Zen and the Art of Murder

  “A wonderful father,” Bonì repeated.

  “Wait,” Lederle said, switching to the other line. She thought he sounded harried, out of breath, as if he had been running. She went into the bathroom and fetched her dressing gown.

  Lederle was back on the line. “That was Villingen-Schwennigen. They’ve got Annegret Schelling. Three guesses as to where she was.”

  “With her mother.”

  “With her What-is-Annegret-supposed-to-have-done? mother,” Lederle said grimly. “Fucking . . . scum. Did you hear about the Thai girl?”

  “Yes.”

  “Terrible, Louise. Terrible. I . . .”

  The doorbell rang. “Hang on, Reiner.” Still holding the phone, she went to the door. Someone was knocking at it now. She ran through the possibilities: her father, Anatol, Enni, Barbara Franke, Klaus Fröbick. Richard Landen, whose wife wouldn’t be coming back until she’d had the baby.

  But it was Katrin Rein.

  With a sigh Louise waved her into the apartment. Katrin was wearing a light-green blouse beneath her coat and carrying a black leather briefcase. She’d tied back her blonde hair and looked unusually determined. When she saw that Bonì was in her dressing gown she blushed.

  “Take your shoes off,” Bonì said. “Like a drink? There’s prosecco in the fridge.” She smiled in spite of herself.

  Lederle asked who had arrived. Louise told him and ended their conversation.

  She put the cordless phone in the pocket of her dressing gown. “Or you could have a coffee.”

  Katrin gave a horrified smile. “Oh, I can’t take coffee; I’ve got a sensitive stomach. Do you happen to have any camomile tea?”

  “Good God, no!”

  “A glass of tap water will do then, thanks.”

  “You can cope with that?”

  Katrin nodded. The tap water in those parts of town to the east of the railway line or Merzhauser Strasse, she said, came from the old water tower in the Sternwald—it was good quality and tasted excellent. The water on the other side of town came from the Rhine Valley—it was hard and didn’t taste particularly nice. But here the water was so good that . . . that . . . “You could . . . um, keep fish from the Amazon in it.”

  “Fish from the Amazon?”

  “Yes.”

  “Hmm. Could you imagine me with Amazonian fish?”

  “Well . . . no. A few piranhas at best.”

  Therapist and patient laughed.

  As Louise filled a glass she thought about which of her friends lived to the west of the train line. Off the top of her head she could only think of Bermann and Mick. Satisfied, she turned off the tap.

  They sat next to each other on the sofa. Katrin had regained her determination and composure. She took a notebook and silver pen from her leather briefcase, drank some water, cleared her throat and said she really had to form a picture now.

  “A picture?”

  “Of your condition.”

  “I see.” Louise got up and sat in one of the two armchairs on the other side of the coffee table. She pulled her legs up and rearranged her dressing gown. This wasn’t the right moment for her definitive step into the abyss. She had to focus on Fröbick and Pham. On not drinking. But when was the right moment?

  She waited in silence for the first question.

  Three hours later she was back under the shower. Looking into the mirror she thought again that everything was perhaps quite different. What she saw didn’t seem to correspond with the image that Katrin had assembled. Is this what Gamma alcoholics looked like in the prodromal phase?

  The mirror fogged up and her face blurred.

  As she sat on the toilet it occurred to her that these strange terms marked the beginning of a new life for her.

  She went back into the sitting room in her dressing gown. Katrin was lying fast asleep on the sofa. In her doll-like way she looked very pretty and utterly exhausted. Her cheeks were red and individual strands had come loose from her hairband. She’d made a huge effort over the past three hours as if having resolved to save Louise, whatever the cost. On a piece of paper she’d drawn a horizontal line and divided it into three sections: prodromal phase, critical phase and chronic phase. This is where you are, roughly, she’d said, writing “Louise” on the line between the prodromal phase and the critical phase. You’re an alcoholic, but you’re still in the initial stage of the disease.

  The disease.

