Zen and the Art of Murder Read online

  Copyright

  Copyright © 2015 by DuMont Buchverlag, Köln

  English translation copyright © 2018 by Jamie Bulloch

  All rights reserved.

  Bibliographical Note

  This Dover edition, first published in 2019, was originally printed in the German language as Mord im Zeichen des Zen by Scherz Verlag in 2004; reissued by DuMont Buchverlag, Cologne, Germany, in 2015; 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: Zen and the art of murder / Oliver Bottini ; translated by Jamie Bulloch.

  Other titles: Mord im Zeichen des Zen. English

  Description: Mineola, New York : Dover Publications, Inc., 2019. | Series: A Black Forest investigation | This Dover edition, first published in 2019, was originally printed in the German language as Mord im Zeichen des Zen by Scherz Verlag in 2004; reissued by DuMont Buchverlag, Cologne, Germany, in 2015; and in English by MacLehose Press, an imprint of Quercus Publishing Ltd., London, in 2018. | Translated from the German.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2019025249 | ISBN 9780486839189 (trade paperback) | ISBN 0486839184 (trade paperback)

  Subjects: GSAFD: Mystery fiction.

  Classification: LCC PT2702.O885 M6713 2019 | DDC 833/.92—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019025249

  Manufactured in the United States by LSC Communications

  83918401

  www.doverpublications.com

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  2019

  For Chiara

  A wise man knows his fellow human; an enlightened man knows himself.

  GUIFENG ZONGMI (780–841)

  PROLOGUE

  It was a snowy Saturday morning in Liebau. When Johann Georg Hollerer took his first glimpse out of the kitchen window at the high street, he was confronted by a vision. Dressed only in a dark robe and sandals, an Asian monk had emerged from the driving snow. His virtually bald, wet head glistened in the gloomy morning light as he walked slowly past Hollerer’s window toward the church. In his left hand he gripped a head-high staff for support, in his right he held a small bowl. Amelie has sent him to me, Hollerer thought, as the vision dissipated back into the snow.

  Hollerer returned to his breakfast table where he sat for several minutes, pondering the message Amelie had been trying to send. It confused him that she, a lifelong God-fearing Catholic, should have chosen a Buddhist to deliver it.

  Eventually he stood up, irritated. Even in death Amelie spoke to him in riddles and put him in a bad mood.

  It was another half hour before Hollerer realized he hadn’t been duped by a vision.

  As he buttoned his uniform jacket over his protruding belly, he remembered noticing a large dark mark above the monk’s right ear. In the initial shock he hadn’t paid it much attention, but on second thought it was strange—a rectangular, dark-blue discoloration of the skin. Hollerer knew marks like that only too well, in all their stages of bruising, in every size, on all parts of the body.

  The monk had an injury to his head. As if he’d knocked it against something—or had been hit.

  Unsettled, he went to his bedside table. In the drawer beneath a dusty copy of the Old Testament lay his service pistol. He had not carried it once in thirty years, let alone used it. But now he picked up the gun with his thumb and forefinger.

  Hollerer found the monk in the church square. Even though snow was still falling heavily, the man was sitting cross-legged on the steps of the Catholic church. His eyes were closed. His mouth moved as if he were saying something. But no sound issued from it.

  The small bowl stood in front of the monk. It appeared to be made of wood, and was empty. Snowflakes formed a white circle on the rim.

  Twenty-five or so villagers had assembled in a semicircle around the man. Hollerer nodded to the others. The mayor was there, both priests, other notables, a few farmers, a handful of children. No one was talking; Hollerer couldn’t even hear a whisper of astonishment. He sensed that everyone was waiting for something to happen, for the monk to open his eyes and explain what he was doing there and where he’d come from. Or for someone to grasp the initiative.

  Hollerer moved in from the side until he was a couple of yards from the monk. The injury was four inches wide, two inches high. A blueish mark, yellow-green at the edges and purplish in the center. Caused either by a hard, accidental knock, or a deliberate blow. He would not have been able to say why, but Hollerer was certain it was a blow. A shiver ran down his spine.

  He rejoined the semicircle. Now he saw that the monk also had a wound on his left cheek, a laceration that had only just stopped bleeding. A scab had formed, but the snow stopped it from drying out.

  “We’ve got to do something—he’ll freeze to death otherwise,” Hollerer said to nobody in particular. The crowd stirred, there was a muted muttering.

  The monk moved too. He raised his head and opened his eyes. They were very narrow; they seemed sad and lifeless. They roamed slowly across the villagers, now and again alighting on a particular face before moving on.

  The narrow eyes rested briefly on Hollerer too. A strange expression. Not unfriendly, but strange. Knowing. Hollerer couldn’t put his finger on it. The monk gazed at Hollerer as if he knew him. As if he knew something about him that Hollerer didn’t know himself.

  Then the monk looked away.

  “But what can we do?” asked Ponzelt, the mayor. “Are we going to tell him it’s illegal to beg in Liebau?” A handful of villagers snorted in amusement.

