Night falls over the city. Burkhard Stiebing will soon be closing time. Soon he won’t care about the swindlers and crooks, the petty criminals and scoundrels here in Brandenburg an der Havel for a few hours. He’s sitting at a desk on the first floor of a gray house at Kurstrasse 53, with a sign stuck to the door: Detective Agency Stiebing, phone 524377, appointments by appointment. Everything seems calm.
On the ground floor, a woman enters “Bistro No. 1”, a nightclub where the smoke hangs from the low ceilings, acrid and so thick that you can hardly see the figures wetting their throats between dartboards and slot machines. Here, the woman was told, she could find Burkhard Stiebing. He owns the pub. The woman goes to the counter. She asks about the detective.
Some things have disappeared from Stiebing’s memories of that Thursday night in March 1995. What remains is the image of a woman in tears coming into his office. Upset because she doesn’t feel taken seriously by the police. Worried because she misses her daughter. Melanie, 16 years old.
Someone did something to her, says the mother. And she knows his name.
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