Zen and the Art of Murder

  “You should go now,” Natchaya said.

  She looked up. “Not without my pistol.”

  Natchaya held out the weapon.

  Bonì hesitated, then took it. Once more everything seemed so simple. The grip of the pistol was warm and damp. She ejected the magazine. Two bullets. Coincidence, or the logic of destiny?

  Natchaya had placed her arm around Areewan’s shoulders. Her sister’s head was resting on her neck. Otherwise nothing appeared to have changed. No suggestion that in relinquishing the Walther, Natchaya had also relinquished control over her future.

  Both sisters were wearing jeans and tight sweatshirts. No room for any more pistols. For a small knife at most. But a knife? Or would they use poison?

  She put the pistol in the left pocket of her anorak. What was Natchaya planning? She felt the anger returning. So simple, and yet so complicated.

  There was a commotion on the other side of the door. She heard footsteps and someone talking in hushed tones. Then Wallmer said, “Everything OK, Luis?”

  “Yes,” she said gruffly, before looking Natchaya in the eye and saying, “Where are your people?”

  Natchaya willingly told her that Paul Lebonne had absconded a week earlier, as had Jean Berger. Annegret Schelling had disappeared too. Klaus Fröbick had been here, but he drove off after a call from Steiner that morning. Her husband had spoken to him, but she hadn’t. Fröbick was in a panic, desperate to flee, but unsure of where to go.

  Bonì nodded thoughtfully and asked about Taro. Natchaya didn’t recognize the name. “The monk,” Bonì said.

  “The monk,” Natchaya repeated. She had no idea what had happened to him. The three Frenchmen had taken him away. “He knew.”

  “What?”

  “He saw the men with me. He watched what we did.”

  When they discovered him, Mahler and Lebonne beat him to the ground. They thought he was unconscious. While they deliberated what to do with him he vanished. Mahler called the Frenchmen, who followed Taro and encountered Hollerer and Niksch. They told Mahler at the Kanzan-an and asked what they should do. Mahler said they needed to find the monk. He set off with Lebonne. The Frenchmen shot Hollerer and Niksch. Mahler and Lebonne found Taro, and the Frenchmen took him away.

  “To kill him?”

  Natchaya returned her gaze without betraying any emotion. Bonì sensed that she wanted to spare her the answer. For the time being she let it lie. Later, when everything was over and she was back in the department, she would hear the truth. “In the forest where they found Taro,” she said, “there were children’s footprints.”

  Natchaya shook her head. There hadn’t been any children there. Louise pursed her lips. She’d been right about the Sharan tire marks, but not about the children’s footprints.

  She put her hands back on Natchaya’s feet. “Have you taken all the children to their new families?”

  Natchaya shook her head.

  “Where are the rest of them?”

  “There’s a barn.”

  “A what?” Bonì said, not having understood Natchaya’s English.

  “A barn,” Natchaya said more slowly, raising a hand.

  The barn was in the forest beyond the houses, fifty yards up a narrow path from the main building. Bonì ran ahead, followed by Bermann and some other officers, including Schneider. The snow was eight to twelve inches deep. They could tell from footprints now partially snowed over that someone had been back and forth here hours before. An adult. No children’s prints were visible.

  Louise stopped to catch her breath. The cold air stung her lungs. She felt giddy, her shoulder was hurting and she knew she wouldn’t be able to go on much longer. The time had come for her to recuperate. Two months, three months—as long as it took. She just needed to find Pham, talk to Katrin Rein and then her period of rest could begin. A time for contemplation. Of unrest.

  Bermann, Schneider and the others overtook her, Bermann speaking into his mobile. He’d called Lederle back at the station and was telling him what car Fröbick was driving—a white BMW, according to Natchaya. They didn’t know the model, only that it was an estate. And that Fröbick had several hours’ head start, even if he didn’t know where to go. Bermann put his mobile away and took out his pistol.

