Crime by Ferdinand Von Schirach

Author:Ferdinand Von Schirach [Von Schirach, Ferdinand]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Random House, Inc.
Published: 2011-01-10T19:00:00+00:00

Forty-eight hours later, the examining magistrate called me to arrange a time for the formal review of Boheim’s remand in custody. We settled on the next day. I could have the file picked up by a courier; the DA’s office had approved its release.

The file contained new inquiries. Everyone in the victim’s cell-phone address book had been questioned. A girlfriend, in whom Stefanie Becker had confided, explained to the police why she had turned to prostitution.

But what was much more interesting was that the police had located Abbas in the meantime. He had a record—break-ins and drug dealing and, two years previously, an offense involving grievous bodily harm, a fight outside a discotheque. The police had questioned Abbas. He said he had followed Stefanie to the hotel once, out of jealousy, but she’d been able to explain what she was doing there. The interrogation went on for many pages, and the detectives’ suspicions were clear in every line. But finally when it came down to it, they had a motive but no proof.

Late in the afternoon, I paid a visit to ADA Schmied in his office. As always, he welcomed me in both a friendly and a professional way. He didn’t feel good about Abbas, either. Jealousy was always a powerful motive. Abbas could not be excluded as the alternative killer. He knew the hotel, she was his girlfriend, and she had slept with another man. If he had been there, he could also have killed her. I explained to Schmied why Boheim had lied, then said, “Sleeping with a student isn’t, finally, a crime.”

“Yes, but it’s not very attractive, either.”

“Thank God that’s not the issue,” I said. “Infidelity is no longer punishable under the law.” Schmied himself had had an affair with a female district attorney some years ago, as everyone knew around the Moabit courthouse. “I can’t see a single reason why Boheim would have wanted to kill his lover,” I said.

“Nor do I, yet. But you know motives don’t count that much with me,” said Schmied. “He really did lie his head off under questioning.”

“That makes him suspicious, I grant you, but it doesn’t prove anything. Besides which, his first statement at the hearing is probably unusable.”

“Oh?”

“The police had already analyzed the phone records by then. They knew he’d had long conversations with the victim. They knew from the nearest cell-phone tower that his car was in the neighborhood of the hotel. They knew he had reserved the room in which the girl was killed. The police should therefore have interrogated him formally as the accused, but they only questioned him under the guise of a witness and only cautioned him as such.”

Schmied thumbed through the transcript of the interrogation. “You’re right,” he said finally, and pushed the files away. He disliked such little games by the police; they never really got anybody anywhere.

“Besides which, the weapon involved, the lamp the student was killed with, showed no fingerprints,” I said. The trace evidence had revealed only her DNA.

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