Published: 4 Oct 2021

The following story is the second episode from the life of Kriminalkommissar (KK) Sascha Altmann. Although the plot is self-contained, it is better to have read the first episode “Othello and other disasters” beforehand, especially to understand the characters. Starting with this story, I decided to use the original German police ranks, check the notes at the end of the story about them.

The killer aimed at the head of the bound man. “Now, cop, you’re going to die!” Apparently, there really was no chance of rescue anymore. But suddenly the door of the room burst open!

“Hello Sascha.”

What? Where? Oh. There were two room doors burst open at the same time, one in the detective novel I was reading, and another one in the office where I was sitting and killing my working hours by reading. I quickly tossed the book aside and turned to my visitor.

“Hello, Sven.”

Kriminalhauptkommissar (KHK) Berger of the Organized Crime Department stepped into the room and closed the door behind him.

“Isn’t your boss in?”

“No, he already went home for the day.”

Berger checked the time and shook his head in wonder.

“Gone home already? At this time? He’s usually in the office until late at night.”

Yes, that was what EKHK Machlitzke of the Homicide Department was famous for. Much to the chagrin of his wife and children.

“Family obligations. It’s his 20th anniversary today, so Gertrud gave him the choice of either celebrating with her or getting a divorce instead.”

My visitor laughed.

“I think with these alternatives, even for a workhorse like Jens it was an easy decision.”

“I think so, too, and judging by the huge bouquet of flowers he left with, he knows full well that he has a lot to make up for to his wife.”

“Well, that’s probably how most people in our job feel. But I’m actually quite happy to catch you here alone.”

What did that mean? Was he going to suggest again that I transfer to his department? Since we were able to convict the underworld bigwig Viktor Barenkow of manslaughter a few months ago, Berger had repeatedly tried to poach me from the homicide department. So far, however, this had always been done in the presence of my own superior. The two of them knew each other very well, and that was more of a running joke than a real attempt to poach me. Now, however, it almost seemed as if Berger wanted to take the matter more seriously.

“Oh yeah? Why is that?”

“You’re still together with your Derek, aren’t you?”

“Yup. Why do you ask?”

Of course I was still together with my sweetheart, I’d be a real fool if I ever gave him up again. And I had been accused of a lot of things in my life – being a fool, however, was not one of them.

“I’ve got a little computer problem I’d like a professional’s help with.”

Well, he was definitely in the right place with Derek. With a former school friend, he started Data Rescue as a successful young entrepreneur, and within a very short time the company had made a name for itself in the field of computer security and data recovery.

“Tell me more.”

“We seized a computer during a home search, and we hope to get some evidence from it. Unfortunately, it’s all encrypted, and time is a critical factor. You know how it is when we go the official route through State Police…”

Indeed. For them first came their own work, then for a long time nothing, and at some point at the very end came the help for us low life city cops.

“And the owner of the computer isn’t very helpful, is he?”

“If only we had that one. He’s slipped through our fingers, and that’s one of the reasons our hopes rest on the computer. Maybe there’s a clue on it as to where we can look for him.”

Wordlessly, I picked up the phone and dialed the number I had known by heart for several months now (and which sounded like music to my ears).

“Data Rescue, Prosch.”

“Hi honey.”

“Sascha! Nice to hear your voice. What’s going on?”

“Work, Der. Are you busy or could you squeeze something in?”

“Oh come on, it’s Friday afternoon. I guess you couldn’t think of a better time?”

I sighed.

“It’s not my fault, honey. Hauptkommissar Berger would need your expert help. He has a computer here with encrypted data he desperately needs to get to.”

“Hm. All right. Bring me the thing and I’ll see what I can do. Hopefully this won’t screw up our whole weekend.”

I decided to better not say anything more about it.

“Okay, I’ll come as soon as I have the computer.”

“Alright, I’ll wait for you. See you later.”

“Bye.”

I hung up and turned to my visitor.

“Derek agreed, we can bring him the computer.”

Berger breathed a sigh of relief.

“You guys are lifesavers. If there’s ever anything I can do for you guys just let me know.”

I couldn’t think of anything he could do for us at the moment, but I noted his offer in my mind. Who knows what that would be good for someday.

“We’d better hurry, though, lest Derek change his mind.”

That got Berger rolling.

“Let’s go then, the computer is in my office. Do you have to check out somehow?”

“No, I’ll just switch the phone to my cell. I’ll be off work in about an hour anyway.”

“Well, we’d better take your car, then you won’t have to come back here at all, and I’ll have a patrol car pick me up.”

So it happened that after half an hour and a somewhat stressful drive through Leipzig’s Friday afternoon rush hour traffic, we turned onto the Data Rescue premises. I clipped the computer under my arm and, accompanied by Berger, marched purposefully into my sweetheart’s office. He was putting together a computer case, but immediately dropped everything when he saw me come into the room.

“There you are!”

Carefully he took the computer from my hands, put it on the floor, then I got his usual stormy hug greeting. Not that I would complain…

Suddenly someone cleared his throat next to us. Crap. Berger. We had completely forgotten about him.

“I don’t want to spoil the fun for you two, but I’ve got some work here that calls for a real computer expert.”

Derek didn’t like to admit it, but he did get off on that kind of talk a bit. He liked to be praised and recognized as a specialist.

“Let’s have a look then. By the way, I don’t think we’ve met. I’m Derek, Derek Prosch.”

Berger grabbed the offered hand.

“Pleased to meet you, Sven Berger.”

My boyfriend now grabbed the computer and placed it on his desk.

“You’d better leave me alone with this thing now, I need my peace to work on it. I’ll contact Sascha if I get anything out of it, okay?”

“Agreed, and Sascha can then contact me. If anything comes up, here’s my card too. Cell phone number is on the back.”

“Okay.”

“Oh yeah, I’m really sorry if I’m kind of messing up your weekend plans, but this is really important and urgent.”

“That’s okay. I’ll see what I can do and hurry. We didn’t have anything big planned anyway, but we were supposed to go swimming at the Kulki tomorrow.”

Sven, who was already standing in the doorway, turned around again and grinned cheekily at us.

“I see. Gawking at cute guys in tight swimming trunks, right?”

Indignantly, my honey put his hands on his hips.

“Really! As if we’d gawk at cute guys in tight swimming trunks!”

Exactly, we would never come up with such a stupid idea!

“Sure, I believe you…”

Now it was time for me to give Sven the death blow.

“You can believe it. Because we always go to the nude beach. So you can forget about swimming trunks, tight or not.”

Now Berger choked on his own spit, then raised his hands above his head in surrender.

“I give up. I can’t keep up with you young people anymore. But I should have guessed that, my twins also only go to the textile beach when my wife and I are with them. Well, I’m off. And Sascha, you better get out of here too, so that your better half really gets some work done. Otherwise there might be no time left for the nude beach, no matter if there are any cute guys with or without trunks.”

With those words, Berger disappeared, leaving me alone with Derek.

“I’m sorry, Sascha, but I’m afraid he’s right. I should get to work, and I really don’t need you here for that.”

“That’s okay, I know you can’t concentrate around me.”

I got a hearty peck in the upper left arm in return.

“I wonder why! You never leave me alone for more than five minutes when we’re together.”

That was probably true, but he was just too cute to be left alone. Still, other things had priority now.

“Alright, I’m out of here. And we’ll talk about leaving you alone later. Let’s see if I should also leave you alone in the evening at cuddle time.”

“Don’t you dare! Now get lost.”

I gave Derek a light slap on his shapely rear end, then left him alone with his bits and bytes. By now it was only a few minutes until I got off work, so I decided to head straight home. With a little detour via the supermarket. However, halfway there my cell phone rang.

“Altmann.”

“What are you doing hanging around with the competition?”

I had to grin, even though I had no clue how my boss already knew I had been out with KHK Berger.

“Don’t worry, he didn’t try to poach me this time.”

“Oh yeah, and why did he leave with you in your car?”

“Because he needed help with a computer problem and asked me to put in a good word for him with Derek.”

“Oh. All right. That’s fine. I was afraid he was going to try to rope you in for his crew again.”

“I’ve told you at least three and a half times I’m not interested in that at all, boss.”

“Hm. I just don’t want to lose you, got it?”

That was probably the biggest compliment I would ever get to hear from Machlitzke.

“Like I said, I’ll stay with you. And if you want your wife to stay with you, too, you’d better get back to taking care of her now instead of hanging around the job with one half of your brain.”

“All right, all right, I hear you. Have a good weekend then.”

“You too, and have a great party.”

There was no reply to that, Machlitzke had already hung up. Grinning, I steered the car into the supermarket parking lot and did the shopping. Then I drove home and treated myself to a refreshing shower. Now the weekend could start and I hoped that nothing would screw it up more than Berger’s computer job already did.

The afternoon went by, it was early evening, and I still hadn’t heard from Derek. I knew better than to call him, he could get pretty pissed off if you disturbed him in the middle of his work. So I rather prepared a nice dinner first and also provided a bottle of wine – always hoping that he wouldn’t come home too late.

