Sven looked around. The building had been recently renovated, but to him, a man from “the other side,” it still carried the same ghost of endless gray-white facades, dampened and insulated, whole streets once stamped out in the GDR like copies run off a press: one house, multiplied a hundredfold.
At the curb, junk was piled high: a torn velour sofa, two worn-out mattresses, a box of plastic building blocks, their colors rubbed dull from years of play.
The air smelled of damp concrete, a hint of salt from the sea, and that vague expectancy of a summer day once the fog burned away.
Katja pressed the buzzer. The nameplate read Mertens F & D., the letters scrawled onto tape. The door lock clicked almost instantly, as if someone had been waiting behind the intercom.
“First floor. Thank God,” Sven muttered. His left arm leaned on the black cane while he rolled his knee to shake out the stiffness of morning.
A gaunt woman in her mid-thirties stood in the doorway. Her thin, shoulder-length hair was bottle-blonde, a mouse-brown root showing. Her skin was pale, her washed-out blue eyes wary, already tired. Behind her, two little girls—five and eight at most—darted into the hall, pushing a doll stroller as if it were a race car. Unlike their mother, they had black curls, olive-toned skin, dark brown eyes—nothing of Baltic sand about them.
“You’re from the moving company?” the woman asked. Her glance slid skeptically to Sven’s cane, as though doubting the man with a limp could carry a single box.
Katja drew her badge. “Criminal police. My name is Sommer. This is my colleague, Chief Inspector Widahn.”
Diana Mertens blinked, fingers lifting to the faded silver cross at her throat. “Police? I haven’t done anything.” Her voice rasped, as if she’d spent half the night talking only to dead cardboard boxes.
“We only have a few questions. About your husband, Faris Mertens,” Katja said gently.
A twitch flickered across Diana’s face—grief and defense at once. She stepped aside. “Come in. But it can’t take long. My flight leaves the day after tomorrow, and I still have too much to do.”
Katja and Sven entered the narrow hallway. The air smelled of cheap carpet glue, sea buckthorn body wash, and something else—faint, like summer dresses not yet unpacked from their boxes.
“Flight?” Katja asked as she glanced around. “Are you going on vacation?”
The hallway opened into a stripped-down living room, wallpaper in faded peach half torn from the walls, bare plaster beneath. The tracks of a cart marked two long lines through the dust. In the corner leaned a pair of folded camp chairs.
“No. We’re moving to Dubai.” The answer was clipped. Diana unfolded the chairs, placed them by the lone window, and gestured with hurried courtesy. “Please, sit. There’s nothing else left. Just the kids’ mattresses and mine. Everything else is gone.”
Katja sat, pulling out her small, battered notebook. Unlike Sven, who typed every address into his service tablet, she was old-school, still loyal to pen and paper. Sven eased himself down slowly, stretching his leg. Diana remained standing, arms crossed, as if ready to keep packing.
Katja felt the walls of boxes pressing closer, hemming them in. She slid a photo across. “Is this your husband, Mrs. Mertens?”
Diana glanced down. “Yes, of course. But how did you…?”
“Your husband, Faris, was found dead the morning before last,” Katja said softly. “In the old cemetery of Bergen on Rügen.”
For a moment, the only sound was the distant clatter of a garbage truck. Diana’s face froze, as if someone had drained the color out of it.
“Samira, Layla—go to your rooms,” she whispered, pushing the two girls gently out of the doorway and closing the living room door behind them.
“That… that can’t be true,” Diana murmured.
“I’m sorry. We had no way of knowing at first who the man was. There was no missing-person report,” Sven said, shifting his weight; the camp chair gave his bad leg no mercy.
“Of course there wasn’t. He wasn’t missing.” Her voice was sharp, too high, as if she felt accused.
The girls had slipped the door open again, quiet, curious. She herded them back into the hall and shut it firmly once more.
“He was supposed to be in Switzerland. I mean… he was supposed to be buried anonymously, in a forest cemetery…”
Her words faltered, hands sketching aimless shapes in the air. “I don’t understand any of this.”
