Landen stopped talking. She sensed that he had leaned back.
Lederle had stopped the car. In the headlights she could make out the tire marks of the Daimler and the patrol car from this morning.
“Why are we here, Louise?” he said.
“Because of the footprints.”
Lederle switched off the engine, but nobody got out. They stared at the white of the snow broken up by dark patches in the beam of the headlights. After a while Lederle turned his head and asked, “So how does the story go on?”
“It’s not important,” Landen said.
With the help of a flashlight and the headlights Bonì followed the footprints toward the hill. She thought of Huike. She had given him Taro’s face and he was sitting in the snow, in the middle of an expanding pool of beautiful, bright-red crystals.
For about fifty yards the footprints formed a narrow line; the strangers had walked behind each other. Then they dispersed to become three parallel tracks in the snow. Side by side, they led up the gentle slope. Every so often there were small circles in the snow. The men—she was certain these were men’s footprints—must have stopped and turned around. Were they being followed too? Or were they looking for someone?
At the top of the hill the tracks fanned out at acute angles to one another. The footprints on the left pointed directly to a pair of static headlights in the distance—probably Niksch’s car.
She followed them a few yards down the hill. When the Daimler vanished over the summit behind her, she grasped inside the right pocket of her anorak.
Then she sat cross-legged with Calambert and Huike in the snow. What was Buddhism’s view on killing? Did it accept it as inevitable on some occasions? She made a mental note to ask Landen when the two of them were alone together, and she would make sure that happened soon.
The headlights seemed to be moving slowly. Jägermeister movements, she thought. But then the light painstakingly peeled a bit of forest from the darkness.
She recalled what Niksch had said: Nothing, nothing at all. Had she been mistaken? Was Bermann right? Her inner voice fell silent.
Hollerer, Niksch, then Lederle and now Richard Landen. She’d mobilized four people, ruined their Sundays, set herself a ridiculous ultimatum and now nothing was happening. Apart from an injured and frightened Japanese monk roaming the snowy landscape of southern Baden. And her having spied shapes between trees in the dim light of daybreak.
Shapes that might have been trees.
She stood up. The beam from the headlights kept changing shape. All these questions merged into one: when, she thought, was something finally going to happen?
5
Bermann was not at HQ. A message had been left on Bonì’s desk: We have a meeting with Almenbroich at 8 on Monday morning. She considered it an unusually polite note; in other circumstances Bermann would have written: Mon, 8—Almenbr. But he was gentler with sick officers.
Louise took a pair of scissors and cut the message into small strips, then the strips into tiny squares. It gave her less satisfaction than she’d thought it might. With her hand she swept the squares into the wastepaper basket and reached for the telephone. While the person at directory assistance searched for the number of Kanzan-an, she scraped the remaining Bermann strips from her hand.
The monastery office was apparently unmanned. She left a message on the answering machine, then called Richard Landen’s number without knowing what she’d say if he picked up. To her annoyance she realized she was nervous. It rang six times, then a woman’s voice said, “Yes, hello?”
Bonì waited. It occurred to her that she’d hoped Landen’s wife would pick up. She wanted to get her down from the upstairs room, hear her voice. She wanted confirmation that the woman really did exist.
As she hung up Anne Wallmer appeared at the door. “Ah, Luis, you are here.”
Wallmer was the only woman Bermann would tolerate at his side on operations. Having said that, he didn’t regard her as a woman, and to some extent this was logical. Wallmer tried to be like Bermann. Her behavior was laddish, her laugh loud and coarse, and she cultivated rippling biceps in the gym. Like Bermann she usually wore jeans and a black leather jacket. Schneider, Bermann’s close friend, said she used the gents’ when no one was looking. Sometimes Bermann and Schneider would lie in wait for her there, but they hadn’t caught her yet.
“I need the Thielmann file,” Wallmer said. She was standing by Bonì’s desk, her hands in her jacket pockets, and staring right at her. Bermann had wasted no time organizing the handover; Louise had been in charge of the Thielmann investigation.
“You can have it tomorrow.”
“I need to read up on it this evening, Luis.”
Bonì’s gaze drifted over to the Thielmann file on her desk. She looked up and shook her head. “Tomorrow.” She wondered how far Wallmer would be prepared to go. Whether any sense of camaraderie or fairness had survived in her pumped-up chest.
At that moment Louise’s mobile rang. She walked past Wallmer and over to her anorak. The number looked vaguely familiar. “Yes?” Nobody answered. “Hello?” Silence on the other end of the line. No breathing, no background noise, nothing. A strange thought raced through her mind: the silence of the snow.
She waited another second then cut the connection and turned around.
Wallmer had gone. The Thielmann file was still on the desk.
Louise sat down. The silence of the snow. She accessed the “Calls” menu. She jotted down a mobile number and called back. Busy. She stared uneasily at the numbers in pencil. Did she know the number or not?
There was a knock at the door and a police officer entered. “Visitor for you. Says you know him. Apparently Chief Inspector Bermann sent him.” He stepped aside and flapped his hand lethargically. A Japanese teenager appeared.
