A Summer of Murder Read online

  Copyright

  Copyright © 2016 by DuMont Buchverlag, Köln

  English translation copyright © 2018 by Jamie Bulloch

  All rights reserved.

  Bibliographical Note

  This Dover edition, first published in 2020, is an unabridged republication of the work originally printed in the German language as Im Sömmer der Mörder by Fischer Verlag in 2006; reissued by DuMont Buchverlag, Cologne, Germany, in 2016; and in English by MacLehose Press, an imprint of Quercus Publishing Ltd., London, in 2018.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Bottini, Oliver, author. | Bulloch, Jamie, translator.

  Title: A summer of murder / Oliver Bottini ; translated by Jamie Bulloch.

  Other titles: Im Sommer der Mörder. English

  Description: Mineola, New York : Dover Publications, Inc., 2020. | Series: A Black Forest investigation | This Dover edition, first published in 2020, is an unabridged republication of the work originally printed in the German language as Im Sommer der Mörder by Fischer Verlag in 2006; reissued by DuMont Buchverlag, Cologne, Germany, in 2016; and in English by MacLehose Press, an imprint of Quercus Publishing Ltd., London, in 2018. | Translated from the German. | Summary: “In this second Black Forest Investigation, Chief Inspector Louise Boni returns from rehab at a Buddhist monastery after the events of the award-winning Zen and the Art of Murder. With a shaky grasp on her newfound sobriety, Boni resumes work with the criminal investigation department. Her first assignment, the probe of a fireman’s death while battling the explosion of a secret underground weapons cache, reveals connections to both neo-Nazis and illegal arms dealers from the former Yugoslavia. But the sudden incursion of secret service agents into the scene indicates more far-reaching possibilities. Boni must come to grips with the dark forces behind the hidden munitions, the divided loyalties of a new partner, and the ghosts of her own past while trying to resolve the most challenging case of her career”—Provided by publisher.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2019054573 | ISBN 9780486841656 (trade paperback) | ISBN 0486841650 (trade paperback)

  Subjects: GSAFD: Mystery fiction.

  Classification: LCC PT2702.O885 I413 2020 | DDC 833/.92—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019054573

  Manufactured in the United States by LSC Communications

  84165001

  www.doverpublications.com

  2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1

  2020

  For Chiara

  There can be no long-term politics without an ethical principle.

  ANDRÉ GLUCKSMANN

  There are a few more stories, let me tell you . . .

  SEYMOUR HERSH IN AN INTERVIEW WITH SÜDDEUTSCHE ZEITUNG

  CONTENTS

  Prologue

  I. The Hellish Legions

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  II. The Murder

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  III. The Pakistani Lead

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  IV. The Night of the Murderers

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  About the Author & Translator

  PROLOGUE

  Adam Baudy didn’t see the fire until they had reached the outskirts of Kirchzarten. A glow, a narrow streak of light on the pasture between the road and the forest, flames flickering sluggishly at the break of day. The fire was dying out; they had come too late.

  The command vehicle ahead of him slowed and turned on to the farm track. Baudy followed. Where the fire raged, the last corner upright toppled to the ground, sending a cloud of sparks flying into the air, a swarm of frenzied red insects extinguished moments later in the dark gray of the morning. Nothing remained of Riedinger’s wooden shed but embers and ashes.

  “You can open your eyes, sweetheart,” Baudy said, taking his phone from its cradle. As he dialed Martin Andersen’s number, it struck him that already he’d forgotten what the shed looked like. He’d been passing this way every day for decades and he hadn’t consciously looked at it once. He wondered how hard you had to look to see everything that existed. The important things and the unimportant ones.

  It went straight to voice mail. “Call me back,” Baudy said.

  “It’s already out, the fire,” Lina said.

  “Yes, thank goodness.”

  The headlights of the first fire engine loomed in his rear-view mirror. On either side the blue light picked out a few yards of field from the dawn gloom. Baudy suppressed a yawn. He felt tired for the first time that morning. Whenever he had Lina he didn’t sleep much. He would lie awake for ages, thinking how she’d soon be gone again.

