THE ATTACK
On Monday morning, Yasira sits on the city train in a bad mood.
She blends in well. The other passengers are also wearing long faces.
Perhaps they too had an argument with their children at breakfast today?
What is it about makeup that makes Yasira so irritable?
Why can’t she just ignore it? Aside from work and the news, she’s had the most peaceful weekend with Zara in a long time, but this morning .
. . She’s annoyed with herself. Why did she start this in the first place?
In all likelihood, this makeup thing is just another phase and—like all the phases before it—will pass on its own at some point.
And even if it doesn’t? Why is that her problem?
Probably because it seems to her that her beautiful daughter is unhappy with the way she looks.
And the blame falls on these damn unrealistically beautiful influencers, who certainly don’t look as sexy in real life as they do in the videos.
They’re essentially modern-day Barbies. Yasira nods.
It’s these Barbies she’s angry at. Not at her daughter at all. That’s a valuable insight.
When she arrives at the office, she drinks a cup of the terribly bad coffee that the filter machine in the small kitchen spews out.
Then she pours herself another cup. She’s going to need it.
Lena was last seen nine days ago. Each passing day diminishes Yasira’s hope of finding the girl alive.
With the almost full cup in hand, she enters the meeting room.
The rest of the team is already present.
Yasira skips the motivational speech. There’s no lack of motivation. There’s just a lack of useful leads.
“According to YouTube, Bear’s account was registered from an IP address in the Philippines,” reports Jenny.
“What does that mean?”
“Well, either he lives abroad or he has a contact there who uploads for him, or he’s tricking the system. In any case, it means he’s not an amateur. His videos are always on the edge of legality. And of course the lynching video wasn’t published on his channel.”
“By the way, none of our colleagues who were on site spotted Bear at the Active Homeland-Protection torchlight march,” reports Katja Jürgens. “If he was there, he kept a low profile.”
“Even in the chat groups, people only speculate about the founder of A.H.,” Jenny adds. “Nobody seems to know him personally. As I said, he might not even be in Germany.”
“And it’s not proven that he’s the one seen in the execution video,” says Michael.
“Can we ask Interpol for help?” asks Yasira. “There must be some way to find this guy.”
“I’m on it,” Jenny reports.
“Are we any closer to the crime scene?”
Karsten groans. “You wouldn’t believe how many photos and videos of bench-table combinations in forest clearings I’ve inspected with a magnifying glass over the last few days.
It’s like that children’s game. Find the ten differences in pictures that initially look the same.
Unfortunately, there are always countless differences in the end.
Different shape, different material, different degree of wear and tear, different types of trees in the background.
There must be hundreds of thousands of these rest area sets in Germany. ”
“I’ll take that as a no,” Yasira interrupts him.
“When I find the crime scene,” says Karsten, “I promise you’ll be the first to know.”
Yasira turns to the next person. “Timo?”
“In the last five days, a total of two hundred and eleven police officers across Germany have followed up three hundred and eighty-three tips from the public,” reports Timo. “Unfortunately, there were no useful leads on the perpetrators, Lena, or Bear.”
“Damn,” Yasira curses. “How can that be?” She pauses. “What about Schoffler?”
“We’ve received the movement profile and itemized billing records for his cell phone from his provider,” reports Katja Grebe. “We’re going through everything meticulously. Nothing suspicious so far. Nothing incriminating, at least.”
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning that he most likely dealt drugs on a small scale. But he wasn’t stupid enough to call his customers. They probably used Telegram.”
Telegram, Yasira thinks. Again.
She ends the depressing meeting and sends everyone back to work.
There are days in the life of a police officer when events unfold rapidly. So much that it’s hard to believe afterwards that everything happened within hours. And then there are days like this Monday. Slow as molasses. Nothing seems to happen and you can’t make any progress.
Frustrated, Yasira leaves the office and takes the city train home.
She looks out the window. Outside in the dark, the city lights rush by.
It’s late. The evening rush hour is already over.
That’s a plus. The train car is pleasantly empty.
But the people sitting around . . . Does it just seem that way to Yasira, or are there more and more worn-out people on public transport?
It wasn’t like this before, or did she simply not notice it twenty years ago?
The big change in perspective probably came with the birth of her daughter.
Suddenly she only saw the world in two categories.
Harmless or potentially dangerous for the child.
You turn your whole life upside down. And what for?
So that sixteen years later you have someone in your home who responds to questions with a shrug of the shoulders at most and is otherwise glued to their cell phone.
Generation climate gluer my ass. Most of the teenagers she knows are glued to their phones.
And they get their political information from YouTube and TikTok.
Well, hooray. What could possibly go wrong?
A sound pulls Yasira out of her thoughts.
Something cooing next to her. She looks around.
There is a pigeon in the aisle. How about that.
A pigeon on the city train. Where might it be heading?
Maybe to Alexanderplatz? To meet friends?
The pigeon looks at Yasira as if it has every right in the world to be on this train.
And who knows? Maybe it even has a ticket.
“Hey, you! You’re that bitch!”
A guy slurring his words distracts Yasira’s attention from the pigeon. An unpleasant guy. Already drunk at the end of the day.
“You’re that bitch from the police! I saw your picture. You look just like her!”
The guy staggers toward Yasira. Only now does she realize he was talking to her. She quickly gets to her feet. If things were to turn physical—which, with guys like him, is always on the table—sitting down would be just about the worst possible position to start from.
The man is already threateningly close to Yasira when he asks: “How would you like it if what the bastards did to Lara happened to you, huh?”
“The girl’s name is Lena,” Yasira simply replies.
“Covering for your Black brothers, eh?” the guy slurs. “You’re a disgrace to the police, you whore.”
He’s almost a head taller than Yasira. Probably also weighs almost twice as much as she does.
Contrary to what modern action movies would have you believe, that’s actually a problem.
Even for a woman with combat training. The guys usually have a significant mass advantage that should not be underestimated.
But the asshole is drunk. Slowed reactions.
So Yasira slips under the arm the guy is using to hold on to the upper handrail, stands behind him now, takes his other arm and twists it behind his back.
He screams in surprise as she bends his fingers backward. Yasira kicks him in the back of the knee from behind, forcing him to his knees and thus reversing the size advantage.
“Listen, asshole,” she whispers into his ear, “I’m an officer of the Federal Criminal Police, asshole.
That means I’m a cop, do you understand, asshole?
It means I can call you asshole as much as I want, asshole.
But if you, asshole, call me a bitch or a whore, that’s insulting a public servant. So what did you just call me, asshole?”
“Nothing . . .” the man stammers. “I didn’t say anything.”
“I see.”
The other passengers just stare. A young man applauds.
Thanks for nothing. If he had intervened, that would have helped Yasira more.
The train pulls into the next station. Yasira lets go of the guy and gets off, even though it’s not her station.
Actually, the guy should have gotten off.
But what if he had refused? Besides, Yasira needs some fresh air.
The train starts up again. The asshole stayed inside.
Yasira waits for the next train. Of course, this one is canceled.
So she stands in the cold for twenty minutes. A shitty end to a shitty day.
But then Yasira comes home to find her daughter in the living room, sitting on the couch and watching Friends.
Without saying anything, Yasira slips under the covers next to her.
Zara hands her mother her cup of peppermint tea, which is still half full.
Yasira drinks the tea gratefully. She thinks about whether she should tell Zara about the attack on the train, but then decides against it.
She doesn’t want to scare her. Instead, she leans her head against her daughter’s shoulder and falls asleep in the middle of the second episode.
She has restless dreams. Even in her sleep, she is not spared from new videos that cause the situation to escalate further and further.