The minister's nephew E-Book

Leander Castello

• Herausgeber: novum publishing
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 444

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

When detective inspector Michael Sanders answers his cell phone during his jog, he would never have guessed what he would hear. Six newborn babies have been kidnapped from a hospital in the tranquil Saarland - including the little nephew of Minister Otto Gregor Weinmann. The babies would only be released for a ransom of twelve million euros. If the kidnappers' demands are not met, one baby after another will die. What follows is a wild chase after the kidnappers through Germany, France and finally even Spain. Who is behind the kidnapping and will Michael Sanders and his colleagues succeed in saving all the babies from certain death?

Leseprobe

Chapter 1

When the buzzer sounded, Jörg Wassermann looked up from his magazine and glanced to the right towards the glass entrance door, at the same time turning down the volume of his small transistor radio, which was standing next to the model magazine on the white desk top.

In the light of the lantern that illuminated the entrance area outside, a young couple stood, wrapped up thickly to protect themselves from the icy cold that prevailed that night.

She, clearly pregnant, held her round belly with a contorted face, while her companion held her in his arms, supported her and spoke to her reassuringly.

Labor pains, thought the old night porter at St. Hildegard's Hospital, taking off his reading glasses and placing them on the open magazine in front of him.

He awkwardly got up from his swivel chair by gripping the armrests and pushing himself up. His knees were giving him more trouble than he could use in this filthy weather. When he finally stood, he unlocked the sliding doors of the entrance using a rotary switch embedded in the desk top in front of him.

Why can't babies be born at humane times?he asked himself as he shuffled to the wheelchair that was waiting for emergencies in the hospital's reception area to meet the heavily pregnant woman. His gaze involuntarily wandered to the large, round clock with its black numbers and hands that hung on the beige wall opposite his workstation. Twelve minutes past three.

The cold, which was raging outside on this December night, penetrated the building with a gust of wind through the open sliding doorswhen they opened to let the two people seeking help into the hospital.

The spacious entrance hall of the hospital was pleasantly quiet at this time of night, which is why he preferred to work at night - and of course because of the night bonus. After all, he wasn't working here out of boredom, but because he needed the money.

At this time of day, no one was sitting on the uncomfortable, orange plastic chairs that were bolted to the floor and sporadically scattered around the hall. There were no noisy children running around playing catch or gambolling on the furniture to pass the time. The place was quiet at night, apart from the odd emergency, but that was usually only stressful for the doctors and nursing staff. Fortunately, such night-time emergencies only affected him marginally, like this upcoming birth.

The couple stepped through the glass door, took two steps into the hall and then stopped so awkwardly that the sensor monitoring the area around the doors prevented them from closing again. The cold and brown, withered leaves, which had not yet been swept away by the janitor, were thus able to enter the wide hall unhindered. The young woman writhed in pain and moaned terribly. Her companion gripped her tighter to prevent her from slipping away and sinking to the cold tiled floor.

She's going to give birth right here in the middle of the entrance, thought Jörg Wassermann in a panic and accelerated his steps to cover the last few meters to the pregnant woman more quickly. When he reached the young woman, he activated the wheelchair's parking brake and walked around it so that he could take hold of the expectant mother's free arm. He had intended to lift her into the wheelchair with the help of her companion, but that never happened.

Without any warning, the pregnant woman shifted her weight and fell straight into the arms of the old night porter. Stunned, he allowed her to clutch him and push him back a few steps into the building. Finally, as they left the sensor area, the automatic doors were able to close. Her companion let go of her, turned to the glass doors and turned the knob at the top left of the door frame to the closed position. This locked the sliding doors so that no one could enter or leave the hospital.

"Hey, what are you doing?" Jörg Wassermann complained, trying to free himself from the woman's embrace.

"Shut up, Grandpa," the mother-to-be hissed in his ear and roughly pushed him away.

While the 65-year-old stumbled and struggled to keep his balance, the blonde reached into her right jacket pocket and produced a small, shiny black revolver.

The night porter, his footing firm again, looked confusedly alternately at the gun in the woman's gloved fist and at her face. She suddenly seemed to be in no more pain as she stood upright and aimed the short barrel directly at his heart. A mocking smile played around the corners of her mouth.

After making sure that the sliding doors were really locked, her companion came around her and pulled the woolly hat he was wearing against the cold over his face with both hands. The cap turned out to be a balaclava with holes for his eyes, mouth and nose.

Too late, my friend, thought the night porter gloatingly, referring to the mask.The camera has already caught you.

The masked man now grabbed the old man by the lapels of the dark blue knitted vest he was wearing and dragged him roughly to the wheelchair. He roughly pushed him into it. With practiced, skilful and quick movements, his hands were secured to the armrests and his feet to the footrests with long, black cable ties that the masked man had conjured out of his clothes. During the entire procedure, the night porter was kept in constant check by the woman with the gun, and by holding the index finger of her free hand vertically to her lips, she told him to keep quiet. Then her accomplice removed a roll of gray armor tape from his thick anorak, just as he had done moments before with the cable ties, and tore a piece about 20 cm long from the roll.

