Hollerer had also been shot twice from behind. One bullet had shattered his right shoulder, the other had shredded his left kidney.
She dialed again. As the telephone rang she prayed she wouldn’t wake Lederle’s wife. Her prayer went unanswered.
“Louise, he’s asleep,” Antonia Lederle said crossly.
“I’m sorry to have woken you, I really am, but I have to speak to him.”
“Call back at eight.”
“Please, Antonia.”
“No.”
Lederle’s wife cut her off.
Louise stared at the time on her mobile. Two and a half hours until eight o’clock. She rang Bermann.
Bermann wasn’t asleep. “Where the hell are you?” he said.
“At my mother’s. Have you got anything?”
“You’re in Provence?”
“Come on, Rolf.”
Bermann paused, then said slowly, as if struggling to control himself, “You’re off the case, Luis. Get used to it, otherwise you’re never going to pull through. Forget the Jap and the dead boy and concentrate on getting off . . .”
“Rolf!” she shouted. “What have you got?”
Again Bermann paused. Then he took a big, noisy breath and said, “Nothing. A few ballistics details, some shoe and tire markings. Other than that, nothing. Don’t call again, Luis.”
“What about the monk?”
Silence. Bermann was wrestling with the last vestiges of his patience. “Nothing there, either.” The line went dead.
She let her mobile slide to the floor and crept under the blanket. What had happened to the monk? Did he manage to escape? Or would they at some point find his body too?
Outside it was still pitch black, but the fire was burning and the living room gradually warmed up. Louise closed her eyes. She had barely slept; Niksch had been giving her a hard time.
The bakery where her mother worked was in the center of the village. When Louise entered, a hectic chorus of bells rang out and she was surrounded by warm, yellow light.
Her mother was talking to an old man, occasionally casting a glance in her direction. The old man was talking about a dog. He thudded his stick against the floor and said the dog was a divine visitation. Her mother laughed and disagreed, but the man raised his voice as well as the stick, and repeated: a divine visitation. Then he took his paper bag and left.
“You look absolutely dreadful,” her mother said in German.
“Your sofa’s too soft; I didn’t get a wink of sleep. What kind of dog is it?” Louise went to the counter and put her hands on the angled glass. It was warm and smeared with fingerprints. A fridge was humming away by the wall. The shelf next to it and the baskets beneath were almost empty.
“A wild Alsatian who’s been ripping apart chickens and geese. They’ve been trying to shoot him for days, but he’s too smart for them. He hides during the day and at night he comes out for food. You should see them with their shotguns, shooting holes in the sky and in the fields. They’re scared shitless, and every day there’s a meeting at the mayor’s where they discuss ‘strategies’ as if they were conducting a war . . . You’ve got fat, my sweetheart, and as for your skin . . .”
“I may have put on a few pounds, but I haven’t got fat.”
“Are you drinking?”
Louise sighed. “Give me a baguette.”
Her mother wrapped the baguette in paper and handed it to her. When Louise tried to pay she refused. “Why have you come? Have you had a row with Mick?”
“There are some marriages that last longer than yours, Mama.”
Her mother laughed. “That’s an invention of the Catholic church.”
The bells rang as two elderly ladies came in. A chatter of voices, greetings exchanged, comments flew back and forth about the cold, the dog and the hunters. In the midst of all this her mother said in German, “I’m finished at one, will you come and get me?”
“Yes,” Louise said. “Yes, Mama, I am drinking.”
It took her an hour to search through the house. Still she could not find a single family photo. Of her brother Germain, her father, even of herself—none of them existed in her mother’s new life. Nothing from their shared past seemed to have enough sentimental value for her mother to be able to stomach the bitter memories it might evoke. Not Germain’s letters from north Africa, not the endless paintings she’d done as a girl, not the newspaper cuttings her mother had collected when they still lived together in Freiburg. Even her clothes, bedlinen and jewelry were from a new era.
