“She’s dying on him and he’s going crazy,” Lederle said as they drove with their blue lights flashing on barely distinguishable roads toward Munzingen. He was a safe driver; no icy, snow-crusted road surface in this world would cause him trouble. “Why doesn’t he hand himself in? Then it would be all over.”
“He’s scared about what comes after that,” Louise said.
“And so he’s making everything much worse.”
The girl in the photograph flashed in her mind, Annetta on her parents’ sofa, then racing on a skateboard across a snowy field, all of a sudden on a sun lounger on the deck of a ship, her father running through the picture, the mother, both of them calling a name, but not their daughter’s—they’re calling, “Louise!”
She rubbed her eyes, forced herself to concentrate.
Only ever seen alone . . . Either Annetta was lying on the back seat—or in the trunk.
It went on snowing. Lederle turned on the windshield wipers, clumps of snow were massing beside the mudguards, you couldn’t see much farther than that. Bermann called, Louise put it on speaker. One of the new witnesses had noted the beginning of the registration number, so now they knew who the white Peugeot belonged to, and because the descriptions given by the other witnesses matched that of the owner, according to the French police, they also knew who they were searching for: René Calambert, a teacher in Paris, married with a daughter.
“I don’t get it,” Lederle said.
“Has he got a mobile?” Bonì said.
“Yes,” Bermann’s voice said. They were trying to locate it at this very moment, but it was probably switched off.
“He might call his wife,” Louise said. “He’s in a panic, he doesn’t know what to do.”
Soon afterward Bermann rang again. They couldn’t pinpoint Calambert’s mobile. “Where are you?”
“Just outside Munzingen,” Louise said, her finger on the map. Coming from thingummy . . . Tiengen.”
“Wait just outside the village.”
They glimpsed Bermann’s car when they were only sixteen yards away. A heavy, black saloon huddled in a snowdrift. Bermann was standing, mobile to his ear, in the midst of clouds of breath and snowflakes, between the circles of light that shone too brightly and hurt Louise’s eyes. Three or four heads inside the car, members of the task force. Raising his hand, Bermann pointed westward at the sky.
Turning her head Louise saw nothing, but then, tiny and scarcely visible, a blink of red, followed by a blink of green. “The helicopter’s got him,” she said, excited. She leaped out before the car came to a stop. A faint clinking in the right-hand pocket of her anorak as she ran to Bermann. Clinking as she ran, she thought, that was something she’d have to get used to. In the distance she could hear the helicopter. “Have they got him?”
“They had him,” Bermann said, putting his mobile away. “And lost him again.”
“Shit!” All of a sudden the cold crept into her warmed body, into her innermost layers. Her teeth chattered for several seconds before she brought her muscles under control.
A third car with police colleagues had joined them. In convoy they followed a little road that ran to the southwest, toward the helicopter that hung almost motionless in the gray sky. Out in front Bermann’s car braked abruptly. They all stopped. To the left a slightly wider track led through deep snow to nowhere. To the right was the edge of a leafless wood.
After they’d gathered around Bermann he pointed to the left, mobile in hand. “A hundred and sixty yards from here is an abandoned farm. House, shed, barn, all pretty dilapidated, but OK for someone looking for a hideaway and a bit of warmth.”
“What about the car?” someone said.
“It would fit in the barn.”
“Is this the drive?”
“No,” Bermann said testily. “This is a fucking footpath in summer. But it’ll get us there quicker than the drive.”
“It doesn’t make any sense,” Louise said.
Bermann raised his eyebrows in irritation. “What?”
“He’s not thinking straight anymore, he’s in a panic—he’s not looking for a hideaway or shelter. The girl’s badly injured, but he’s not taking her to the hospital. Instead he’s been driving around the area for hours, maybe even days. He can’t just park up somewhere, look after her and wait to see what happens. He’s got to keep moving or he’ll go mad.”
“The helicopter saw him; he must be here somewhere.”
“I know,” Louise said. “I’m going to wait in the car.”
From the waning warmth of Lederle’s car she watched her colleagues, ten dark shapes laboring their way through the snow, making slow progress. One man out in front: Bermann. For Annetta’s sake she hoped his assumptions were right. With his willpower and strength Rolf Bermann cleared up matters where most others would fail.
