Zen and the Art of Murder Read online

  “Your car,” he said in French.

  She nodded and with her right hand pulled the blanket up to her neck. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been washed.

  “I took it in to Altkirch today, to my brother-in-law. He’s got a workshop, you see. He’s looking after it.”

  Louise nodded again.

  “You were lucky. A Renault radiator against the reinforced side of a VW. Could have been a different outcome.” He grinned and glanced at Bermann.

  Bermann said, “Cut to the point, Chervel.”

  “Tell us what happened, Louise,” Chervel said.

  “There’s a report,” she said in French. Chervel smiled meekly and said nothing.

  So she explained again what happened after her second visit to the Kanzan-an.

  Muller was silent, but Chervel had plenty of questions. What had happened with Taro exactly a week ago? Why had she spent the whole night with him? Since when had she harbored suspicions about Asile d’enfants? And, most important, why? Why had she taken Natchaya with her? Why had she been working alone?

  “None of your business,” Bermann said in German.

  Why hadn’t she notified anyone prior to the shootout?

  “Ditto,” Bermann said in Latin.

  Later Chervel listed in a soft voice all the international agreements and national laws she had violated. The fact that she had been “involved in a shootout with French citizens” didn’t make things any better.

  She rolled her eyes.

  “Utter nonsense,” Bermann said in German.

  “Yes,” Chervel said. “But we have a problem.”

  She sensed that Bermann was leaning on the right-hand side of the bed. Gravity began to pull her toward him. She wondered how he’d react if her bottom suddenly rolled on top of his hands. “If we’d sent a request for mutual assistance,” Bermann said, “we’d still have been waiting for an answer at Christmas, for God’s sake.”

  “We?” Bonì said, but none of the three men took notice of her. She glanced at the alarm clock. Ten minutes had become half an hour. The men gave the impression they wanted to spend the whole day in her room.

  Through the blanket she could feel one of Bermann’s fingers touch her buttocks. The mattress returned to the horizontal.

  Chervel leaned back. “Right,” he said with a sigh. “Let’s look at what we’ve got. We’ve got a monastery in France where French people, Germans and Asians live. But the monastery belongs to us because it’s in France. Then we’ve got a VW Sharan with a Cologne license plate. In theory that belongs to you, unless it’s in France. The same is true for the owner. We have a Swiss organization with its HQ in Basel, that belongs to Switzerland . . .”

  “Switzerland isn’t a problem,” Bermann butted in. “If we have to go into Switzerland we jump into the car, call operations in Basel, get the public prosecutor on the line, the prosecutor says, ‘Are you armed?’, we say, ‘Yes we are,’ and he says, ‘Good luck, then, you won’t come to any harm.’ The Italians aren’t a problem either. Even the Russians aren’t a problem.” He gave a satisfied grin.

  “France is a problem,” Chervel said, now grinning himself. “So, what else do we have? We’ve got three French pros. They’re ours, even if it’s likely they’ve killed a German policeman and drive a German car. We’ve got German and French employees of Asile; we can share them depending on where they are. Have I forgotten anything?”

  “The children,” Bonì said.

  “Aha,” Chervel said.

  “Why don’t you clear out of here and find them?”

  A little later a chubby, young senior doctor came in and supplied her with medical details from the foot of the bed. No broken bones, no damaged organs, just muscles and fat tissue as well as an inflammation from the dirt that had entered the wound. She nodded, exhausted. The doctor spoke in a southern Baden dialect, quietly, but enthusiastically. His hands were in the side pockets of his doctor’s coat. He kept moving his arms out sideways, as far as the material would allow, resembling an exuberant white putto. She suspected this was the first bullet wound he had treated. His first encounter with a serious crime. With evil.

  “We were lucky,” he said. “With an injury to the arteria brachialis, that’s to say the artery in your upper arm—we’d have had circulatory shock after thirty minutes to two hours, so . . . loss of blood, tachyarrhythmia, which means rapid heartbeat, a drop in blood pressure, impaired consciousness, which means we wouldn’t have been sufficiently responsive, et cetera and we’d have needed emergency surgery, but that wouldn’t have been possible because we . . . I mean you . . . wouldn’t have been here.”

