Weißbier im Blut (2021)

Chief Inspector Kreuzeder was once one of the most successful investigators in the “Lower Bavaria Homicide Department” (also known as the Passau Homicide Department). But now he has given up on the job. Perhaps that is also because, two years ago, his wife ran off with a “more sensitive” man with a severe disability; Kreuzeder, however, denies any resentment about it. After more than 20 years on the force, he considers many murderers “poor bastards” or “dimwits” who are not responsible for their actions. By contrast, some victims were “assholes” who had brought their fate upon themselves and deserved it. These days, Kreuzeder drinks impressive quantities of beer and schnapps at the inn almost every day, turns up late for work as a result, neglects his appearance, and, with “wheat beer in his blood,” hardly ever manages to catch a perpetrator. He hopes this will hasten his compulsory retirement—to the great annoyance of his boss, Chief Superintendent Becker. Becker sends his tardy subordinate to police psychologist Dr. März, who is supposed to get him back on track. At the same time, Kreuzeder is handed a new case: At the Holzners’ farm, a savings-bank employee gets caught in the rotating roller of a combine harvester and meets an exceptionally grisly end. It turns out that the farm has been running at a heavy loss since it began receiving fewer government subsidies. The cuts, in turn, were agreed upon in various German-foreign free-trade agreements. The savings bank had “helped out” with a loan—or foisted one on the Holzners out of greed for profit. When they could no longer make the payments, the murdered employee was sent to prepare a foreclosure sale—and ended up in the chopper. Farmer Holzner sees himself as a victim of a globalized, unrestrained world economy, but insists that he is not the murderer. Nevertheless, he is held in pretrial detention as the prime suspect. Left behind are his wife, overwhelmed by the farm’s bookkeeping; his prickly teenage daughter Agnes; and schoolboy Moritz, who lives in a fantasy world of superheroes and archvillains. Shortly afterward, another “accident” involving the combine occurs. The victim, a seller of Christian devotional items, barely survives, but cannot provide a description of the perpetrator. Meanwhile, a suspicion is slowly dawning on Kreuzeder, though he keeps it to himself. When the Holzner farm comes up for auction soon afterward, only one prospective buyer shows up: Kreuzeder. Everyone else is put off by the still-open investigation into the supposed “murder farm”—an investigation Kreuzeder has deliberately been dragging out. And so the eccentric but sharp-witted policeman becomes the new owner of the now mortgage-free farm for the laughably low minimum bid of 20,000 euros. The savings bank, as creditor to Farmer Holzner, is far from pleased, but has to swallow the bitter pill. There is plenty happening in Kreuzeder’s private life, too. In a drunken haze, he spends a night of passion with Gerda, a waitress, and then has to deal with the brutish innkeeper, who believes his female employees should also be sexually available to him. During a wild scuffle in the taproom, a beer stein smashed over the innkeeper’s head ends the brute’s life. Here, too, the question is who did it: Gerda, Dr. März, or a young Ukrainian woman whom the innkeeper had tried to force into prostitution? Kreuzeder was a witness, but he keeps quiet about this as well, allowing the woman who acted in the heat of the moment to escape punishment. In the end, at least from Kreuzeder’s point of view, everything works out happily: He has a sensual, erotic relationship with Gerda and an intellectual, friendly one with police psychologist Dr. März. Farmer Holzner is released, and Kreuzeder leases the farm back to him. The detective intends eventually to bequeath the property to Holzner’s son, provided that Kreuzeder himself dies of “natural causes.” For there is more to Moritz than meets the eye: In his superhero persona, the imaginative boy is demonstrably responsible not only for killing Kreuzeder’s superior, Becker, with a Molotov cocktail, but is also suspected of killing the savings-bank employee who died at the beginning. Apparently, in his naive way, Moritz saw both of them—and also the injured crucifix seller—as hostile intruders and (movie) villains who had to be kept away from his home by any means necessary. At Kreuzeder’s insistence, police psychologist Dr. März is now supposed to rid him of these delusions. But with Becker’s death leaving his position vacant, Kreuzeder himself is promoted to Chief Superintendent and head of the Homicide Department.