We had moved into the apartment we shared shortly after the Brauner/Barenkow case. It had been quite an adjustment for both of us. I had lived alone in a small apartment before, but Derek had lived with his parents until then. Neither of us had any experience in living with a partner. It had taken us a while to adjust to the new living conditions, but we had gotten our shit together and things were going really well. The apartment was fortunately big enough, so that each of us had an area all to ourselves if necessary. We had been very lucky to get this apartment on the 26th floor of Leipzig’s highest residential building in the city center. The rent was as high as the house, but we both earned well and could afford it. And the view was simply priceless.

After getting everything ready for a leisurely dinner, I grabbed a bottle of Radler and sat down on one of our balconies. It was a bit noisy there because of the city traffic, but it was still wonderful. On this balcony Derek found me, when he came home around half past seven. Because of the noise I had not heard him approaching me.

“Ah, here you are. I’m working hard and you’re lazing around on the balcony.”

“Hi honey. I’m glad you’re here. So, did you find out anything?”

“Not so far, it’s all scrambled up pretty darn good. But I think I’m on the right track. I’ll get back to it in the morning, I just couldn’t make out any characters on the screen anymore.”

“Poor you. Make yourself comfortable, dinner will be in ten minutes.”

“Make it twenty, I’m going to jump in the shower real quick.”

“Okay. Would you like a glass of wine or something else first?”

“A Radler first, we’ll have the wine later.”

“Okay, go take your shower.”

Half an hour later we were sitting at the dinner table, and Derek looked just scrumptious with his wet hair. Luckily I had prepared some other yummy things to bite into, otherwise I couldn’t have guaranteed for anything.

“Sascha, do you have any idea what exactly your colleague’s case is about?”

I chewed on the herb baguette and shook my head.

“No, he didn’t say anything about it. Would that be important for you?”

“Don’t know yet, depends on what I find tomorrow.”

“You haven’t discovered anything yet?”

“No, but I think I’m pretty close to the algorithm.”

“You’ll get there.”

“Yeah, but not today. I’m really beat. I just want to snuggle up in front of the TV for a bit and then go to bed.”

Challengingly, I grinned at him.

“I’m sure that can be arranged. And you’re welcome to snuggle in bed, too.”

Derek grinned back at least as cheekily.

“Why doesn’t that surprise me?”

“You just know me way too well.”

“Yeah, and that’s a good thing.”

We flirted some more, then I took care of the leftovers from dinner and the dishwasher. I had relegated Derek to the couch earlier, he really had worked long enough for one day. Later, I joined him with the wine bottle, and it turned out to be a nice, cozy evening…

The next morning I was awakened by a kiss on my forehead. Blinking, I opened my eyes and looked into Derek’s face, which was bent over me.

“What’s wrong, Der?”

“I’m on my way to the office. Feel free to stay in bed, it’s still early.”

With displaced eyes, I looked at the clock. Sure enough, it was only a little after 7:30. Poor Derek. And that on a Saturday. I turned back onto my side, and shortly thereafter I was asleep again.

I woke up again shortly before ten, and first I treated myself to a very leisurely morning with a nice breakfast. Just as I was thinking about what to do with the day at about eleven, the phone rang.

“Altmann.”

“Derek here.”

Immediately, my brain jumped into action.

“Did you find something?”

“Yes, and I think you should come over right away, and bring Berger, too.”

“I will, see you soon!”

“Bye.”

With that, the quiet morning was over. I looked up Berger’s phone number and dialed it. After the third ring, a young voice answered.

“Pascal Berger.”

Pascal? Oh yes, one of his twins.

“Kriminalkommissar Altmann, could I speak to your dad, please?”

“Kriminalkommissar Altmann? The nude beach Altmann?”

I groaned. What had Berger been telling his family about us?

“That’s the one. Is your dad available?”

I could literally feel the grin on the boy’s face on the other end of the line.

“Yeah, hold on, I’ll get him.”

I heard the phone land on a table, then feet sprinted away. About half a minute later, the voice of Sven Berger answered.

“Berger. What’s up?”

“Altmann here. Nude beach Altmann.”

My interlocutor laughed uproariously.

“Sorry, Sascha, but I didn’t think Pascal would bring that up right away.”

“Well, all you had to do was to not tell him.”

“Sorry, I just couldn’t help myself. But I guess that’s not why you’re calling. Did your boyfriend find out anything?”

“Yeah, he just called and told us to get over to his office as soon as possible.”

“All right, I’ll get going right away.”

“I’ll meet you there.”

We hung up at the same time, I grabbed my HK SFP9 service weapon and car keys and headed to Data Rescue. Just as I got out of the car there, Berger’s car also came rolling into the parking lot, and together we entered first the company building and then Derek’s office. As we entered, he looked up from the screen.

“Ah, there you are. That was quick.”

“You gave the impression that it was quite urgent.”

Derek didn’t answer but just pointed to two swivel chairs, which we pulled up so that we were now all sitting in front of the huge screen at my friend’s workstation. The latter now looked piercingly at my companion.

“Did you know what I would find on the computer?”

What did he mean by that? Spellbound, I waited for Berger’s answer.

“I had a hunch, but nothing certain. But seeing your reaction, I’m guess my hunch hit the mark.”

“I’m afraid so.”

Derek turned to the computer and clicked the mouse around a bit. Now I was really excited to see what he had discovered! The next moment I saw it – and the moment after that I felt like throwing up in the wastebasket.

“Oh shit!”

Berger turned chalky white, too.

“Does this confirm your hunch?”

“Y-yes. That’s what I was afraid of. And at the same time, I hadn’t imagined it to be so bad.”

A slide show of the most disgusting child porn images played before our eyes. Girls and boys between the ages of maybe 6 and 16, abused for every sex practice imaginable and a few more completely unimaginable ones.

“I think I’m going to be sick.”

“I felt the same way earlier, Sascha. I was expecting all sorts of things, but nothing like this. Your dear colleague here could have given me a little warning.”

KHK Berger made a contrite face.

“I’m sorry, maybe I really should have. But it was really just a hunch at first, I had nothing tangible to show.”

“That hunch would have at least saved me the biggest shock. By the way, the pictures here are the more harmless part of the contents of the hard disk.”

I could hardly believe it, and Berger also looked at Derek in horror.

“The more harmless part?”

“Yes, there are also terabytes of videos. Same content, but moving pictures with sound and everything.”

Disgusted, I stared at Berger.

“And you let the pig who owns the computer get away?”

“Yes, unfortunately. When we showed up at his apartment with the search warrant, he had flown the coop. Neighbors said he hadn’t been home for two or three days. But it didn’t look like he left in a hurry, maybe he just went on vacation and will show up again soon. In any case, I’m having the apartment monitored around the clock.”

Hopefully he was right. A bastard like that simply must not get away.

“Did you find anything besides the pictures and videos?”

“Yeah. It looks like this was not only a collector but also a dealer. I found something like a customer file, but it’s not only encrypted on the computer, it’s also written in some kind of code. I haven’t gotten into it yet, but I can keep trying.”

“That would be good, I guess. And can you copy everything you have onto a thumb drive or external hard disk? Then I can send it to our people, maybe one of them will have a bright idea.”

“No problem, the transfer is already running. Did you find any other technology in the apartment? DVD burners or anything?”

“Yes, a case with six DVD burners, plus lots of blank discs. And a good color laser printer.”

“A dealer, for sure. He needs all the burners for duplicating, and the printer for the covers. But I don’t suppose there were any recorded DVDs?”

“No, but maybe he still has a warehouse somewhere that we haven’t found yet.”

Which was riskier than just having the data on his own encrypted hard drive, though.

“Or maybe he only produces to order at a time. Take order, produce, ship – and the evidence is gone. Except for his own hard drive, but that’s encrypted.”

Berger nodded thoughtfully.

“That could be it. It’s not like he could have counted on your genius boyfriend to crack the encryption in a couple of hours.”

Derek grew at least six inches taller in his computer chair. Well, I didn’t begrudge him the praise either, he had earned it.

“Okay, I just wanted to show you this first so you know what it is all about. I’m going to jump back into this supposed client file.”

“No.”

Surprised, both Derek and I looked at Berger.

“No? You don’t want me to try to break the code?”

“I want you to do that. But not today. With the material here, I have enough to initiate a manhunt for Schmitzke. Everything else can wait until Monday.”

My friend looked doubtfully at Berger.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. Besides, I can’t afford to deprive your Sascha of his well-deserved weekend with you – otherwise he’ll never put in a good word for me with you again.”

Ha, exactly! Derek also seemed very pleased with this answer.

“Great, then I’ll shut everything down here now. Won’t be long, Sascha. And by then, the transfer to the external disk will be done, too. A 6TB hard disk…”

A whole giant hard disk full of this smut. I sighed. Well, at least now our weekend finally started, so hopefully we would be able to relax a bit. Ten minutes later Berger had his hard disk and said goodbye to us.

“Have fun you two. And thanks again for the help, Derek.”

“You’re welcome. Good luck finding the son of a bitch.”

Berger’s face turned grim.

“I sure hope we can catch him soon. And that he then gets a cozy cell in jail. With lots of sympathetic fellow inmates.”

That was perhaps not exactly in line with political correctness, but I wouldn’t have objected to such a development either.

“So, I’m off. Bye.”

With those words, he left Derek and me alone. My sweetheart turned off all the devices, then we also left his workplace.