Sven reached inside his jacket and pulled out his service tablet. On the display glowed the photo of a tiny, circular tattoo, a strange seal burned into the dead man’s thigh. He turned the screen toward Diana.
“Have you ever seen this mark on your husband? Perhaps in the past weeks? A new tattoo?”
Diana blinked, then shook her head sharply. “Faris hated tattoos. He always said the skin was God’s gift, not to be defaced. I’ve never seen that before.”
Sven tapped the screen to close it and pushed the tablet back. “Good, that helps us.” He cleared his throat. “We’re sorry if we’re unsettling you. We’re just trying to find out how your husband ended up at the cemetery.”
Tears welled up in Diana’s eyes, but they did not fall. “Yes, I would very much like to know that myself.” She pulled a tissue from her jeans pocket and wiped her sharp nose with it. “Ask your questions.” Her voice rang like thin glass.
Katja turned a page forward. “Mrs. Mertens, before we continue: in the hospital records your husband was listed as Faris Mertens, birth name Al Kazemi, correct?”
Diana gave a weak nod.
“Isn’t it rather unusual for a man from the Arab world to take his wife’s surname?”
A faint trace of pride flickered across Diana’s face. “Yes, absolutely. But Faris and I thought it would be easier for him, and especially for our girls, with a German name. Faris was Muslim, he came to our country as a refugee in 2016. You know how divided society can be sometimes. Mertens sounds harmless. No one asks twice about origins or religion.”
Katja nodded and opened her notebook. “Mrs. Mertens, can you describe to us why your husband left the hospital?”
Diana rubbed her lower lip, as if she had to shape words out of dry earth. “It was mid-May...”
“When exactly?” Sven pressed.
“Exactly...? About four weeks ago. We had actually agreed with the attending physician and the hospital’s social services that he would spend his final weeks in a hospice. We didn’t want our girls... they were so attached to their father, you see?”
She slid down the wall and sat on the floor with her knees pulled up, her head resting against the plaster. “...and he loved them.” Her mouth, her whole face turned to tears. She shook her head in deep pain. “We still had so many plans, so many plans, immeasurably many plans. He was studying biology and mathematics, working during the day for a courier service delivering packages.”
She took another tissue from the packet and wiped her face.
Katja and Sven let her speak. Katja tried to suppress a deep inhale and exhale; she knew this was one of those moments that made her job especially hard. That Sven felt the same, she could tell by the way he appeared to concentrate on slowly turning his cane between his fingers.
“And then...” a deep sob broke her voice, “...he began to lose weight without noticing, complained more and more about back pain, and suddenly rejected his beloved flatbread because it made him sick.”
For a moment the memory gripped her so strongly that her face looked strained and pained. “Shortly before his admission to the clinic, his eyes turned yellow, his urine dark, and his stool almost clay-colored.”
Katja stared at her notebook; the pages were still blank. Perhaps one day a breakthrough would come and no one would have to die of cancer anymore. But that was of no help to Diana now, and even less to Faris.
“I have to tell you something else,” Sven cleared his throat; now came the difficult part. “We didn’t just find Faris at the cemetery. He was naked.”
“What... how... what? How is that possible?” Diana’s voice was now completely hoarse.
Katja instinctively sat down beside the helpless woman on the floor and took her hand.
“But why? Who would do something so degrading?” Diana looked at her in disbelief. “Faris would never have allowed that!”
Katja looked at Sven; they understood each other without words: we’ll leave it at that for now, otherwise we’ll overwhelm her, she still has two children who need her. Sven gave the slightest of nods. Sometimes one had to weigh between law and morality.
“That is exactly what we’d like to find out. Do you feel able to tell us about Faris’s last days? Perhaps there was something unusual that no one has paid attention to yet?”
Diana tapped the back of her head rhythmically against the wall, a bitter smile on her lips. “Yes, indeed, now in hindsight...”
Katja quietly brought her notebook out again. “Take your time, we’re listening.”
Diana stood up and began pacing like a caged tiger, both hands shoved into the back pockets of her jeans. “We knew very quickly it was pancreatic cancer, advanced stage, there was no chance left. He was still in the hospital then, and I went to see him every day after work. Then the attending physician and the social services came. Faris was at the end of his treatment; there was nothing more they could do in the hospital. There were two options, either home or hospice. We chose hospice...” She nodded toward the closed living room door. “Because of the children, you understand?”
