Blind ermittelt - Die toten Mädchen von Wien (2018)

Alexander “Alex” Haller, who inherited a hotel together with his sister Sophie, is a blind former chief inspector in Vienna. Two years earlier, he barely survived a bomb attack involving a car bomb, suffering serious injuries and losing his eyesight—and with it, his career. His partner, prosecutor Kara Hoffmann, was killed in the attack. Alexander Haller blames himself for her death and believes the attack was meant for him. In nighttime Vienna, Nikolai Falk, a taxi driver from Berlin, stops Haller from taking his own life in despair. Their chance meeting eventually develops into an unlikely investigative partnership. Udo Strasser, who was convicted of Kara’s murder but has escaped from prison to prove his innocence, gives Haller a new purpose in life and convinces him that the real killer is still at large. Haller investigates Kara’s last case without a police badge and using unconventional methods. The trail leads to a human-trafficking ring that Adna, a woman from Belarus, has escaped from. Haller’s successor, Laura Janda, and her former boss, Chief Prosecutor Arthur Pohl, are far from pleased that Haller is now investigating on his own, with the help of his driver, Nikolai. Haller tries to turn his inability to see to his advantage, since other people underestimate him because of it. In addition to an exceptionally keen sense of hearing and smell, he has, among other abilities, the knack of identifying what is on records by feeling their grooves. Weber, a retired former police officer who had been able to prove that Strasser obtained the explosives, is found shot dead by Haller and Falk. The police also find a girl who was shot dead while fleeing in a field. Nearby, they find Adna, who was shot while fleeing, and take her to hospital. Pavel turns up there. He is Kara Hoffmann’s real killer and works for the human-trafficking ring; he encounters Haller there. Haller recognizes Pavel by the distinctive whistle he heard at the crime scene back then. Pavel abducts Adna from the hospital. In the files Pohl provides to Haller on Kara’s last case, in which four girls were killed, the autopsy report is missing. In Kara’s diaries, Haller finds the notes “Documents missing” and “I suspect W.” Haller thinks this refers to Weber, who investigated the case at the time. Her diary also says that documents went missing in the case of the murdered senior government official Faber. In Weber’s apartment, Haller taps on the walls and finds a record hidden behind wallpaper, on which a girl’s screams can be heard. Haller does not believe the screams are staged. Forensic technician Kühberger recognizes the record. He had already seen it two years earlier in connection with the murder of senior government official Faber, but it disappeared before he could examine it. Meanwhile, Janda finds a copy of the autopsy report on the four girls. Their cause of death could not be determined, but a fragment was found at the level of the heart, caused by a sharp object. Kühberger finds matching fingerprints on the files and the record. The record is not an industrial pressing; it was recorded using a vinyl recorder. Pohl confesses to Haller that he recorded the girls’ final screams on vinyl before their deaths because, as he puts it, everything is rooted in the “primal experience of the scream.” Kara Hoffmann had discovered what he was up to, so she had to die. Strasser and Weber were merely scapegoats. Haller manages to record Pohl’s confession on his mobile phone before Pohl incapacitates him with a stun gun. Pohl flees to record the screams of more girls, including Adna, on records and auction them off as unique pieces to art lovers. Haller and Falk manage to rescue Adna at the last second. Strasser shoots Pavel, while Pohl and Lukas, another member of the ring, are arrested by the police.