Esser Murder in Art Nouveau

1. Auflage 2022
ISBN: 978-3-347-75473-7
Verlag: tredition
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 225 Seiten

Reihe: tredition GmbH

Why are the director of the Hagen Osthaus Museum and his deputy murdered? Why is a well-known art forger reactivated? On which wise disappeared valuable paintings from the museum during the Nazi era? And what has the Naples Camorra to do with all this? Questions upon questions that lead to a real confusion. In any case, the murders are causing excitement in Hagen. The police is initially faced with a mystery. Can this complicated case be solved?

Rolf Esser, Jahrgang 1948, ist im Hauptberuf Lehrer und inzwischen pensioniert. Er unterrichtete an einer integrierten Gesamtschule in den Fächern Deutsch, Gesellschaftslehre, Kunst und Musik. Seit etwa 1990 war er für verschiedene Verlage als Autor im Bereich Unterrichtsmaterialien tätig. Darüber hinaus war er immer künstlerisch und musikalisch aktiv. Neben der Ausstellung seiner Kunstwerke (zuletzt im Osthaus-Museum Hagen) spielte er viele Jahre als Schlagzeuger und Gitarrist in Bands seiner Heimatstadt. Rolf Esser hat inzwischen drei Jugendromane, einen Roman für Kinder, zwei Kriminalromane, eine Kurzgeschichtensammlung, ein Sachbuch für Musiker und eine Reihe von verschiedenen Unterrichtsmaterialien veröffentlicht.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Esser, Rolf

Leseproben

Chapter One

Death with style

Visitors are not yet to be seen this Wednesday. The Kunst-quartier will not open for another half hour. The caretaker is making his morning rounds. Is everything all right? Nothing is in order!

The caretaker is heading for the stairs down from the upper floor of the Osthaus Museum. He must have been surprised, because the light was still on upstairs. Had someone forgotten to turn it off last night? Then he looked over the beautifully crafted banister down into the hall with the marble Art Nouveau fountain and its five bowing male figures and the small fountain in the middle. The fountain has undergone a gruesome transformation. The white marble and the water are coloured red, and the five figures have been joined by another. A human body hangs above them. One of the figures has bored its way through this body.

Driven by horror, the caretaker rushes down the stairs, stumbles and almost falls on the last landing. Who is that lying there across the well in his blood? Then the caretaker is downstairs and can see it from the side. There lies the museum director Ricardo Sommer, pierced by Art Nouveau, and as dead as dead can be.

Shocked by the sight, the caretaker almost throws up. Then he runs up to the cash desk and shouts to the cashier already sitting there: "Call the police! Call the police!"

The cashier doesn't know what's happening to her, but well, if the caretaker wants it, she calls the police.

The police arrive quickly, because the police station is in the neighbourhood, on Prentzelstraße. The caretaker leads the two officers to the fountain. For them, too, such a sight is not an everyday occurrence. They are also shocked, because they know the museum director, he is well-known in the city.

"This is a case for the CID," one of the officers states, "it doesn't look like a natural death to me."

He pulls out his duty mobile phone and calls the relevant office: Criminal Investigation Department 11, Homicide, Death Investigations. It takes time for the investigators to arrive, because they first have to drive from the police headquarters on Hoheleye to the city.

Chief Inspector Günter Etsch has already seen a lot in his criminal career, but the bloody scene he now has before his eyes is new to him in its extremely bizarre nature. A corpse in the midst of a highly artistic environment, pierced by a marble statuette as if by a torpedo. And of course he also knows the dead man.

"My God, what happened there?" he muses aloud. "Did the man lean too far over the railing?"

Then he instructs the two policemen, who are still standing there dumbfounded: "Block off this part of the building! Searchers have no business here."

The policemen call for more help and equipment from the police station and practically seal off the entire museum building with the typical red and white police cordon tape with the words "Polizeiabsperrung" (police cordon) in big letters.

In the meantime, the police doctor has put on his latex gloves and begun an initial examination of the body. Even he has never experienced such a strange death.

"Can you say anything yet, doctor?" asks Etsch impatiently.

"But yes, my dear, the man is quite clearly dead," the doctor says seriously, but can hardly stifle a laugh. The investigators always want results, results, results, and preferably yesterday.

Etsch already knows these medical sayings and can no longer laugh about them. He needs facts, the sooner the better. The perpetrator or perpetrators have a head start that needs to be caught up. Otherwise it will become increasingly difficult to solve the case.

The police doctor, however, can already contribute insights.

