the sad experience of dying? Anyway, it didn’t look like this was something the man had had time to think about. The killer probably came from behind without warning, and the victim never had a chance to do or think anything at all.

“Where is the woman?” Lucarelli asked.

“Over there.”

They made their way towards a covered barbecue area a few meters away, at the edge of the clearing. It had a pointed roof, was open to the path and housed four wooden benches, two simple tables, and a fireplace. To the right of it was a tree trunk trough, about two meters long.

The woman was considerably younger than the man, perhaps in her mid-twenties. Her dead body lay curled up on her stomach in front of the well. She was wearing a light, half-length summer dress, and her shoes were scattered loosely at a short distance. There was blood on her bare legs. Her brown hair was clinging to her head. By now it had dried in the air, but it looked as if the woman had been submerged underwater.

“Drowned?” Lucarelli asked.

“There are bruises on the neck. It looks as if she was strangled too. The pathologist would have been here by now if we had been able to reach him. But I guess not everybody picks up the phone on a Sunday.”

Lucarelli had seen from his missed calls log that Arens had also tried to reach him several times. But the inside pocket of his tennis case had swallowed the ring tone.

“Do we know the names of the victims?” he ignored Arens’ dig.

“Not yet. No wallet, no purse, no cell phone. Mitzler’s searching the area.”

“Maybe the killer took everything of value and dumped the rest in the woods.”

“It’s rare to see a car like that here. It’s probably in the same league as a Rolls, right?” asked Lucarelli.

Arens was an ardent car fan, read specialized magazines, and knew almost everything about cars. Lucarelli’s Triumph Spitfire didn’t impress him much. This was not only because a German automobile club had once awarded it with the “silver lemon” for poor driving characteristics, but also because getting into the narrow sports car was torture for Arens due to his two-meter height. He avoided taking a lift with Lucarelli.

“That’s a Malberg XC1. New, it costs a little over two hundred and fifty thousand,” said Arens. “According to the license plate it belongs to the car rental company RML in Freiburg. The sole company owner is Rolf-Michael Losch. RML not only rents cars but also runs a limousine service for weddings or trips to the airport for celebrities and those who would like to be. The company is closed on Sundays, and nobody is answering the phone. Therefore, we don’t know yet who rented the car. Benny left earlier to look for Losch.”

Bernhard Liebig, at the age of twenty-nine, was the youngest in Lucarelli’s team. He had grown up in the area and almost always knew what was going on in the city. Liebig remembered that Losch had been a sponsor of the Freiburg Marquee Music Festival several times. He had chauffeured some of the stars from the venue to their hotel in a red Rolls Royce for advertising purposes.

“The dead man is not Losch. Benny thinks he looks different,” Arens added with his Rhineland accent.

“Says Benny,” Lucarelli repeated.

“To me, it looks like the victim might have rented the XC1 to try and impress the young woman. And it seems like he’d been successful. Due to the location of the man’s body and the fact that his pants were pulled down I’m pretty sure they had intercourse on the bonnet of the car.”

Lucarelli looked at the scene again. It was indeed hard to imagine it any other way. “Let’s suppose it was like that. “So, in the middle of making love, the perpetrator appears and shoots the man from behind. But why not the woman as well? Why did she get choked and drowned when the killer had a gun?”

“Maybe a maniac. Someone like the parking-lot killer,” said Arens, horrified.

The case of the famous parking lot killer had been a nightmare for the police. More than ten years ago, a never-captured perpetrator had ambushed and shot lovers in remote parking lots. At the time, Lucarelli was working for the Stuttgart Criminal Investigation Department and had followed the cases that had taken place near the state capital. As the saying went: a murderer without a motive was hard to catch because his actions did not follow any logic that could betray him. The colleagues from the State Criminal Police Office, which the case was quickly assigned to, were doomed to wait in vain for the perpetrator to leave a trail.

“First the murderer with the gun gets the man out of the way, just like the parking-lot killer used to do. And as soon as he is alone with the woman, he lives out the rest of his perverted fantasy with her,” Arens revealed his theory.

“The parking-lot killer shot but did not abuse his victims.”

“Maybe he has descended into further madness over the past ten years?”

Lucarelli answered calmly: “In any case, it seems like there are a lot of possibilities right now. Robbery, sex murder, serial killer. It’s too many for my taste.”

“What do you mean?” Arens asked.