“Der, do you want me to make us something quick to eat at home or do you want to go straight to the lake and attack the snack bar there?”

My friend contorted his face.

“Nah, no fast food for the weekend. I have enough of that in our cafeteria during the week.”

Data Rescue employees partook of the company lunch at a large neighboring company – and this I had judged to be relatively inedible after trying it once. Apparently this had not been an exception either, because Derek commented: The consistently poor quality of the cafeteria food presupposes a certain level of qualification! Gallows humor was probably what they called it. With his business partner, he had been looking for an alternative food manger for quite some time already, but had not found one yet.

“Okay, then I’ll make us some quick pasta with tomato sauce, okay?”

Derek’s face brightened.

“With lots of grated cheese?”

I laughed.

“Sure, with extra grated cheese.”

“Cool! And what’s for dessert?”

I knew exactly how to satisfy my little sweet tooth.

“Chocolate pudding with eggnog?”

“Oh yes!”

In situations like this, Derek became a little kid again, and in excited anticipation, he fidgeted in the passenger seat next to me. Simply adorable!

Once home, I took care of lunch while my boyfriend relaxed a bit on the balcony. After a very pleasant meal, we made our way to the Kulki, arriving at our favorite stretch of beach around two pm. Shortly thereafter, we lay heavily sunscreened in the sand and enjoyed the beautiful weather. In between we jumped into the water every now and then, then we rested again after the exhausting work week. After a while, we both dozed off…

“Mr. Altmann?”

Eh? With difficulty I began to fight my way out of my slumber.

“You are Kriminalkommissar Altmann, aren’t you?”

Wait a minute. I was still at the beach, wasn’t I? Then who was addressing me in such an official manner? I opened my eyes and immediately squeezed them shut again – the sun was awfully bright. After some blinking I could recognize something. In front of me stood a young man, well, rather a boy. In his birthday suit. Of course, we were at the nude beach. Blond, well tanned, with huge sunglasses and a shy grin on his face.

“Who wants to know?”

The grin got a little wider.

“I’m Pascal.”

Oh yeah, and that was supposed to tell me something? But the boy probably realized I wasn’t fully there yet.

“Pascal Berger. We spoke briefly on the phone earlier today.”

Now it clicked! This was the son of my colleague who had called me nude beach Altmann. At that moment, another naked boy slid in next to Pascal. An absolutely identical looking boy. Hm. Yes, Berger had twin boys, identical ones.

“So, is it him?”

Pascal grinned at his brother.

“Yes. This is my brother Patrick, Mr. Altmann.”

In the meantime, Derek had also woken up and was curiously observing what was happening. He obviously had missed some things, so I took over the introductions.

“Derek, this is Pascal and Patrick, the sons of Sven Berger. Guys, this is my boyfriend Derek Prosch.”

Shyly, the two brothers held out their hands to us.

“How did you guys find us? Did you guys approach everyone here and ask if they were nude beach Altmann?”

Now the two laughed and apparently felt a little more at ease.

“No, but Paps described us what you two look like, and so it wasn’t that hard to find you. After all, most of the men are here with their wives or girlfriends.”

“Exactly. And I’m sorry about the nude beach Altmann, Mr. Altmann. I didn’t mean that in a bad or disrespectful way.”

I laughed, they were both kind of cute. Well, not in the sexual sense! No, they just seemed like two nice boys. One thing bothered me though, the way they addressed me I was really starting to feel as old as my name sounded sometimes.

“That’s okay. But please don’t do that Mr. Altmann thing, it really makes me feel like an old man. I’m Sascha.”

“And I’m Derek. I’m another year younger than Sascha the Old Man, so you can cut out the Mr. with me, too.”

“Cool!”

In stereo. Well, twins.

“Did you walk the whole beach to find us?”

Pascal (or Patrick?) grinned mischievously.

“No, we had settled down over there by the tree, and then Mr. Altmann … oh … Sorry … then you caught our eye. Patrick wanted us to leave you alone, but I wanted to see if it really was you. I hope that was okay?”

He looked at us a little fearfully at the last question, but Derek immediately allayed his fears.

“Sure that was okay. How about it, there’s enough space here, you guys want to move your stuff over?”

The boys’ faces lit up.

“Can we really do that?”

Derek winked at me almost imperceptibly, so I went for it.

“Sure, why not.”

After another stereobrotherly “Cool!” they both scampered off to get their stuff. Questioningly, I looked at Derek. Not that I would have minded having the boys join us, but I was a little surprised. Usually, out of the two of us, my friend was the one who took a little longer to warm up to new faces. He shrugged his shoulders.

“You didn’t notice, did you?”

“Notice what?”

“And you claim to be a Kriminalkommissar. I don’t think Pascal approached us just because he wanted to see who nude beach Altmann was.”

Oh.

“Do you think he’s…”

Since the guys were already on their way back to us, my better half interrupted me.

“You know my gaydar almost always hits the mark.”

Yes, he really was spot on most of the times. Very interesting. And I really hadn’t noticed anything like that with either of the guys.

“Just Pascal or both of them?”

Derek laughed out.

“Now don’t ask for too much. No, just Pascal. But forget about that right now, okay? If he wants to talk to us about it, it has to come from him.”

I just nodded my head in confirmation, because at that moment the twins were already arriving at our place. Darn, how did Berger keep them apart? From their light blond-dark blond streaked hair down to their feet, they looked absolutely identical.

“And we’re really not getting on your nerves?”

“No, Patrick, or we wouldn’t have offered in the first place.”

Hmpf. Derek could obviously tell them apart! Delighted with the answer, the two of them settled down with us, and we spent the next half hour getting to know each other a bit. They would both be sixteen in a few months, went to high school, and like most boys that age were interested in computers, cars, and soccer. We also shared a few things about ourselves, though the subject of our sexuality never came up. I stuck to Derek’s guideline and left it up to our two young friends to bring it up or leave it alone.

At some point we jumped into the water together and frolicked – that was really the best thing to do in the prevailing heat. When we came back out of the water a tiny bit tired, Derek turned to me.

“Sascha, I have a job for you to do.”

Tilting my head, I looked at him.

“What kind of job?”

“Nothing hard to do. Would you go to the kiosk with Patrick and get ice cream for everyone?”

And again he winked at me and it was clear that this was not a suggestion I could refuse.

“Okay, no problem. Come on, Patrick, let’s put some clothes on.”

I slipped on my shorts, the twin who was sentenced to help me did the same, then we set off, leaving Pascal in the care of Derek. We walked side by side in silence for the first few meters, then Patrick addressed me.

“We should walk a bit slower.”

Ah yes. Looks like Patrick knew the plan of my boyfriend, too.

“You know Pascal is gay, right?”

The boy was very direct! But if he wanted to be so open about it, that was fine with me.

“Derek told me.”

Grinning, the twin looked at me.

“Yeah, I realized right away that your boyfriend noticed. You didn’t catch it yourself?”

“Now don’t start with me being a lousy detective, too. Not every gay person recognizes other gays right away. Derek has an accurate gaydar – I don’t.”

“Gaydar? Is that what you call it? Well, anyway, it’s true, my little brother likes boys. Sadly, he doesn’t have anyone to talk to about it. Apart from me and our parents, but we’re just not gay and don’t know how he feels.”

Interesting, so he was at least outed in the family. A good accomplishment at that age.

“Paps used to talk about his gay co-worker at home quite a bit.”

I laughed out.

“Ha! Yes, I overheard that. A certain nudist old man!”

Patrick was laughing now too.

“Yup. And then when he said at lunch today that he was giving you guys time to enjoy the beach weekend, it was clear that we had to come here too. With some luck we’d spot you guys – and as you can see we found you. Okay, I suddenly wasn’t so sure anymore about it being a good idea to ambush you like that, but it all worked out.”

“It sure did. So it wasn’t a completely random encounter after all.”

“No. I hope you’re not angry with us for that. But I think it’s good for my brother to talk to other gays for a change.”

“Even if those other gays are sooooo old?”

I got a poke in the upper arm for that.

“Yeah right, grandpas are supposed to have lots of wisdom. It comes with the age I guess.”

Okay, I poked back.

“Just watch who you’re calling grandpa here, kiddo! I’m not that frail yet that I can’t still put you over my knee.”

We continued to banter in this manner as we approached the kiosk and then bought a popsicle for each of us. Of course, we had to speed up on our way back, otherwise the ice cream would have melted away. When we arrived back at our place, about twenty minutes had passed and we found two laughing young men.

“Ah, ice cream! Finally! Hand it over!”

Derek had jumped up and snatched one of the packs out of my hand. Laughing, I let him have the dessert while Patrick took care of his brother. Inconspicuously, I eyed him. Pascal made a very relaxed, satisfied impression. Derek had done a good job. Well, he would certainly tell me all about it later.

We spent the remainder of the afternoon again with rather shallow conversation, and around six-thirty we got ready to leave. We offered the boys a ride home, but they were there with their bikes and declined with thanks. As we said goodbye to each other, Derek turned to the twins.

“Whenever you see us here, you’re welcome to join us again.”

Their eyes lit up with delight, and once again there was a brotherly “Cool!” delivered in stereo. Shortly thereafter, they swung on their bikes and pedaled away, and a little later we too climbed into our car.