She was on her way down the steep, narrow stairs when Lederle called. “Really sorry, but all hell’s broken loose here.” He sounded exhausted.
She sat on a step and nodded. A policeman had been murdered. The Liebau task force would soon comprise around forty colleagues from various police departments and the constabulary. Every two or three hours Almenbroich was being summoned to the head of the regional police. They were preparing for the first press conference, and an HQ for the task force was being set up on the ground in Liebau. All she could hear was Lederle’s voice, short of breath, but she could sense the footsteps, conversations and activity beyond his office door.
“Who’s in charge of the team?”
“Rolf.”
“It’s not his turn. It should be Alfons’ turn, and after Alfons it’s you.”
“Almenbroich has declared an emergency. Alfons is heading the investigation team and I’m leading the back-room operation.”
She nodded. Not fair, but sensible. Bermann owned situations like these. His energy and determination set the many-limbed machinery smoothly in motion. He was depressing proof of just how much dictators are able to achieve. And how first they create problems before solving them.
“Anything else come to light?”
Lederle hesitated. “No, nothing. We’ve got literally nothing.”
“Talk to Landen.”
“He was just here.”
“And?”
“Well.” Lederle sighed. “You know Bermann. He doesn’t like intellectuals. At any rate, we haven’t found out anything we didn’t already know.”
She went into the sitting room. It was cold; she’d forgotten to put more wood on. She sat on the sofa, pulled the blanket over her legs and placed her hand on her aching tummy, which would not release Niksch. Her gaze came to rest on the framed photographs of strangers on the windowsill. “How about the monastery?”
“Schneider and Anne are on their way, with a French colleague.”
“Really? Why are the French being so cooperative all of a sudden?”
“They’re not,” Lederle said. “Schneider and Anne are allowed to go along, but they’re not allowed to ask questions, take photos, carry weapons or take their own car. The usual rules.”
“All the same, they’re being allowed to visit.”
“Only because Almenbroich groveled to Mulhouse.”
Bonì smiled. It was Almenbroich who had come up with the saying: Freiburg Kripo gets more support from Moscow than from Colmar.
She stroked the faces with her fingers. Portraits of two men and two women, all about sixty years of age. Secretive, weather-beaten faces that told you nothing except that these people had led a simple life in nature. And yet they had some connection to her mother. They were important to her.
“We’ll see,” Lederle said, clearing his throat. “How are you getting on, anyway?”
All of a sudden she realized that Lederle was keeping something from her—just as Bermann had. “Rolf thinks the monk’s involved, doesn’t he? Have you launched a manhunt for him, then?”
“Please don’t get worked up, Bonì.”
“I’m not getting worked up.”
“It’s a possibility, isn’t it? He might have had accomplices . . .”
Of course it was a possibility. What’s more, it ought to be one. Dictators didn’t just create problems, but possibilities too. She could have laughed out loud. Bermann was so unimaginative. “Promise me you’l
l do your best to see it’s not the only possibility,” she said.
She waited outside the bakery. On the other side of the steamed-up windows two or three small dark figures were moving about in the yellow light. The door opened and a woman emerged. Louise recalled the faces on the photographs, but none matched. Then her mother left the bakery and tentatively linked arms with her.
At lunch they barely spoke. Louise thought of the photographs, of Filbinger, and of the fact that neither he nor the past were important anymore. “Is water OK with lunch?” her mother asked, and she gave a disgruntled nod.
The downfall of the family, or so her father claimed, had begun in 1968. That year gave “people like your mother—frustrated feminists, hippies and communists—ideas, comrades, forums, focal points.” Those four digits pierced the body of the family, which began to hemorrhage in 1968 and collapsed completely ten years later.
In the interim there were discussions, followed by arguments, hysteria, fisticuffs, and finally an uncanny peace. Her mother became a “communist whore,” a “man-eater” and “terrorist”; her father a “fascist” and a “collaborator.” Germain dropped out of school and fled to north Africa. Louise stayed and hoped things would improve.