“I didn’t order sushi,” she said.
“And I haven’t got any. The chief inspector said you were looking for a translator.”
She closed her eyes. From the darkness behind her lids Bermann’s grinning face lunged at her.
“And someone who knows about Buddhism. He says it’s about samurais and ritual murder.”
She opened her eyes. The boy, Enni, wore a serious expression. He was sixteen at most. Whenever she went to eat at the sushi place a few streets away he was always behind the counter, looking exhausted. “I think he’s been watching too much television,” he said.
She wanted to laugh, but then felt tears in her eyes. She let them run down her cheeks.
“Is everything all right, Inspector?”
The silence of the snow. She felt for her mobile and pressed call-back. Still busy. She wiped away the tears with her hands and suppressed the urge to fling her arms on the desk, lay down her head and give up.
The boy was now beside her. “Stand up, Inspector.” She hesitated before doing as he asked.
He was only a little taller than she was. He placed his right hand on her lower abdomen. She recoiled, but the hand went with her movement. Warmth spread out below her belly button and Bonì felt herself blushing. Without wanting to, she imagined him sliding his hand down further. She wondered how she would have reacted. Would she have shot the boy or taken him home?
“What’s that?” the boy asked.
“My tummy.”
“And?”
“And what?”
“What’s that, Inspector?”
“No idea. Skin, muscle, guts.”
“It’s your center. The seat of your energy. It’s the center of the universe.”
“All I can feel at the moment is air.”
“Me too,” the boy said with a grin.
As soon as they started laughing she remembered where she knew the number from.
Hollerer’s mobile.
She couldn’t reach Hollerer and Niksch by radio. Niksch’s mobile rang a few times before going to voicemail. Hollerer’s was still busy.
She requested three patrol cars over the loudspeaker. Five policemen an
d one woman hurried with her to the stairwell. “Where are we going?” the policewoman asked, a pale blonde girl called Lucie or Trudi or maybe even Susie.
Bonì stared at her. Where indeed? Where precisely should she send the cars? Into the forest east of Liebau? “Liebau police station. Wait for me there.”
She remembered Bermann. As head of department he would have to be informed. Louise turned back and went to his office, but he wasn’t there. She met him on her way downstairs. This time he was livid. “You have to stick to the rules too,” he snapped. “The uniforms are staying here.”
It took her a moment to realize that he’d heard her announcement. “Hollerer called; someone’s out there,” she said breathlessly.
“Such crap,” Bermann said.
She moved closer to him. His mouth was half open and he smelled of beer, onions and garlic. She remembered Niksch’s döner and Hollerer’s three seasons. She felt tears running down her cheeks again—or still. Her great, mysterious sadness was back, the dark hole inside her, where Calambert and Mick and Germain sat alongside her parents and Filbinger, and now Huike too, as well as her unease about the monk, Hollerer and Niksch. All of a sudden she was glad she was going with Bermann to see Almenbroich, to be put on sick leave or suspended or chucked out. She would give up and leave it to Bermann and Almenbroich and whoever else to make the decisions about her future. Relief unfurled within her. Give up at long last. Forget Calambert.
“Crap!” Bermann screamed.
She put her arms around his neck and pulled him toward her. Bermann froze. For a moment he didn’t even breathe. Deep inside her stirred a vague horror at the degree of revulsion she triggered in him. But that wasn’t important now.
She brought her mouth to his ear. “But what if it’s true, Rolf?” she whispered. “Then you’ll be the one going to Almenbroich tomorrow and it’ll be your career that’s over. Have you thought about that?”
Bermann began to breathe again, but his muscles remained tense. Footsteps came and went, voices spoke, doors were opened and closed. Then silence.
Finally Bermann pushed her away with two fingers. “Just us two, Luis,” he said. “The uniforms are staying here.”
Bermann didn’t say another word until they got to Liebau, his tension didn’t appear to have eased. “Where now?” he barked at the exit to the village. She directed him into the darkness to the east. Shortly afterward her mobile rang, but it was only Lederle asking whether she needed him earlier after all. Whether he shouldn’t do the whole night shift. He couldn’t sleep anyway, he told her. “Thanks,” she said, “but please stay at home.”
Then she thought of Landen, imagined him sitting in the back. She wished he’d told a different story, one she could have understood. One where the ending was important. Had Lederle found out how it went on during the drive to Günterstal?
She tried again to reach Hollerer or Niksch by radio and telephone. The only sign of life was the staccato of Hollerer’s mobile. Memories of Calambert welled inside her. She had driven in Bermann’s car on that occasion too. They’d come back with one dead person, and another dying.
“Drive slowly, it’s left up there.”
“There’s no road.”
“Slowly, Rolf.”
Cursing, Bermann made the turn.
When they arrived at the spot where they’d left Hollerer and Niksch late that afternoon, Bermann switched off the headlights. The sky was cloudless and the moon had not yet risen. They walked a while in the dark-gray snow. No lights, no sounds. Their anxiety grew. For the thousandth time in the past hour she pressed Redial and heard only the busy tone.
