Marie Brand und die Leichen im Keller (2021)

While a stalker is secretly staying in Annika Herforth’s house, she unexpectedly comes home. A short time later, her neighbor finds the young woman dead. Annika Herforth was apparently pushed down the basement stairs. Detective Marie Brand and her colleague Simmel begin investigating, and Annika’s sister, Nelly, immediately voices a specific suspicion. She accuses Florian Leffers, who has been harassing Annika for some time and was even reported to the police by her for stalking. Leffers is questioned and gives an alibi: at the time of the crime, he was ice-skating with his new girlfriend and her son. Joy Wagner confirms the alibi. Nelly Herforth herself then comes under pressure, as the investigators discover that she had argued with her sister over an inheritance and now stands to benefit financially from her death. Nelly Herforth is a self-employed tax consultant with her own firm. Among her clients are the married dentists Heike and Erik Böttcher. Herforth had helped them conceal money from the tax authorities, which Florian Leffers had found out when, as so often, he was secretly in Annika Herforth’s house and overheard a phone call in which she advised her sister and the clients to make a voluntary disclosure. He therefore tries to blackmail the Böttchers, but this leads to an argument between him and Erik Böttcher. Erik Böttcher then hits him on the head with a wooden slat and flees. Leffers falls into a coma with a brain hemorrhage, and just as he is nearly waking up, he is killed by an unknown person. At first, however, suspicion falls on Erik Böttcher, who had been at the hospital shortly beforehand and had indeed considered killing Leffers. But footage from the surveillance cameras at the entrance to the intensive care unit rules this out: when Erik Böttcher left the hospital, the patient was still alive. Brand is then able to expose Wagner, who returned after visiting the hospital and suffocated her partner. According to the accused, she had also pushed Annika Herforth down the stairs because that day she wanted to talk to the woman who had accused her boyfriend of stalking. But the situation escalated, and Herforth died as a result. Wagner knew about her boyfriend’s obsession, which kept leading him back to the house of the woman he adored. Afraid that he might have loved Annika more than he loved her, she then killed him in the hospital. Simmel rolls his eyes when he hears this logic.