One night legions of uniformed officers turned up to arrest her mother. The reason? She was alleged to be close to the Baader-Meinhof gang, or at least a sympathizer. It took weeks for her lawyer to disprove the charges.
It never came to light who had denounced her mother. But soon it became clear who she suspected. She never went home, and from that day on she never spoke another word to Louise’s father.
Even then she had favored simplistic solutions.
At the beginning, at least, it was more complicated. Louise remembered a photograph of a demonstration her father had been on too. In her mind she had a clear picture of him smiling hesitantly at the camera. Beside him her mother, with one arm raised. This photograph had vanished too.
I’ve never been on a demonstration in my entire life, her father claimed later. Conformists don’t demonstrate, her mother had said.
After Filbinger’s resignation in 1978 she expended her entire energy on individual battles: against Christian Socialist Franz-Josef Strauss, NATO, the arms industry, the Kohl government. New fronts opened up daily. But when Germain died in 1983, she gave up the war overnight.
“Did you have a boyfriend at the time?” Louise said with her mouth full.
“When?”
“At the beginning. In sixty-eight.”
“Heavens . . . Is that what your father told you?”
“‘You can imagine what they got up to in their communes,’ is what he said.”
“‘What they got up to . . .’” Her mother broke off.
“Well?”
Her mother got up to put the plates in the sink. “Why is all this coming out now? It’s more than thirty years ago.”
“Did you have a boyfriend, Mama?”
“Are you holding me responsible for your problems?” Her mother put an Italian coffee pot on the stove. She didn’t look rattled, just cross.
Louise smiled faintly. You can get rid of photographs, but not memories. At least not when other people keep them alive. “So why is Filbinger no longer important. For ten years everything revolved around him, and now he’s unimportant.”
Her mother turned around. “What I said was: He’s not important here.” For a moment they looked each other in the eye. Her mother’s face was still smooth and beautiful, in its pinched way. Her eyes had a particular, intense life in them. Louise had never been able to work out what went on behind them.
Her mother filled two cups with espresso. The cups were more robust than Richard Landen’s and showed signs of frequent use. They matched her hands. Louise tried to imagine Landen with the task force. But he was just a shape, a feeling, barely even an image. All she could remember vividly was his clear, detached voice. You can never really understand another person, the voice said.
Her mother sat down. “Why is all this so important for you?”
“Why this . . .” She paused, took a sip of coffee, closed her eyes.
No other name had become so branded on her mind as Filbinger. In her memory she’d got out of bed with this name and gone to school, she’d spent her evenings with the name and sometimes even dreamed of him. To begin with the name had sounded wonderful, representing a mysterious being her father and mother had long discussions about. These discussions had escalated into serious rows and the mysterious being had turned into a nightmare.
She opened her eyes and looked at her mother.
“Is that why you’re here, Louise? To accuse me? To tell me I’m to blame for everything?”
She shook her head. “I’m here because two days ago someone died.”
Later that afternoon they went out. It was raining softly; the bright-gray sky hung low over the village. They followed the road for a while, then turned on to a path at the edge of the village, which led up a small hill.
Her mother had barely said a word since Louise had told her about Niksch. She looked thoughtful, exhausted. When they reached the top she stopped and said, “Do you ever think about Germain?”
“Occasionally. Why?”
“He was only a few years older than the policeman.”
Louise nodded. They went on. Her mother was wearing a simple, dark coat, a simple, checked scarf, walked with simple, small steps and had become a simple woman for whom a few square miles sufficed. Louise found it difficult to recognize in her the warrior from her childhood and adolescence. Like Landen’s Japanese wife, she had traveled a long way.
“I rarely think of him. Never, in fact.”
“Isn’t he important here either?”