But when he tried to put the tape across the bound man's mouth, Jörg Wassermann suddenly resisted. The night porter turned his head to the side and whispered quietly: "No, please don't, I can't breathe through my nose."

But the perpetrator mercilessly interrupted this brief bout of recalcitrance by reaching into the old man's hair and using his far superior physical strength to turn his head back. He reached out with the hand in which he was holding the roll of duct tape and slapped the duct tape across the old man's face, then placed the previously torn off piece across his mouth.

Now that the night porter was tied up and no longer posed a threat, the woman holstered her gun again and pulled her woolly hat over her face. She turned away and marched off at a quick pace, while the masked man grabbed the worn rubber handles of the wheelchair and followed her, pushing the vehicle in front of him.

They pulled up to the door of the visitors' toilet and Jörg Wassermann caught a glimpse of the large wall clock, whose black minute hand had just jumped to 3:16. The whole operation had only taken four minutes.

The woman opened the yellow door to the visitors' toilet and let her companion pass with his victim. Jörg Wassermann felt his lips swell, a result of the hard blow with the roll of glue. Inside, the pair of criminals pushed the night porter into the disabled toilet, as this was the only cubicle that could accommodate the wheelchair in terms of width. After making sure that his victim was properly bound and gagged, the masked man locked the toilet cubicle from the outside withthe help of a coin. Finally, the two looked into each of the other separate compartments to make sure that no one else was in the toilet rooms.

The blonde woman pulled a small black radio out of her coat pocket, pressed the talk button and spoke into it: "You can come in."

Without waiting for an answer, she put the radio back in her pocket and left the sanitary facilities. She walked quickly to the front door through which she and her accomplices had entered the hospital a few minutes ago and waited. Now it was important to be quick, it was only a matter of time before an ambulance brought an injured person or someone in pain showed up to find help here. Or, and she had to grin at this thought, a pregnant woman with strong contractions turned up.

Suddenly, three figures dressed in black appeared out of the darkness and stepped into the light of the bright lamp above the door. They were also masked and wearing black gloves, each of them carrying two large, empty sports bags.

The woman unlocked the door and the new arrivals slipped through as soon as it had slid far enough apart. She immediately pressed the rotary switch again and locked the building. With a quick glance outside through the panes of the glass door, she made sure that everything was quiet outside the hospital. No one seemed to have noticed anything unusual going on inside the hospital. Very good.

The accomplice with whom she had entered the building earlier and overpowered the night porter had now taken off his jacket, mask and gloves and made himself comfortable behind Jörg Wassermann's desk. There was no danger of being filmed here, as the porter's workplace was not under video surveillance. This was one of the things they had scouted out in advance over the last three and a half weeks.

In his white shirt and dark blue tie, which had emerged from under his anorak, he looked like he belonged here. His job now was to keep an eye on the entrance hall and the screen on his desk for the next few minutes. The monitor showed a four-part image, so he could monitor all four video cameras installed in the clinic at the same time. The one watching the main entrance through which they themselves had entered the hospital. A second one monitored the roller shutter door of the emergency room, through which the ambulances drove into the building. Finally, there were cameras three and four, which showed the two alarm-secured emergency exits at the side of the building. If there was any activity in an area he could see that posed a threat to their operation, he would warn his accomplices via the radios he had with him.

He calmly picked up Jörg Wassermann's magazine and began to leaf through it, bored, just like the night porter.

The four remaining intruders made their way to the stairwell, the entrance to which was in sight of the elevators and connected the entire building from the basement to the roof. Using one of the elevators was out of the question; the risk of running into a doctor or nurse who wanted to take the elevator to change floors was far too great, and had to be avoided at all costs. In contrast to the elevators, however, the stairwell was hardly used at all; it was practically only used as an escape route in the event of a fire.

Their destination was on the fifth floor, and they climbed the light-colored steps of the staircase almost silently, one after the other.

Once she reached the fifth floor, the number emblazoned large and black on the heavy metal door that separated the stairwell from the rest of the building, the woman opened the door a small crack and peered into the long, dark corridor. The light in the corridor was subdued and came from a fewenergy-saving lamps embedded in the ceiling, which were dimmed at night. Almost all the doors she could see from her vantage point were closed; all the patients on this floor seemed to be asleep. No one was in the long corridor. Only one door was open, bright, warm light fell through the door frame onto the corridor and illuminated the surroundings a little; it was the nurses' room. The masked woman opened the heavy metal door a little wider and stuck her entire head through the opening, now looking in the opposite direction. Here she saw the same peaceful picture, everything was quiet. The leader glanced at her wristwatch, three twenty-four, they were well on schedule. As they knew, the newborns were fed between three o'clock and a quarter to four, which meant that the two night nurses on duty were separated, one feeding the babies while the other was on normal duty on the ward, and also that the nursery was not locked during this time as one of the nurses was in there. So they didn't have to force either of the nurses to hand over the key, because that always carried the risk that the women would refuse in order to protect the newborns and that meant that they might have to use force. Violence could mean noise and noise could wake up the entire ward. A catastrophe that had to be prevented. That was why they had chosen this exact moment for their raid.

