Laim und die schlafenden Hunde (2023)

Chief Inspector Lukas Laim attends a pitching event hosted by startup entrepreneur Anno Waldeck. The event is disrupted by Dirk Reimann, a former tech entrepreneur who fell for Waldeck’s promises and is now homeless. The next day, his body is found in the Olympic Lake. Laim and Simhandl begin their investigation and immediately focus on Anno Waldeck, who describes Reimann as too willing to take risks and says he had not only run his small company into the ground but also squandered his investors’ money. Reimann’s last registered address leads to a foundation run by Cecily Filander, where people in need can find a place to live. “Karl,” one of the residents there, says that someone stole Reimann’s ideas. This leads Laim back to Anno Waldeck, whom he accuses of deliberately letting young entrepreneurs fail so he can take their promising ideas and bring them to life himself. Waldeck points out that several young entrepreneurs have succeeded and are still doing well in business. Reimann failed through his own fault, he says, and it is legitimate to take up new ideas and develop them further. The next day, a dead homeless man is found in the illegal shelter where Reimann had been staying. Cause of death: cocaine overdose. He, too, had been living at the Filander Foundation until a few weeks earlier. As the investigation proceeds, Laim notices that homeless people have repeatedly died from the same drug in recent months. All showed signs of hypothermia, which is not unusual in winter; but some had died in summer. Reimann is the exception in some respects: he also had cocaine in his blood, but he died after being hit by a car and was then thrown into the water, where he drowned. Once again, Laim’s investigation leads him to Cecily Filander, since all the victims had found shelter at the foundation for a time. When Laim talks to her about the drug found in the dead homeless people, she becomes suspicious and, after Laim has left, confronts her employee Sorin. She knows that he was once prescribed this medication. He justifies himself by saying how ungrateful everyone is and how they fail to appreciate the opportunity the foundation gives them. Driven into a corner, he drugs his boss too and locks her up. Laim picks up his trail and realizes that Cecily Filander is in mortal danger. He searches for her in the basement of the foundation building and finds her in a cold-storage room, but Sorin, in his delusion, locks himself in there with Laim as well. The door cannot be opened from the inside, but fortunately Simhandl is looking for his colleague and manages to rescue him and Filander just in time. Sorin is arrested. Anno Waldeck and his partner, Lin Yu Choi, ultimately have to answer for Reimann’s violent death. They had hit Reimann with a car and then thrown him into the water.