Her mother shrugged. “It’s impossible to forget the bad things and only hold on to the good ones. I can’t, at least. Somehow it’s all connected. When I picture Germain I automatically have your father in my mind, and then I think of Filbinger and that unbearable male world of power, lies, greed, war . . . So I prefer not to think of Germain.”
“Or of me,” Louise said.
“Yes.” Her mother shot her a glance. “It’s appalling, I know, but that’s how it is.”
Beyond the hill lay a gently sloping meadow with yellowish grass, which after a couple of hundred yards became a barren, rocky landscape. Wisps of fog hung between the hulking boulders and a muddy path led up to them. They followed it in silence. Louise thought of Landen and wondered how he coped with the knowledge that he’d never really understand his wife. And whether he had a way of making it bearable.
Her mobile rang. Lederle. Every other second the poor connection made his voice cut out. She swiveled around, but it made no difference. She did grasp, however, that Hollerer’s condition was unchanged. She wanted to ask more, but Lederle was already talking about Schneider and Wallmer. They had been at the Kanzan-an with the French detective. The monk—“Taro,” Lederle said—had indeed come from there.
“What else? . . . Reiner?”
Lederle’s answer was incomprehensible.
She walked a few steps further. There was a roaring in her ear, and then Lederle’s reedy voice again. Nobody at the monastery knew anything more, he said. “Bonì?”
“I can hear you.”
Schneider and Wallmer had been allowed to take a look at Taro’s cell, while the French detective had questioned the people at the monastery. As Richard Landen had suspected, Taro was from Kyushu. He was twenty-three and had been at the Kanzan-an for four months. He’d left the monastery some time on Wednesday night; his absence had gone unnoticed until the following morning. That was all they had been able to discover.
Louise wondered whether Schneider and Wallmer had primed their French colleague with the right questions. Questions you would ask based on the assumption that Taro was a victim, not a suspect. Questions that assumed other possibilities than the one Bermann had served up.
“What about at your end?” Lederle said. “Everyth
ing all right? Anything I can do for you?”
“Who’s the French guy they went with?”
“Your father rang, by the way. He says he can’t get you at home anymore. Doesn’t he have your mobile number? Shall I give it to him?”
“Please don’t. Reiner, who were they there with?”
Lederle said nothing for a moment. Then he said, “Bonì? I can barely hear you . . .”
“I can hear you loud and clear.”
“Bonì? Hello? . . .”
“Cut the crap, Reiner.”
“Bonì, I’m going to hang up now, OK?”
“Christ, you’re such a coward.”
Lederle sighed. “Muller,” he said. “But please keep out of it.”
“Thanks.” She put her phone away.
Justin Muller. She grinned. One of the few French colleagues of theirs who assessed requests from Germany according to their urgency rather than by any other criteria. An honest, likeable chap with curly hair, a bit tubby, paternal in a nice way. Two sons, divorced—or at least he was. A great kisser. A year ago she’d almost got him into bed. Or was it the other way around? We shouldn’t be doing this, we’re colleagues, one of them had said at some point. She? Muller?
She instinctively felt in her anorak pocket. Car keys, tissues, four packets of chewing gum, mobile. Nothing else.
“Louise?”
She looked up. A grim smile sat on her mother’s lips. Although it was raining more heavily now, she’d untied her headscarf and pushed it over her head. We shouldn’t be doing this, we’re colleagues. She’d never say anything like that.
Louise slowly came back to her mother.
“What happened to you?” Taking her arm, her mother pulled her onward. Louise felt how much strength she still had.
A gentle, damp wind was stirring. The path wound between the head-high rocks. Once more she thought she could smell snow hanging in the air. It occurred to Louise that in the last few years she had always visited her mother in winter. After her hurried separation from Mick three years ago, after Calambert’s death two years ago, and in January last year, having spent Christmas and New Year alone, and then taken half the night to quietly dispose of the empty bottles.
Zen and the Art of Murder Page 9