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“The thing is,” he finally says, “you can’t imagine how much political pressure we’re under right now.”
“No, no,” Yasira bursts out. She would have expected to feel at least partly relieved to be rid of this horrendous investigation that has been swallowing up her whole life, but at this moment all she feels is anger. “You will not take this case away from me!”
“That’s not all,” says her boss. “We’re forced to suspend you until further notice.”
Yasira is stunned. “What? But by doing that, you’re playing right into these assholes’ hands. You’re doing exactly what they want!”
“It’s only until further notice. Until things are sorted out.”
Yasira can’t comprehend this anymore. She gets louder: “But we have proof now! I never said that! Don’t you understand? This is the proof that all those videos were fake.”
Gebhardt sighs: “That’s your perspective. And I believe you. I want to believe you. But you’ve become a political issue. So until this case is resolved, I have to...”
Yasira stands up. Now it’s her turn to scream at her boss. “You can’t possibly be serious! Show some backbone for once! You’re a cop, goddammit, not a fucking politician!”
Gebhardt stands up too. His head turns red.
“Who do you think you are?” he shouts. “I entrusted you with this case, the most important of your damn career. But for two weeks you’ve delivered nothing! Nothing but half-baked conspiracy theories! What happened to the girl? Where is Lena Palmer? Your indiscretion alone would have been enough to get you fired. I gave you a direct order not to go to the press with your suspicions and you did it anyway. Now you have to suffer the consequences. The decision comes from the very top. The president of the BKA personally demanded your head! You are suspended! Leave my office and the building immediately! This conversation is over.”
They stare at each other. Yasira is seething. But what can she do? In a final dramatic gesture, she takes her gun and slams it on her boss’s desk. She turns to leave, but then turns back again. “And sometimes, when you shave your head,” she shouts, “you miss a little tuft on the back of your neck, and it looks ridiculous!”
Then she leaves the office. Not without slamming the door, of course. She behaves like her daughter when she’s angry, Yasira thinks. So what? A colleague who is just passing through the corridor looks at her with wide eyes.
“What are you staring at, Silke? Mind your own goddamn business!”
Yasira stomps into her office. Without saying a word, she grabs her jacket.
“How did it go?” asks Michael.
But Yasira just shakes her head. She can’t talk to him or her team. Not now. They don’t deserve to be on the receiving end of her anger. Plus, she’s suspended. It’s not her job to inform anyone about anything.
She leaves the building, marches past the guard on duty at the gate to the outside world without saying hello, gets into her car, still fuming with rage, and drives off. For a moment she has the feeling that a black Passat is tailing her, but moments later she can no longer spot it in the city traffic.
Yasira drives aimlessly through Berlin. She doesn’t know where to go. She doesn’t want to go home. What should she do there? Alone. She would go crazy. Her phone rings. It’s Michael. But she doesn’t want to talk to him now. So she lets the phone ring until he gives up. Part of Yasira wants to drive to her parents. Cry on her father’s shoulder. But that’s a stupid idea, obviously. She’s not a little kid. She needs to calm down first. She needs to think straight again. And for some reason she doesn’t want to face her daughter. Not now. Not like this. Full of anger. Full of disappointment.
She has to... She has to... She has to carry on. She can’t give up. The suspension is irrelevant. She knows she’s right. She has to... She has to go to Claus Messerschmidt. She has to keep investigating. So she opens the email from Cyber-Chris and enters Messerschmidt’s address into her GPS. This almost causes her to have an accident, resulting in a small honking concert. “Fuck you!” Yasira thinks. “Just go and fuck yourselves!” The house is located in the middle of the countryside in southeastern Brandenburg. One hour and thirty-eight minutes. Good. Perhaps enough time to cool off a little.
But the traffic does little to improve her mood. Her phone rings again. This time it’s Jenny. Apparently the news of her suspension is slowly spreading. But she doesn’t want any pity now, so she simply turns off her phone.
It takes Yasira what feels like an eternity to get out of Berlin. Then, finally, the flood of cars subsides. Instead, there are plenty of trucks. And tractors. Yasira makes overtaking maneuvers for which she would have given Michael a scolding. One time, an oncoming car has to hit the brakes hard. She doesn’t give a damn. The villages and monocultures along the country road fly past her. Not until she turns onto an unpaved forest road shortly before her destination does she calm down a little. Perhaps it is the colorful trees glowing in the light of the late afternoon. Perhaps it is the sudden absence of any noise. Perhaps it is the focus on the uncertain that awaits her in this remote house. Yasira opens her window and breathes in the fresh, cool autumn air. She slowly lets the car bounce along the road. Finally, she spots Messerschmidt’s house. She stops immediately, backs up a little until she is out of sight, parks there, and gets out quietly.