“Thanks for playing along so well, Sascha.”

I looked over at Derek, who was smiling to himself, relaxed and obviously very pleased with himself and the world.

“You set that up cleverly, Der.”

“Pascal had quietly asked me in the water if he could talk to me alone for a few minutes. And luckily you understood right away what I was trying to do with the ice cream job.”

“I just know you well already. It wasn’t that hard to figure out what you wanted me to do.”

If we hadn’t been sitting in the moving car, my little one would have snuggled up to me quite fiercely right now. I could literally feel his romantic mood.

“What did you guys talk about? Or are you not allowed to tell me?”

“Pascal allowed me to tell you everything.”

“Was it about him being gay and needing someone to talk to?”

Slightly puzzled, Derek looked at me.

“How do you know?”

I laughed.

“His big brother told me when we went to get the ice cream.”

Now the person next to me was laughing too.

“Yes, the big brother! Pascal already told me that Patrick always teases him about the ominous 5 minutes he was born before him.”

“But the two of them seem to get along great, don’t they?”

“They sure do. Twins, that’s how they are. So, back to the topic at hand. It was really about Pascal liking boys. Sadly, he doesn’t know a single other gay guy, so it came just in time that he found out about us through his dad.”

I could vividly imagine that. The boy had to feel pretty alone, despite his supporting family.

“And what all did he want to know?”

“Things like how we met.”

I started giggling quietly, and Derek next to me chuckled to himself as well. This was really a funny story, I had literally jumped his bones the very first time we met! And that with me not being someone who tries to conquer sweet boys in such an attack. No, only my very first attempts to move on inline skates were to blame. I could already roll just fine, but with the braking I had some problems. With the result that I panicked, screaming for help and flailing my arms while rolling down a slightly sloping path and grabbed on to the first obstacle that came in reach. This obstacle went by the name of Derek and was mercilessly knocked over by me. Well, at least I landed softly – which could not be said of my poor victim. Long story short: after my three hundred and sixty-fourth apology, he had asked me, annoyed, what he had to do to avoid having to listen to the three hundred and sixty-fifth. I told him that he would have to accept my dinner invitation, and the rest was history. That had happened some 10 months ago.

“I could lend him my inline skates sometime…”

My passenger laughed out loud.

“I suggested that too, but he said he had some of his own.”

“Well, then it’s all settled.”

Derek became a little more serious again.

“If only it were always that easy. But I told him he should just drop in on the B.o.y.S.“

“What boys should he drop in on?”

“Not just any boys, but the B.o.y.S. That’s the gay youth group in Leipzig, I once helped them with a hacker attack on their website. Don’t you remember? Oh wait, that was before we met.”

“Oh, all right. Yes, that’s probably a good idea to send Pascal there. If he dares to go. It does take a bit of courage to do that.”

“True, but I talked to his brother earlier, and he’ll drag him there if necessary.”

Again we laughed, and shortly thereafter we arrived home. The rest of the weekend passed without anything special happening, we just relaxed and enjoyed our time together.

It now was Tuesday, and Derek had succeeded in cracking the code of the customer file on the confiscated computer. This time we had met in my office, both KHK Berger and my own boss were present. Machlitzke probably wanted to make sure that Berger wasn’t trying to poach me for his department again.

“It was a somewhat complicated shift code, but in the end it wasn’t really unbreakable. I printed it all out for you. If these are all buyers of the dirt, then you can kill a lot of birds with one stone.”

“Great, Derek. Thanks a lot.”

“You’re welcome. Oh, by the way, has any of you tried his hand at the computer before me?”

Sven thought for a moment.

“Not really. We turned it on once, but when the security prompt came up, we left it alone. That’s why I asked you to take a look at it.”

My friend frowned.

“Very strange. I found traces of a code-breaker on the hard drive, very similar to the program I used myself.”

Now he had the department head’s undivided attention.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, absolutely. According to the index data, it must have been about three weeks ago.”

“Then it couldn’t have been one of us at all, we’ve only had the computer since last Friday!”

That was really very interesting. What explanation could there be for this? I had an idea.

“Maybe this Schmitzke guy had forgotten his password and cracked his system himself?”

Derek shook his head.

“I don’t think so. Whoever did this tried to erase all traces of his intrusion afterwards. No, I think it’s more likely that there was a stranger snooping around on the sly.”

“Was he successful in doing so?”

I would like to know the answer to Berger’s question, too.

“I think so. As I said, it was more or less the same codebreaker as mine, just an older version.”

“So whoever it was now has the same data that we have.”

“Maybe – maybe not.”

Questioningly, we looked at the computer pro.

“It’s like this: with this program I was able to crack the encryption of the hard drive. The customer file, however, was extra encoded again, so I needed a different program on a different computer for that.”

“You mean he might just have data salad instead of the list of names?”

“Possibly, Sascha. But maybe he did the same steps I did and got the plaintext after all. I really can’t say for sure, though, I’m sorry.”

Berger rose to his feet.

“Not a problem, Derek. You really helped us out big time, thank you very much. We’re just going to assume that there’s someone else out there running around with an explosive list of names.”

What a catch! This customer file was perfect blackmail material.

“Well, I’ll leave you to your investigation. And if you need my help in this case again, just give me a call. It’s very important to me that this bastard and his customers get caught.”

I walked my boyfriend to the car, gave him a big kiss and then parted with him most reluctantly.

Later that day, when closing time finally approached, I picked Derek up at his company and drove with him to visit my grandma in the hospital. Grandma Baerbel was the last link to my family after my parents wanted nothing more to do with me. They simply couldn’t cope with a gay son. My grandmother, on the other hand, had then disinherited her son and daughter-in-law and fully sided with me. Now, unfortunately, she was in the hospital with a broken arm and was bored to death there. After a march of at least half a kilometer through sterile hospital corridors, we entered her room.

“Hi Grandma.”

The eyes of the small, elderly woman in the bed by the window lit up happily when she recognized us. Grandma Baerbel had met Derek shortly after I had crashed into him and had immediately taken him into her big heart. Sometimes I worried about what the two of them were up to when they talked for hours (most likely about me!).

“Hi boys! That’s so nice of you guys to come visit me! Are the flowers for me?”

“Sure thing, Grandma.”

We went to her bedside, where she was now sitting up with some difficulty, and greeted her.

“It’s really beautiful. Sascha, why don’t you go out to the nurses’ station and get a vase?”

Typical. She seemed to like Derek a lot better than me. Sob. Grinning inwardly, I put the large bouquet of flowers we had bought on the way to the clinic on the table and headed out to the vase distribution area. When I reappeared in the room a few minutes later, my grandma and my friend were in the middle of a happy chatter.

“Ah, there you are again. Put the flowers in the water quickly, then we’ll take a little walk through the park. My legs are getting rusty here.”

That’s exactly what we did, and fifteen minutes later we were sitting comfortably on a park bench, letting the sun shine down on us.

“And, Derek, is my grandson treating you properly?”

The addressed smiled dreamily.

“Yes, he does, Grandma Baerbel.”

“Well he better does if he knows what’s good for him! If he ever misbehaves just let me know. I still remember how to deal with naughty brats.”

I raised my hands in playful surrender.

“Give it a rest, Grandma! It would never occur to me to misbehave with Derek. I know exactly what I have in him.”

“Good for you. To alienate that boy would be a sign of boundless stupidity.”

She pinched Derek’s left cheek, which he let slide with a grin. I took the opportunity to change the subject.

“So, Grandma, how are you doing? Do you have to stay here much longer?”

Grandma Baerbel sighed.

“I’m doing better than the doctors would like to believe, but if I’m lucky, I’ll be out by the end of the week. Well I better be, otherwise I’ll go crazy from boredom here. The food is lousy too, and you can forget about getting a good night’s sleep. Just last night there was a big commotion, a man in the next room almost died. Quite a young man as far as I know. Out of the blue, and nobody knows what’s wrong with him. And now he’s in intensive care.”

Astonished, I shook my head.

“How do you know all this, Grandma?”

“Well, my boy, the head nurse has three children – and all three went to my kindergarten. Once in a while we talk a little.”

Ah yes. My grandmother had worked in a kindergarten for almost forty years, so she actually knew God and the world. So much for medical confidentiality.

“Well, in any case, sleeping was out of the question. First he puked constantly and shit his pants, then he had cramps, and in the end he fell into a coma. It was a constant running in the corridor, and a slamming of doors! It was awful.”

That’s really what it sounded like. But now my professional curiosity was piqued, too.

“And the doctors don’t know what happened to him?”

“I think they’re suspecting some kind of poisoning right now. But that’s all I’ve been able to find out so far.”

I was sure it wouldn’t stay that way. I had probably inherited my criminalistic aptitude from my grandmother, who in a previous life had most likely been employed by the Spanish Inquisition. As an instructor. No secret was safe from her, as I had learned in the past.

“Poisoning? Hm. Maybe I’ll come visit you on the job soon, Grandma.”

We talked for a while longer about all sorts of things, and my grandma really blossomed. When it was time to say goodbye, we took her back to her room. In the meantime, her roommate, who had not been there earlier in the afternoon, had also arrived. Actually, Grandma Baerbel could easily afford a single room, but she didn’t want that at all. “I can be alone in the coffin long enough,” she used to say.