He was quickly given a place and was supposed to be transferred three days later, the paperwork was sorted out quickly.
“But only a day later,” she looked out the window at the high-rise opposite, “it was actually like any other day. I rushed home from work, picked up the girls from after-school care, and we drove to the hospital as we did every day. But...” She looked straight at Katja. “...in Faris’s room sat two young men. Friendly, polite, both maybe in their early thirties. Lars and Felix, both volunteer end-of-life companions who support people on their final journey.”
Katja made a note. “Did they have name tags? Any organization?”
“Not that I know of. But they were very nice. They wore dark casual clothes, very neat in appearance. And… Faris smiled. For the first time in weeks, he smiled again.”
She had to smile too, and it softened her face. “After the two men briefly introduced themselves, they stood up and said goodbye. I even asked them to stay a little longer, they seemed to be good for Faris.”
Diana took a deep breath and resumed her pacing through the room. “The taller one, Lars, said to Faris: ‘We can do everything the way we discussed, but please sleep on it one more night.’”
Sven looked up at her. “What exactly did he mean by that?”
Diana shrugged helplessly. “I thought it was about pastoral care. But the next day Faris took me into the corridor and said he was leaving the hospital of his own free will. Not to the hospice, he wanted to go to Switzerland with Lars and Felix. He said there were possibilities of… assisted dying there.”
The older daughter, Samira, peeked through the door into the living room again. Diana gave her a strained smile, switched into Arabic, and quietly sent her back. Almost apologetically she said to Katja, “I’ve been learning Arabic for nine years with Faris, so I can understand his family too. And the girls… they’re confused as well, they have to cope with the fact that their father is not coming home.”
Katja smiled back, her look saying everything was fine. Sven asked gently, “Did your husband explain why you and the children should not go to Switzerland with him?”
“He didn’t want the children to witness it. He said it was over. He would stay with us for a few more days, maybe a few weeks if he was lucky, then one night he would be gone, and we should not search. He said the last journey he would take alone. His body would be cremated and buried anonymously in a memorial forest, everything was already arranged. We would be taken care of. He had taken out a life insurance policy years ago, 250,000 euros in case of death. He told me to go to Dubai with the girls as soon as possible.
His uncle, a jeweler, would find me a comfortable job and a place to live. His uncle’s wife is also German, we would have a good life there. As for him, Faris, he said he would live on in our hearts. And when he was gone, I should tell the girls that Papa was in heaven now and would always be with them from above. He said it would be easiest for everyone this way. No long farewell, no bargaining with life. Death always comes when it wants, Faris said.”
Or when someone calls for it, Katja thought, and turned a page in her notebook.
“In any case, we still had three wonderful days with the children. We went to the beach, strolled, ice cream for the kids and the playground, everything was almost like always. Faris seemed to burn every second of it into his heart. I was surprised he was doing so well. He said he had received some kind of booster injection or something like that.”
“From whom?” Sven frowned.
Diana shrugged. “No idea. He didn’t tell me where he got it or what it was called. But it kept him going for a while, so much so that I almost had a little hope again that maybe it was all just a bad dream.”
Katja grew particularly attentive. “According to the hospital records, he was not given anything special. Apparently he refused morphine in the end.”
Diana nodded, this time uncertain and regretful. “Yes, he said he didn’t need it. He felt fine without it, better than with the morphine, which only made him very tired. The injection helped him. When I wanted to know what it was, he said it was something experimental and I shouldn’t worry. Time was too short to talk about it, and if he said no once and didn’t want to discuss something, then that was final. I didn’t know it would now be called into question like this.”
Sven struggled to his feet. “No, that’s all right. What happened in the end?”
“After two wonderful days, I suddenly woke up one night with a headache. The bed next to me was not only empty, it had been neatly made, the pillow fluffed, the blanket smoothed. His wardrobe, his books, all his personal things… were gone. It seemed as if he had never been there. It was as if not the illness, but Faris himself had been a beautiful dream. And yet I had fallen asleep in his arms the evening before.