On the way back to the car Bermann discovered the tire prints of the patrol car, running straight across the virgin snow. “Quick,” Louise said.
They followed the car’s path driving in the furrows. The tracks kept making small swerves to the left or right. Niksch had been enjoying himself. When the ground sloped upward, the wheels of Bermann’s police Mercedes began to spin.
“Half an hour, Luis,” Bermann said. “Then I’m heading back.” He took a flashlight from the glove compartment.
“But keep it switched off,” Louise said.
She went in front. The surface of the snow was slightly crusty, though soft beneath. Bermann was wearing sneakers and having difficulty keeping up. She heard him slip several times.
It had been the same two years ago. They’d had to abandon the car and continue on foot in silence through the snow. Bermann had slipped time and again. Then Bermann, Lederle and the others had gone in the right direction and she’d taken the wrong one.
After ten minutes the ground sloped gently uphill. The tire tracks approached a sparse wood and then ran parallel to it. She stopped to blow her nose.
Bermann came up next to her. “Wallmer rang me earlier,” he said.
She nodded. “Things not moving quickly enough for you, eh?”
Bermann didn’t respond. He looked perturbed, pensive. She got moving again.
Soon she spotted the footprints of a solitary individual, leading out of the woods. The tracks of the patrol car branched off, following the footprints away from the trees. Only now did she notice how small the monk’s feet were.
Ten minutes later they spotted the car. It was twenty yards away in an open field. The engine and lights were off, the passenger door open. Bermann stopped. His gaze wandered back and forth between Louise and the car. He appeared confused. She took out her weapon and tried not to think of Hollerer and Niksch.
The car was empty. On the passenger tray she saw gloves and a thermos. She placed a hand on the hood—cold. She stopped beside the passenger door; the seat was full of crumbs.
A movement made her turn her head. Bermann was standing by the trunk, now holding his pistol too. He was staring at her shoes. She glanced down and saw she was standing in a muddle of footprints. Slowly she crouched and looked around. Nothing was moving. Darkness, snow—and footprints that ran to and from the car in a number of directions.
Bermann knelt beside her. “I don’t believe it,” he said, pulling out his mobile. His cheeks were red, his eyes screwed up in concentration, his breathing strained. She could almost like him in moments such as this, when he gave her the feeling that the disruption of the system was merely temporary. That there were opportunities to restore it. Bermann had the unshakable belief that the system was intact again when you found the person who had put it into disarray.
She thought differently. Nothing would ever be the same as before the deed. No matter what it was, the deed changed the system forever. It left scars, holes, puzzles. People had disappeared. Those that remained had changed.
She stood up while Bermann whispered his call for backup. The various sets of footprints fanned out in a semicircle. Two people had approached the car from the side and from behind, and walked away from it in the same direction. Parallel to these ran more footprints, also leading away from the car. They were broad, long and deep—Hollerer?
Seven feet away she stumbled upon a fourth set, coming from the driver’s side of the vehicle. Niksch.
She turned to Bermann. He’d stood up too and was coming over to her. She thought of the lights of Liebau, twinkling in the darkness beyond the woods and the hills. And of how Hollerer and Niksch would now be sitting at home if she’d prevailed over Bermann that afternoon.
Bermann returned her look but said nothing. At once she knew that he was thinking the same. And that he’d blame her for not having asserted herself.
But that wasn’t important now.
With her gun she indicated the direction in which the four sets of footprints disappeared and he nodded. Bent low, they followed the tracks as quietly as possible.
A few minutes later they saw Hollerer. He was lying on his back in a dark, icy sea of blood. Bonì almost passed out. A chill ran across her scalp and her heart started racing. She forced herself forward.
Hollerer was alive. When she kneeled beside him she saw he was weeping silently
. His round face glowed white against the shadowy night snow. She put her hands on his cheeks. “Hollerer . . .” No response. She stroked his face and whispered, “Hollerer.”
She was vaguely aware that Bermann was on his mobile again as he came to join her. She dropped into the snow. The damp cold on her bare neck was almost painful. The sky was clear and infinite; she found it too big, frighteningly big.
Louise rolled on to her side. Bermann had begun buttoning up Hollerer’s coat. How could she have trusted this fat, old, slow man with such a task? And where was Niksch? Had he managed to escape? Or was he also lying . . .
She resisted taking this thought to its conclusion. She wanted to close her eyes, lie there on the ground and go to sleep. Give up. But then she thought of the mother and the three sisters who needed a policeman in the family to make them feel more secure. She saw their faces before her, staring at her, pleading silently for Niksch.
Bonì scrambled clumsily to her feet. She took off her anorak and laid it over Hollerer’s legs.
“Fuck, we’re losing him!” Bermann said.
“In case you need alcohol, there’s some in the pockets.”
Bermann looked up. “What do you mean?” he barked.
Without really knowing why, she said, “There’s a camera somewhere. Niksch was photographing the monk.”
“For fuck’s sake, Luis, stay here. There are at least two of them.”
“Do you want to go?”
“No one’s fucking going!”
Zen and the Art of Murder Page 7