“We’ll see,” Lucarelli said, “It’s just a gut feeling.

3.

Lucarelli stood in front of a door with a silver sign that read Police Commissioner Charlotte Benzing. They’d met during their studies at the police academy. Charlotte’s career had taken off quickly, as she’d effortlessly found her way into the Ministry for Internal Affairs after graduating from the administrative faculty of the academy. A year later, she’d already been appointed as deputy to the police president of Freiburg, Rupert Steinle. After Steinle was unable to return to his post from his vacation, following an unfortunate accident, the Ministry in Stuttgart promoted Charlotte. At the time, Charlotte had just turned forty-three and was two years younger than Lucarelli. Sometimes when he walked past her office, he couldn’t help but wonder what this woman could possibly still strive for during the next twenty-five years—now that she had already reached the top.

The waiting room was empty on this particular Monday. Lucarelli walked past two meticulously tidied desks, which two assistants usually occupied. According to rumors, they had only half-heartedly managed to befriend their new boss.

The door to Charlotte’s office was ajar. Lucarelli could hear his boss trying to get rid of a journalist on the phone. He waited until she had hung up before he knocked.

“Come in, Hans,” she waved from her desk.

Charlotte Benzing pointed to the large meeting table opposite her desk, walked over, and took a seat. She hadn’t called him “Hans” since the police academy. In the presence of others, she always insisted on being on very formal terms. When they were alone, she’d leave it simply at “Lucarelli,” minus the “Mr.” From her point of view, that probably sounded colloquial enough anyway, yet still created the necessary distance to push away the memory of a night during which she had slept with her subordinate. Lucarelli didn’t mind, or rather he had gotten used to it. All the more reason why he was surprised to hear her first-name him now.

“The ghost of the parking lot killer is haunting us. There is going to be madness circulating in the press. It’s time for Adrion to come back,” said Charlotte Benzing before Lucarelli could sit down.

Hendrik Adrion was the police’s spokesperson and usually dodged unwelcome phone calls for her. To Charlotte Benzing’s dismay, he had taken the week off to travel to a film festival. With her assistant’s illness-related absence and the resignation of the other, Benzing now had to take phone calls herself in order to prevent possible accusations of lack of PR maintenance. This had resulted in a wave of annoying phone calls, which had kept her busy all morning.

“The parking lot killer hasn’t been on the move for over ten years. He was exclusively active within the Stuttgart area. The recent double murder wasn’t necessarily his doing,” said Lucarelli.

“Do you really think that’s going to reassure anyone out there?” Benzing grumbled.

Lucarelli decided to shift his focus on the facts. They couldn’t afford to get carried away by an outbreak of hysteria in the press.

“Thanks to the car rental service that rented out the limousine, we now know the name of the male victim,” he said calmly. “The man in question was called Henry Huth. Forty-nine years old. Co-founding partner of Huth & Saidenberg Communications in Berlin. Estimated time of death between midnight on Saturday and one in the morning on Sunday. The bodies were found at nine the following morning by a pedestrian.”

“What was Huth doing in Freiburg?”

“He was born in Sankt Georgen and had been registered as a resident of Freiburg for quite some time. He owned two houses here, one in Kirchstraße and another one in Jacobistraße. His only son Philipp also lives in Freiburg. Huth arrived at Euro-Airport Basel last Friday at 4:50 p.m. with the plane from Brussels. We don’t know what he was doing during the days prior to his death yet. But we have located his son and are going to meet with him shortly.”

“Why did Huth take the woman to the woods when he has a flat in town?” Benzing wondered.

“Spontaneous decision? Particular sexual preferences? Flat occupied?”

Lucarelli couldn’t help but think about where he and Charlotte had taken off to after their first kiss. The scene hadn’t been very different from what Huth and the unknown woman had done, apart from the fact that they’d gone to a parking lot behind the fair complex with a rusty, old diesel Mercedes. Lucarelli would have loved to know if she was also thinking about that right now.

“Anyway, Huth was shot while the couple was having sex,” he continued. “Based on the blood samples, the victim’s post mortem erection and the position of the body, there is no doubt that the perpetrator snuck up on Henry Huth while he was standing in front of the hood to shoot him in the back of the head at close range.”

“What happened to the woman?”