  Beside the piece of paper was a list of telephone numbers of “volunteers helping people with addiction,” the majority of them themselves former alcoholics. Alongside these were the names of self-help groups, specialist clinics and therapy institutions. Katrin had tentatively suggested that after a two-week or so detox in a clinic, she could complete the physical withdrawal as an outpatient. The path into the abyss was steeper than she’d imagined, but it might be less unpleasant on the way out.

  Taking the woollen blanket from the back of the sofa, she laid it over Katrin, who briefly opened her eyes but didn’t seem to wake up.

  In the kitchen she drank Sternwald water and ate a slice of wholemeal bread. Confused, she tried to recall when and why she’d bought it, then it came to her that it must have been bought by her father. She wondered how he was. Was he already hard at work changing the immediate past? Or was he trying to summon the courage to ask himself her questions?

  She reflected on whether the questions about her family’s past were really so important that they could be allowed to encroach so heavily on the present. Yes, she thought. The questions were part of who she was.

  All the same, perhaps it was still possible to keep up contact with her father.

  Just then the telephone in her dressing-gown pocket rang. She answered before it could ring a second time. It was Lederle. Fröbick had been in touch.

  A patrol car was coming to fetch her.

  “Call when you’re on your way,” Lederle said.

  “Wait! What about the children?”

  “No word yet.”

  She hurried to the sofa and put the telephone in its dock. Katrin was still asleep. On the table was the sketch with the horizontal line. She stared at her name.

  Prodromal phase, Gamma alcoholic, disease.

  As she got dressed she could feel the tears running down her cheeks.

  19

  Ten minutes later Bonì went down to meet the police sergeant who’d helped her to her feet in the barn near Münzenried. She introduced herself as “Zancan.” “Italian mother,” she explained. Louise smiled briefly and said, “French father.” Zancan smiled back and asked if Louise wanted to drive. She shook her head. Zancan seemed to know where they were going because she didn’t ask. She turned on the siren and crossed Werderring into Kronenstrasse.

  Bonì stared out into the white night. Then she called Lederle. “Does Rolf know I’m coming?”

  “He doesn’t have to know everything, does he?” Lederle made noises that sounded like laughter or coughing.

  “Tell him, Reiner.”

  “Later. Now listen.”

  Fröbick had first rung home at eight o’clock that evening. They’d begun by letting him talk to his wife for a while. He was in tears and sounded panicked. But he wasn’t going to give himself up. When Bermann took the receiver he hung up immediately. As he hadn’t switched off his mobile, they located him via the radio signal. He was driving all over Freiburg. But they weren’t able to pinpoint him exactly—Bermann hadn’t allowed them to deploy a helicopter and patrol cars.

  At 8:20 Fröbick called home again. This time he agreed to speak to Bermann and asked whether he might strike a deal. Bermann told him they could discuss it, of course. Fröbick promised to hand over the children, unharmed, in exchange for one hundred thousand euros and his freedom. Bermann agreed. Fröbick said he’d have a think about how and where the handover should take place and he’d call again.

  “Can he really be so naive?”

  “He’s desperate,” Lederle said. “He doesn’t know where to go,
or what to do. His wife thinks he won’t be able to see it through.”

  Half an hour later he called again, saying the plans had changed. Now he was demanding five hundred thousand euros and said he’d keep hold of the children until he was sure nobody was following him. Bermann told him he’d only be able to get the one hundred thousand for now. If he wanted more it would take a while. Fröbick replied, OK then, one hundred thousand will do, I’ll be in touch again. He made a note of Bermann’s mobile number. Bermann said, You and the children need to eat, I’ll bring you something. Fröbick said, Thanks, but for God’s sake come alone. And then he hung up.

  For the next twenty minutes he kept phoning Bermann in the car and navigated him through Freiburg, presumably to check whether he was on his own. On several occasions he had Bermann drive right past him, or he’d tail him for a few seconds. Officers in unmarked police cars could easily have intervened, but Bermann didn’t want to risk putting the children’s lives in danger. Until they knew where these children were, Fröbick was not to be arrested.

