Matula - Tod auf Mallorca (2019)

With no investigation or surveillance assignments available, private detective Josef Matula has taken on the job of delivering a sailing yacht from the Côte d’Azur to Mallorca. When he reaches the destination port, he discovers that his client has not yet arrived. Instead, Matula meets Ingo Schumann, a friendly German early retiree, and his companion Karin Weißbach. Because the yacht’s owner is delayed, Matula spends the night aboard. The next morning, he finds Ingo Schumann floating dead in the water. The police initially assume the man had an unfortunate accident, but signs of murder soon emerge. The party drug Liquid Ecstasy is found in the victim’s blood, and it appears that Schumann was thrown into the water after the drug rendered him unconscious. Karin Weißbach comes under suspicion and immediately hires Matula to help her. In the course of his inquiries, Matula soon discovers that Schumann seems to have been leading a double life. While he was enjoying himself with Weißbach on his rented yacht, his partner Angela Bremer was also waiting for him on the island. She knew him as Malte Schuster. In Matula’s view, Bremer’s not-yet-ex-husband, a local building contractor, could be the culprit: Schumann/Schuster had not only stolen Robert Bremer’s wife, but had also received a substantial sum of money from her—money Bremer urgently needed for his company. However, Matula’s investigations also turn up clues that his client may have had goals similar to Schumann/Schuster’s. She, too, apparently looks into wealthy potential partners in order to have the men support her. The detective is therefore unsure whether Weißbach is really innocent. Nevertheless, Matula continues to pursue his suspicion that Bremer was involved in Schumann/Schuster’s death. He discovers that Schumann/Schuster had a third identity and, as Malte Schubert, had a nightclub and a wife with a child. Matula speaks with Maria Schubert-Sanchez and learns that she knew about her husband’s affairs, but supposedly tolerated them. Matula begins to doubt this and discovers that Sanchez had teamed up with Angela Bremer to take revenge on Schumann/Schuster/Schubert. Sanchez provided her ally with an alibi while Angela Bremer committed the murder. To prove this, Matula tries to get the women to confess. He succeeds by tricking Sanchez into coming to Bremer, thereby establishing that the two women know each other. Bremer secretly slips Liquid Ecstasy into Matula’s glass, believing she can get rid of him as she did Schuster, and actually admits the murder to him. But Matula has switched the glasses and only pretends to lose consciousness so he can secretly record the confession on his mobile phone. He then hands the recording over to the police as evidence.