When Chief Detective Schimanski comes home late in the evening, young Katja Behrens is sitting in the stairwell in front of his apartment and asks him to look around her mother's apartment across the street. She came home from boarding school but didn't find her mother and found the apartment ransacked. Schimanski does the girl a favor, but does not attach any urgent importance to the situation. Nevertheless, he allows the frightened Katja to spend the night with him. The next morning, the police found a woman's body not far from the apartment.