  By the time she reached the barn the men had spaced themselves out around the building. Bermann and Schneider were standing by a door set in a larger double door. It was ajar. “Police! Open up!” Bermann shouted, kicking it open at almost exactly the same time.

  Bonì stood ten yards away. No children’s voices. No crying, no screaming. Pham and a two-year-old girl from Poipet in Cambodia must be in there.

  Bermann shot out of the barn and ran back toward the houses, followed by Schneider. Neither afforded her a glance.

  She entered the barn, which consisted of a single room lit by a bright bulb that hung from the tall ceiling. Ranged along one wall were half a dozen mattresses with woollen blankets. Along the wall opposite were piles of clothes. Toys were scattered across the floor. It reeked of urine and excrement.

  Pham and the girl were nowhere to be seen.

  Louise leaned against the wall and sank to the floor. A young, female police sergeant kneeled beside her and asked if everything was OK. She nodded. She rested her head against the wooden wall and tried not to pass out. “You could do with some fresh air,” the sergeant said.

  Three of them managed to pull Bonì to her feet, and when they got her outside she felt a little better.

  It took a moment for her to grasp two things. First, Fröbick must have taken the children with him. Second, Bermann was on his way to see Natchaya.

  There was a ghostly silence back in the house. Half the task force had gathered by the door and in the room where Mahler’s body lay, but no one was speaking. It smelled of sweat, old clothes, stale cigarette smoke. Feebly she pushed her way past her colleagues.

  Natchaya and Areewan were still sitting by the window. Areewan was keening again, Natchaya was phlegmatic, and both were staring at the figure of Bermann in front of them. “So?” he said menacingly.

  “Rolf,” Bonì said.

  Bermann spun around. “Out,” he hissed. “I don’t want you in here!”

  “They don’t know where the children are.”

  “Go, Luis.”

  Wallmer came to her, but said nothing.

  “Take her home,” Bermann barked.

  “Don’t you touch me,” Louise said.

  Natchaya looked at her. “You should go now.”

  You should have fought, she thought, returning her gaze. She hated herself for having thoughts such as these. A moment later she asked in English, “Because things cannot change anymore?”

  Natchaya nodded.

  As she went down the stairs with Wallmer a tune could be heard, but only faintly. She stopped and turned around. It was coming from the room they’d just left.

  “Come on,” Wallmer said.

  “Do you hear that?”

  “What?”

  They went on.

  “What am I supposed to have heard?” Wallmer said.

  “Beethoven,” Bonì said.

  Outside there was light snow. The cold seemed to have abated slightly. They walked in silence past the larger of the two buildings. Bonì asked to borrow Wallmer’s mobile, then rang Lederle at headquarters. He had Chervel on the other line. “Call me back when you’ve found Fröbick and the children,” she said. “I need to be there when you get him. It doesn’t matter when. Do you hear me? I—need—to—be—there.”

  Lederle made her a promise.

  Wallmer grinned as Bonì returned her mobile. “You always get what you want in the end.”

  “It only looks that way, Anne.”

  At that moment voices were raised in the smaller building behind her. With a loud bang a casement window crashed against the wall. Frantic male voices burst outside, with Bermann’s bitter curses louder than all the other sounds.

  Wallmer had turned to look. Bo
nì kept going.

  The voices and the swearing stopped.

  We cannot stay, we cannot leave.

  18

  Her father had gone. Louise searched her apartment twice, but he hadn’t left a note. She turned all the radiators up high, undressed and switched on the radio. But even under the shower Natchaya hummed “Für Elise” in her head.

  She was certain she’d used poison rather than a knife. If you were killing someone to save them from a worse fate, you didn’t stick a knife into them.

  As she dried herself she wondered why she felt so little sadness at the sisters’ deaths. It made her feel a little melancholy, but no more than that. Perhaps because she hadn’t witnessed it herself. Perhaps because she felt so sorry for their lives. Or because Natchaya had been so embroiled in Asile d’enfants’ business.