  He smiled sheepishly.

  “What else?”

  “What do you mean, ‘What else?’”

  “What else have you established? In general?”

  “In general?”

  “Is my blood OK?”

  “Yes, and you’re not pregnant, if that’s what you mean.”

  “That’s what I meant. Can I keep the bullet?”

  “The bullet? Ah, the bullet. No, it’s with your colleagues in forensics.”

  The following day, when she was able to sit up again, she called Anatol. He couldn’t talk because he had customers. Although he said little more than “Hi” and “Yes” and “Wow!” she sensed he was relieved and pleased. “We’ve got something to celebrate,” she said. “Come whenever you want, but bring a bottle of prosecco.”

  “OK. Tonight at nine?”

  “I need a sweater. And don’t forget the prosecco.”

  Anatol’s laughter sounded devious, as if he knew the real purpose of the prosecco and was deliberating whether he should do her the favor or not.

  Later that day Katrin Rein appeared at her bedside. The pretty doll’s face was pale, her hand cold, her eyes frightened.

  “You’re not going to start with your lecture now, are you?” Bonì said.

  Katrin shook her head.

  “Have you been worrying again?”

  Katrin nodded.

  She sat on the chair by the bed and emptied Louise’s water glass in one gulp. “Sorry. I’m not good at hospitals. Does it still hurt?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “And you were really shot?”

  Louise nodded wearily. For a ridiculous moment she felt almost proud. Then she remembered how she knew Katrin and the pride gave way to resignation. Katrin Rein, the abyss woman. Whose job it was to have a good poke around in the wound, to make it heal better.

  “W . . . w. . . where . . .?”

  She pointed cursorily to her right temple, her left shoulder.

  Katrin’s eyes widened, she poured herself more water and drained the glass. Then she wiped a few drops from the light fuzz on her upper lip. “I did my PhD on the psychological effects of gunshot wounds.”

  “On the victim or their therapist?”

  Katrin stared at her for a moment, and then started to laugh.

  Bonì forced a smile. The therapist and patient were joking with each other. Was that a good sign?

  In the afternoon Lederle took Louise for a stroll in a quiet, empty corridor. He linked arms with her, clearing his throat in embarrassment as he did so. It dawned on Louise that in all the time they had worked together he’d never touched her, apart from a shake of the hand. It was a nice feeling. It felt like starting again.

  He told her he had visited Hollerer the day before. His recovery was slow and he couldn’t remember a thing. He now knew that Niksch was dead. Bonì said nothing. The thought of Hollerer and Niksch had destroyed the feeling of starting again. She didn’t want to start again, she thought. She wanted to go on living with everything that had happened. In some way she felt that starting again would be a betrayal of Niksch.

  Hollerer wouldn’t be starting again either.

  She decided to visit him as soon as she was able.

  “How’s Antonia?”

  “Antonia’s fine, thank you. She sends her regards.”

  “Y
ou said there’s something I ought to know. What did you mean?”

  “Not here,” Lederle said.

  “Where?”

  “When this is all over, we’ll go out for dinner and I’ll tell you then.”

  “You’re being transferred.”

  Lederle smiled fleetingly. “Patience, my dear.”

  She grinned and laid her hand on his.

  Lederle told her that the manhunt hadn’t yet thrown up any results. Jean Berger, Annegret Schelling, Natchaya, the Frenchmen, the pregnant woman, the children—all of them had vanished from the face of the earth. The Sharan, on the other hand, had been found. They’d blown it up in a quarry to the west of Mulhouse. The French forensics team were putting together puzzles from charred pieces while the German request for mutual assistance was being processed.

  One promising lead was the name “Steiner.” A Steiner who might be a doctor. The French were looking; the Germans were looking. “If you’re right, they could do with a doctor.”

