Marie Brand und die falschen Freunde (2020)

At his wife’s birthday party, construction contractor Borris Angersbach announces that he wants to become more involved in politics and is therefore handing the company over to his son Malte with immediate effect. Angersbach’s wife is outraged, but especially her son Kai. After all, Kai would be the rightful successor, since his mother had brought the company into the marriage, just as her husband had brought his son Malte. The next day, Malte is found beaten to death on the banks of the Rhine, and Kai becomes a murder suspect. Detective Marie Brand and her colleague Jürgen Simmel also investigate other leads and cannot rule out the possibility that the crime was an act of revenge by a company employee whom Malte had recently fired without notice. Nevertheless, Kai remains the prime suspect, since the detectives’ inquiries show that he still had a score to settle with his stepfather. Four years earlier, Kai had been kidnapped, but the police were never notified. Borris Angersbach had paid the ransom at the time, but accused his stepson of having faked the kidnapping. This led to a complete falling-out between them, and Kai founded his own company with his friend Daniel Weisach. When one of the marked banknotes from the ransom suddenly turns up, Marie Brand suspects a connection between the two crimes. Her investigation reveals that Angersbach had hired a detective to search for the ransom money, and Malte was therefore close to unmasking the kidnappers—a discovery that sealed his fate. But as the case is solved, Kai realizes that his best friend Daniel and Daniel’s girlfriend Maja were behind the kidnapping, and that Daniel has now even made Maja a murderer.