  Then, just before Lederle rang Bonì, Fröbick instructed Bermann to drive to the parking lot at the southern end of the Opfinger See. He said there was another change of plan. Bermann was to bring a young, unarmed policewoman with him and head out on to the frozen lake with the money. Then he’d receive further instructions.

  “He wants to exchange the children,” Bonì said. “Good. That young, unarmed policewoman wouldn’t happen to be me, would it?”

  “You’re not young.”

  “I’m sure Rolf wouldn’t mind. There’d be a sporting chance he’d be rid of me forever.”

  Subdued laughter. Zancan joined in too, quietly.

  “I’ve got to hang up,” Lederle said.

  “Do I know her?”

  “She’s sitting beside you.”

  They were now beyond the residential area and driving along the Opfinger See through the southern part of Mooswald. The road had been cleared of snow. Dark skeletons of trees with a sprinkling of white flew past. What they could see of the forest in the beam of the headlights looked frozen solid. “You don’t have to do this,” Bonì said.

  Zancan smiled. She was twenty-five at most. Not a Bermann woman—not attractive enough, too serious, too assertive. More like an Anatol woman, if such a thing existed. A woman whose beauty was subterranean.

  “Are you frightened?”

  “Of course I am.”

  “You don’t have to do it.”

  “I heard you,” Zancan said in a perfectly friendly voice.

  Louise grinned. Zancan wouldn’t be a police sergeant for long. She’d move up soon, or change career.

  They approached the motorway which cut through the city forest almost vertically. A couple of miles to the south was Munzingen. Why had Calambert driven to Munzingen? Why had Fröbick chosen the Opfinger See?

  Calambert had been on the run. Munzingen was pure coincidence. Just as it was a coincidence that she’d turned in the wrong direction. Fröbick, on the other hand, would have his reasons for choosing the lake. What were they? He needed somewhere to hide, and from where he had an easy escape route. Where he had the situation under control.

  “He’ll have been there for a while,” she said.

  “Yes,” Zancan said.

  “And because he knows that we know that, he also knows that we won’t bring any backup. We don’t know if he’s watching the motorway or Opfinger Strasse. We can’t risk arriving with backup. We can only cordon off a much larger area. Is that what we’re doing?”

  “Yes,” Zancan said again.

  “Good. What would you do in his shoes?”

  “Split up the children.”

  Louise nodded. She hadn’t thought of that. Why not? It was so obvious. One child in the car, the other one somewhere on the route he’d chosen for his escape. They wouldn’t dare arrest him at the handover unless they were sure the children were safe. They wouldn’t dare do it later either.

  Splitting up the children was obvious. She’d have done the same if she were in Fröbick’s shoes. But she hadn’t thought of it. “I think you’re the right woman for the job,” she said.

  “Thanks,” Zancan said.

  At that moment they heard Bermann’s voice over the radio. “Marie, stop!” he shouted. It sounded close, furious, on the verge of hysteria. Bonì sighed and undid her belt. Good old Bermann. His concentration unseated for a few seconds. But she thought he might be right. In view of the situation Lederle’s little game was dangerous.

  Zancan took the radio. “What is it?”

  Bermann screamed at her to stop. Zancan obeyed. “Are you stationary?” Bermann yelled.

  “Yes.”

  Louise opened the door. Zancan looked at her in astonishment.

  Bermann screamed, “Luis, get out!”

  Zancan was calm. “Rolf, she’s our only advantage. He doesn’t know that she . . .”

  Bermann yelled that he wouldn’t permit any discussion.

  “We need her,” Zancan said.

  Bermann bellowed that they didn’t need a pisshead, this was about his life and hers, and the lives of the children. Why would they rely on a pisshead?

  “Fuck off, Luis! Marie?”

  Marie, Bonì thought—first name terms. Was Zancan another Bermann woman after all? She didn’t really believe it. Bermann women never got themselves into situations in which they might defy him.

  “Marie!” Bermann yelled again.

  “Yes?”

  “Is she out of the car yet?”

