Chapter 4: Safe Ground
Dr. Richter refused to release Beate until a full obstetric assessment was complete.
The ultrasound room was quieter than the one three weeks earlier. No charming husband holding her hand. Only the steady click of the machine and the doctor’s focused silence as she measured the baby, checked fluid levels, and listened to the heartbeat for longer than protocol required. The child was still active. The placenta showed no obvious trauma. Beate exhaled for the first time in twelve hours when Dr. Richter finally nodded.
“We monitor closely,” the doctor said. “Tonight you do not go home.”
Kommissarin Brenner took a formal statement while a nurse photographed the injuries under clinical light. Beate gave the sequence without the old practiced excuses: the late potatoes, the belt, the fifty strikes, the phone call to the business dinner, the cold water in the tub, the red light of the camera. She handed over the phone so the cloud video could be downloaded and hashed before anyone else touched it. Brenner worked with the quiet efficiency of someone who had seen too many cases where evidence disappeared overnight.
Thomas Brand stood outside the door until he was invited in. He did not interrupt. He did not demand names or addresses. When Brenner finished, he asked only two questions: where his daughter would sleep that night, and whether the house was being secured so Gero could not return and destroy what remained.
May you like
Brenner answered both. A temporary protection order would be filed before evening. The house would be processed. Beate would not go back there alone.
Thomas nodded once, the same controlled movement he had used for thirty years when an order was received and understood.