She pushed the door open further, walked through it and turned left, away from the nurses' room. One of her accomplices followed her silently like a shadow. The other two, however, turned right and walked towards the open door of the nurses' room. The gray CV coating under their rubberized shoe soles swallowed up every sound. When they reached the nurses' room, the taller of the two men stood in the doorway and looked into the room. A young, red-haired student nurse in wine-red hospital clothing was standing with her back to him at a table in the middleof the room, handling utensils that he could not see. He pulled a gun out of his jacket pocket and pointed it at the young woman's back. His masked companion stood close behind him; they had placed their empty sports bags on the floor in the hallway next to the door to have both hands free.

The young hospital employee seemed to sense that someone was standing behind her in the doorway. She paused in her movements and slowly turned her head to look over her shoulder. Startled, the metal cutlery fell out of her hand and landed clattering on the table top.

The smaller intruder slipped past his colleague and was at the student nurse in three quick steps. He grabbed the 18-year-old by the back of the neck with his right hand, jerked her around and pressed his left hand firmly over her mouth before the young woman could make a sound. His partner put the pistol back in his pocket and came to his aid. He dug out cable ties and adhesive tape from his clothes and placed everything on the table where the trainee had been working. Together they bound and gagged the young, frightened woman and finally fixed her to one of the chairs in the recreation room.

When the two masked intruders were finally satisfied with their work, they left the young woman to her fate, just as their accomplices had already done with the porter on the ground floor. They switched off the light, removed the key from the keyhole and closed the door from the outside. They quietly let the door click into the lock. Finally, they locked the door with the captured key, collected their sports bags and made their way back to their colleagues.

The second group of intruders on the fifth floor followed the corridor in the opposite direction to the end. There it continued at a right angle to the left. The woman carefully peeked around the corner to make sure the coast was clear.

A few meters away from them, she saw a light blue door decorated with pink teddy bears. The room behind the door was the actual destination of their nocturnal mission. Instead of a wall, a large pane of glass reaching up to the ceiling adjoined the door frame. The curtain behind the pane was drawn, but the silhouette of a person sitting in a chair and feeding a baby could be made out, just like in a shadow cabinet. It was the second nurse on duty in the ward that night. They entered the spacious room at almost the same time as their accomplices at the other end of the corridor.

There were several small beds scattered around the room, five of which contained newborn babies between one and three days old. Two of the little creatures were sleeping peacefully, the third was playing with its little pink hands, while the last two were trying to grasp the mobile dangling from the ceiling right in front of their faces. The nurse held a sixth baby in her arms and gave him a bottle. Feeding the new inhabitants of the earth was currently a little more complicated than usual, as for once there was no woman among the mothers who was breastfeeding herself. She was sitting roughly in the middle of the room, about three meters away from them, and had a silver side table next to her on which she could place the bottle if necessary.

"What's up?" the nurse asked without looking up from her work, assuming that the student nurse had entered the room to ask something.

When there was no reply, she raised her head, but by then it was already too late, the man was standing right in front of her and pressing the muzzle of his revolver against her forehead.

"Not a sound," he threatened quietly.

His companion reached for the bottle of milk, pulled it out of the baby's mouth and placed it on the floor next to her. The little one immediately began to protest and finally started to cry. Undeterred, she took the child from the night nurse'sarms and gently placed it in one of the empty cribs. What followed was similar to the fate of the other hospital staff who had the misfortune to encounter them that night. The pediatric nurse was expertly bound, gagged and tied to the chair she was sitting in.

Sister Veronika watched in horror as the intruders took one baby after the other from their little beds, wrapped them in the white blankets that covered them in their beds and stowed each one in one of the sports bags they had brought with them.

Partly due to the already crying baby, who was crying because his meal had ended prematurely, and partly due to the movement of being lifted up and packed into the bag, some of the other newborns also began to cry. But as soon as the zippers of the sturdy bags were pulled closed, the babies could hardly be heard. The perpetrators had punched a few air holes in the sports bags to be on the safe side, but the still weak voices of the newborns were still almost completely muffled.

Filled with horror, the bound nurse realized what was going on and began to tug wildly at her restraints, but they only cut deep into the flesh of her wrists and didn't loosen an inch.

She tried to scream out loud for help, but she couldn't produce more than muffled, unintelligible sounds, just like her charges. The tape was wrapped too tightly around her head. In the end, she fell over with her chair, knocked off balance by her attempts to free herself, and remained lying on the floor. Pain shot through her body like a shot of fire from her left wrist. Her glasses had slipped off her nose and were now lying a few centimeters away next to her on the white CV flooring. The 50-year-old closed her eyes and groaned. She found it difficult to get enough air, hindered by the tape. The chair had hit her left wrist with the metalbrace to which her hands were tied when it hit the floor. At the same time as the impact, the two gangsters who had been looking after the student nurse arrived in the nursery. Wordlessly, they helped their accomplices to pack the last babies into the still empty bags. When they had finished their work, the woman among the kidnappers went to the door and made sure that no one had noticed her because of the noise of the chair falling over. All seemed quiet in the dark corridor, no doors opened, no heads poked out of the patients' rooms. She was lucky. Nevertheless, she waited a few more seconds before signaling her accomplices to follow her.

