Private Berlin (Private 5)

“Look at me watching him walk away,” Mattie cried after seeing herself step to the guard’s window. “I had this feeling about him, but I let him walk away because he reminded me of my mother and I pitied him!”

“You couldn’t have known,” Katharina said.

Mattie knew she was right, but it sure didn’t make her feel any better.

Was that the man who killed Chris? Was that Krüger or Pavel in disguise?

Pavel owned a nightclub for female impersonators. He’d know all about makeup, wouldn’t he? What about Krüger? A billionaire could hire someone to disguise him, right? Or he could have paid someone to steal the documents.

She was lost in these thoughts when Katharina’s phone rang again.

“What?” Katharina cried. She stabbed at her phone and the speaker came on.

“He’s done it!” Rudy Krüger shouted over a background din of voices. “He’s killed my mother!”

“Slow down, Rudy,” Katharina said.

“She’s dead,” he said in a quivering voice. “I just got a call from Berlin Kripo. Someone shot her in her car near the house. It had to be Hermann. I know it. He did it or he had her killed. That fucking capitalist pig! He—”

Rudy was choking. “Oh, God. He—I told her—”

“Rudy, I know this is tough. Take a deep breath. Where are you?”

“Leaving the rally. We were protesting corporate pigs like my stepfather who are trying to tear down Tacheles and turn it into another high-rise. The police want me to identify her.”

“We’ll meet you there in ten minutes.”

CHAPTER 50

HAUPTKOMMISSAR HANS DIETRICH was already on the scene when Mattie and Katharina arrived. He was standing in the rain by the open door to the black Porsche Cayenne, grim, drawn, and gray, and even more hunched over.

From behind the yellow crime scene tape, Mattie spotted Inspector Weigel and called to her. Weigel came over, puzzled.

“What are you doing here?” the inspector asked.

“Agnes Krüger was Chris Schneider’s client,” Mattie said. “Dietrich knows about it.”

Suddenly annoyed, the young inspector glanced at the high commissar. “The man tells me nothing. It’s like I don’t exist. But he has a lot on his mind. His father died of a heart attack last night in Treptower Park. He found him.”

“That’s awful,” Mattie said.

“And he’s here at work?” Katharina asked.

“The way I understand it, work is all Dietrich has,” the inspector replied.

Mattie had heard the same thing and

was about to say so when she heard Rudy Krüger cry, “Where is she?”

The billionaire’s stepson had just left a taxi and was rushing to them. He slowed when he saw the crashed Porsche on the other side of the street. He moaned, “Oh, God. What’s he done to her?”

To Mattie, Rudy Krüger no longer looked the part of the arrogant artist and anarchist. He was just a boy who’d lost his mother.

Tears came to his eyes and he rubbed fiercely at his cheeks. “What’s he done? What’s he done to her?”

“Are you Rudy Krüger?” High Commissar Dietrich asked.

He’d come over to Weigel and seen Rudy crying.