“Hildegard, there you are again! May I introduce you to my grandson Sascha and his friend Derek?”

We greeted the woman who had a few years less under her belt than my grandma. Curiously, she eyed us, she had probably noticed that with “friend” not just “friend” had been meant. Then, however, grandma Baerbel threw us out.

“Okay boys, now get lost. You young people certainly have better things to do than to spend time with an old woman like me.”

“Nonsense, Grandma Baerbel. You’re not an old woman!”

Laughing, my relative turned to me.

“Does your honey always sweet-talk this much?”

Grinning, I took Derek in my arms.

“Yes, he does.”

“Well then, that’s fine. But now you really should go, I want to talk to the head nurse for a bit before dinner.”

Ah yes, Kriminaldirektor Baerbel in full action. We said goodbye to her and headed home.

“Your grandma is really cool, Sascha.”

“Yeah, she is. I’m damn glad I still have her.”

Derek knew this was a sore spot for me, so he didn’t delve any further into the topic of family. At home, we treated ourselves to a light dinner, then spent the time on the balcony until bed time.

Two days passed before I heard again about Sven Berger and his case. I was preparing for lunch break when he suddenly came into my office.

“Hello, Sascha.”

“Hi Sven.”

“I’ve got another computer I want Derek to take a look at. What do you think, would that be okay with him?”

“Sure, he offered it himself. Did you guys catch anyone?”

Sven nodded.

“Yeah, we went through the customer file and found a couple of people here in Leipzig. We searched one place earlier today and confiscated the computer right away.”

“I hope the guy got a good scare.”

“He wasn’t in much of a position to be scared of us.”

I looked questioningly at my visitor.

“Why is that?”

“I think he was actually glad we showed up. When we rang the bell, he barely managed to open the door for us, then he collapsed. And the place looked really nasty! All puked up. The ER doctor said we probably found him just in time.”

I shrugged, if this really was a kiddie porn client, then my sympathy was as low as the room temperature in an un-heated apartment in the middle of the Siberian winter.

“Anyway, it would be nice if your boyfriend would take a look at the computer.”

“No problem. I’ll just check out with Jens real quick, then we’ll take the computer to Derek.”

I rose from my chair, at the same moment the door burst open again and hit KHK Berger in the back.

“Ouch! Jeez, Machlitzke, what is going on?”

My boss looked puzzled at the whining colleague.

“Oh, excuse me, please. Sascha, grab your stuff, we have a case!”

Now the calm was over, I grabbed my gun, cell phone and jacket and stormed to the door, past a still slightly befuddled looking Sven Berger.

“Just take the computer over to Derek, you know where to go.”

“I … okay.”

My boss and I were already storming down the stairs.

“You drive, we’ll take your car. The radio in mine doesn’t work.”

That was fine with me. In the parking lot, we jumped into my service car, buckled up, and I started the engine.

“Where are we going, anyway?”

“Gardening Club Evergreen, Geibrecht Street. Do you know where that is?”

“At the Paunsdorf Center?”

“Exactly. So go ahead, push the pedal.”

I did just that, and shortly after we were fighting our way through traffic.

“What is there? I don’t suppose you want to take me out for a beer at the garden pub.”

“Haha, I wish. The colleagues in blue have found a corpse in an arbor, allegedly under suspicious circumstances.”

Sounded like a job for us. A few minutes later, we arrived at the Gardening Club, where a uniformed officer immediately directed us into a narrow path. An ambulance was also already in the parking lot.

“You have to go this way, Garden 73, about 200 meters on the right.”

We walked on and shortly thereafter entered the aforementioned garden, at the end of which was a small wooden arbor. The door was open, so we went inside, where we were greeted by a murderous stench, even though not only the door but also two windows were wide open. A man was lying on a couch, obviously dead, and the emergency doctor was packing up his things. My supervisor introduced us.

“Good afternoon. I’m Kriminalhauptkommissar Machlitzke, Homicide Division. This is my colleague Kriminalkommissar Altmann. What do we have here?”

“Pleased to meet you, I’m Doctor Riemenbrandt. Your colleagues called the Emergency Control Center after they found the garden owner here lifeless. Unfortunately, I could only determine death.”

That did not surprise me, in this stench one just had to die. Of course, it was quite possible that I was confusing cause and effect here.

“I can’t say much more yet, only that the man has been dead for at least a day.”

“Cause of death?”

“I don’t know, sorry. Possibly food poisoning, but that’s for the autopsy to determine.”

“All right, doctor. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. You’ll arrange for the pickup then?”

“Yes, we’ll take it from here.”

“Well, have a nice day.”

Given the circumstances, I had my doubts that it would be a nice day. The emergency doctor left the arbor, and Jens turned to our uniformed colleague.

“How did you find him?”

“A neighbor from the next garden said that his car had been parked in the lot for a few days, but that she hadn’t seen him for some time. She then went into the garden and tried to see something through the windows, but only saw that the TV was running. Nobody answered her knocking, so she called us. When no one responded to us either, we opened the door and then found this.”

It looked really desolate in the hut. Food scraps and unwashed dishes were everywhere, in fact the TV was running soundlessly in the background, and the dead man seemed not to have managed to get to the bathroom in time in his last hours of life.

“Do we have any personal details?”

“We haven’t gone through his things yet, but according to the garden neighbor it’s a Paul Schmitzke.”

Immediately I was wide awake.

“Did you just say Schmitzke? Paul Schmitzke?”

Both the officer in blue and my boss looked at me questioningly.

“Yeah, why?”

“Boss, that’s also the name of the guy whose computer Derek cracked last weekend.”

“What, are you sure?”

“Yes, I am. Is that just a coincidence? I mean, the name shouldn’t be that common, right?”

“Right.”

Jens reached for his cell phone and dialed a number from memory.

“Sven? It’s Jens. Say, are you still looking for a Paul Schmitzke?”

I couldn’t hear Berger’s reply, but the appreciative look in my direction spoke volumes.

“I think you can stop looking. We have a Paul Schmitzke here, and he’s not in a position to run away from anyone anymore.”

Again, he listened briefly into his cell phone.

“Gardening Club Evergreen on Geibrecht Street. There’s an officer stationed at the parking lot, he’ll show you where to go.”

Shortly after he gave Berger the address, my boss packed away his cell phone.

“Good work, Sascha. Damn, I was there too when the name Schmitzke came up a few days ago, but I didn’t stumble over it now.”

“Well, you’re an old man, where I’m just an Altmann.”

“Now don’t get cocky, you young whippersnapper. You better take a look around here.”

“Can’t we let the place air out a little first? Otherwise Berger won’t just find one dead body when he gets here.”

Machlitzke looked around briefly, then nodded.

“You’re right, let’s go out for a while. I still have to call the forensics anyway.”

That’s exactly what we did, and the forensic experts arrived practically at the same time as our colleague from the Organized Crime Department. After the technicians had gained an initial overview, they released the scene for a cautious inspection. We re-entered the hut, which by now did not smell fresh as spring, but at least the thickest stench had dissipated a little. Curiously KHK Berger looked at the body.

“Guys, I think you’re right. We have a photo of our Schmitzke, and I think that’s your man.”

In the meantime, I rummaged through a wallet I had found in a jacket hanging over the chair. Bull’s-eye, an ID card.

“Paul Schmitzke, 9/25/63 in Leipzig, Ring Street 67.”

“Bingo, that’s our Schmitzke. Looks like he didn’t have an easy death.”

Grimly, my boss shook his head.

“From what I’ve heard about him from you guys, I’m not going to shed a tear over it. We just have to find out what he died of.”

“Well, that’s your job now, but I would suggest that we continue to work closely together.”

“Sure, Sven.”

“Great. By the way, you know what this sight kind of reminds me of?”

Questioningly, we looked at him.

“Of Joerg Pleichelt’s apartment.”

That didn’t mean anything to Machlitzke or me, and Berger explained further.

“The guy whose apartment we searched earlier today. Everything in his apartment was full of vomit and shit, and it smelled awful. However, he was still a little bit alive.”

“Hm. Kind of weird.”

Indeed. And I remembered something else at that moment.

“I’ll be right back!”

With these words I left the arbor under the astonished looks of the two KHKs. Once outside, I grabbed my cell phone and dialed a number. After several rings, the call was answered.

“Well, if it isn’t my favorite grandson.”

I laughed.

“I certainly hope so, Grandma!”

“Oh it’s just you, I thought it was Derek.”

Hmph! But I didn’t have time to pout now.

“Tell me, Grandma, did you find out anything else about the man who almost died a few nights ago?”

“Ha, sure I did! You know that I find out everything!”

Oh yes, she did. Which had ended embarrassingly for me more than once.

“But why do you ask?”

“Grandma, this is really important. Can you tell me the name?”

“Is it something official?”

“Yes. I have a hunch, and if it’s true, I’ll probably be on the hospital’s doorstep soon.”

“That would be nice, finally something happening.”

“The name, Grandma.”

“Oh yeah. Wait a minute, let me think. Thorsten. No, not Thorsten. It was a somewhat unusual name. Thoralf. Exactly. Thoralf Lundstroem. He died this morning, by the way. Does that help you?”

