Neben der Spur - Todeswunsch (2016)

Hamburg psychiatrist Dr. Johannes Jessen tries to find out what happened to his daughter’s school friend. One evening, sixteen-year-old Sina Martensen appears at Jessen’s front door, utterly distraught. Her clothes are smeared with blood, and because she is unresponsive, Jessen has her taken to the clinic, where she must be kept under observation as a suicide risk. When he goes to visit Sina’s father, he finds a large police presence outside his home: Ralf Martensen was recently stabbed to death with a pair of scissors. Detective Vincent Ruiz is leading the investigation, and because Martensen was a colleague in the narcotics division, the police are eager to solve the case quickly. Since there are no traces suggesting a third person was involved, Sina is suspected of murdering her father. She herself cannot remember what happened that evening. After traces of the victim’s semen are found in Sina’s room, Detective Ruiz becomes convinced that Martensen sexually abused his daughter and that she fought back. Jessen is determined to prove Sina’s innocence. He considers it just as possible that Sina’s older sister or her mother ended the ordeal caused by the father’s abusive behavior. In his search for the truth, Jessen discovers that Sina probably had a relationship with her teacher, Gregor Engels. He tells Detective Ruiz about his suspicion, and Ruiz investigates Engels, learning that Engels’s first wife disappeared without a trace four years ago. While Ruiz and Jessen follow this lead, Jessen’s family is threatened by the psychologically disturbed Leo Barreis. Because the psychiatrist had issued a negative assessment of Barreis’s criminal responsibility and considers him capable of further offenses, Barreis now takes revenge: he stalks Jessen’s daughter and directly threatens his wife as well. He takes things so far that, out of fear, she suffers a miscarriage. To cope with the pain of losing the child, Jessen throws himself ever more deeply into his work and the pursuit of Sina’s teacher. He tells Engels bluntly that he must have sensed that Sina’s father was abusing her and, instead of helping, took advantage of her vulnerability. Moreover, she would not have been the first: in Jessen’s psychiatric assessment, Engels may also have abused female students in the past, and when his wife found out, he very likely got rid of her, since that is the only way to explain her sudden disappearance. Gregor Engels is initially outraged that Jessen considers him a monster. He provokes the psychiatrist, who loses his temper and attacks Engels physically, going too far. Jessen realizes that Engels intended this, to discredit him because Jessen had figured him out. He discusses his suspicions with Detective Ruiz and goes with him to see Sina’s guidance counselor, who had called Jessen because she needed to tell him something about Engels. When the two arrive at the school, the teacher is dead. Ruiz begins to share Jessen’s suspicions and interrogates Engels. The detective can use the psychiatrist’s observations to tell which of Engels’s answers are lies, but that is not enough evidence to take him into custody. Jessen suggests increasing the pressure on Engels in the hope that he will make a mistake. First, Jessen manages to convince Sina to admit that she had a relationship with Engels. This leads him to a caravan where they often met. To find DNA traces and solid evidence against Engels there, Ruiz and Jessen lure the teacher to the campground. Engels is in the process of destroying the evidence. When he realizes he has been caught again, he admits to killing Sina’s father because the man deserved it. In front of Ruiz and Jessen, he then blows himself up in his caravan. Jessen, however, is not entirely convinced that Engels is truly the only one responsible. He concludes that Engels must have been protecting the real perpetrator. As Jessen is still pondering this, he unexpectedly encounters Engels’s wife, who is waiting for him in the psychiatrist’s office. In tears, she admits that she discovered Sina was about to destroy her family, and she could not allow that. But that evening, Sina’s father had turned up unexpectedly, so she killed him first, hoping Sina would be blamed for the crime. As she makes this emotional confession to Jessen, she plunges a kitchen knife into the unsuspecting psychiatrist’s abdomen, leaves the building, and throws herself to her death from a bridge. Ruiz finds Jessen in time and takes him to a clinic. The stalker Leo Barreis is also arrested after threatening his doctor as well.