Oktoberfest (42/49)

Oktoberfest (42/49)

The scene of the crime for Batic and Leitmayr's latest case is Oktoberfest: it's Munich, but not as you know it. The world's largest public festival, a heaving mass of inebriated mayhem, is the worst possible place to have to investigate a crime but investigate they must as not everyone who falls to the ground here is drunk.

It's October. And in Munich that means only one thing: Oktoberfest. Leitmayr is leaving the city, as he does every year. As the crowds flock to the beer tents, he heads in the opposite direction. But no sooner does he arrive in Italy when he gets the call from Batic asking him to come back. It appears that his fingerprints are all over the wallet of a reveler who was found dead that morning. Leitmayr had pushed the Italian's wallet back into his pocket on the way to the train station. He had looked completely drunk. But according to the post mortem his blood alcohol levels were only 0.7 permille. Obviously the festival beer was not the cause of the Italian's condition. The tox screen shows that there were high levels of GHB, liquid ecstasy, in his blood. And his is not the only case. In the beer tent of the famous Amper brewery, the GHB cases are mounting rapidly. For Batic and Leitmayr time is of the essence, because taking GHB with alcohol can be fatal?