When all the intruders had left the large room together with their human prey, the blonde kidnapper locked the baby's room, the ward nurse's bunch of keys still stuck in the keyhole from the outside. All that remained was the hospital employee in her predicament and the empty beds. The leader of the quartet pulled the radio out of her jacket pocket and informed the man at reception: "We're coming down."

They ran off, each of the men carrying two bags, while she held the revolver in her right hand and opened the stairwell door for her companions with her left. They went back the way they had come.

The shadow raised his binoculars to his eyes and watched the lightly traveled road for a few seconds; he had spotted movement in the dark. Now it was a matter of determining whether there was any danger. Finally he lowered the binoculars again, just an old man who apparently couldn't sleep and was walking his dog at this hour of the night. No danger.

He took another step back and pressed himself into the hedge, which at this time of year lined the spacious, pitch-black parking lot without leaves. Now he was as good as invisible again.

The only sources of light on this cloudy, cold winter's night did not manage to penetrate the darkness enough to cause him much concern. There were only four streetlights shining mournfully 20 to 50 meters away. The night-time walker stopped briefly under one of them and gave his dachshund the opportunity to lift his leg.

There was also a lamp burning above the entrance to the large, multi-storey building that he had been watching for several hours, but even its light did not reach his hiding place. Finally, there were the energy-saving bulbs embedded in the floor that lined both sides of the driveway to the emergency room. They served to guide the drivers of the emergency vehicles at night, just like the illuminated sign above the roller shutter with the word "Emergency Department" flanked by two red crosses, under which the vehicles drove into the building to deliver their patients. These two light sources also posed no danger to him.

For cost reasons, the rest of the site was dark from 11 p.m. to 5 a.m., which suited him very well.

He had been in the immediate vicinity since 10 p.m., first walking around the hospital to check out the situation, and later, around midnight, he had taken up his position in the darkness of the hedge. He had chosen this spot a few days ago when he had scouted out the hospital. He had found out last week that he had the best view from here. While he himself disappeared into the darkness, everything he needed to observe was brightly lit up in front of him.

His job was to secure the area that his accomplice in the hospital could not monitor, he would warn him by radio if danger arose and thus enable him and his accomplices to escape in time. However, he himself was unaware of what was happening in the hospital because his radio was switched to mute. The risk of the device squawking at the wrong moment and giving him and his location away was simply too great.

The man behind the reception desk pocketed the magazine as he stood up. He would dispose of it later, it was covered in his fingerprints. He put his black balaclava, dark jacket and gloves back on and wiped the table and chair thoroughly with a cloth he had brought with him. He had taken great care not to touch anything else without gloves. He then went to the front door and looked out through the windows while he waited for his accomplices from the fifth floor. As far as he could see from here, everything seemed to be quiet outside, there was no sign of anyone, and the outpost had not reported anything suspicious either. So far, so good.

Noises behind him announced the appearance of his accomplices, he glanced over his shoulder and saw them coming. He reached up and unlocked the sliding door. Five seconds later, they left the hospital together and disappeared into the darkness.

Sister Veronika rolled on her own axis, which was no easy feat given her predicament. She lay on the meticulously clean floor, her hands firmly attached to the back of the chair. Her damaged wrist throbbed to the rhythm of her heartbeat and sent waves of dull pain through her body, the pain intensified by the plastic restraints that cut deep into her swollen flesh. The fact that she could only breathe through her nose because her mouth was taped shut didn't make her attempt to get to the door any easier. She knew the door was locked, she had heard the key being turned in the lock. But she had to do something, otherwise it could be hours before she was found, as the shift change wasn't until six o'clock.

Three or four more turns and she was there. At the moment she was on her knees, her forehead pressed to the floorand gasping for breath. Sweat ran down her forehead and dripped onto the floor.

Not for the first time in the last few minutes, she thought of the young student nurse who was on duty with her tonight. What had those guys done to her? Lena was a very conscientious girl, she would have reacted to the clatter of the overturned chair if she had been able to. And what were the masked men planning to do with the babies? She had to hurry.

She let herself fall to the side, the chair strut hit her wrist again, and the backrest also struck her upper arm muscle painfully. She would be covered in bruises tomorrow, two more turns, maybe three. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath and completed the procedure.

When she reached the door, she started to bang the chair against it, but it didn't make as much noise as she had hoped. She looked around the room desperately, she needed an idea.

Suddenly she saw it clearly in front of her, the solution she was looking for. However, her solution also meant that she had to return to the center of the room. She closed her eyes again, breathing heavily and sweating as she prepared herself for the next pain. She took the same route back.

