Gotthilf had heard that Frau Sophie had two young daughters at home. He was saddened at the thought that they no longer had a father; but the thought of the kind of man Herr Schmidt had proven himself to be tempered the sadness.
On the widow’s other side was Stephan Burckardt, Schmidt’s secretary.
The next group in the arc was Marla Linder and her husband, Franz Sylwester.
Next to Franz sat Gunther Bauer, the new project manager of the hospital expansion project, and beside him was Herr Schiffer himself.
There was no one alive in Magdeburg who had a legitimate connection to Herr Schardius who could represent his interests. He, of course, was dead, his wife had died before the sack, and he had no children. More distant relatives were too far from Magdeburg to attend this meeting, so Mayor Gericke had appointed Jacob Lentke to stand in for Schardius’ estate. He had his gouty foot propped up on a stool and his cane resting over his lap.
Facing that arc was a trio of Polizei behind a short table: Gotthilf on the left, Byron in the middle, and Karl Honister on the right.
Albrecht, Mayor Gericke’s secretary, entered the room from the door behind the interested parties, stepped around to whisper in Byron’s ear, then took a seat behind the mayor and picked up a notebook. He had been deputed by the mayor to take notes to document the meeting.
Byron looked to Mayor Gericke, and nodded. The mayor nodded back, and Byron looked first to Honister, then to Gotthilf.
Gotthilf felt his stomach muscles tighten, and he leaned forward just a bit. This was the end of the hunt, and he was ready.
“Thank you for coming today,” Byron began. “For those of you who don’t know me, I am Lieutenant Byron Chieske of the Magdeburg Polizei. This is my partner, Sergeant Gotthilf Hoch.” He gestured toward Gotthilf. Gotthilf nodded, and Byron concluded the introductions with, “And this is our associate, Sergeant Karl Honister.” Another gesture, this time toward Karl, who also nodded in response.
“You are all here, because you have all been touched in some way by events that occurred here in Magdeburg in the last few months; events which are connected in some way with either the late Herr Georg Schmidt, or the late Herr Andreas Schardius, or both.” Byron stopped at that point and looked to his partner.
Gotthilf let the pause extend a moment longer, making sure that everyone facing him felt a bit of tension as they waited for him to begin. “It all began,” he at length began, “when the contract for the hospital expansion project was awarded back in January to a consortium headed by Herr Georg Kühlewein and Herr Johann Westvol. There was another consortium competing for the project, of which Herr Georg Schmidt was a member. And it appears that Herr Schmidt did not take losing the contract with good grace. We don’t know—yet—how he made contact with them, but the information we have been able to develop leads us to believe that he hired two Italian criminals to come to Magdeburg to disrupt the hospital project with a view toward driving the consortium into either abandoning the project or into bankruptcy.”
Otto Gericke’s lips thinned, but he said nothing. Frau Gericke looked down at the clasped hands in her lap, but said nothing.
Herr Schiffer harrumphed. “Can I look to Herr Schmidt’s estate, then, to recover damages?”
“That will be a matter for the courts, for the Schöffenstuhl,” Mayor Gericke stated. “Have your lawyers prepare their briefs and submit them.”
Herr Schiffer sat back in his chair with obvious dissatisfaction.
“Thanks to information from Herr Bauer,” Karl Honister picked up the thread, “we know that these two men”—he held up photographs—“were both hired by the Schiffer work bosses at the project as laborers. Not long after they started, the project began experiencing a rash of minor accidents. We suspect they were the cause, but we don’t know that for a fact. We do know, however, that they were centrally involved in the three big attacks on the project: the fire that destroyed the wood stockpile; the theft of the payroll and the murder of the accountant and his guard escort; and the placing of the bombs that caused the steam crane boiler explosion. Once we had them identified, with a lot of legwork by our patrolmen, we were able to find their rooms, where we discovered evidence that linked them to all three crimes.”
Karl went on to describe some of the evidence they had, and how it all tied to the two men from Venice. He didn’t spend much time on it, but he made it clear that that case was very solid. One of the things he did mention was the money from the robbery, and how Schmidt had been exchanging it for silver for the robbers.
Byron took over. “That would be bad enough. But we also have some evidence…” Gotthilf noted that he was careful not to describe it as strong, “…that Herr Schmidt’s passion had become aroused not just against the project, but against one particular member involved with the consortium who won the bid: Herr Andreas Schardius.”