“Don’t know yet, Grandma, but thanks a lot for now. I’ll have to check that out.”

“You’re welcome, grandson. And keep in touch. I get to go home tomorrow, by the way.”

“All right, Grandma. Talk to you later.”

I ended the call and went back to the arbor, where Jens and Sven were still looking around. I turned to Berger.

“Sven?”

“Yes?”

“Does the name Thoralf Lundstroem mean anything to you?”

Berger’s eyebrows shot up.

“Thoralf Lundstroem? You bet it means something to me! Where did you come up with that one just now?”

“First tell me how you know the name.”

“You’ll laugh, that was the first name from the customer list we tried to work off this morning. However, no one was home there, we were planning on paying him another visit later this afternoon.”

“No need to do that.”

“Why?”

“Thoralf Lundstroem passed away this morning at the St. Georg. According to my grandma, who was in the room next to him, he had a severe seizure a few nights ago with vomiting, diarrhea and cramps, and then slipped into a coma.”

With that, it was all clear to my boss.

“Guys, there just are not that many coincidences. I’m afraid we’re dealing with a serial killer.”

He was probably right, it all fit together far too well.

“Sascha, you go to the St. Georg immediately and make sure that this Lundstroem is autopsied as soon as possible. Sven, you’d better take a look at his apartment, maybe you’ll find something useful there. I’ll take care of Schmitzke.”

And that’s exactly what we did, and the wheels of justice were set in motion. A few hours later, we gathered for a war council in my boss’s office.

“Okay, in the arbor we found some things, including recorded DVDs. I’m sure you can guess the contents of those. Unfortunately, there was nothing there that could help us regarding Schmitzke’s death.”

Berger nodded.

“We didn’t find anything in his apartment last week that would have pointed to a crime against him in any way, either.”

“And in this Lundstroem guy’s apartment?”

“That’s where it gets interesting. While we didn’t find anything there either – except for a computer, which I immediately took back to Data Rescue – our own computer did come across something interesting. Just a good two weeks ago, Lundstroem reported an apartment break-in in which, strangely enough, nothing was stolen. Also, no signs of the break-in were found on the apartment door until closer inspection. A very strange affair.”

Indeed. Very strange. A break-in in which nothing was stolen? And the victim was dead two weeks later? I couldn’t ponder over it for long, however, because now my boss approached me.

“How did it go at the hospital?”

“They had already ordered the autopsy, because they themselves still had no idea what Lundstroem died of. Because of the new facts, the autopsy was made top priority, they’ll call us when there’s a result.”

“Very nice. Forensics is already working on Schmitzke, too. Sven, how is the other suspect? This Pleichelt?”

“He’s in intensive care at the Diako, in critical condition. The doctors don’t know yet if he’ll pull through. If the autopsies on Schmitzke and Lundstroem find anything, it might give Pleichelt’s doctors a crucial tip for treatment.”

“Well, we can probably assume poisoning. The only question is what kind of poison was used.”

“And who poisoned these guys.”

“Exactly, Sascha.”

“We should probably also check out the other people on Sven’s client list real quick, maybe our three victims aren’t the only ones.”

“Right. Sven, have you done anything about that yet?”

“No, but I think I’ll send out patrol cars right away, at least to all the addresses here in town for now.”

“How many are there?”

“Four or five more, plus a handful from the surrounding county.”

“All right, send those people out. And really check it out, if no one answers have them do an emergency opening.”

“All right, I’ll get right on it.”

KHK Berger got up and went across the hall to his own office. At that moment, my cell phone rang.

“Kriminalkommissar Altmann.”

“Good afternoon. This is Professor Junghans from the St. Georg Municipal Hospital. You wanted to be informed about the result of an autopsy?”

“Yes, that’s right. It’s about a Thoralf Lundstroem.”

“Exactly. We have the first results now. Are you coming over or should we mail them to you?”

“By mail if possible and by email in advance, you should have the email address. And can you tell me something briefly right now?”

“Yes. We are definitely dealing with poisoning. Mr. Lundstroem has been in contact with an arsenic compound over a long period of time. This initially led to nausea and malaise, then later his condition got progressively worse, and in the end he died from the effects of poisoning.”

That was highly interesting.

“Over a longer period of time, you said? How would you define that?”

“I would say two to four weeks. He must have ingested the poison in small doses, otherwise his reactions to it would have been much more acute and in quicker succession.”

“How did he ingest the poison?”

“I can’t say that yet. You’re homicide detectives, right?”

I confirmed.

“Well, in classic crime literature, arsenic is mostly administered through food. But that usually involves a lethal single dose, that can’t have been the case here, it’s pretty clearly a gradual poisoning – so someone would have to have given him a small dose on a regular basis. We also found traces of another substance that we can’t quite place yet. Does that help you?”

“We’ll have to see. In any case, I thank you for your quick work.”

“You’re welcome. Would it be possible to inform us when you have solved the case? That would be very interesting for us from a medical point of view.”

“I will do that, Professor. But I have one more request for you.”

“Go ahead.”

“There is a patient in critical condition at the Diako who may also be suffering from such poisoning. Would you please get in touch with the doctors there? I’m sure you can explain it to them faster than I could.”

“Of course! I’ll do that right away. Can you tell me the name of the patient?”

“Joerg Pleichelt. He was admitted this morning.”

“All right, I’ll get on the line right away. Goodbye!”

Before I could even answer, the call was ended. I shrugged my shoulders and told my boss what I had learned. He frowned.

“This is getting bigger and bigger. Is someone trying to take the law into their own hands?”

“Possibly. Maybe a vendetta?”

“Could be. These kiddie porn bastards don’t deserve it, but we should see to it that there are no more victims, if possible.”

A pious wish, as the next few days would show…

Another week had gone by, and this week had brought us three more deaths (including Joerg Pleichelt, who had died in the meantime) and four patients in critical condition in various intensive care units in and around Leipzig. All victims had one thing in common: they were on Paul Schmitzke’s client list. Someone went to a lot of trouble to work off this list and to send everyone on it to the eternal hunting grounds as cruelly as possible.

And there was more consistency. Each of the previous victims had been burglarized in the course of the last few weeks – but apart from Thoralf Lundstroem, who was also no longer among the living, no one had noticed the break-in. My boss had had the brilliant idea of having the apartment doors examined by forensics, and lo and behold: they all showed professional signs of break-ins. A few small scratches in the lock were really all the traces, there were no other usable things, and of course no fingerprints. We could assume that the cause of the poisoning was somewhere in the household sphere. The only question was: where? Several laboratories examined all the food found in the apartments, but so far none had found the source of the poisonings.

In the meantime, all the people on Schmitzke’s customer list were visited and questioned in a large-scale, nationwide operation. The main target was, of course, to find potential further poison victims in time – but so far our killer seemed to be confined to the Leipzig area. There were apartment searches by the dozen, and what was a case of serial killings for my boss and me, represented one of the largest cases of child pornography in the last ten years for KHK Berger and his colleagues. The investigations even led to a prosecutor and several politicians facing a sudden career end. Meanwhile, we not only worked with the initial client file, but Derek was also fully involved in the investigation. Every suspect also had a computer, and on them there was often enough information to make the scope of the case grow bigger and bigger.

Unfortunately, we were still in the dark about the murders. Just as we were once again pondering in the office how we could get on the trail of the killer, the phone rang. Kriminalhauptmeister Eva Schlueter, who had just returned from vacation that day, picked up the receiver and listened in briefly.

“All right, bring her up.”

Eva hung up and looked at our boss.

“That was the front desk. There’s a Mrs. Schultheiss who says she has something to say about the Bruesser case.”

Heinrich Bruesser was one of the other Schmitzke customers for whom any help had come too late.

“Well, I’m curious about that! Hadn’t you already talked to this woman extensively, Sascha?”

“Yes, and she had nothing interesting to say then.”

We had to wait another three minutes, then an officer led the elderly lady inside. We rose and greeted her (with the exception of Eva, who was confined to a wheelchair).

“Ah, good afternoon Mr. Altmann!”

“Good afternoon, Mrs. Schultheiss. May I introduce you? My boss, Hauptkommissar Machlitzke, and our colleague, Hauptmeisterin Schlueter.”

After the greeting, we all took our seats again, and Jens turned to our visitor.

“You said at the reception desk that you had some information on the case of Mr. Bruesser?”

“Oh yes! I really must apologize for not mentioning this three days ago, but I had completely forgotten about it.”

Hurry up, lady! I fidgeted restlessly in my chair.

“You had asked whether I had noticed anything in the time before Mr. Bruesser’s death, because there had also been a break-in.”

I had asked that, however, Mrs. Schultheiss had answered the question in the negative.

“This morning I suddenly remembered that there had indeed been something, about three weeks ago!”

I sensed that my boss could hardly contain himself with tension, but he nevertheless asked calmly.

“What did you remember, Mrs. Schultheiss?”

“This!”

With those words, she reached into her shopping bag and pulled out an item wrapped in a clear bag. A bicycle pump?

“Ah, yes. Why do you think this bicycle pump is important?”

“Mr. Kommissar, it doesn’t belong to anyone in our house! I found it in our hallway, though.”