Back in the middle of the room, she slid her feet under the first crib she could reach. Despite her legs being tied to the chair, she managed to lift the metal frame of the bed a little. Good, the bed wasn't as heavy as she had feared. She relaxed her muscles and tried to gather her strength. She closed her eyes, counted to three and tensed all her muscles, from her neck to her calves. Then she lifted her buttocks with momentum, as if she wanted to do a backward roll. A jerk, but it wasn't enough, the bed only rose a few centimetres and then came to rest on its legs again. She closed her eyes again.Second attempt,she thought, and repeated her effort, as if she were using a piece of exercise equipment at the gym. Almost, but it wasn't quite enough.Come on, she thought,all goodthings come in threes. Sweat dripped from her forehead onto the floor, partly running into her eyes, so that she had to close them again, but she started again, with even more strength, even more momentum. And this time she succeeded, lifting the metal frame over the tipping point and letting gravity do the rest. The bed hit the floor with a loud clatter and the mattress and pillow fell out. But that didn't matter, the only thing that mattered was the noise. For the first time, she was happy to hear noise on the ward. Wonderful. She took a deep breath, twice, three times, four times, then moved to the next bed.

The man standing in the darkness of the hedge stamped his feet quietly, trying to fight the cold that had been slowly but steadily creeping into his bones for hours. He longed for a cigarette and a hot cup of steaming coffee. But he couldn't have one because of the embers that would give him away, and he didn't have the other with him.Soon, he consoled himself,soon.

Finally something happened, he noticed movement behind the glass front door of the clinic. He raised his binoculars to his eyes and took aim at the entrance. He adjusted the focus of the binoculars with his index finger and spotted his masked accomplices, who were just slipping out of the building and moving as quickly as possible out of the range of the light and the camera.

The man in the shadows followed the movements of his companions with his glass and accompanied them to their vehicles.

First, the five ran to a white van, a Renault Master, which was parked at the far edge of the parking lot, opened the sliding side door and carefully placed the six dark blue bags on the floor of the loading area. One of the men then got behind the wheel and put the ignition key in the steering wheel lock, while the woman and another accomplice got into the back to join their victims. One of the two men who had stayed outside closed the sliding door and left with his colleague. Their destination was a mouse-grey SkodaFabia at the other end of the parking lot. The man could see the indicators light up in the dark when the Skoda's remote control was operated, even without binoculars. Seconds later, the car left the parking lot, closely followed by the van.

He silently stowed his binoculars in the rucksack he had brought with him and set off, it was now time for him to leave too. His car was only a ten-minute walk away.

Chapter 2

Sweat poured down his back and soaked the T-shirt he was wearing under his jogging jacket. His breathing gradually began to become intermittent. His heart rate, increased by the exertion, became even faster. He had already covered more than half of his running route and was now struggling with the steep climb that marked the start of the last third. The wide path had been getting narrower and narrower for a few minutes and would soon be nothing more than a trail. The branches of the bushes flanking the path brushed against him more and more often, as if they were reaching for him. His breath condensed as it left his lungs and met the cold surrounding air, the light drizzle of the previous night had stopped and the sun was making an appearance. The dry, sunny weather that the forecast had predicted for today was also the reason why he had decided to go running alone after his friend and work colleague Mario had canceled last night.

With 500 meters to go, he had reached the top of the hill. A quick glance at his watch showed him that he was a little behind his desired time, he would have to hurry on the downhill section. He increased his speed, pushed himself to the limit, reached the top of the hill and, as he had done hundreds of times in the last five years, jumped over the large tree root that protruded into the narrow path. He concentrated on not slipping when he landed, but he never did. His right foot got caught in the tree root and abruptly stopped his forward movement. Physics and gravity did the rest and Michael Sanders hit the partially frozen forest floor hard, face first. Fortunately, the worst was prevented by his reflexes, whichensured that he pulled both arms up, but his face still skidded a few centimetres across the ground.

Slightly dazed by the hard impact, he remained lying down for a few seconds before getting into a sitting position.

"Shit," he cursed loudly and carefully felt his face. Between the left corner of his mouth and his left ear, he had a few scratches that ran across his cheekbones and bled slightly. They didn't seem to be particularly deep, however, and the abrasions on his hands were also harmless.

His sports shorts were torn in the area of his left knee and he could see a small bleeding wound through the hole.

"Shit," he repeated as he stood up.

He carefully took a few steps, bent and stretched his knee, but apart from the abrasions, everything seemed to be fine. He was lucky. However, he had lost his desire to jog for the day, so he walked, or rather limped, back to his car, which was parked about two kilometers away in a forest parking lot. He had not yet covered a hundred meters when his cell phone, which he had stowed in the pocket of his jogging pants, buzzed. He fished it out awkwardly and looked at the display. When he saw who was calling him, he frowned briefly. It was unusual for his boss to disturb him on his day off.

"Moin, Klaus," he announced, stopping on the path so that he could better understand his superior. The network was not particularly good in this part of the forest.

"Good morning. Sorry to bother you, but I need you and Mario in Neunkirchen right away. I'm already on my way there." Michael frowned again. If it was unusual for his boss to call him in his free time, then it was downright strange that he was on his way to a job site. As a rule, Klaus Decker never took part in field operations; he was in charge of all the specialist departments of the Saarland State Office of Criminal Investigation and his work consistedmainly of coordinating the activities of these departments. For example, he put together a homicide squad when one was needed. In Germany's smallest federal state, with a population of just under one million, murder was a relatively rare crime, and when it did happen, it was usually a crime where the perpetrator was close to the victim and could therefore be solved relatively quickly. For this reason, and of course for cost reasons, the small Saarland did not maintain a permanent homicide squad, as other federal states might have done, but put one together on a case-by-case basis.