  Zancan didn’t answer. She turned to Louise, and Louise looked back at her. She understood Bermann. A hostage taker, two small children, two police officers nearby—even she wouldn’t rely on an alcoholic in that situation, be they Alpha, Gamma or Delta. It dawned on her that she’d understood Bermann that time two weeks ago too, when this whole thing began. He’d told her that he’d had enough of her, and she had understood. Sometimes you understood best the people you didn’t like.

  “Your choice,” Zancan said.

  “Good luck, then,” Bonì said.

  The patrol car drove away slowly, as if Zancan were hoping she’d change her mind at the last moment. Then the red taillights disappeared.

  Louise turned away. What would be the responsible course of action? Should she telephone her colleagues and head back to the city? Or walk the last few hundred yards to the lake to see if she could help? Which was the right direction, and which the wrong one?

  From a distance Louise could hear the rumble of the motorway, but immediately around her there was silence. She was alone. Alone with two concepts: prodromal phase and Gamma alcoholic. And facing a future defined by these.

  Asking herself the question, What do I do now?

  From one moment to the next she suddenly felt frozen. The temperature had continued to drop; it must be twenty-three degrees. But Bonì doubted that this was the reason.

  Not everyone ended up in such a situation, so why had she? At what moment, at what point in her life had she stepped on to the path leading her to this? What had gone wrong when? When had it all begun? Was it with Calambert, who might be alive today if it hadn’t been for that sticker?

  She suspected it had begun before that, when she’d decided to marry Mick. But she must have already been on the wrong path for quite a while, or she wouldn’t have fallen for him the first time they met, when he’d told her he had a ridiculous name.

  More important, perhaps, than the exact moment at which she’d set off on the wrong path was the fact that she hadn’t realized it for years. Unaware of it, she hadn’t been able to alter her course.

  Bonì mulled over what she was feeling at that moment. Nothing that could have been of any help. All-encompassing fury. The cold. The need for a drink. That she was alone. A mild satisfaction that Bermann and Mick wouldn’t be able to keep Amazonian fish in their tap water if they wanted to.

  What else? That Niksch was no longer in this world. The worry that Landen wouldn’
t call after he got back. And fear. Fear for Pham, Bermann, Zancan.

  She started running, westward, wondering if it was possible that the right way and the wrong way sometimes led in the same direction.

  The noise of the motorway had grown louder. Horizontal beams of light darted back and forth above the trees. She stopped to catch her breath then ran on. After about three hundred yards a car came toward her. She didn’t stop, nor did the car reduce its speed. For the first time it crossed her mind that Fröbick might not be alone. Lederle had said he was close to panic. Out of fear he might have called the French professional, or Paul Lebonne, who had done a runner a week ago. There were, after all, one hundred thousand euros to go around.

  A dark-red Porsche. A small, old face peered at her as they passed each other.

  Then she was on the bridge that ran across the motorway. To the north lay the lake. In the light of the moon hanging just above the horizon, the snow shone on the frozen surface. Bermann, Zancan and Fröbick were nowhere to be seen. Had they already done the exchange? No, not enough time had passed.

  She had never before been here in winter. In summer the lake was a recreational area with a nature reserve, but now it appeared inhospitable and menacing. A large expanse of snow surrounded by bare, black forest. Cordoning off this huge area, where there were barely any roads, was not hard. Searching it for a man on foot most definitely was.

  Her gaze wandered along the shore of the lake and the forest. Even though there must be a dozen of her colleagues somewhere in the darkness, the whole area looked deserted.

  Where had Fröbick parked his car? On the hard shoulder of the motorway, perhaps, which ran along the lake only a few yards from the shore. In the headlights of approaching cars she tried to make out if a vehicle was there, but she couldn’t say with complete certainty.

  Louise ran on, leaving the road just after the bridge and stopping in the cover of the trees. In the parking lot stood Bermann’s Mercedes and Zancan’s patrol car. The kiosk and surfing school were closed. Farther in the distance, toward the gravel pit, a truck was parked, covered in snow. Footprints led from the two cars and merged before heading for the shore. No other tracks were to be seen.