Das Geheimnis im Wald (2008)

Fourteen-year-old Clara Tomrad disappears on her way to school, and her parents report her missing. The police immediately begin their investigation. A special task force is set up in an old school under Frank Breitner’s leadership, and Chief Detective Inspector Steffen Gellhagen from the Hanover State Criminal Police Office is brought in. After many years away, Gellhagen returns to his home in the Harz Mountains and takes over the case at Breitner’s request. However, Gellhagen is personally compromised because he had an affair with Clara’s mother, Susanne Tomrad. But since the suspect already in custody, Hans Kortmann, will speak only to Gellhagen, Breitner overlooks this. Kortmann is a former teacher who has spent the past 15 years in prison for the murder of a 15-year-old student. He denies the crime, and since Gellhagen also investigated him at the time, he believes Gellhagen is the only one capable of understanding how the pieces fit together. From their very first conversation, it is clear that Kortmann has a score to settle with Gellhagen, accusing him of not having investigated thoroughly enough back then. Gellhagen senses the suspect’s hostility toward him but is not fazed by it. At first, he also ignores Kortmann’s renewed protestations of innocence regarding the old murder. Detective trainee Jule Brandenburg is assigned to assist Gellhagen with the investigation. He briefly tells her about the events 16 years earlier, when the body of Kortmann’s student was found in his garden. He believes it was a mistake to arrest Kortmann in the current case. In his view, the police should have kept Kortmann under surveillance, because he would very likely have led them to Clara’s hiding place. Since there is now nothing against Kortmann beyond speculation, he has to be released. Clara’s father is horrified and now has twice as much reason to be angry with Gellhagen. But Gellhagen is not deterred and tries to find a strategic lead in the investigation. The way Kortmann spoke to him during questioning makes Gellhagen think that he knows more than he is letting on. His research reveals that Kortmann was in close contact with the Albanian Altin Simonic while in prison. After his release, Simonic worked at the brewery owned by Clara’s parents, but he stopped coming to work the very day she disappeared. Gellhagen focuses increasingly on this lead. A large number of officers are deployed to search the area around Clara’s hometown. Preparations are also made in case the kidnapper calls the Tomrads to demand a ransom. The search for Simonic ends when his body is found on the shore of a reservoir. Two shots to the back of the neck suggest an execution. The explanation later emerges in the illegal dealings he was involved in. During the search for Simonic, Kortmann’s car is also found in the woods. When Clara’s jacket is discovered in the trunk, the police become convinced that Kortmann is holding the girl. But he confesses to nothing and remains as obstinate as he was at the beginning. Clara’s family finds the whole situation outrageous and doubts Gellhagen’s competence, since he has yet to achieve any results in the search for the girl. Gellhagen, however, remains calm and pursues the investigation on his own terms. He considers it entirely possible that Clara was not kidnapped at all, but simply ran away. He sees the reaction of Clara’s best friend to her disappearance—which seemed too composed to him—as evidence of this. He had also learned that Clara was to be sent to boarding school, something her friend said was absolutely not what Clara wanted. Kortmann continues to declare himself innocent and wants revenge for the wrongful conviction. After further interrogations, during which Kortmann makes only vague suggestions, Gellhagen becomes certain that Kortmann is not concerned with Clara at all, but with her father, Markus Tomrad. This suspicion is reinforced when the police find a video in the woods that Kortmann had apparently placed there specifically to ensure it would be found. The videotape shows footage of the student he is said to have murdered, as well as Markus Tomrad. At the end of the tape, he demands that Tomrad confess to the student’s murder, or he will never see Clara again. Gellhagen then speaks to Tomrad, who indeed confesses to him that he murdered the girl. Shortly afterward, Clara’s father shoots himself. Meanwhile, the situation at the old school also comes to a head. Breitner takes advantage of Gellhagen’s absence to interrogate Kortmann his own way. First, he beats him to make him confess. When that gets no result, he takes away Kortmann’s asthma inhaler, which he needs at that very moment under the stress of the situation. Terrified that he will die, Kortmann breaks his silence and says that he drove Clara to the airport in Hanover. She wanted to go to Greece to be with her boyfriend, and Kortmann had encouraged her to take that step while also using it to further his plan to clear his name. Unfortunately, Kortmann does not survive the ordeal. When Gellhagen returns, he demands that Breitner answer for what he has done, but then leaves him to face his fate and bids him farewell with the words: “I hope your son never finds out how corrupt his father is.”