In addition, Detective Superintendent Decker represented the authority externally in dealings with politicians and the press.

"I'm out running in the forest and ..."

"Forget your training, go take a shower and pick up Mario. I want you on site in an hour," his boss interrupted him.

"What actually happened?" Michael wanted to know.

"A really big mess," his boss replied from the car. "All the newborns have been kidnapped from St. Hildegard Hospital."

"Excuse me?" asked Michael, puzzled.

"I don't know much more than that. Pick up Mario, hurry up."

The line was dead, Klaus Decker had hung up.

The 33-year-old detective inspector stood there with his smartphone in his hand and tried to make sense of what he had just heard. Who the hell stole all the babies from a hospital? For what purpose?

The abduction of a newborn has happened before, usually by a mentally disturbed person or a woman whose wish to have a child was not fulfilled. But all babies at once?

He tapped on his colleague's phone book entry and waited for the connection to be made. Two elderly ladies walked past him with their leashed poodles and eyed him suspiciously as he stood there with his injuries to his hands and face. He smiled at the women and greeted them in a friendly manner.

"Hey there, old man, tired yet?" he suddenly heard from his cell phone.

"Oh, don't ask," Michael replied as he felt the wound on his face again. "Do you know yet?"

"What about?" asked Mario di Vincenzo, obviously her boss had only informed him.

"There's work to do, I'll be with you in three quarters of an hour."

"Absolutely not, I'm off work today and I'm leaving for the beach in Belgium in ten minutes."

"In November?"

"In November!"

"I don't believe a word you say."

"I don't care, I can do what I want on my day off."

"You're not free anymore," Michael corrected him and then briefly put him in the picture.

"Okay," sighed Mario, resigned to his fate. "In that case, I'll just go to the beach in the summer, see you in a minute."

Michael pocketed his phone and set off again, this time at a slightly limping trot. He had to get to his car as quickly as possible. Forty minutes later, changed and freshly showered, he pulled up in front of the house where his friend and colleague lived. Mario was already standing on the sidewalk waiting for him. He walked around the hood of the red Lancia Delta and got in on the passenger side. The blue light attached to the roof of the car with a magnetic base flashed blue light across Mario's face. As soon as he sat in the seat, Michael switched on the siren permanently installed in his car and drove off.

"Did you have a fight?" his colleague wanted to know when he saw the scratches on his face.

"Something like that," Michael replied as he threaded his way into the flowing traffic.

"Did you at least win?"

Michael briefly summarized how he had sustained the injuries.

"You can't be left alone for a minute. Maybe at your age you should only do sports that aren't so dangerous," Mario suggested. "Chess, for example."

He was almost a year younger than his colleague, which he kept rubbing in Michael's face by calling him an "old man". Like Michael, he was also a detective inspector, but he had fewer years of service under his belt, which made Michael his superior.

Mario owes his Italian name to his father, an ice cream seller from Sicily, who drove through the streets of Saarland for 20 years in a brightly painted van that he had converted into an ice cream truck and sold his products to men and children.

As he had a German mother, he had dual citizenship and was therefore allowed to join the police because he was considered a German citizen.

Mario was slightly shorter than Michael, measuring just under 1.70 meters, with dark brown eyes and black curls. The genes of his Sicilian relatives had really come through in him. He grabbed the grab handle above the side window and asked: "Why is someone stealing babies from a hospital?" while Michael drove around a cab parked in the second row, forcing oncoming traffic to stop.

"To sell them," Michael speculated.

"I don't think so," Mario replied as his colleague drove past the Ludwigsparkstadion in the direction of the A623 and was promptly caught by the speed camera installed there. "There are less risky ways to get close to small children."

Michael looked at the speedometer: 105 km/h at the legal 50 km/h. Mario gripped the handle even tighter as he guessed his colleague's intention. Michael started an overtaking maneuver on the long, straight road and accelerated his red speedster to over 150 km/h.

"We'll see," said Michael, who now pulled onto the highway and accelerated the car even faster.

"Would it be very bad if we arrived in Neunkirchen alive?" Mario asked, gripping the handle on the roof of the car even tighter.

A glance at his TomTom showed Michael that he had to follow the A623 for nine kilometers before changing to the A8. Ignoring his buddy's question, he continued to accelerate.

When they drove into the hospital parking lot a few minutes later, a uniformed police officer lifted the blue and white tape that had been used to cordon off the crime scene so that the Lancia could drive underneath.

Michael rolled down the side window of his car and asked the officer for directions to the crime scene. His colleague pointed in the right direction. The local police station had obviously mobilized everything it had to offer. Several patrol cars were parked around the hospital grounds with their blue lights flashing and around a dozen officers were walking around and securing the crime scene. They kept onlookers and reporters on the other side of the cordon. A little way off, Michael parked his vehicle and the two officers got out. Together they made their way to the main entrance of the clinic. They ignored the calls from the press, whom they knew from previous cases, who wanted to know what had actually happened here. Obviously, nothing of what had happened in the hospital had leaked out yet. But Sanders knew that would soon change; six kidnapped babies were impossible to keep secret.