“The murderer tied her up, strangled her and held her head underwater in a nearby tree trunk trough. She died of asphyxiation. The identity of the woman is still unknown. However, she was considerably younger than Huth, probably in her mid-twenties. Medium height, slim and of middle or western European origin.”

“Was she raped?”

“According to Forensics’ initial analysis, Huth penetrated the woman anally. Nevertheless, she suffered more severe injuries to her genitals, probably caused by a woodlike material such as a branch or a stick. Since the object hasn’t been found in the immediate vicinity of the crime scene, we can assume that these injuries were not inflicted on the woman by Huth. So, it was the murderer.”

Charlotte Benzing showed no emotion. It was a defining characteristic of her professional conduct and probably quite useful for her career that no one could ever guess what she was thinking or feeling. The possibility that the parking lot killer was in town had only briefly scratched at her mask. Now she appeared impenetrable and distant again.

“This methodology is not unusual,” continued Lucarelli. “There are plenty of examples of killers who don’t rape but enjoy torturing their victims. Something about this parking-lot killer scenario still doesn’t convince me. The serial killer from Stuttgart did not indulge in paraphilia with his victims. As far as we know, he only shot them.”

A phone started ringing in the waiting room. Charlotte Benzing got up, shook her head, and closed the door. You could still hear the shrillness of the ringtone, but the padded executive door kept out most of the noise. The light of the intercom on the desk, however, continued to blink incessantly.

“Do you think the killer staged this in order to distract from his real motive?”

“I know this sounds adventurous right now. However, the killer was incredibly careful not to leave a trace.”

“That doesn’t prove anything. Even sex maniacs can get rid of evidence.”

“Perhaps. I just don’t want to rule out the possibility that the murderer might have wanted to distract from his true identity and a concrete motive for the murder by staging some elements of the crime. Maybe the police are supposed to believe that a compulsive lunatic or a thief was involved.”

“If the perpetrator took the victims’ valuables to fake a robbery, why not steal the car as well? The key was practically on a silver plate,” Charlotte Benzing objected.

“It is quite common for these expensive rental cars to have an in-built sim-card with which one can easily locate the car. And the fact that it was a rental car would have been easy for the perpetrator to recognize, thanks to the sticker on the windshield.”

Lucarelli kept the second reason he had in mind to himself. In the front room, the phone started ringing again. This time the President rose to return to her desk. Lucarelli also stood up.

“Cherchez la femme!” she shouted before he walked out of the door.

4.

Philipp Huth is taking an exam right now and then he has to get back to his studies. That’s why he wanted to meet us at the university,” said Arens.

“Not a nice way to find out that his father has died,” said Lucarelli.

“He said he didn’t have much time otherwise,” Arens shrugged. “I couldn’t exactly tell him on the phone.”

They left the police station’s courtyard and drove into the street.

“Soon, the whole country is going to know. Madam President is expected to hold a press conference later. She’s just waiting for Adrion to return,” said Lucarelli.

“I bet she isn’t too happy with him right now. While all hell broke loose here, he was in Cannes watching movies.”

“So what? A vacation is a vacation. What difference does it make if he’s spending it on a beach somewhere or at a film festival?”

Lucarelli liked Hendrik Adrion. He was young, highly educated, and managed to keep his cool even during the most heated press conferences. On top of that, he was well-liked by the journalists. Word had gotten around that Adrion occasionally wrote film reviews for a major Berlin newspaper, so some journalists respectfully considered him as one of their own. However, Adrion’s trips to glamorous film festivals and his articles appeared in a large, national newspaper aroused some envy among some of his colleagues. Although Lucarelli assumed that Adrion could bear it, he occasionally felt it was appropriate to defend him. Time to change the subject.

“We need to establish the identity of the woman.”

“So far, there’s been no match with our records nor a missing person’s report.”

“Do we know when and what the victims had for dinner?” Lucarelli asked. The first thing Lucarelli would do in the office in the mornings was to turn on the espresso machine. He’d then sit down at his desk with his first cup of coffee and read his emails in peace. This morning he had had to deviate from his ritual and had asked Arens whether he had turned the machine on as soon as he stepped into the office.

The awkward silence he got in return confirmed that Arens had forgotten to take care of it. He was still embarrassed and was currently pretending to be looking at something highly interesting in the rear-view mirror.

“Stop over there by the tobacco shop. You can ask the lab while I get some smokes,” said Lucarelli.