She reached for the map she’d tossed on to the back seat earlier. The track to the farm was marked, as well as a long driveway from the other side. To her right was the strip of wood with only footpaths going through it, but a forest road ran along its northern fringe. It was worth a try, she thought. In any case, she needed a pee.
She got out and trudged over to the trees through twelve-inch-deep snow. Breathing heavily, she pulled down her trousers and squatted. Bermann and the other officers had shrunk to scarcely visible dots, now moving forward at greater distances from each other. One hand in her anorak pocket to stop the clinking, Louise walked on. She came to some sort of path marked by animal tracks, animals with hooves, deer perhaps—she didn’t know. Mick would have known. One of his lovers had been a vet, the woman who’d concluded the confession in the ski lift when they arrived at the mid-station near Scuol. Picturing a busty, stupid beauty in a white coat, Louise had whacked her ski stick against the side of his head and brought their marriage to an end. But it wasn’t easy to get rid of someone like Mick, who could preserve the illusion of stability and an everlasting “We,” and now he haunted Louise through her nights, her dreams, her drunkenness and the snowy undergrowth of a wood near Munzingen.
When she heard a sound she froze. A metallic click she’d heard thousands of times before, but she couldn’t place it. Disjointed images and feelings blustered about in her mind, her legs were aching, her lungs crackling. Why did the physical and mental exhaustion and despair have to overwhelm her right now, as well as the cold, the fear? At least her discipline was still intact; her right hand had automatically reached for her Walther.
And then she worked it out: a car door had been shut.
Summoning every last reserve of energy, she followed the path as quietly and quickly as possible. A shape appeared between the trees—a tall man, standing ten yards in front of her with his head bowed. She heard a gentle rippling and then the man looked up and noticed her.
She held her weapon so he could see it and said in French, “Don’t go making any mistakes now, Calambert.”
“She’s alive,” he said hoarsely, “but she’s in a bad way.”
“Where is she?”
He gestured behind him with his head.
Louise could see nothing but trees. Trees that wouldn’t quite keep still. She blinked. “In the car?”
Calambert nodded. “She’s not made for this sort of thing. Those girls are looking for wild adventures, but in the end they bite off more than they can chew and then it’s all complaining and whining.”
“What did you say?”
He yawned. He shrugged.
“Let’s go, asshole,” Louise said, aiming the gun at him.
Calambert laughed and raised his hand, which now sported a pistol, the barrel pointing to the side. He looked at it uncertainly then shook his head. “Not me, I’m going somewhere else.” Pointing the weapon at Louise he retreated, step by step, moving ever farther away, disappearing momentarily behind trees, then emerging again, becoming a tree amongst trees. Against the white the dark swayed, staggered and wobbled.
Louise pointed the Walther into the air a
nd fired; her colleagues would hear the shot. She ran off down the path which must lead to the road where the Peugeot would be parked. As she ran she notified the ambulance service, then Bermann, who barked orders at her, all of which began or finished with the words, “Wait for backup!” Although Calambert didn’t reemerge, she found the white car soon afterward, half in the ditch. She peered inside: a chaotic jumble of clothing, food packaging, bottles, blankets. No Annetta.
She caught sight of a sticker on the rear windshield: it’s a man’s world. Fury flew through her arteries. She turned her head, scanned the edge of the woods, the road, but there was no Calambert. She wasn’t going to leave him to her colleagues. She—a woman—wanted to put the handcuffs on him herself.
She opened the trunk.
A brown blanket, a gentle whimper. All she could see was the top of a forehead encrusted with blood, hair stuck down. “It’s going to be fine, everything’s going to be fine, sweetheart,” Louise whispered as she carefully stroked Annetta’s shoulder. It took her a while to realize that the girl’s wrists were tied to her ankles; Calambert had literally folded Annetta in two to fit her into his trunk.
She untied the scabbed hands and feet, then cut through broad strips of packing tape with a Swiss Army penknife. Without really knowing what she was saying, she spoke to Annetta, stroked her and finally ventured to take the blanket from the girl’s face—here too were traces of horrific abuse: swellings, blood, and a deeply disturbed look in her eyes.