  She thought Lederle’s voice sounded too sober. But then he said with the same detachment, “I’d hoped to be spared something like this. Years ago we had a case where a ten-year-old girl had been passed around her relatives. I was supposed to head up the task force, but I chickened out. I didn’t want to . . . to see any photos or videos—do you understand? I mean, I don’t like children, but I didn’t want to see that. I didn’t want to believe it.”

  “And now?”

  “And now?” Lederle repeated. He shrugged. “Now it’s not so important what I see and what I don’t see.”

  “Why not?”

  “Why not?” Lederle frowned. They were approaching the end of the corridor. Behind them came the sound of soft footsteps, which went away again. The back of Lederle’s hand brushed her breast. His hand recoiled, then he said, “By the way, have I given you an apology yet?”

  “No one’s given me an apology.”

  “Then I’ll do it now. Please forgive me. You were right. We were . . . oh, I don’t know. All those strange Japanese people—it makes you think things you shouldn’t.” He laughed. “You think before you think.”

  She nodded. Yes, she had been right, but had she acted correctly? She couldn’t answer that. As ever, there was a lot she could have done differently, perhaps ought to have done differently. Think things through more thoroughly, be better prepared before acting.

  That morning Bermann had asked again and again why the fuck she hadn’t called. Why the fuck hadn’t she had the courage to come to him and Almenbroich with her theory—at the right time? She replied that she hadn’t had a theory, just a feeling. So why the fuck didn’t you trust your feeling? Bermann had said. I did, you fool, she protested, otherwise I wouldn’t be lying here.

  “We’ve just got to get them now,” Lederle said.

  “Yes.”

  They had stopped by the window at the end of the corridor. “It’s snowing,” Bonì said.

  “That’s what happens in winter.”

  They turned around and resumed their walking.

  “What about the names? Are they genuine?”

  Lederle nodded. “They seem to be.”

  Some things they had managed to find out, others not. They knew nothing about Jean Berger. The report from their Swiss colleagues should arrive today or tomorrow. Harald Mahler, Klaus Fröbick, Annegret Schelling led discreet lives and had no previous convictions. Mahler was an expert witness in compensation cases resulting from car accidents. Fröbick was a secondary school teacher, while Schelling had worked for a bank until a few months ago, since when she’d been unemployed. Fröbick had a family; Schelling was divorced. All three had been regular visitors to Thailand since the early 1990s and Schelling had traveled to other Far Eastern countries too. She lived in a one-bedroom apartment in Freiburg. Fröbick was a member of Freiburg Football Club and went to pretty much every home and away game with his two sons. At the school he was neither popular nor unpopular. He taught German and English, and at home took further education courses online. Besides exercises and learning material his computer contained several hundred video files—all child pornography, including rape. They had found no videos or images on Schelling’s or Mahler’s computers.

  A few days earlier Lederle and Anne Wallmer had been sitting on a flowery sofa in a terraced house in Villingen-Schwenningen, drinking coffee with evaporated milk and questioning a mistrustful Margaret Schelling about her daughter. On the windowsill stood photographs of little Annegret. Annegret ballet dancing. Riding. Holding her father’s hand. With her mother by her father’s grave. I really don’t understand what you want from us, the mother had said. What is Annegret supposed to have done?

  They’d run a thorough check on the family—after all, many abusers were victims of abuse themselves—but found nothing. No charges, no rumors, no suspicious visits to the doctor, no unusual occurrences according to what they knew. As far as the Schelling parents were concerned, at least, everything seemed to be in order. Lederle hesitated, then said, “But we don’t want to rule anything out anymore.”

  They’d stopped outside her room. “I was waiting at a traffic light today,” Lederle said, “and there was a family crossing the road: father, mother, ten- or eleven-year-old daughter. I couldn’t help wondering whether . . .” He shook his head.

  Louise looked at him. “It’s only natural.”

  “No, it’s not. I mean, I don’t wonder whether the man coming this way is a bank robber, or if the woman over there is a murderer.”

  “The hidden figures relating to bank robbery and murder aren’t as high as with child abuse.”

