Hannah Mangold & Lucy Palm - Tod im Wald (2013)

Hannah Mangold was head of the criminal investigations unit in Potsdam, but after being severely traumatized by her last police operation and deemed unfit for duty, her position had to be filled by someone else because of her lengthy, medically required absence. On top of these problems, she also has personal troubles: her ex-husband wants sole custody of their daughter, Laura, on the grounds that his former wife is mentally unstable. Since Hannah has not yet fully gotten her drug and alcohol use under control, her chances do not look very good. On “her” unit, a missing-person case that has been open for months is currently puzzling her colleague Lucy Palm. Her supervisor, Habermann, however, thinks they are already understaffed and do not have time for it right now. So Palm takes matters into her own hands and drives along the country road where the missing couple was last seen. When the road passes through a stretch of forest, Palm spots heavy tire-braking marks on the asphalt and notices several other irregularities. The next day, she sets out again with Mangold. While they ask two forestry workers where the owner of the forest, Arthur Meckenstock, lives, Mangold spots a little boy wandering alone in the woods with a German shepherd. When they arrive at Meckenstock’s home, his son-in-law, Harald Kurtz, greets them frostily. It quickly becomes clear that the dilapidated mansion seems to be under a dark cloud. Kurtz’s father-in-law has been bedridden since a stroke, his wife shot herself in the kitchen a few months earlier, and his young son wanders around the estate, traumatized and mute. Mangold also spots the German shepherd in a kennel and suddenly starts hallucinating again under these stressful conditions. She tells only her therapist, who thinks her subconscious is trying to tell her something. Mangold uses the episode as a reason to face the situation and promptly applies to Kurtz for a job as Arthur Meckenstock’s caregiver. Kurtz has a poor relationship with his father-in-law, so he does not care much who looks after the man, and is surprised that anyone is willing to work here in the middle of nowhere. The postwoman tells Mangold that Kurtz and his wife loved each other, but that “King Arthur” had never approved of his son-in-law. Shortly afterward, Mangold has another hallucination and sees Meckenstock’s daughter playing with her son, Kilian, in the kitchen—the place where she died. But the boy himself is now approaching her from a completely different direction, and seems to be playing a strange game: he is wearing a white respirator mask against fine dust particles, scented with peppermint. Meanwhile, while reconstructing the missing couple’s route, Palm has come across a country inn very close to the Meckenstock forest. The two forestry workers are there too, and their relationship with the landlady and their general behavior seem quite odd to Palm, so she runs a search in the police computer. There are no records against the forestry workers, Stiller and Imhoff, but she quickly discovers that they belong to a militant group called “The Special Forces Command,” which Kurtz is also part of. All three served in Afghanistan for several years. Immediately after Kurtz returned home because of an injury, not only did his wife shoot herself, but the couple was also reported missing, on that very same day. Since their dishonorable discharge, Stiller and Imhoff have worked for him as forestry workers. When Palm goes to question Kurtz about this, she unexpectedly runs into Mangold, whose unauthorized undercover operation she knew nothing about. Palm later confronts her angrily. Mangold explains that her new hallucinations are a cry for help from the boy and that she wants to help him. Whether it is connected to the current case is not her motivation. Besides, she is on sick leave and can decide for herself what she does. Palm becomes increasingly obsessed with her case and analyzes other missing-person cases in the region. She finds a total of six people who went missing and have never been found, all of whom were last seen near the Meckenstock forest. During another “outing” in the forest, she discovers a burned-out car wreck, but is also attacked by two masked men, from whom she barely manages to escape. Stiller and Imhoff are questioned, but because the attackers were masked, the assault on Palm cannot be proved against them. Palm therefore tries to sow distrust between the couple by approaching Stiller’s wife, Inge, who runs the country inn. She shows Inge Stiller photos of all the people she has identified as missing and tries, with further small gestures, to awaken her conscience. Meanwhile, Mangold also sees Kurtz’s violent side, and whenever Kilian runs away from his father and the unbearable situation in the house, he takes refuge with his German shepherd in its kennel. Mangold happens upon a laboratory report stating that Kurtz cannot be Kilian’s biological father. When Kurtz discovers that Mangold is actually a police officer, her stay at the Meckenstock house is over, and her plan to help the boy has probably failed. But the situation now comes to a head when Kilian runs into the forest and his father drunkenly follows him. Mangold immediately sets out to find the boy too. She takes the German shepherd with her, however, and it leads her straight to Kilian’s hiding place. There she can hardly believe her eyes: the boy is sitting in the cellar of an old building, reading fairy tales aloud to someone. They are the half-rotten corpses that Stiller and Imhoff have piled up there. She calls Palm to tell her what she has found, and Palm, with help from her colleagues, is able to arrest the two men after they try to flee. Meanwhile, Kurtz is holding Mangold by force in the mansion. Since she already knows that he is not Kilian’s father, he now tells her that his father-in-law fathered Kilian, and that this was also the reason his wife shot herself. In desperation, he sets the house on fire, killing himself and Arthur Meckenstock. Mangold hands Kilian over to his new foster parents, who have already taken in his German shepherd. The detective hopes that Kilian will settle in there too and be able to overcome his trauma.