When Bonì heard a police siren she straightened up. She fetched two more blankets from the back of the car, laid them gently over Annetta and ran.
The snow flurry was growing thicker; on this narrow road she could see barely more than ten yards ahead of her. She heard Calambert before she saw him. He was battling his way noisily through the woods and broke through on to the road no more than nine yards ahead of her. She was about to shout a warning when a shot rang out. Calambert had fired more or less in her direction, but she couldn’t tell precisely with the snow, the anger and all the other emotions inside her throbbing head. Another shot rang out, an acrid smell tickled her nostrils and the Walther had jerked backward. Now Calambert was bent over his thigh, screaming. Around his feet, red was flowing into the white. It’s a man’s world, Louise thought. His arms were flapping about, his head flew up again, as perhaps did the hand holding the gun, perhaps not; it was hard to tell. Once more the Walther jerked back with a bang, Calambert stopped screaming, lurched backward and toppled into the snow. She went to him and seconds later watched him die in a rapidly expanding pool of crimson crystals.
Annetta lived for four more days. In intensive care she drifted toward death in an induced coma. Each day Louise stood by the large, square observation window, the mother and father beside her, both as motionless as the girl on the other side of the pane of glass. At some point the mother put her hand on the window and said, “She’s on a long sea voyage and that’s the porthole, and she can look out whenever she wants, and we can look in.”
“Why don’t you go to her?” Louise said.
“She wouldn’t want that.”
“No,” the father reiterated, “not our daughter.”
Louise entered the dark ship and sat by Annetta’s bed so she didn’t have to bid farewell alone.
“Thank you,” the mother said when it was over.
The father took her right hand in both of his and said, “Thanks for shooting the bastard.”
Did I? Louise thought. Even the next morning she couldn’t remember her encounter with Calambert. An unreal nightmare of cold, despair, fear and exhaustion, where there were no thoughts, only emotions, reactions and the occasional clinking of a little bottle against the bunch of keys in her pocket.
“What did I say afterward?” she said to Bermann.
“That he was going to shoot at you again.”
Bermann asked no questions, nor did he allow any. Not even a bullet in the thigh had stopped the kidnapper and killer René Calambert from pointing his gun a second time at Chief Inspector Bonì, he decided. Once again his colleague had aimed at his legs, but because of the visibility and the wounded man’s erratic movements, her second bullet unfortunately hit his stomach before he was able to shoot again. Regrettable, but clearly self-defense.
Thus Bermann brought order to the chaos, and this order helped Louise get over the next few days and weeks, Annetta’s funeral and the date in the spring and on into the summer. It was not until the following winter that Calambert reappeared with the snow. It’s a man’s world, he said, and died time and again in a pool of crimson crystals.
AUTHOR’S ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I WOULD LIKE to thank everyone who has helped me with this crime novel, in particular Dr. Petra Eisele from O.W. Barth Verlag, without whose initiative it would never have seen the light of day; Freiburg Kriminalpolizei, and especially Karl-Heinz Schmidt for his phenomenal assistance; my agent, Uli Pöppel, for his detailed feedback and friendly support; and my wife, Chiara Bottini, for the very many intense conversations about the manuscript. Any remaining errors are entirely my responsibility.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
OLIVER BOTTINI was born in 1965. Four of his novels, including Zen and the Art of Murder and A Summer of Murder of A Black Forest Investigation, have been awarded the Deutscher Krimipreis, Germany’s most prestigious award for crime writing. In addition, his novels have been awarded the Stuttgarter Krimipreis and the Berliner Krimipreis. He lives in Berlin. www.bottini.de.
ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR
JAMIE BULLOCH is the translator of Timur Vermes’s Look Who’s Back, Birgit Vanderbeke’s The Mussel Feast, which won him the Schlegel-Tieck Prize, Kingdom of Twilight by Steven Uhly, and novels by F. C. Delius, Jörg Fauser, Martin Suter, Katharina Hagena, and Daniel Glattauer.
www.doverpublications.com
Zen and the Art of Murder Page 27