Doubtingly, I looked at the elderly lady.

“Maybe it belongs to a visitor?”

Very firmly, Mrs. Schultheiss shook her head.

“No, definitely not. There are only four parties in our house. Miglers, Schalberts, Mr. Bruesser and us. Mr. Bruesser never had any visitors who would have come by bicycle, and Miglers and Schalberts were on vacation together at the time. The pump must have been lost by a stranger who didn’t belong in the house!”

Thank heaven for such nosy little spies as Mrs. Schultheiss!

“So you found the pump in the hallway. What did you do with it then?”

“I put it in our cellar compartment for the time being, and then I forgot about it. It wasn’t until I went to get a jar of cherries for lunch today that I noticed it again. Well, I thought of you right then and there, packed it very carefully in the bag and brought it here!”

Hopefully she had really done that very carefully! I reached for the phone and pressed one of the speed dial buttons that connected me to the forensics department.

“Werner? Sascha here. Can you send someone over to Jens’ office right away to pick up a potential piece of evidence? Yes? Thanks, see you in a minute.”

I looked to my boss.

“Werner will come up himself and pick it up.”

“Very nice. Mrs. Schultheiss, we’re very grateful to you for bringing us the pump. Tell me, has anyone else touched the thing besides you?”

“No, no one. And even I only grabbed it in one place. You can see how dirty the thing is, I was going to clean it up later. But then I just completely forgot about it, and this morning I really only grabbed it with with my fingertips. After all, I knew there might be a killer’s fingerprints on it!”

“That was very clever of you, Mrs. Schultheiss! Maybe this will really get us somewhere.”

We said goodbye to our visitor, and just as she stepped out of the door, a dejected-looking Sven Berger came in.

“Spardonk is dead.”

Ralf Spardonk – one of the critical cases from the ICU. The next victim of the creepy porn killer.

“Did you guys find out anything new?”

Before we could answer his question, Werner Hildebrand from the forensics team entered.

“Good afternoon, everybody. You guys got something for me?”

Machlitzke pointed to the packaged bicycle pump.

“Take a look at that thing right now, please, hopefully you’ll find some fingerprints.”

“Is this related to your murder case?”

“Could be.”

“All right, I’ll get right on it.”

“Thanks.”

Carefully, Hildebrand grabbed the bag and left our office. Berger now looked a bit more hopeful again.

“You have a lead?”

“Maybe, if we’re very lucky.”

My boss told our colleague about the neighbor’s visit.

“A bit of a long shot, isn’t it?”

I shrugged.

“That’s all we have, I’m afraid. So far, this is the first thing that looks even remotely like a possible lead.”

“Then I guess we’ll just have to wait and hope.”

“Indeed. In the meantime, are there any new cases of poisoning?”

“No, Jens, not so far. But the killer got every single person on the list who lives in the Leipzig area. Damn thorough.”

And so he would probably continue unless we could stop him. I asked the question that probably interested everyone present.

“Where will he strike next?”

Berger shrugged his shoulders.

“If we assume that he has his base of operations here in Leipzig, then I would guess Halle. I have three people from there on the list, and they would be easy to reach from here, after all.”

“Have you done anything in that regard yet?”

“Yes, I put the forensics team on the apartment doors, but they didn’t find any signs of a break-in.”

“Well, it could still happen. Are you having them monitored?”

“Yes, the colleagues in Halle are on it. The problem is that Halle is only a guess. He could just as easily strike in Dresden, Chemnitz or anywhere else. And I can’t have hundreds of apartments all over Germany under round-the-clock surveillance!”

We pondered for another half hour without coming to any useful conclusion, until suddenly the door to the room was torn open and Werner Hildebrand rushed in. He was completely out of breath and waving a sheet of paper.

“I found something!”

Immediately he had everyone’s attention.

“There were prints of two people on the bicycle pump. One person’s were only on one end, and that person had probably been very careful. There were considerably more prints from the other person, and some of them were very well preserved. I took them and got a direct hit.”

My God, were we really going to be that lucky?

“Geez, don’t keep us in suspense, shoot!”

“All right, Jens, all right! The prints belong to an Irene Wollendorf.”

A woman? But that would fit in with the poison murders. Supposedly, that was a typical female way of sending someone to his grave.

“And now hold on to your hats: Wollendorf has been convicted several times for … tata! … Burglary!”

We were flabbergasted. That fit like a glove; it simply couldn’t be a coincidence.

“And it gets even better. The victims were all involved in this child porn case, weren’t they?”

KHK Berger confirmed that they were.

“There you go. Irene Wollendorf had a daughter who was kidnapped when she was nine. Two years later, her body was found. She had been alive the whole time and had been constantly sexually abused. And the whole thing was filmed and sold for big money. The perpetrator was never caught.”

Bingo, it all fit together beautifully.

“And do you know what Wollendorf’s profession was? You’ll never guess. Pharmacist!”

My boss cleared his throat.

“That covers everything I think. Motive and opportunity, all there. We still have to find out how she got the idea to search Schmitzke’s computer, but that shouldn’t be a problem once we have her in custody. That was damn good work, Werner.”

“You’re welcome. Everything’s on this printout, even a current address. Well then, good luck with the hunt.”

The forensic specialist left us, and we were still completely overwhelmed by the news. We didn’t quite want to believe it yet. Berger put our doubts into words.

“Is it really going to be that easy all of a sudden? Almost too good to be true.”

Resolutely, Machlitzke rose from his chair.

“Well, sometimes you get lucky and it really is that simple. There’s only one way to find out. We get us the Wollendorf.”

Assuming she hadn’t already slipped away. Or was otherwise on a “job” at the time. Based on the evidence, it was no problem to get an arrest warrant and a search warrant within a very short time.

With several cars we sped to the address. It was a rather run-down old apartment building, and the name of our suspect was actually written on the doorbell board. Of course we didn’t ring the bell, the front door was open anyway, so we marched straight up to the apartment. Just as we were about to make ourselves known there, the door opened and a haggard woman in her mid-thirties stepped out.

“Are you here to see me?”

Jens showed his badge.

“Mrs. Irene Wollendorf?”

“Yes?”

“Ms. Wollendorf, you are under arrest on suspicion of multiple murder. We also have a search warrant for your apartment. Our colleagues will now take a look around, and you will accompany us to the Police Heardquarter.”

The woman gave a hysterical laugh.

“Damn it, couldn’t you stupid cops take a few more weeks? You didn’t find my daughter’s killer either! I still have some unfinished business.”

We looked at each other meaningfully – that was practically a confession. Ms. Wollendorf was handcuffed and three quarters of an hour later she found herself in our interrogation room. She actually admitted everything, she was really talkative. Well, that was often the case with caught serial killers, who talked like a waterfall.

She had gotten on Schmitzke’s trail through one of her burglaries. She had stolen the computer of one of his customers, and through the data on it she had found the porn dealer. Since she often stole computers, she had acquired quite a bit of expertise, so it had been no problem for her to copy the data from Schmitzke’s computer during a “visit” and then decrypt it later at her leisure at home.

“Everything else was a snap! I mixed myself a nice poison and then sent one pig after the other to hell! And if you cops hadn’t messed my plan up, I could have rid the world of a lot more perverted bastards! You narrow-gauge detectives aren’t capable of that!”

For her, as a professional burglar, it had been no big deal to enter the apartments in question unnoticed and without leaving any traces, and to deposit the poison.

“And how did you administer the poison?”

KHK Berger asked the question that was burning on the nails of all of us. The poisoner laughed arrogantly.

“Ha, so you didn’t find that out either, why am I not surprised? But I don’t want to be a spoilsport. I could have poisoned the pigs in a normal way, but that would have been too easy and a much too harmless death. They were supposed to get the death in their blood whenever they pursued their perverted passions. I made a contact poison and coated the computer keyboards and mice with it. Whenever the filthy bastards now clicked through their child porn, they poisoned themselves more and more. Ingenious, isn’t it?”

Indeed, ingenious. Murderously ingenious. The next moment, I blacked out for a few seconds.

“Derek!”

I stood up, but staggered and just managed to grab onto the desk. Jens and Sven jumped to my aid.

“Sascha, what’s wrong?”

“Derek!”

“What about him?”

“He works with those computers all the time!”

Immediately, it was clear to both of them what I was getting at. Feverishly, my boss picked up the phone and dialed the number for Data Rescue. He let it ring for a long time, but to no avail.

“There’s no answer. What about the cell phone?”

The cell phone, that’s right! I pulled mine out and hit the speed dial button.

“The subscriber you have dialed is not available at this time. Please leave a message.”

I literally screamed into the phone.

“Derek, get your hands off those seized computers right now! They’re poisoned!”

My God, hopefully nothing had happened to him yet!

“Come on, Sascha, we’re going over there. Sven, will you take care of the rest here?”

“All right, hurry up!”

We ran down the stairs of the Headquarter, I perceived everything only in half-awareness and to this day have no idea how I managed to do it without injuries. Shortly after, we sped through traffic with blue lights flashing, setting a new record for the distance between our office and my boyfriend’s company. Once there, we sprinted into the building, which looked completely deserted. Not even the reception desk was manned. I was now unstoppable and ran as fast as I could to Derek’s office. Tearing open the door, I rushed in and saw my friend lying with his head on the desk, a gray keyboard in front of him. No, dear God, please not that! I jumped to him.