  “You’re right. By the way, the man coming this way is your father.”

  Louise’s father sat at the little table in her room, looking alternately at the Band-Aid on her temple and the bandage around her shoulder. She had never seen him so distraught. A small, wizened, empty, gray cocoon that threatened to turn to dust if you touched it. “Come on, Papa,” she said. “It was virtually nothing.”

  Her father didn’t seem to have heard. His eyes wandered from her shoulder to her temple. It was as if he couldn’t understand why the Band-Aid and bandage were there. What they meant, which was that she was still alive. That he hadn’t lost his second child as well.

  She sighed. What now? What could she talk to him about now, without risking that the cocoon might shatter? Not about what had happened in France, certainly not about Germain or her mother. Should she tell him about Anatol? About her feelings for Landen, whose wife would soon be having a baby? About Enni, who’d found the center of the universe in her belly?

  Should she confess that she couldn’t wait for the prosecco Anatol was going to bring?

  Louise grunted wearily. “I’m going to have another lie-down, Papa.”

  Her father got up and took her hand. She let him lead her to the bed and tuck her in. Then he sat down and clasped her hand.

  She remembered how he had often taken her and Germain to bed when they were children. My little butterfly, he used to say, holding her hands tight.

  She stared at his gray hands and began to cry.

  When Louise stopped weeping it was dark. Snowflakes flew against the window. Her father’s grasp was still as firm. At some point, when she had the time, she would tell him about Anatol and Landen, about Enni and the roshi. Let him turn his nose up all he liked, she was going to get him back into her life. She would confront him with herself, her liquid friends and her professional problems, so he knew who she was. Being alive, she thought, was more than just picking up the telephone when it rang.

  And at some point, when she had the time, she would help him remember what really had happened with her family in the 1970s. What he had done on a student demonstration.

  But not now. Now she wanted to sleep. “Go home, Papa,” she said quietly.

  She felt the mattress move, and then she fell asleep.

  At 8:30 p.m. the telephone rang. Half asleep, Bonì sat up and reached for it. She caught sig
ht of a note on the bedside table. I’ll come back in the morning, darling. I hope you don’t mind me staying in your apartment while you’re in here. Love, Papa.

  In her apartment?

  She sank into the pillows. When had she given him the key to her apartment? She couldn’t remember. Louise was gripped by panic as she thought of the cupboard below the sink. The mirrored cabinet above the washbasin in the bathroom. Underwear all over the bedroom, sitting room and bathroom. Barclay James Harvest in the CD player. The point at which she was going to get her father back into her life had come quicker than was strictly comfortable.

  With a groan she put the receiver to her ear. “Yes?”

  “How are you?” It was Barbara Franke.

  “Better.”

  “Great. I’ll come and visit you again tomorrow. You were right, by the way.”

  “About what?”

  “Areewan. Her mother gave her up for adoption in early 2000 and she was adopted shortly afterward. By the same couple that had already adopted her.”

  “Have you got a name?”

  “Two. You know them: Harald and Natchaya Mahler.”

  Bonì wondered why she wasn’t surprised. Then she realized that she was thinking just like Lederle: not ruling anything out. She couldn’t be surprised anymore.

  Natchaya and Areewan. Two more loose ends tied up.

  “They’re sisters,” Barbara said. “It’s a big family. Natchaya is the eldest, Areewan the youngest. Natchaya and two other sisters disappeared years ago, after the father died. To go and find work. The mother testified in court during the Areewan trial. You can imagine what that means.”

  “Prostitution?”

  “No,” Barbara said. “It means child abuse.”

  Anatol arrived shortly after she’d hung up. “Hi!” he said.

  “Hi!”

  “The things you get up to!”

  They had a brief, but oddly intimate kiss, then Anatol put the bottle of prosecco on the bedside table. They gazed at each other. He looked younger than she remembered. Over the past few days she’d furnished her image of him with crows’ feet, a few white hairs and a couple of extra pounds. Maybe it was just that he didn’t exude the same weary serenity as before.