Arens steered the company car into a parking space. Lucarelli got out and went to his local shop. Every time he visited the narrow, windowless store, he told himself that he would stop smoking. Before he joined the police force, he had been aiming to become a tennis pro. Smoking and alcohol had been taboo, and as soon as he had to bury his dream, he made up for what he’d had to give up in his youth. He’d been unable to kick the nasty habit ever since. To his dismay, he’d been out of breath for the first time after climbing the stairs to the sixth floor in the presidium this morning. And he couldn’t imagine the impression he would have made if he had played against the beauty at the tennis court. It was a blessing in disguise that it hadn’t come to it.

The tobacco shop also served as a newspaper stand and point of sale for the lottery. A long queue of people was waiting in front of the sales counter, which only moved slowly. Finally, it was Lucarelli’s turn. The shopkeeper looked stunned when instead of ordering a whole carton, as Lucarelli usually did, he asked for a single packet of cigarettes. As he stepped out into the street, he decided that the packet would have to last him for the entire week. Lucarelli had never been good at sticking to his resolutions, apart from the one which resulted from his brief affair with Charlotte Benzing. Ever since he had vowed to himself to avoid any kind of temptation involving his female colleagues. This time, however, he was serious about cutting down on his smoking.

“Any news from the lab?” Lucarelli asked as he sat back down next to Arens.

“The two victims had ingested more or less the same thing: white asparagus, potatoes and hollandaise sauce. According to the lab, the food was consumed approximately three hours before the murder.”

“Alcohol?”

“Huth had a blood level of 0.8. The woman, 0.2.”

Lucarelli downloaded a restaurant guide onto his cell phone. A map of the districts of Waldsee, Littenweiler, and Wiehre indicated where restaurants and pubs were in the vicinity of the crime scene.

“Would you rent an XC1 to take a woman out for dinner to the clubhouse of a sports club?” Lucarelli asked, looking at the city map.

“Of course not.”

“I don’t think the Schwarzwald-Sushi serves asparagus. So that leaves us with three restaurants in the vicinity: the Sankt Ottilien restaurant near the chapel, the Gasthaus Stahl in Carthusian Street and the Schiff in the Schwarzwaldstrasse. Obviously, they could have eaten God knows where and driven to the forest from there but who knows. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”

Lucarelli glanced at his watch. It was a quarter to eleven. All three places were still closed.

“If the woman hardly had anything to drink, it could be that she drove her own car to the restaurant,” Lucarelli pondered. “Our colleagues from the municipal law enforcement services should check whether there’s been a forgotten, parked car nearby. They’re usually out quite early with their parking tickets.”

“The first parking tickets get distributed at half-past eight on Mondays. From then on, it’s every half hour,” Arens spoke with a voice of sore experience. “And now it’s almost eleven.”

Arens lived in a small village of the Black Forest where no buses passed through after eight o’clock in the evening. Despite his many written requests, he was refused a permanent parking space on police grounds due to his low rank. Therefore, he occasionally had to park his car outside. If Arens was unable to get a new ticket from the parking ticket machine on time, he was quickly punished by the local parking stewardesses. As he suspected, the ladies worked for a private company contracted by the city, which paid its employees a commission per ticket. Arens was convinced that they spent the last remaining minutes of his parking time lurking next to his car just so they wouldn’t miss the opportunity to give him a ticket.

“We need pictures of the two dead victims so we can show them to the restaurant staff,” Lucarelli said.

“I’ve already arranged for that. Should be ready soon.”

“Very good. Let’s go to meet Philip Huth at the university.”

5.

Shot?” Philipp Huth was shocked.

He looked much older than twenty-five. It was obvious that he hadn’t slept much. Pale and visibly tired, he had waited outside the cafeteria for the detectives to arrive before silently following them into the courtyard. They stopped between two buildings, away from the crowded student tables. At least here, they could talk undisturbed. Lucarelli had gotten straight to the point.

Philipp Huth sunk onto one of the benches that formed a row on the north side of the courtyard. He closed his water-blue eyes, which had black circles underneath.

“Who did this?” he said.

“We don’t know yet. A woman has also been murdered. Your father and this woman were ambushed and killed in a remote wooded area near Saint Ottilien,” said Arens.

“Who was the woman?”

Arens pulled a photo out of his jacket and held it up to Huth.

“Is that her?”