Something tells her it’s better to surprise the guy. So she sneaks up to the house, covered by the trees. It’s not the witch’s hut she expected given the location. On the contrary, it looks quite modern. In the twilight of the autumn evening, she sees two satellite dishes on the roof. Presumably they are not here to ensure the best possible interference-free reception of network TV but rather for his internet connection. Next to it are solar panels on the roof. A photovoltaic system in the forest? But the house is in a clearing and probably gets enough sun. A little way from the house are a dozen tanks about the size of punching bags. What’s in them? They don’t look like gas tanks. Maybe Messerschmidt has one of those modern systems that store excess solar energy as hydrogen. Nearby is a larger metal box. A transformer, perhaps. Is Messerschmidt a prepper? Is he, in the worst case, one of those Reichsbürger nutcases? Does he also hoard grenades in his basement?
Actually, she’s only here to talk to him as an expert. But now the thought occurs to her that he might be the one behind the video. Her research, however, did not indicate that Messerschmidt would sympathize with the Nazis. On the other hand, quite a few people, from whom you wouldn’t have expected it, took a sharp turn to the right during the pandemic. Yasira painfully misses the weight of her gun on her hip. But she shouldn’t get carried away with her imagination. As it stands, Messerschmidt is nothing but a law-abiding citizen. Even the covered-up #MeToo scandal is just a rumor.
Still, Yasira picks up the large rock that she almost trips over and keeps it in her hand. She thinks about how to proceed. Knock? Ask for a chat? But she is not the police. Not anymore. Though Messerschmidt doesn’t know that, does he? When she made her furious departure from the BKA headquarters, she didn’t hand in her badge. Yasira decides to check out the situation first. She sneaks closer to the house and then around the building. There are lights burning in several windows. Messerschmidt seems to be around. The sliding door on the patio is slightly open. A terrible smell is coming from nearby.
Yasira wants to surprise Messerschmidt. With her badge in one hand and the rock in the other, she slips through the patio door into the living room of the house. Right away, the stench is almost unbearable. The TV is on in the living room. Some old murder mystery. The screen is huge and curved. For whatever that’s worth. Yasira pulls her scarf over her nose and follows the stench into the hallway. There, a half-open door to her left leads into the kitchen. Her heart beats faster as she carefully pushes the door open. She listens, but apart from the TV in the living room, she can only hear her own breath. She cautiously enters the kitchen. As she had feared from the smell, a corpse is lying on the floor.
SPILLED MILK
Yasira nearly throws up. Nevertheless, she enters the kitchen. A swarm of flies abandons its feast, buzzing around her. She puts the rock, which she is still holding in her hand, into the pocket of her coat. Then she opens the window. Now she has to inspect the body. A part of her job that she absolutely dreaded, starting back in her training. The images and videos of the American body farms that were shown in Wiesbaden during the training courses gave her nightmares for weeks. In these body farms, corpses are laid out in the open so that forensic scientists can observe the decomposition processes in order to draw conclusions about bodies found after crimes. The corpses lie under rusty wire mesh cages to protect them from wild animals. A horrible place. Yasira refocuses on the present and turns to the corpse lying in front of her.
The dead man is Messerschmidt. Despite the advanced stage of decomposition, she can clearly identify him by his golden nose piercing. It’s the same one he wore in the photo shoot forWired. A light stubble beard covers his face. He doesn’t have it because, as popular belief has it, hair continues to grow after death. It’s more because that the skin shrinks, causing the beard hair to appear.
Judging by the state of decomposition, Messerschmidt has been lying on the kitchen tiles for weeks. The putrefaction, which begins in the intestines, has already spread over the entire body. The skin is discolored, the sulfur compounds produced during the decomposition of hemoglobin make the veins under the skin shimmer green. The soft tissues are swollen. Yasira can tell by his lips. Messerschmidt’s mouth is open. There are blisters on his tongue. But the putrefaction has already turned to decay. A few weeks ago, the stench must have been far worse.
At first glance, she finds no wounds or signs of violence on Messerschmidt’s body. Then she uses her boot to slightly turn Messerschmidt’s head to the side. Something looks suspicious on the back of his head. It was once encrusted blood. But even the blood is already decomposing. Maggots are crawling around in the wound. Yasira lets her gaze wander upwards from Messerschmidt’s head. On the corner of the slate worktop there are also traces of blood. Messerschmidt must have hit his head against it. Did that kill him? But why did he fall?