"Freezing cold," Mario muttered to himself as he zipped up his jacket. Over the last few days, the temperatures had been almost permanently in the freezing range, which was unusual for November.

"Don't complain, the weather won't stop them from asking stupid questions," said Michael, pointing with his head at the journalists who were standing behind the barriers with their cameras, hassling their uniformed colleagues and photographing everything that came in front of their lenses.

"They don't come from sunny Sicily either," commented Mario.

"Neither did you," said Michael. "As far as I know, you were born in Riegelsberg, and the last time I was there, the town was still in Saarland."

After showing their IDs to the uniformed officer at the entrance, they entered the hospital.

Inside, there was a lot of activity, a dozen or so officers were busy securing evidence. Men and women in white overalls were taking fingerprints from various surfaces, strips of adhesive tape and cut cable ties scattered on the floor were being photographed and bagged up for the lab. Everywhere there were yellow plastic stands with black numbers on them, which the forensics people used to number the clues they found.

Mario was the first to spot their superior. Klaus Decker was standing in a corner of the spacious entrance hall with two other men, engaged in a conversation. When he saw his employees, he waved them over. Mario tapped his colleague on the arm, who had stopped to look in the entrance hall, pointed with his chin in the direction where he had spotted their boss and went ahead. Michael followed.

"These are my two employees Michael Sanders and Mario di Vincenzo," Klaus Decker introduced the new arrivals.

The men shook hands while the two strangers introduced themselves as Detective Superintendent Peter Wegener from the local criminal investigation department and Karl Drilling from the hospital administration.

"What happened to your face?" Decker, who had seen his colleague unharmed yesterday, wanted to know.

"He had a date last night and then asked his companion in the restaurant to pick up the bill," joked Mario, earning him two punishing looks. Peter Wegener, on the other hand, seemed to think it was funny because he grinned at Mario.

"I can have a doctor called to take a look at the wounds," Drilling suggested after Michael had told him about his morning mishap. But the policeman declined with thanks, so Klaus Decker began to brief his two investigators on the sequence of events so far.

"So there were at least four perpetrators?" Michael stated after his boss had finished speaking.

"The nurse who was overpowered in the nursery speaks of four perpetrators, including at least one woman. The porter and the student nurse speak of two perpetrators. I even assume that there were more than four, we'll be able to determine that from the CCTV footage," Peter Wegener interjected. "Surveillance cameras?" Mario asked hopefully.

"All entrances are under video surveillance," Wegener replied, pointing in the direction of the camera securing the main entrance. "However, the hospital staff do not have access to the images for data protection reasons. Mr. Drilling spoke to the security company on the phone earlier, they're based in Trier, one of their employees is on his way and should be here any minute."

"What other measures have you taken?" Michael wanted to know from Peter Wegener as he unobtrusively scrutinized the man from the KDD and tried to assess him. Wegener was slightly older than himself, wore glasses and was poorly dressed. His jeans were too loose, but his sweater was too tight under his gray rain jacket. He was a good 20 to 25 kilograms overweight and about 1.85 meters tall. Basically, he was the exact opposite of him and his colleague Mario, who took care of their appearance and kept fit with regular sports sessions, usually spent together.

"We haven't been able to do much so far," Wegener replied. "It took almost half an hour for an emergency call to be made after the perpetrators escaped. From the arrival of the first commando on the scene, who first freed all the hostages and then got an overview, to the first searchmeasures, another half hour passed. With all the mothers whose children had been kidnapped, there must have been a huge hullabaloo here. The freeway is only two minutes away, in an hour you can easily create a search radius of over 120 kilometers." He raised his hands apologetically.

The colleague was right, and to make matters worse, there were two federal borders, with France and Luxembourg, and a state border with Rhineland-Palatinate in the radius mentioned. Michael was sure that the perpetrators were long gone.

"Nevertheless," added Wegener. "I've launched a search for vehicles large enough to hold five people and their luggage. As a rule, these are likely to be transporters, vans, estate cars and SUVs, but there are certainly thousands of them. We concentrate on vehicles that don't fit into the street scene. Maybe we'll get lucky."

However, he said the latter without really believing it.

Inspector Zufall, who was often mentioned and praised in the press and literature, was a very unreliable colleague who rarely contributed anything to solving a case.

"Who called the police?" Mario wanted to know.

"A patient," the man from the hospital administration joined in the conversation. "A young woman who is due to give birth by caesarean section today. She heard the noise that nurse Veronika was making to draw attention to herself and wanted to know what it meant."

"Where are the parents concerned now?"

"In one of our conference rooms, upstairs on the sixth floor. One of our doctors is looking after them with two nurses. The poor people are totally distraught, some of them are in shock."

"You can hardly blame them," said Michael.