Arens nodded. “The identity of the murdered woman is still unknown to us. Perhaps you recognize her?”

Philipp Huth looked at the photo without taking it into his hands. He pinched his bushy, dark blond eyebrows together and stared at the distorted face of the deceased woman.

“I think I might have seen this woman before,” he finally said. “But I could be mistaken.”

“Maybe it was with your father? Take your time and think about it.”

Two chatting female students approached. They were heading for the neighboring bench, which was lit by the warm spring sun. As usual, Lucarelli received a few curious looks. His southern appearance, with his dense black hair, dark brown eyes and natural tan which he had inherited from his father Silvio, was generally attractive to women. He was also relatively tall. The suits of his cousin Carlo, who had been one of the most respected tailors in Milan’s banking scene and whose custom-made garments inevitably caught the eye of many in a student city like Freiburg, did the rest. Lucarelli didn’t mind. At some point, he had gotten used to it.

“I don’t see my father very often,” Huth said with a muffled voice. He ran his hand through his thick, blond hair.

“Where can we find your mother?” asked Arens.

“In America. She has a guest tenure at Yale. She flew back after Easter.”

Philipp Huth stared into the void. Lucarelli and Arens exchanged a silent look.

“Are you going to be alright?” Lucarelli asked. “We’ll leave you alone now.”

Huth pursed his lips together and nodded.

“We’re going to have to ask you to come down to the station,” Lucarelli said. “You still have to identify the body.”

“How about at ten tomorrow morning?” Arens suggested.

“I can’t make it at ten,” Huth said with a weak voice. “I can’t make it until the afternoon.”

Arens picked a business card from his wallet. Huth limply lifted his arm and put it in his pocket without looking at it.

“Please call first.”

They left. After passing the cafeteria and reaching the entrance to the university building, Lucarelli paused.

“What are you waiting for?” asked Arens.

“I want to keep an eye on Philip Huth.”

“Why?”

“Because my job requires me to think badly of people. Now I want to know how upset Phillip Huth still is, now that he thinks we’re gone.”

Lucarelli and Arens hid in the blind spot behind the glass front door. From there they had a good view of the bench.

The two female students from earlier balanced coffee filled paper cups as they passed by but paid no attention to the police officers. A few moments later, Huth pulled out his cell phone, pressed a number and made a call. The anguish seemed to have disappeared from his face.

6.

We now know the identity of the woman who was murdered. Her name is Michelle Merlin,” announced Benny Liebig. “She was twenty-four years old.”

Peter Mitzler, Head of Forensics, had also been invited to the team meeting. Although Liebig, Arens, and Lucarelli now had confirmation on the young age of the female victim, there was also a sense of relief in the air. Even Peter Mitzler, who usually never seemed to carry any expression on his face, was nodding appreciatively at Liebig.

“She’d been reported missing by a colleague after she failed to show up to work at a health insurance company,” Liebig continued. “I went there immediately. Two of her colleagues recognized her in the photo.”

“Do we know anything else about her?” asked Lucarelli.

“On Facebook, there’s a page with her resume. She was born in Offenburg, where she also did her A-levels. Afterward, Merlin spent a year working in Montpellier as an au-pair, followed by studies in Freiburg. Twenty months ago, she started working for the health insurance company AKV Krankenversicherung in Habsburger Street.”

“Michelle Merlin sounds French,” added Arens.

Benny Liebig had a small stack of papers in front of him and pushed the top sheet aside. “She had two citizenships: German and French. Michelle Merlin’s grandfather Albert Merlin was French and served in the French military. He was stationed in Donaueschingen and later in Baden-Baden. At the beginning of the sixties, he married a German woman and remained in Germany until retirement. Her father Roger Merlin was born in Rastatt and also married a German woman. The couple didn’t have any other children. Both parents, Roger and Margarete Merlin died in an accident two and a half years ago.”

For a moment, the room fell silent. One couldn’t help but grieve the fact that with the murder of Michelle, an entire family had been wiped out.

“The only ones still alive are her father’s older brother, Gustave, and her grandfather Albert,” Liebig continued. “They both live in France now. Albert Merlin returned to Marseilles on retirement and Michelle’s uncle was the director of a big bank in Frankfurt until last year. Since his retirement, he’s been living in a little village called Vogelgrün. It’s just over the border in Alsace.”