I checked on the children, they were sleeping peacefully in their beds.”
She drew a deep breath, the memory weighing heavily on her. “I knew he was on his way to Switzerland, and the next day… he would die, then be picked up by a funeral home and cremated. Very quickly I received mail, one letter from the insurance and one the death certificate. In the letter from the insurance it said I would receive the payment after sending in the certificate and the necessary documents.”
Sven shook his head and gave Katja a meaningful look. Switzerland, death certificate, payout, anonymous forest burial, it all went too fast and too smoothly. Someone must have had a hand in it.
“You say your husband was Muslim, Mrs. Mertens?”
“Yes.”
“Did he perhaps make enemies among his family or friends by marrying a German woman and taking her name? And then assisted dying, and anonymous forest burial, that may not have pleased everyone.”
“His father was not exactly happy about his wish to give up the name, but in the end he accepted it. His only brother was killed in the war. Both his parents later died in bombings. He only had his uncle in Dubai, who also has a German wife. As for friends in Iraqi, I don’t know. I think he cut off those contacts completely.”
„Faris was a man of faith, but above all he was a man of science. He said God would understand if a person could no longer endure the suffering.“
Sven exchanged a quick glance with Katja and jotted something down. “Do you know which funeral home Faris had spoken to?”
Now Sven asked the questions while Katja quietly took notes. They worked like a well-rehearsed team.
“No, I honestly didn’t take care of any of that. Faris always made sure we were okay.”
“Did you ever see Lars or Felix again?”
“No, just that one time...”
“Do you have your husband’s death certificate?”
“Of course.”
A blue plastic folder lay on the floor. Flight tickets, passports, and other documents in Arabic script spilled out. The death certificate slid free among them.
“Here, please.”
“The original?”
Diana nodded. Sven studied it. Date of death: May 25. Three weeks ago.
“Look at the date,” he showed Katja the paper. “May we take this with us? You’ll get it back once the investigation is complete.”
Diana gave a resigned nod. “If you think it’ll help.”
Katja had risen to her feet. She gazed out the window at an older man hunched over a squeaking shopping cart, rummaging through the yellow recycling bags for bottles. The clinking glass echoed through the canyon of apartment blocks.
She shut her notebook. “Mrs. Mertens, we’ll do everything we can to find out what happened to your husband. Could I have the names of your relatives in Dubai?”
Diana tore off a scrap of paper from an advertising flyer she’d been using to wrap glasses. Her handwriting shook as she scribbled.
“Am I still allowed to go to Dubai now? That’s what he wanted. And can I have his body transferred there? Somehow… everything turned out differently.”
Sven’s tone was grave. “Right now he’s still in Greifswald at the medical examiner’s office. Tomorrow around noon a colleague will come and pick you up. I’m sorry, but you’ll have to identify your husband. After that we’ll let you know the moment his body is released. Please contact a funeral home that specializes in international transfers. They’ll guide you through the process.”
Katja’s phone rang. “Yes?”
Out of the corner of her eye she saw Sven hand Mrs. Mertens a business card.
The line crackled; Marit’s voice was muffled but insistent. “Katja? Sorry to interrupt, I know you’re in the middle of something. I’m at the doctor’s with Sina, it might take a while. Could we meet tomorrow at my place instead? Today’s going to be too late, and Sina looks really wiped out. Please come early in the morning to Bergen, before anything else. We’ll talk then.”
Katja exchanged a glance with Sven and nodded, though Marit couldn’t see it. “We’ll come to you first thing tomorrow before we head to Stralsund. Promise.”
Marit let out a breath. “Thank you. Drive safe.”
The call dropped, leaving only the hum of the hallway.
Sven slipped his card case back into his pocket. “Marit?”
Katja nodded. “Something about Sina is weighing on her. She sounded worried.”
Sven shook Diana’s hand once more. “If anything unsettles you tonight, call right away. We have a police crisis counselor on call, twenty-four seven.”
Diana’s answer was weary. “I… thank you. I’ll try to get the kids some rest.”