A 19-year-old drug addict lies dead in a filthy sewer – she was brutally murdered. During their investigations, the Cologne “Tatort” inspectors Max Ballauf (Klaus J. Behrendt) and Freddy Schenk (Dietmar Bär) encounter junkies and pimps, but also strange things in their own environment. The first shows the episode “Trail of Blood” on Sunday at 8:15 p.m.
The dead woman, Lara Krohn (Charlotte Lorenzen), went on the street to finance her addiction. Her best friend Kim (Greta Bohacek) suspects that a client killed her. Kim is also the only one mourning Lara. In any case, the wealthy mother (Lea Mornar) doesn’t seem particularly concerned about her daughter’s fate. “It had to happen that way. Lara had been spoiled for years,” she comments on the news of death. “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. But mine fell right into the sewer.”
Emotional Investigators
Schenk and Ballauf, on the other hand, are very affected by the young woman’s terrible death. “You do it for so many years. And sometimes it still affects you,” says Schenk after the autopsy.
For the actor Bär, this scene shows that Schenk has remained human despite all his hardening: “Thank God he hasn’t become dulled by years of confrontation with evil.”
The two Cologne detectives have been investigating together for 25 years, making them one of the longest-serving “crime scene” teams. In their now 85th case, they sometimes flirt with their age. “I’m too old for this shit – but I always win,” Schenk warns a suspect as he prepares to flee.
Who Murdered Lara?
The circle of those who come into question as perpetrators is large. For example, what about the all too helpful caravan rental company Frank Baumgartner, wonderfully portrayed by the Austrian cabaret artist Josef Hader?
On the victim’s corpse, coroner Dr. Roth (Joe Bausch) – also there for 24 years – several foreign DNA traces. But the forensic technician Natalie Förster (Tinka Fürst) apparently accidentally contaminated one of them. And anyway, the colleague behaves quite strangely.
It is unusual and interesting that director Tini Tüllmann has implemented individual scenes in such a way that they are reminiscent of the style of mystery thrillers: a fire on a poster expands into a room fire, in visions something is dangling from a tree.
Conclusion
Although it is clear relatively early on which direction the case will take, the episode remains exciting until the end. Only then will the resolution take place. This is how a good crime novel should be.