  For a while she tried to disentangle the questions relating to Natchaya’s guilt and responsibility, but didn’t get far. An underage Thai girl is hired out or sold to pimps. The girl meets a German sex tourist who’s a regular visitor to Thailand, probably in a Bangkok brothel. By then she’s a professional and still underage. When she reaches the age of consent she marries the German. Via a criminal organization that procures children, she tries to bring her sister over. The mother gets the adoption annulled, but a few years later the sister is released and comes to Germany. While the girl protects her sister from a life as a child prostitute she helps with the procurement and sale of Far Eastern children to European customers. Is she forced to? Probably not. So why does the girl do it? She knows that what awaits the elder children at least is horrific, otherwise she wouldn’t be protecting her own sister from it. She knows good from evil. So why does she do both good and evil?

  Perhaps Katrin would find an answer in her textbooks. But perhaps you just had to accept Natchaya’s answer: Because I am part of the men.

  Whatever that meant.

  Later she put the tin of coffee from the fridge back into the cupboard, crawled for a moment beneath the sink and sat on the sofa beside the answering machine. Two new messages.

  Katrin Rein was requesting a meeting. Barbara Franke wanted her to call back. She dialed Landen’s number. It was still only Thursday; there was plenty of time to talk.

  Tommo answered. Louise apologized for her hasty departure the week before. Tommo seemed not to hold it against her and called her husband. Louise wondered where the telephone was in the Tommo/Landen household. She couldn’t remember having seen it in the hall. On the little cupboard beneath “Happiness” and “Friendship”? No. In the kitchen? In the kitchen were the china cat and Niksch, but no telephone. In the living room?

  “Ah, Inspector,” Landen said.

  “Hi,” Bonì said.

  “How are you? Did you go on holiday after all?”

  She grimaced. She had the third Richard Landen on the line, the secretive, depressive one. “Where are you now?”

  Landen did not immediately understand the question, so she explained. The telephone was in the living room, to the right of the door. Not a cordless phone, because of the radiation. “Is that enough information for you?” He laughed softly, but was soon serious again. “Any news of Taro and Pham?”

  She replied that Pham was alive but hadn’t yet been found, and that she still knew nothing for certain about Taro’s fate.

  “Nothing for certain,” Landen repeated.

  Again she saw him and Pham in the garden. They were looking in her direction, waiting in silence. “And you’re off to Japan,” she said after a while.

  “Yes, tomorrow morning.”

  She nodded and heard herself ask whether he’d put the telephone on speaker. No, he told her. “Good,” she said. “That’s good.” She stood up and went to the window. Snow, frost and cold wherever you looked. The garden where Landen and Pham were waiting for her was green. She drew the curtain and sat down. “Why are you flying to Japan? When are you back? Do you love your wife? Why are you sometimes so likeable, and sometimes so dull? What do you mean by ‘special gift’? I mean, is it a good or a bad thing? Are you still there?”

  “Yes.”

  She got up and went to the kitchen window. Below was a boutique for plus size clothing. To the right was a small, unnamed square, where café tables, chairs and palm trees in plastic tubs stood in the summer. In winter passersby crossed the square with their shoulders hunched, because it was open on three sides and windy. She drew this curtain too and said, “When will I see you again?”

  Landen paused for a moment. “I didn’t know that was important.”

  “It might be.”

  Another pause. “I’m back in a fortnight.”

  “Did you say ‘I’ or ‘we’?”

  No answer.

  Apart from a small standing lamp all her lights were off. It was cozy. All that was missing was Barclay James Harvest. She brought the bottle of vodka over to the sofa and stood it on the coffee table.

  “Is your wife staying in Japan?”

  “Yes.”

  “For a while?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is she beside you now?”

  “No.”

  A fourth Richard Landen. A taciturn, surly Landen, taken unawares. One who’d realize only later what he had actually wanted to say. “How long is your wife staying in Japan?”

  “Until the birth of our child, I imagine.”