"We have housed the employees who were victims of the gang separately, each on their own," Wegener added to the hospital representative's comments. "They are also receiving medical treatment. Fortunately, their physical injuries are quite harmless, the night porter has a swollen lip and bruises from the cable ties and nurse Veronika has a lot of bruises from making a lot of noise. The poor thing consists almost entirely of bruises, contusions, cuts and abrasions."

"What do we know so far about the victims, I mean the babies?" asked Mario.

"So far almost nothing, except ..."

"I had our secretariat print out a list of the names of the newborns," Drilling interrupted the officer from the criminal investigation department and reached into the inside pocket of his jacket. He pulled out a folded sheet of paper and handed it to Mario.

CHILDREN'S PARENTS

Maike Saug - Kathrin and Klaus Saug

Oliver Meyer - Sibille and Sven Meyer

Philipp Otto Winter - Katherina and Bernd Winter

Without names -Monika and Ralph Ratzky

Muhamet Ösgu - Sira and Mustafa Ösgu

Jennifer Jung - Natalie and Peter Jung

"None of the names mean anything to me," he remarked.

"So let's go and get a first-hand impression," Michael decided and walked towards the elevator.

"There's something else you should probably know first," his boss stopped him.

"That's exactly what I wanted to mention when Mr. Drilling interrupted me," Wegener interjected, giving the administrative employee a punishing look that said he should stay out of internal police conversations. The man had already interrupted him several times during the morning.

Michael stopped and slowly turned to face them. His instinct told him that now came the interesting part of the story.

Klaus Decker looked around, making sure that no one around them was aware of what was about to happen.

"It's about the child of Katherina and Bernd Winter, the latter is the mayor of Neunkirchen."

Now that Klaus Decker was talking about it, the name suddenly seemed familiar. Bernd Winter was occasionally mentioned in the regional press.

"And you think it's about him?" Sanders guessed.

"Perhaps, although I fear that the problems will come from a different direction. His wife Katherina was born a Weinmann."

Suddenly, Michael's scalp began to tingle as two pieces of the puzzle came together. He gave his friend Mario a meaningful look.

"Weinmann," Michael repeated the name quietly. "Weinmann, like Otto Gregor Weinmann, our Minister of the Interior?"

"Exactly, she's his sister."

"Shit," Michael whispered.

So that's where the wind was blowing from. Of course, this explained a lot, especially Decker's presence on the scene. This investigation was going to be a nightmare, he already knew that, it could flush his entire future career down the toilet.

"Has he been informed yet?" asked Sanders, resigned to his fate.

"His sister called him even before the first patrol car arrived," Peter Wegener answered Michael's question.

Of course, thought Sanders,how could it be otherwise? Slowly, the group of five made their way back to the elevators to go up to the sixth floor. It was time to talk to the witnesses. Mario pressed the button requesting an elevator car to the top, and shortly afterwards a beep announced the arrival of the elevator. The silver doors opened, revealing the empty cabin, but they didn't get to board.

A whole group of people came marching in through the sliding doors of the main entrance, through which the criminals had already entered the building last night. They were all dressed in light gray, well-fitting suits that differed only by nuances in color. In contrast, eachwore a different colored tie, like karate fighters who wore different belt colors in their competition suits to show their level of skill. Only the only woman in the group wore a different colored outfit, as if she wanted to stand out clearly from her male colleagues. Her costume was dark blue, her shoes high-heeled, her long hair tied in a tight knot and her glasses a subtle red.

Leading the way was the great Zampano himself, the man they had absolutely no use for here. The Saarland Minister of the Interior had immediately spotted the group at the elevator door and approached them purposefully. He recognized Klaus Decker; they had met at various events over the years.

"Are there any new findings? Have you found my nephew yet?" he rumbled through half the hospital.

Great, thought Decker,why not make a big deal of it?

Otto Gregor Weinmann was 67 years old, over 1.85 meters tall and very slim. He had full, wavy gray hair, bushy eyebrows and a larger-than-average hooked nose, which he tried to distract from with an even larger, twirled moustache. His eyes were gray and fixed on everyone he spoke to, as if he were trying to penetrate their thoughts.

Weinmann was regarded as a very unpleasant person, he was loud, opinionated, choleric and argumentative. There was hardly anyone around him with whom he had not had at least one legal dispute. He was certainly not someone you would want to have as a neighbor.

In office for seven years, he had earned a reputation as a tough dog who knew no mercy.

"Good morning, Mr. Minister, we've only just arrived too," replied Klaus Decker.

"That may be true, but it doesn't answer my question," said Weinmann.

Asshole, thought the policeman, but replied: "No, we haven't found your nephew yet, the crime was only a fewhours ago and we're still investigating the evidence. We were just about to go upstairs and start questioning witnesses."

"Is public prosecutor Zwiebel here yet?" the Minister of the Interior wanted to know.

"I haven't seen him yet," Decker replied.

"Let's go then," said the minister, walking through the group of police officers and entering the elevator cabin first.

Mario, who had been blocking the elevator doors throughout the conversation, grinned at his partner as he stepped past him into the elevator, following the minister. Once the police officers and the administrative staff member were inside, the minister's entire staff followed. A total of eleven people were now crowded together in the cramped cabin and Michael wondered if they all wanted to be there for the interrogation.