  Hollerer approached the monk again, stopping a few feet away from the bowl. Water had begun to collect in it. Bending his knees slightly, he stooped and propped his hands on his thighs. The holster grazed his elbow. All of a sudden he felt ridiculous. “You’ve got to get into the warmth,” he said. “You’re soaked; you’ll catch your death of cold.”

  The monk gave the hint of a smile. He was still a young man. Or he looked young, at least. Hollerer’s colleague Niksch was in his early twenties and he didn’t look much younger.

  The monk pointed at the bowl, then at his mouth, lowering his head several times as if bowing, expressing thanks or simply nodding. “He wants money,” someone said from behind.

  Hollerer grunted, picked up the bowl and turned around. He tipped out the water and dried it as best he could with the sleeve of his jacket. Then he dropped in a two-euro coin and set it down again in front of the monk, who had watched him without stirring.

  Hollerer pointed to his own left cheek, then to his right temple. “What happened?”

  The monk simply put his hands together in front of his chest, gave a slight bow and closed his eyes. Hollerer was about to ask him to open them and look at him again, but because the monk would not have understood he just said, “Leave him be. I’ll be back in a minute.”

  When Hollerer returned from the bakery with two cheese rolls, at first glance everything seemed to be the same as before. The monk was sitting there with his eyes closed; the villagers, now numbering around forty, in a semicircle around him. But Hollerer sensed that the mood had changed.

  As if to confirm this, Ponzelt took the police officer by the arm, pulled him beneath his umbrella and moved a couple of paces aside. “People are getting nervous,” he said, his gaze fixed on the monk. “You’ve got to get rid of him.”

  Hollerer stared at a drop of water hanging from Ponzelt’s nose.

  “They’re wondering,” Ponzelt said, “if there are more of his sort where he came from, or wherever he’s going to. If people like that are going to be coming to beg
in Liebau every Saturday morning. You know, the Hare Krishna and Bhagwan types. Our lot reckon they’ve got enough problems without some sect making itself at home here.”

  The drop of water finally detached itself from Ponzelt’s nose. Hollerer now turned to the monk as well.

  “Do you see?” Ponzelt said. “In times like these people get nervous. How can we be sure that he and his comrades aren’t planning something?”

  Hollerer nodded but said nothing. He wondered whether, like Ponzelt, he too was an opportunist who instigated all manner of things, but was never to blame. Someone so slippery that blame did not stick.

  Since Amelie’s death he had often been visited by peculiar thoughts. Am I a pessimist? An optimist? Am I an egotist? An opportunist? Without such thoughts life had been simpler, he mused. He had eaten, worked, slept and argued with Amelie. But he’d never had odd thoughts.

  “It may also be . . .,” Ponzelt said, pausing when the monk opened his eyes again.

  In silence they waited for something to happen. Hollerer had a vague sense that the monk knew what was going on around him. Knew that the mood had turned.

  “The best thing,” Ponzelt said, “would be if you showed him your ID and took down his details . . . that sort of thing. Then the village will see that you’re not leaving them at his mercy. And his Hare Krishna mates will realize that there’s no chance of them setting foot in Liebau.”

  “The best thing,” muttered Hollerer as he went over to the monk, “would be if you kissed my ass.” Disgruntled, he wondered if merely having voted for Ponzelt made him an opportunist. He decided to postpone this question until the next election. If he voted for Ponzelt again, that would be the time to subject himself to greater scrutiny.

  The monk followed him with his gaze. Once more Hollerer felt that this man knew him to the core. That in fact he knew everybody and everything. Despite this—or maybe because of it—his eyes looked sad and exhausted.

  And Hollerer fancied he detected something else in those unfamiliar eyes: fear.

  He offered the monk the sodden paper bag with the rolls. “Here’s something to eat,” he said. His voice sounded unintentionally reassuring.

  The monk nodded and peered inside the bag.

  “Local cheese,” Hollerer said. “I assume you’re a vegetarian.”

  The monk took one of the rolls and held out the bag with the other one. Hollerer was about to protest, but the monk nodded again and shook the bag impatiently.

  Hollerer took it. Baffled, he folded the paper around the roll. “OK, then. Goodbye.”

  With the roll in his right hand he went back to Ponzelt, but didn’t step under the umbrella.

  “Well?” Ponzelt said.

  “He’s just having a snack,” Hollerer growled, and plodded off into the sheet of snow.

  CONTENTS

  Prologue

  Part I: The Monk

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Part II: The Kanzan-An

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Part III: Asile D’enfants

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Author’s Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  About the Translator

  I

  THE MONK

  1

  Louise Bonì hated snow. Her brother had died in the snow, her husband had left her in the snow and she had killed a man in the snow. It was the memory of this man that particularly discomforted her. Last summer she’d managed to suppress it at times, but during winter it haunted her mercilessly. At home, down at the station, out and about. A bloodhound that refused to be shaken off.

  Even now, as from her bed she pushed the curtain aside and stared into the snow flurry for minutes on end, this man dominated her thoughts. She pictured him lying on a snow-covered road in the middle of an expanding pool of beautiful, bright-red crystals. René Calambert, a teacher from Paris, handsome, married, one daughter, one bullet in his leg, one bullet in his stomach, both from her service pistol.

