Border Patrol: Price of Freedom

Border Patrol: Price of Freedom

A black SUV speeds along a dark country road, heading towards the German/Polish border, closely followed by a police patrol car. The driver of the expensive SUV slams on the brakes and then there’s a crash; the young police officer Katarzyna Ludvinek, driving the patrol car, never had a chance. Shocked and unable to do a thing, Lutz Piatkovski and Police Superintendent Udo Lehde, who shows up a short time later, watch the young woman die. Later, when Piatkovski is being deposed about the night’s events, he states that the SUV’s driver caused the accident. Piatkovski leads the local civil defense group and was coincidentally patrolling the area. Lehde was the patrol leader for the dead policewoman, but why wasn’t he in the car with her? And where is the SUV’s injured driver? He’s all but vanished from the face of the earth. These are just a few of the questions facing Chief Detective Olga Lenski, her colleague Adam Raczek and the team of the German/Polish Homicide Squad in Swiecko, near Frankfurt (Oder). But right now they’re focused on finding the suspected car driver and the people pulling the strings in the background. Olga Lenski is annoyed to discover that her colleague Raczek is holding back information central to the case: the accident victim is the daughter of Office Chief Karol Pavlak. The case thus requires finesse and hits particularly close to home for aspiring inspector Edyta Visnievski, Police Captain Wolfgang Neumann and Inspector Viktor Krol. Lenski and Raczek find a number of inconsistencies during their investigation: Lehde says that his trainee Katarzyna spontaneously decided to pursue the stolen SUV, but it soon becomes apparent she was no risk-taker. Did Lehde want to prevent further investigation of the theft? And what does the fisherman Piatkovski and his solitary patrol right at the accident scene that night have to do with the case? Officially the members of the civil defense group partner with the police for local security. But can the officers trust them? Not to mention the strange brands found on Katarzyna’s body during the autopsy that remain a riddle to them. Without the vanished SUV driver, Lenski and Raczek can’t make any progress on the case.