"The man has been dead for about eight to nine hours, Chief Superintendent. And he did not fall of his own accord. He clearly received a hard blow to the back of the head. Without wanting to prejudge the forensic investigation, it was probably the contact with this fountain figure that caused his death. Of course, the blow could already have been fatal. We will find out."

Günter Etsch turns to his colleague standing next to him, Inspector Katharina Weil: "Then it must have happened at midnight, right? But what is a museum director doing in the museum at midnight?"

"If I knew," Katharina Weil shrugs. "I'm not familiar with the psyche of museum directors."

The two criminologists are now organising the forensics. The specialists have to examine practically the entire building for traces. How did the perpetrator(s) get into the building? Are there signs of a break-in? If not, did the director let them in? Otherwise, the search is on for possible fingerprints.

Fingerprints are still an essential means of evidence. Dactyloscopes, which are specially trained employees, compare fingerprints with fingerprints of suspects. This comparison is made possible by an identifying evaluation of the individually characteristic and unchanging features of the skin waves on the fingertips. Years ago, the experts had to painstakingly and very time-consumingly evaluate and record the results by sight.

Today, they are read in electronically on the computer and compared with the existing data. This procedure is called Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS). In AFIS, an independent nationwide comparison is made with the stored fingerprints of all unsolved crimes and with all fingerprints stored for the purpose of the identification service. This has made it possible to multiply the speed of the comparison of traces.

On site, however, manual labour is still necessary. With a brush and special powder, all possible surfaces have to be dusted and the fingerprints that become visible have to be transferred onto adhesive foil. These are later scanned and entered into the computer.

However, only solid and smooth materials are suitable for trace investigation. The perpetrator does not always leave usable fingerprints. He could also have worn gloves.

In addition to fingerprints, DNA traces are also needed. The North Rhine-Westphalian police use the latest scientific findings and examination methods. Even the smallest amounts of body cells, such as saliva, blood or skin, are sufficient for the scientists at the State Criminal Police Office to conduct a molecular genetic examination and determine the DNA identification pattern of a crime scene trace or a person. In this analysis, only sections of the noncoding, i.e. the area of the DNA that does not contain genetic information, are examined. Individual external characteristics of the person thus remain protected.

Within a very short time, the results can be directly checked for consistency with the comparison material of suspected persons or the data stock of the DNA analysis file kept at the Federal Criminal Police Office.

The successes of recent times, especially in solving serious homicides and sexual offences, have confirmed the expectations of the police and justify the use of this procedure. Not infrequently, it has also been possible to exclude suspicion of a crime against a specific person beyond doubt by means of a DNA analysis.

The problem with all trace searches is that in a museum the existing traces can also come from the museum staff or from the visitors. It will be very difficult to narrow things down. You cannot assume that you will necessarily find clues in the databases.

But all this is routine and Etsch and Weil let the specialists do their work.

"We have to question the museum staff," Katha-rina Weil notes with unease. She doesn't like doing this work. Always the same questions: Did you see anything? Did you notice something? Do you know more about it?

Weil and Etsch go into the connecting entrance hall of the museum. All the employees seem to have gathered there. The shock is written all over their faces. The museum director Ricardo Sommer was popular with them. He was highly competent in art history and also enjoyed international recognition, but he did not wear his nose high at all. He often chatted with the supervisors and inquired about their personal circumstances. And he was not above occasionally sweeping away the leaves in front of the entrance in autumn, which fell in masses from the two tall trees in the museum courtyard. When the caretaker reproached him that as director he didn't have to do that, he regularly received the answer that without real life, all art was worthless.

The questioning of the museum employees does not yield any usable insights. How could they, none of them stay at their workplace at night.

"If you want to know what the director was doing in the museum that night, you'd better ask his deputy," says the second cashier.

That's right, Etsch thinks, there's also the deputy director, Dr Karin Schmitt. She is supposed to be a strange woman. He hasn't met her personally yet.

"Has the deputy director arrived yet?" Etsch asks the cashier.

"I don't know, she comes and goes as she pleases. She doesn't think much of a regular service, like the ones we have to run. Go over to the office above the restaurant. If you're lucky, she'll be there."

The cashier's voice sounds rather contemptuous, Katharina Weil thinks. The woman obviously doesn't care much for the deputy director.

Etsch and Weil make the short walk over to the museum office. When they step outside through the museum's automatic swinging door, the reporters are already waiting there. How do they know that something has happened here, Etsch wonders. The museum staff must have tipped them off. But no matter, it won't be possible to conceal it anyway. So he gives the most necessary information in scant words, while the photographer captures...