“Derek!”

I shook him by the shoulder and nearly fell over with relief when I saw him shake himself briefly and slowly wake up.

“Uh … yes … Sascha! What are you doing here?”

This was too much for me, I burst into tears and sank to the floor. This, in turn, caused Derek to immediately become wide awake and squat down next to me.

“Sascha, what’s wrong? Come on, tell me! Did something happen?”

I didn’t really notice all that, only one thought dominated my whole mind: Derek was alive!

“Come on, Derek, let’s help him up. I’ll tell you what’s going on in a minute.”

I felt myself being grabbed and pulled up from two sides, then I was sitting in a chair. Derek pulled up his own swivel chair and took me in his arms, then looked questioningly at my companion.

“The case is solved, Derek. We arrested a woman who admitted to poisoning the people on the client list.”

“And that’s why Sascha is so messed up?”

“Yes. You need to know one thing: the woman poisoned her victims by coating the computer keyboards and mice with a poison mixture. The keyboards and mice of the computers you’ve been working on for almost two weeks.”

“Oh. And that’s why you guys rushed in here like this?”

“Yeah, we were afraid you might have poisoned yourself, too.”

Derek was now hugging me tightly and stroking my head gently.

“Oh Sascha. It’s sweet that you were so worried about me. But there was no reason for it at all.”

I managed to lift my head a little and look at him questioningly. Smiling, he continued to pet me.

“I haven’t touched the keyboards and mice at all, they are sitting unused on the shelf. I only work with my own input devices.”

I couldn’t help it, I started giggling softly, which increased into raucous laughter in no time.

“Haha … that is … haha … that means I had worried for nothing?”

Derek laughed back, and Machlitzke grinned to himself as well.

“Not completely for nothing, Sascha. I now know exactly how much you love me. And I love you too!”

He pulled my face close to his and gave me a big kiss. My boss used this moment to say goodbye.

“I’ll leave you guys to it then. Sascha, your weekend starts now. For the rest of the stuff I don’t need you anymore. Enjoy a few nice days with your boyfriend.”

Gratefully we said goodbye to him, and then we just sat there for a while, holding each other in our arms. After a few minutes, Derek broke away from me.

“Sascha, I have something to show you.”

Curious, I looked at him.

“I found something on one of the computers you should take a look at.”

I screwed up my face.

“Not more kiddie porn!”

My friend laughed at me.

“It’s not quite as bad as some of the things I showed you already. Come on over.”

I wheeled my chair to his workstation, he clicked the mouse around a bit, then the screen in front of him came to life. Completely perplexed, I looked at the action unfolding before me.

“You’ve got to be kidding me!”

“I had the same reaction the first time I saw this.”

“Have you shown this to anyone yet?”

“No, you’re the first. But I think we should do something.”

“Right. Only what? Talk to Berger?”

“Nah, not necessarily. You know what? Let’s pack this up for now and figure something out while relaxing.”

That was a really good idea; I had enough excitement for the week. Derek turned off his devices, then we headed home in his car, toward a relaxing evening.

On Saturday, we had packed our beach stuff first thing in the morning and drove to our favourite lake. Just as we left the parking lot, two cyclists came to a stop next to us with blocking tires.

“Hi Sascha, hi Derek!”

Well, what a surprise! The Berger twins. I gave my sweetheart a meaningful look, which was met with a big grin and a nod of the head.

“Hello you two. What are you guys doing here?”

“Well, what do you think, Derek. We’re going for a swim! The weather is great again, isn’t it?”

It certainly was, the sun was blazing down from the sky, and there wasn’t a single cloud to be seen. I had an idea.

“Would you guys like to go for a little pedal boat ride with us? We didn’t want to just sit around on the beach today, we wanted to get out on the lake.”

That wasn’t entirely true, but Derek would certainly forgive me for that little lie. Judging by his grin, he had already seen through my intentions. The boys were grinning too, but for a different reason.

“Cool, pedal boat! Sure!”

Twenty minutes later we set sail on a large pedal boat complete with swim ladder and sundeck. After we pulled away from the shore a bit, the twins jumped up and shortly thereafter were naked as God had made them. Derek and I didn’t hesitate for long and followed their lead. Another ten minutes later we had reached a nice swimming spot and plunged into the water. We then frolicked around in it for quite a long time until we climbed back onto our watercraft, completely exhausted, and settled down on the sun deck.

“Wow, I’m totally bushed!”

Patrick wasn’t the only one, we were all completely exhausted and enjoyed just lying around in the sun for a while.

“We heard you solved your poison murder case?”

Yawning, I looked over at Pascal. Well I hope I looked at Pascal.

“Yes, we did.”

I glanced quickly at my better half, who nodded back with a grin. So I continued.

“We were going to talk to you about that anyway.”

Surprise spread across the twins’ faces.

“I guess you know that these murders were related to the child porn case your dad is working on.”

“Yes, he told Pascal and me all about it.”

“Good. Then you also know that Derek checked all the suspects’ computers.”

Patrick and Pascal nodded, but didn’t seem to have a clue where this conversation was going. Now my friend interfered.

“How amazed do you think I was when I suddenly found a video on one of the computers whose two very identical-looking, teenaged main characters somehow looked very familiar to me.”

The next moment I had to fear that our two young friends’ hearts would stop! Their tanned faces couldn’t decide whether to turn chalky white or bright red. Derek noticed this, too, of course.

“Aha, I see you have an idea of what I’ve discovered, don’t you?”

The two could only stammer.

“I … we … But …”

I took over the conversation thread again.

“Look, we don’t give a shit about what you guys do together. But damn it, do you have to keep the webcam running while you’re doing it?”

With that, it should be clear what my boyfriend had discovered on the hard drive of the confiscated computer. Pascal and Patrick at rather … ahem … intimate games. Nothing earth-shattering, more like pubescent brotherly experimentation, but still things that you don’t necessarily expose to the entire web public.

“But … how … how did the guy get it?”

“I don’t know, Patrick. The fact is, the video was on the hard drive of a child porn suspect. I don’t know how it got there. YOU must know who you let watch it. But anyway, please refrain from doing that in the future. And pray that this video doesn’t make the rounds on the web too much.”

Now the two boys were downright scared. Very good. Maybe they learned something from it. Pascal looked at me questioningly.

“Did you show the video to our pop?”

Reassuringly, I smiled down at the twins.

“No, and he doesn’t get to see it in the future either, right Derek?”

“Yeah, I erased it from the disk before I copied the data for him. And if you promise never to do anything like that again, he’ll never get to see it either.”

Pascal and Patrick hurried madly to make this promise. With that, we settled down, and Derek drew a line under the matter.

“Very well. We’ll trust you, it’s for your own good anyways. And now for a more pleasant topic: Pascal, have you been to the B.o.y.S. yet?”

Relieved at the change of topic, the two teens’ faces relaxed.

“We’re going this evening!”

Derek’s and my eyes locked on Patrick.

“You’re both going?”

The addressed shrugged his shoulders.

“Sure, why not. The website says straight guys are welcome too, and I can’t let my little brother go into the lion’s den alone, can I?”

Derek stroked his hair in satisfaction.

“That’s the spirit. And now … now you two strong young men could actually pedal a little and get us over to the main dock. I could use some ice cream.”

The twins at first wanted to protest about the slave labor, but the prospect of ice cream drove away all opposition, and soon we were cruising toward our destination at the top speed of two teenaged strongmen.

It turned out to be another very nice day, and as I lay in bed next to my sweetheart late in the evening, I was just happy with my life. I had professional success, good friends and a partner with whom I could share all this. What more could I ask of life?

Explanatory Notes: Ranks in the German Police (in brackets the ranks of the CID) – as you can see we Germans love to make our words longer by simply putting them together.

Medium level (starts after the 3 to 3.5 years of police training, roughly comparable to officer, corporal, sergeant):

Polizeimeister PM (Kriminalmeister KM)
Polizeiobermeister POM (Kriminalobermeister KOM)
Polizeihauptmeister PHM (Kriminalhauptmeister KHM)

Higher level (roughly comparable to Lieutenant, Captain, Inspector – bachelor degree required):

Polizeikommissar PK (Kriminalkommissar KK)
Polizeioberkommissar POK (Kriminaloberkommissar KOK)
Polizeihauptkommissar PHK (Kriminalhauptkommissar KHK) – senior officers, often leading departments
Erster Polizeihauptkommissar EPHK (Erster Kriminalhauptkommissar EKHK) – usually leading special departments or districts

Highest level (roughly comparable to Chief Inspector, Chief, Commissioner):

Polizeirat PR (Kriminalrat KR)
Polizeioberrat POR (Kriminaloberrat KOR)
Polizeidirektor PD (Kriminaldirektor KD)
Leitender Polizeidirektor LPD (Leitender Kriminaldirektor LKD)
Polizeipraesident

Kulki: Kulkwitzer See, a little lake at the city boundary
Radler: a mix of Beer and Lemonade, low on alcohol and very refreshing
St. Georg: big hospital in Leipzig
Diako: Diakonissenhaus, another big hospital

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