Blind ermittelt - Tod im Weinberg (2023)

In the eighth case involving the duo Alexander “Alex” Haller and Nikolai “Niko” Falk, they investigate a kidnapping in Grinzing. Twenty-two-year-old Paul Rauch, who comes from a family of winegrowers, was overpowered in the street at night, knocked down with a motorcycle helmet, and dragged into a van. Mrs. Horvath witnessed the incident. A ransom video is supposed to prove that Paul is still alive. Paul’s wealthy uncle Heinrich tries to raise the ransom of two million euros. Worried about her son, who suffers from asthma, Paul’s mother Sonja wants to keep the police out of it, so Commissioner Janda assigns the case to special investigator Haller. Haller and Falk begin looking into the people around the victim. Suspects include winegrower Tomasek and a motocross club associated with Rita Decker and her brother Leo, not least because Paul was hit with a motorcycle helmet. The siblings’ company, Decker Motors, was bankrupt. Rita Decker and Paul Rauch had been in a relationship, which Sonja Rauch opposed. Tomasek has no alibi for the time of the crime, and he also had access to the Rauch family’s finances. A restraining order has been issued against him because he was violent toward his wife. Tomasek had promised money to his ex-wife. Konstantin Rauch is Heinrich’s husband; he worked as a stock-market speculator and had to file for bankruptcy. As Sonja and Heinrich try to hand the ransom over to the kidnapper, they repeatedly receive the coordinates of a different location on their mobile phones, including one at a motocross track. After the ransom is handed over, not only is Paul still missing, but Sonja has also disappeared without a trace. Haller and Falk eventually find Sonja and Paul alive in a derelict villa. According to Paul and Sonja, the kidnapper was a man with piercing blue eyes, over 1.80 metres tall and masked; he communicated with them by means of a note. Sonja says he forced her onto his motorcycle and later into a van. The investigators suspect that Paul and Sonja had coordinated their stories because they gave identical accounts independently of each other. Falk finds two plane tickets to Cambodia, one issued in Paul Rauch’s name. Paul says he had no interest in the family business or the vineyards and just wanted to get away. The investigators discover that the Rauch family’s wine tavern was insolvent. Meanwhile, Leo Decker, who deals drugs, turns up again. He claims he had only hidden his drugs in the derelict villa and had nothing to do with the kidnapping. In the Rauch family’s old wine cellar, winegrower Tomasek finds Sonja Rauch dead, with a broken neck. Tomasek had covered up Sonja’s fraud in the wine business; she had wanted to increase profits so she could sell the business at a gain. Paul Rauch eventually admits that the entire kidnapping was staged and planned by his mother. Heinrich had recognized the old wine cellar in the ransom videos and confronted Sonja about the kidnapping she had staged. They argued, and Sonja fell. Heinrich is arrested by the police.