  “Oh.” She walked around the coffee table. From behind, the vodka looked even more inviting than from the front. Mysterious and full of promise. She sat down and said, “That gives us plenty of time, then. You called me three times in one week, so I assume you want to spend some time with me. Am I right?”

  “I’m hanging up now, Louise.”

  “Fine.”

  “I’ll call you when I’m back. Then . . .” Landen broke off.

  “Then what?”

  “Goodbye.”

  She spent the next few minutes not drinking. The desire and need were overwhelming, but Lederle might ring at any moment and tell her where Fröbick had taken the children. It would be reckless to have a drink before then.

  She stared at the bottle for a quarter of an hour without touching it, and felt highly responsible. A few times she asked herself whether fairly responsible would be good enough too. But she didn’t give in to the voices inside her head. To be on the safe side she put the vodka back under the sink. In the end, she thought, life is one big battle against human desire. What the soul craved destroyed the body.

  When she sat down she noticed that only her bookmark was poking out of The Fifth Woman.

  Later she pondered what “I’ll call you when I’m back. Then . . .” might mean.

  As far as Landen was concerned, it meant that everything they had to discuss could wait until he got back. But it also meant that there was a “then.” A “then we’ll see each other again” or a “then we’ll chat about everything” or a “then we’ll do it in my teahouse.” The “then” meant that their relationship could not be adequately conveyed by the words “I’ll call you when I’m back.” That it went further than this.

  Satisfied, she put her bare feet up on the coffee table and fell asleep.

  When she woke it was still afternoon. The light in the room hadn’t changed. Time had not passed. She looked at her feet and thought of the chains around Natchaya’s ankles, the cool skin against her palms. She wished that “fairly responsible” had been good enough.

  Lederle hadn’t called. Fröbick was still on the run with Pham and a two-year-old girl from Poipet. What would he do with the children when he reached his destination or hideaway? Or if he had to continue his escape alone? Would he gag them, tie them up, and stuff them in his trunk as Calambert had done to Annetta? Would he abandon them in the snow?

  And what would he do with the children if he was surrounded?

  Hollerer seemed to be making good progress. But he’d asked for the telephone to be removed from his room. He wanted some peace and quiet to think, Roman said. She understo
od that. “He doesn’t want me to read to him either,” the volunteer said. Louise was about to tell him he should try something less depressing than The Outsider, but kept her mouth shut.

  “He doesn’t want any visitors either,” Roman said.

  “I’m coming anyway.”

  “Please don’t.”

  At around four o’clock she called Anatol. At five he was at her door with flowers, chocolate and prosecco. He looked even younger than he had in the hospital. “Hi,” he said. “I don’t have much time, I’m afraid.” He went to the sofa and sat down. Bonì noticed that he moved like a stranger, unlike at the weekend. With a peculiar shyness, as if worried about being thrown out.

  She put the flowers on the coffee table, the prosecco in the fridge and said, “Come to bed, but be careful of my shoulder.”

  Later, as they lay naked beside each other, Anatol spoke at length by his standards. He said that she was beautiful in an unusual way, in a “subterranean way,” if you like. Not immediately beautiful, at first glance, because she wasn’t “that slim” and “you don’t really look after your hair, do you?” On the other hand, he said, the longer he gazed at her, the more beautiful she seemed, captivatingly beautiful in fact, because her expressions, her laugh, her smile, her look and her body all had their own particular beauty—something warm, wild, sad, unique, genuine. He couldn’t keep his eyes—or hands—off her.

  She wondered what he was trying to say. She had no idea.

  Then Anatol said, “I’ve got to go.”

  At 6:10 p.m. she called Lederle. Still no trace of Fröbick and the children. If he had a mobile on him, it must be switched off. Bermann and Schneider were sitting beside the telephone in Fröbick’s living room. Evidently his wife had known nothing. They hadn’t told her everything either, but enough. “She’s cooperating,” Lederle said.

  Fröbick’s wife was convinced her husband would ring soon, because of his sons. He loved his sons and was a wonderful father. He would call. Especially as he knew he couldn’t come home.