Schandfleck - Der Usedom-Krimi (2015)

Ahlbeck supermarket owner Manuela Kirchhoff is hit by a taxi in Świnoujście while running half-naked through the spa park in freezing temperatures. She had been struck beforehand and must have wandered through the streets in a confused state after regaining consciousness. It turns out that she had wanted to meet her employee Rita Mahlow and Rita’s father, Werner, there to discuss a real-estate deal. Since the Mahlows’ house, on the German side of the island, has recently been listed as a protected historic building and would need to be expensively renovated, Kirchhoff wanted to buy it. Rita was to receive money, and her father a new-build apartment in Świnoujście. Werner quickly comes under suspicion. An impulsive, eccentric alcoholic with a long record of offenses, he had caused a disturbance in Świnoujście on the night in question, but can’t remember anything. Rita asks Karin Lossow, a former public prosecutor, for help. Things are tense in the Lossow family. After shooting her husband in the heat of the moment years earlier, Karin is trying at last to rebuild her relationship with her daughter Julia. Julia is cold toward her; Karin gets along well only with her granddaughter Sophie. Sophie discovers that her mother Julia is having a relationship with Marek, a Polish police officer, which causes further tension. Karin tells Julia that her father was corrupt and took bribes whenever the opportunity arose. Karin now gives Julia the bribe money her father had collected and hidden in the attic at home. Other relationships also come into play in the case: Kirchhoff’s daughter is involved with the married Lutz Eppendorf, and cashier Rita Mahlow with Ringo Fischer—all of this apparently has something to do with the planned real-estate deal. The evidence suggests that Frau Kirchhoff may have been hit with Werner Mahlow’s hip flask. During questioning, he confesses to the crime, but Julia has her doubts. She suspects that Mahlow is trying to protect the real culprit by confessing. Karin speaks with Rita once more, and during their conversation Rita admits that, in the heat of the moment, she hit Frau Kirchhoff with her father’s hip flask. Rita is then handed over to the Polish authorities. Julia drives to Karin’s to return her father’s money, but is hit by a car outside the house and left injured on the ground. Karin runs to her daughter and realizes that Werner Mahlow is the driver. Before getting back into his car, he says to Karin, “That’s what it’s like to lose your child.”