As always, Peter Mitzler watched the scene through the lenses of his nickel spectacles with unwavering calm. He didn’t seem to be getting impatient in the least, even though the meeting had taken a completely different direction than what he’d been originally invited for. Two photos laid before him, facing down. Mitzler had folded his hands over them as if he wanted to protect them.

“For the official identification of the corpse, the statements of the work colleagues are not enough. We need to ask Michelle’s uncle from Alsace to come here,” said Arens.

“Indeed. Were you able to question the colleagues about Ms. Merlin?” Lucarelli asked Liebig.

“They didn’t know much about her. As I’ve already mentioned, she worked there for a year and a half as an insurance clerk. She was responsible for claims.”

“Not very exciting for a woman with a degree,” said Arens.

“True. She had given notice to quit by the end of the quarter and according to her colleagues, she intended to resume her studies. Apart from that, she was rather reserved and barely talked about private matters. So, nobody had the slightest idea who Michelle Merlin dated or how she knew Henry Huth. Maybe we could learn something by visiting her apartment. She lived in Kirchzarten.”

Benny shoved two already filled-out forms over to Lucarelli, which Lucarelli signed immediately without looking at them.

“Sorry, I kept you waiting,” Lucarelli apologized to the chief of forensic, Peter Mitzler.

“No problem, Hans. The complete program for the victims’ apartments?”

“Yes. We need to find out as much as possible about them. Let’s move onto your analysis.”

“On one hand, the perpetrator acted with great caution,” Mitzler began thoughtfully. “He wore gloves and left nothing behind at the scene of the crime. However, we found a hair under the seat of the car, which doesn’t belong to either victim.”

“That sounds promising,” said Lucarelli.

“It can happen that a hair from a previous renter gets caught in some crevice and stays there for a long time, despite repeated cleaning of the rental car.”

“Was the perpetrator even in the car?” Arens wanted to know.

“Given the circumstances, I think it is likely. I’m assuming that the man left the car keys in the car while he was having sex with the woman outside. Since we couldn’t find the key, the perpetrator must have taken it out of the car. He might have lost a strand of hair in the process. We should also consider the murder weapon that was used to shoot Henry Huth. The 9mm caliber matches a Parabellum pistol which was frequently used during World War I. It’s over a hundred years old.”

Mitzler turned over one of the two photos and slid it over to the other side of the table. Lucarelli and Arens looked at the pistol in amazement. It was still equipped with a knee joint lock and a stop board. Although there was little doubt about how much damage it could still create, one would rather imagine such a weapon in a museum.

“Si vis pacem para bellum,” Lucarelli recited. “My father taught this to his pupils because he considered tennis to be a form of psychological warfare. He believed it would prepare them for the harsh realities of a tennis career. If I’m not mistaken, the name parabellum pistol was derived from this phrase.”

“I didn’t have Latin in school,” Arens shrugged.

“If you want peace, prepare for war,” translated Mitzler. He pushed his glasses up to the tip of his nose and paused for dramatic effect while observing his colleagues over the rim of his spectacles. Mitzler seemed to enjoy these seconds of suspension before getting to the point. Lucarelli had never seen Mitzler behave like this before.

“The LKA Stuttgart discovered that the parking lot killer used a parabellum pistol to shoot his victims,” Mitzler finally said.

Lucarelli and Arens gazed silently at the second photo that Mitzler placed next to the first. “The same caliber, almost the same age and, of course, the same name, derived from ‘If you want peace, prepare for war’,” explained Mitzler.

“The connection between these two murder weapons could be a coincidence,” Arens said. He sounded like a student plagued by test anxiety, desperately hoping that the teacher would get sick and cancel the exams. Dealing with a serial killer without a proper motive was a nightmare.

Mitzler shrugged; he had his great moment. Perhaps he was expecting a bit more resonance.

Lucarelli’s thoughts started racing. Were they really dealing with the parking lot killer? He might have possessed a whole arsenal of old World War I pistols, which he fired at unsuspecting lovers in his madness. On the other hand, the parking lot killer’s last murder was over ten years ago. And no more than a year had ever passed between each of his four double murders. Insane people were usually in a greater hurry.

7.

Questioning the staff of the restaurant “Zum Schiff” didn’t achieve much. Neither the landlord nor the two waiters had noticed a couple with a large age difference on Saturday evening. They were going to visit the Gasthaus Stahl next.