  She let go of the curtain and sank back into her pillow. It had been snowing nonstop since yesterday lunchtime and there was no prospect of an improvement in the weather today or on Sunday. Freiburg was suffocating in the snow. Her colleagues were looking forward to skiing, her colleagues’ wives to a winter break with the family, and her colleagues’ children to snowball fights. Bonì was looking forward to a moment without René Calambert bleeding to death.

  She glanced at the digital clock. 11:30. She closed her eyes.

  An hour later the telephone rang. Louise went into the sitting room and saw Bermann’s number on the display.

  “Yes?”

  “Luis?” Some of her colleagues called her “Luis,” effacing both her French background and her gender. Bermann channeled all of his bodybuilder’s strength into the “u,” perhaps because he was head of Section 11, the Serious Crime Squad. “Luis, you’ve got to go to Liebau.”

  “But it’s Saturday.”

  “Still.”

  “I won’t,” she said, hanging up. Louise was surprised by her own nerve. For a few weeks now she’d been resisting Bermann’s habit of exploiting her, ordering her around. Something seemed to be coming to an end, but she had no idea what. She didn’t get the impression that her courage would lead her into a new life. More likely into the abyss.

  She looked out at the snowstorm. Three faces flashed through her mind. Two belonged to dead people, one to a painful memory.

  My three men, she thought. My snowmen.

  As she stood under the shower with her eyes closed she found it difficult to keep her balance. Louise opened her eyes slightly but it didn’t get any better. Through the gushing water and the closed door she heard the telephone ring again.

  A few minutes later she was sitting with wet hair on the sofa in her dressing gown. Bermann had left two messages on her answering machine. The first consisted of a single command: “Call me back, Luis, immediately. I need you.”

  The second message was a threat: “Luis, if you don’t call back in five minutes I’ll start disciplinary proceedings and strike you off the task force list.” Bermann’s voice sounded icy with rage.

  She suppressed the urge to reach for her mobile and instead returned to the bathroom, trying not to think about the task force list. For a detective it was painful enough to be absent from it for special investigations. But to be struck off the list entirely was the worst punishment imaginable. You would remember the two or three task forces per year for the rest of your life; everything else was just routine.

  By the time she rang Bermann the clock read 13:00. He answered at once. “That’s twenty minutes, Luis,” he said. “I’ve started disciplinary proceedings.” She could hear chatter in the background, an announcement over the PA system highlighting special offers. Bermann was in the supermarket.

  She closed her eyes. “Rolf, I have a day off.”

  “And I’ve had it with you,” Bermann said.

  Bonì was beginning to understand his irritation. For a moment she wondered why that didn’t surprise her, or even depress her. “What are Ops saying?”

  “Nothing. They haven’t been there.”

  “Operations haven’t been?”

  “Nothing has actually happened,” Bermann panted angrily. “And because nothing has actually happened, and because the operations department is undermanned, it hasn’t paid a visit. And because we’re undermanned, you’re going to take a look.”

  “Can’t Anne do that?”

  “No.” While Bermann gave a lecture on the staff situation in the operations department as wel
l as in Section 11, detailing illness, parental leave and regular holiday, she wondered how he could have started disciplinary proceedings in a supermarket. Was there a special counter beside the meat one? Forms in metal containers behind a rounded glass screen? Bargains to be had on disciplinary proceedings today, said a woman wearing blood-stained disposable gloves.

  She grinned.

  “So?” Bermann said gruffly.

  “All right,” she said. At least she’d have some company. Better than spending all weekend alone at home. It might stop her thinking about René Calambert.

  Then she concentrated on Bermann, who was talking about Liebau and the extraordinary things going on there.

  *

  She was still feeling dizzy fifteen minutes later in her red Mégane, squinting into the dim light of the underground parking garage. The ramp was wobbling, the concrete pillars were moving. She shut her eyes, opened them and waited for a moment. She had heartburn and a headache.

  In a wall to her right the elevator doors opened, flooding the garage with a harsh neon light. Ronescu the caretaker stepped out of the glare and his blurry figure shuffled past her. She screwed up her eyes but he was still fuzzy. The contours of his substantial body were duplicated, as if he possessed a spiritual aura. She gazed at him in fascination. The mysterious Ronescu was revealing his secret: he was a medium.

  She giggled and got out. She’d take a taxi.

  To avoid startling him she closed the door softly. “Herr Ronescu,” she said.

  Ronescu turned. “Ah, Frau Bonì.” He nodded, and his long, gray, canine face came alive. His fleshy jowls quivered, the deep furrows on his brow smoothed out momentarily. The aura remained.

  “I’ve got a bottle of ţuică.”

  Ronescu raised his gray-brown eyebrows. “Let’s sink it together, then.” His eyes remained watery and lifeless. He rolled his “r”s, while in his small mouth vowels became broad, dark and wistful. To Louise it seemed as if they were trying to slip out of German and back into his native Romanian.

  Nobody knew for sure where exactly Ronescu came from, or what he had done there. A few vague rumors were doing the rounds of the neighborhood, suggesting that he was a former secret agent who had once spied for Israel in Romania.