  “Papa, was there someone inside?” Lina whispered.

  Baudy turned to look at her. Lina had leaned forward in her booster seat to catch a glimpse of the fire. He gave her a reassuring smile. “No.”

  “What about any animals?”

  “No animals either.”

  “Maybe two or three mice.”

  “They move so quickly, they don’t hang around when there’s a fire. They scuttle away, sweetie.”

  Lina looked at him. “So what was in there?”

  “Just a bit of hay.”

  Baudy checked the time: a quarter past five. Riedinger had called the emergency services fifteen minutes ago. Thirteen minutes ago Freiburg had notified the Kirchzarten volunteer brigade via the radio alarm. Ten minutes ago, with Lina in his arms, he’d left the apartment, “without brushing our teeth?” Three minutes ago they’d set off from the fire station. The blaze must have started at about a quarter to five. It took half an hour to die out and the little old wooden shed, which he’d never consciously looked at, no longer existed.

  “Are we going back to your home now?” Lina said.

  “Soon. Have another little sleep.”

  His cell phone rang. “No fuel, no gas bottles, no fertilizer,” Martin Andersen said. He’d been on the phone to Riedinger. Baudy peered at the command vehicle. Andersen had stuck his hand out of the window and was giving the thumbs-up.

  “O.K.,” Baudy said.

  They pulled over on to the shoulder soon afterward. Baudy turned around again, pulled the blanket over Lina and stroked her cheek. “Papa’s got to do some work now, sweetheart.”

  “It’s a shame hay can’t run away,” Lina said quietly.

  Baudy waited beside the command vehicle until the two fire engines had come to a stop, and then gave the order to get out. His voice was deep and hoarse with tiredness. While the sixteen men took up positions between the vehicles, he went to within thirty feet of where the fire had burned. He wasn’t wearing a respiratory mask; they didn’t have to worry about carbon dioxide as the fire had been too small and they were in the open air. Baudy checked for odors as he breathed in through his nose. No gasoline. In the center of the scorched area a slim flame darted upward, unable to find sustenance, and was then extinguished. Thirty square feet of embers and a few fire pockets. “Two B hoses,” he said, without turning around.

  Lew Gubnik and the leader of the second squad relayed the order.

  Baudy could now make out the contour of the belt of trees fifty-five yards away, behind which ran the B31. A slender band of darkness a
nd silence. Above the trees flashed the warning lights of the Rosskopf wind turbines, like four synchronized stars. In the north-east he saw a flickering blue light. A third fire engine: their colleagues from Zarten.

  Slowly he walked forward. No people, no animals, Riedinger had told the control room, and Martin Andersen too. Only a few old tools and some hay. The unused wooden shed had stood in the middle of a pasture, and nobody lived within two hundred yards of it. But you could never tell. If you couldn’t see what you passed every day for forty years, then anything was possible.

  Baudy stopped when he could feel the heat of the embers. No casualties, no fatalities, that was the important thing. He let his eyes wander across the burnt area. Again he checked for the smell of gasoline, or of any other accelerant. Then he stepped aside and gave the signal to start operating the hoses.

  Smoke rose into the air, the embers hissed.

  Once they’d dealt with the fire pockets they could all go home. He would take Lina to kindergarten in Freiburg, sit with a cup of coffee in the carpentry workshop and finish Gubnik’s strange chest. This had been a short, safe operation. But he wasn’t feeling the usual satisfaction of having won the battle. Maybe because he was so tired, or because there had been no battle.

  “Fire under control!” Gubnik called out. A few of the men laughed and Baudy joined in.

  *

  Then the squad from Zarten arrived. Baudy raised a hand and waved at the driver’s cab. All that was missing were the police. He wondered what might have caused the fire. A cigarette butt? The hay spontaneously combusting? Or was it arson? But who would set fire to a hay shed? He thought about the asylum seekers in Keltenbuck, all those Dutch at the campsite, the American students camping in the Grosse Tal. About Riedinger, who was capable of anything.

