Das Schweigen der Esel (2023)

A woman is drowned in a swimming pool, and in the process the killer loses a metal button, which sinks to the bottom. The woman owned a cat. The impostor Commissioner Jonas Horak is now in custody at a special institution for mentally abnormal offenders, after being arrested by police officer Sophie Landner. While his fellow inmate Kotrusek plans an escape, Horak wants nothing to do with his plans. He feels at home in prison, where he works in the garden. Landner discovers the body of an old woman on an isolated farm. The woman is missing her head, which is later found in a soup pot. She had been murdered a week earlier. At the scene, a rooster flutters toward Landner. The following night, she receives a call from a phone booth. The anonymous caller tells her that he is back and asks her to give Commissioner Horak his regards. The phone booth is near the special institution for mentally abnormal offenders, where Landner pays Horak a visit. The institution is run by Dr. Hauff. Upset by Landner’s visit, Horak promises her he will not see the inspector again. Landner is living in the drunk tank after breaking up with her boyfriend and being unable to find an apartment she can afford. Flashbacks recount Horak’s trial after the double murder, at which Horak was the only one able to see Friday, as well as his work as a trainee in the Federal Criminal Police Office archives. After his wife threw him out, he secretly spent nights there and worked on a text titled *The Tale of the Perfect Crime* or *Criminal Offences in the Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm*. When Landner tries to visit Horak at the institution again, Director Hauff refuses to let her see him, explaining that she wants him to continue doing well. She also argues that Inspector Landner has no jurisdiction at all in the case of the beheaded woman. Hauff forbids her from having any further contact with Horak and says that if she disobeys, she will file a complaint against Landner with the police oversight authority. Horak summons Landner to the prison. The two deaths agitate Horak. He fears that it was Friday, who, as a “demonic parasite,” has sought a new host to commit murders for him, ultimately driving the host to kill themself. While the police consider the drowning of the woman with the cat an accident, Horak suspects murder. According to Horak, the murders involving the cat and the rooster are connected to the Bremen Town Musicians, so Landner should track down a donkey. No autopsy was performed on the drowned woman because there were no signs of foul play. She had donated her body to medical science. At the pathology department in Innsbruck, it was established that the dead woman’s right shoulder had been dislocated; the pathologist suspects this happened as she tried to defend herself. Landner eventually finds the metal button at the bottom of the swimming pool. Soon afterward, a dead man is found in the woods. He had been beaten to death and owned a dog. Landner is now looking for the donkey, whose owner is the next potential murder victim. Her colleague and station commander, Lutz Seeger, tells her that he won a donkey while playing cards the previous week. Landner takes the two of them into “protective custody” in the drunk tank. By post, Landner receives the book *Criminal Offences in the Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm*, by trainee Horak, dedicated to Friday. Someone had ordered it in her name using her phone and credit card and had it delivered to her. She had to leave her phone and wallet at the entrance when visiting the institution, so Landner suspects the culprit is among the security staff. At the crime scenes, she found shoeprints from regulation boots; the metal button from the pool came from a uniform. Horak, however, realizes that the demon has taken up residence in Landner herself, and that she committed the murders. She had sewn a missing button back onto her uniform herself. In a video recording, Horak can be seen in front of an elevator door, but Landner is not visible in it. In reality, Landner drives back to the police station and strangles her colleague Seeger there. Then she draws her service weapon to shoot herself. Horak eventually escapes from the institution with Kotrusek’s help by hot-wiring the director’s car, whose starter Kotrusek had tampered with. He gets past the guards in the car by wearing a headscarf, coat, and sunglasses like the director’s; the guards are distracted and inattentive because a football match is being broadcast. Horak drives to the police station and arrives just in time to hear the shot with which Landner kills herself. But then a passerby points out that the station closed a year ago, that it is now being offered for sale by the real estate company Ellmer & Scheffknecht, and that the nearest station is in Dornbirn. Landner is safe and sound, on duty there, and learns that Horak has escaped from the institution. Finally, Friday appears beside Horak in front of the police station and tells him he made the whole thing up just to motivate Horak to escape from the institution. Landner fills out an application form for the criminal investigation service. Horak drives off with Friday in the director’s convertible. On the way, he stops and finds Kotrusek hiding in the trunk. Together, they drive across the national border.