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too.” Hanna finished her beer. “But we grew apart.”
    “No wonder he decided to leave.” Meike gave a contemptuous snort. “Next to you, nobody has any room to breathe. You’re like a tank, rolling over everybody with utter disregard for the consequences.”
    Hanna sighed. She felt no anger at the hurtful words, only deep sadness. She would never be able to feel real affection for this young woman, who had deliberately tried to starve herself to death. And it was Hanna’s own fault. During Meike’s childhood and youth, her own career had been more important than her daughter, and that’s why she had yielded the field almost without a fight and with a feeling of relief. Meike had not seen through the perfidious little power play of her father, and for years she had idolized him without reservation. Meike had no clue that he had used his daughter to exact revenge on Hanna. And Hanna took care not to mention the topic.
    “So that’s the way you see me,” she said softly.
    “Everybody does,” Meike snapped back. “You never care about anyone but yourself.”
    “That’s not true,” Hanna countered. “For you, I’ve—”
    “Oh, give me a break!” Meike rolled her eyes. “You haven’t done shit for me! All you ever cared about was your job and your boyfriends.”
    The teakettle began to whistle. Meike turned off the burner, poured water into the cup, and dropped in the tea bag. Her abrupt movements betrayed the inner tension she was feeling. Hanna would have liked to put her arm around her daughter, say something nice to her, talk and laugh with her, ask her about her life, but she didn’t do it because she was afraid of being rejected.
    “I made up the bed in your old room upstairs. There are clean towels in the bathroom,” she said instead, putting the empty bottle in the recycling bin. “Please excuse me. I’ve had a trying day.”
    “No problem.” Meike didn’t even look at her. “When do I have to show up tomorrow?”
    “Is ten o’clock all right for you?”
    “Sure, that’s fine. Good night.”
    “Good night.” Hanna stopped herself from adding her daughter’s childhood nickname, “Mimi.” Meike wouldn’t appreciate hearing that from her mother. “I’m glad you’re here.”
    No reply. But no insult, either. That was progress at least.
    *   *   *
    “What’s going on here?” Pia ducked underneath the crime-scene tape after making her way through an excited crowd.
    “There was a summer party over there in the sports club tonight,” her uniformed colleague explained.
    “I see.” Pia looked around.
    Looking up ahead, she could see fire engines and two ambulances with mutely flashing blue lights. Next to them were a patrol car, two plainclothes cars, and Henning’s silver Mercedes station wagon. Behind them, a section of the woods was brightly lit. She went around the beach volleyball court and glanced briefly into the open side door of one of the ambulances, in which a dark-haired young woman was being treated.
    “She discovered the body,” explained one of the EMTs. “She’s in shock and has a blood-alcohol content of point twenty percent. The doc is down by the river tending to the other boozer.”
    “What happened? Did she drink herself into a coma?”
    “I don’t know.” The medic shrugged. “The young lady here is twenty-three, according to her driver’s license. Actually a bit old for this sort of thing.”
    “Which way do I have to go?”
    “Along the path down to the river. They’ve probably gotten the gate open by now.”
    “Thanks.” Pia continued on. The path ran alongside the soccer field. The floodlights had been turned on, and the crowd of rubberneckers on the other side of the chain-link fence was even bigger than up front by the crime-scene tape. Pia was having a hard time walking in her unusually high heels. The glaring lights from the fire department and rescue vehicles were blinding her, so she couldn’t see where she was going.