  The first rays of sun flared on the horizon. From one moment to the next the light in the east became friendlier. It occurred to Baudy that this was the least worst time for a fire. A new day was breaking. A seed of hope, even in the face of the devastation wrought by fire.

  He took a few steps into the heat beyond Gubnik and young Paul Feul on the first hose. Baudy heard Gubnik curse. They needn’t have come, not with three engines and two dozen men. The fire was out and there was no other building far and wide that needed protecting. A few buckets of water would have sufficed. Baudy smiled. Lew Gubnik, the Russian-German, had put on a fair bit of weight in Breisgau and regretted every movement that wasn’t strictly necessary.

  Karl, head of the Zarten squad, appeared beside him. “Was anyone in there?”

  “No.”

  “Horses? Cattle?”

  “No.”

  Karl nodded. “Do you need us?”

  “No,” Baudy said for the third time, holding out his hand. “But thanks for coming.” Karl nodded. The two men didn’t like each other. Too many fights as children, and later often running after the same girl. When neither invited the other to their wedding or christenings, it was too late to change anything. But none of this had any bearing on joint operations; then it was as if the fights and the girls had never existed.

  “There’s somebody over there,” Gubnik said.

  Baudy now saw a man in the gray morning light. He was standing about thirty yards away, staring at the ashes.

  Hannes Riedinger.

  Baudy approached him. He wanted to tell Riedinger about the seed of hope, even if it was only a shed that had burned down. Everybody needed some hope, didn’t they?

  Riedinger’s wrinkled, unwelcoming face glistened with sweat. “A little bit of hay doesn’t go up in flames that easily,” he said.

  Baudy nodded. “Not at night.”

  The charred planks crackled, the hissing of the embers was not so loud now. A few yards away Gubnik was muttering.

  “It looked like someone had opened the gates to hell,” Riedinger said, as if talking to himself.

  Baudy looked at him. “Are you sure it was just hay in there?”

  Riedinger nodded curtly.

  “No fertilizer? Gas bottles, fuel, quicklime?”

  “How often do I have to say it?”

  Baudy remembered that Riedinger lived alone. His wife had done a runner, the children had moved abroad and the neighbors avoided him. He’d driven them all away. “Well?”

  “No.”

  In spite of the darkness he could see the severity, the ruthlessness in Riedinger’s eyes. Baudy jerked his head toward Gubnik and Paul Feul to signal that he had to get back to work.

  “A little bit of hay doesn’t go up in flames that easily,” he heard Riedinger say behind him.

  *

  Shortly afterward Baudy gave the order to reel in the second B hose. Only Gubnik and Feul remained at the site of the fire, the others were gathered around the manifold or by the fire engine, chatting about the Tour de France as they watched Gubnik and Feul. Baudy could see the blue lights of a patrol car in the distance. Officers from Freiburg South. The Kirchzarten police were still asleep; their shift began at half past seven.

  Baudy got into the command vehicle and switched on the blue lights to help the police locate them. Then he went back to his Passat and gently opened the rear door. Lina’s eyes were closed. He waited for a moment to see whether she really was asleep or just playing her old Am-I-Asleep? game, from when there wasn’t a “his home” and a “her home.” By now Lina would have grinned if she were still awake.

  Only the kindergarten run left, and after that he’d have to be without her for another fortnight.

  “Water off,” he heard Gubnik shout.

  He shut the door. “Water off,” he ordered. The hose slackened. Baudy glanced at Riedinger, who was staring at the scorched ground, hands in pockets. His home, her home. The idea that they had some things in common made him uneasy.

  “Josef, the infrared camera.”

  “Is there any point looking for more fire pockets?” said Josef, the longest-serving Kirchzarten volunteer. Most people became more cautious as they grew older and more experienced, but Josef had become more reckless.

  “The camera,” Baudy repeated. Josef nodded and went to the fire engine. The men at the manifold were discussing Jan Ullrich’s unsuccessful challenge on the Col du Tourmalet a week earlier. Their voices had gotten louder.

  “Quiet!” Gubnik grunted, but nobody apart from Baudy seemed to hear him. Gubnik had raised one hand and turned his head to the side, as if listening for something. “Quiet, you assholes!” he yelled and dropped his hand.

  The voices fell silent.

  Baudy took a few steps toward Gubnik. Now he could hear it too. A sound like water on stone. But the shed wasn’t made of stone and the hoses were off. “Does the shed have a cellar?” he called out to Riedinger.

  “No.”

  “Josef ?” Baudy said.

  Josef, who was a few yards away from Gubnik, already had the camera to his eye. “Nothing.”

  Gubnik let go of the hose, took off his helmet and stepped on to the ashes. Seized by a sudden fear, Baudy called out, “Stop, Gubby!”

  Gubnik stopped mid-stride.

  “Put your helmet back on, for God’s sake!”

  Gubnik grimaced, saluted him, and put on his helmet at an angle. Baudy heard Paul Feul giggle.

  No fire pockets, but water on stone, he thought. As he went over to Josef he gave the order to get the second B hose ready again.

  “It’s all out,” Josef said. “Not a straw smoldering.”

  “Underneath, perhaps?”

  “What do you mean underneath, if there’s no cellar?”

  Baudy took the camera and twice scanned the area of the fire, but found nothing. Plenty of gray, no white. There really wasn’t a single straw smoldering.

  “Listen,” Gubnik muttered.

  Now other sounds mingled—earth, stones, sand, all falling. “The ground’s giving way.”

  Then they saw it too. Roughly in the middle of where the fire had burned, the damp ashes began to move, and all of a sudden a three-foot-
square hole appeared. “Get away from there!” Baudy said, yanking Gubnik back on to the grass. Their eyes met. Gubnik nodded in satisfaction, as if to say: Maybe there is more to be done here. He plodded back to Feul by the first hose.

  “I see something,” Josef said, the camera at his eye. “Diagonally beneath the hole.”

  “Engine one, first and second hose at the ready!” Baudy instructed. “Josef ?”

  “It’s spreading. Something’s burning down there.”

  Gubnik and Feul aimed the first B hose. A few feet away the second squad got into position. Baudy gave the order to engage. Water shot from the hoses.

  “There’s no cellar there,” said Riedinger, who’d gone closer.

  “Stay where you are!” Baudy barked. By the time he turned back more holes had appeared. He couldn’t hear a thing; the rushing of water drowned out all other sounds.

  “Shit, something’s burning underneath,” Josef said again. Seconds later a few sparks flew out of one of the holes.

  “Everyone back!” Baudy ordered. Those manning the hoses as well as Josef, Riedinger, and Baudy all retreated a few steps. He turned and instructed Martin Andersen to recall the Zarten team, just in case. Dark shapes emerged from the Freiburg South patrol car, which had just arrived. The strip of light on the horizon was now orange and had spread across the sky.

  Baudy looked back at the site of the fire.

  “Something’s really brewing down there,” Josef said.

  Baudy put the whistle to his mouth to give the danger signal. At that moment came an ear-splitting detonation and a fountain of flames, rocks, and earth erupted from the ashes. Paul Feul let out a shrill scream, Gubnik began to curse wildly, and Baudy held his breath. Stones and earth peppered the ground, particles of ash danced in the air.

  Then there was silence.

  Nobody moved a muscle; everybody appeared to be waiting.

  “Martin, take Lina away!” Baudy yelled without turning around. Barely five seconds later the engine of the Passat sprung to life.

  “What is that asshole storing down there?” Gubnik growled.

  Baudy was gripped by a sudden panic. He blew his whistle and shouted, “Retreat! Get back!”

  The entire ground on which the shed had stood caved in, flames shot high into the air. The blast from another explosion threw Baudy backward. He got to his feet again, all but deaf. With Paul Feul screaming on one side and Josef on the other he staggered to the fire engines. In the light of the flames he could see that the men from the second hose were running back to the engines, with Riedinger and the police officers somewhere in the chaos too. There was frenzied shouting up ahead, a number of voices yelling all at once. He couldn’t make out what they were saying. Baudy opened and closed his mouth but it got no better.