“Aha…And what’s your line of work?”
“I’m a manager for event marketing.”
He gave her a quizzical look, but she was not in the mood for long explanations.
“I market luxury luggage for the well-to-do.”
“Aha, and what does it take for a job like that?”
Josefa was perplexed: What’s this guy trying to get at? His eyes behind those sleepy eyelids seemed to betray nothing more than just a normal curiosity. But Josefa wasn’t fooled. By way of explanation she repeated her mantra. “I must completely put myself into the customer’s head; I must feel what they feel. I must turn into the customer, though I’m really the salesperson. That’s the trick.”
“You call it a trick,” he said, a statement, not a question.
She was getting a little indignant. Why should she be explaining her job to a total stranger, to a detective, of all people? “It’s much more extreme in your case, surely,” she replied. “You must get into the criminal’s head, right? You must think and plan like a criminal—be able to understand their feelings.”
“So you’re suggesting I’m supposed to become a criminal in my mind?” Sauter asked, putting his coffee cup down noisily on the saucer.
“To a certain extent…Of course it’s for a good cause—I don’t mean to insinuate anything,” Josefa replied unfazed.
“See, we’ve got something in common, then,” Sauter responded. “And why do you think people buy these deluxe suitcases?”
She thought their conversation was becoming positively bizarre. “I think they want to belong somewhere. To an exclusive club of course…But they want to belong somewhere,” she replied after some hesitation, a little surprised by her own answer.
“Do you know anybody else living in this building?” The question came without any warning. It was an interrogation, after all.
“I only know Esther Ardelius really well. I’m often away, and the apartments change hands a lot. They’re small, for students, whoever. The people I knew have slowly moved away.”
“Why’s that?” Sauter asked, taking notes.
“I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe because of the asylum seekers in the two bottom apartments.”
“Are there any problems with them?”
Josefa was turning a chocolate biscuit around in her hand. “Actually, no. Except…” She hesitated with her answer, afraid of making herself look ridiculous. “They do their washing all day long, and at night too. The washing machines are always in use. It’s as if they’re doing other people’s laundry too!”
“Do those people downstairs often have visitors?”
“Visitors? Not a clue. I only see them now and then on the stairs. They keep moving in and out. Most of the time I haven’t any idea who’s living here and who’s not.”
She noticed that Sauter was using a gold fountain pen. A detective writing with blue ink!
“Has anything caught your attention here recently? Something you found odd? Any changes?”
Nothing really came to mind so she told him all she knew. “A family with a child, a little boy, is living there now, I think. But I don’t know them very well.”
His cup was empty; he looked tired. What else does he want? Josefa’s shoes were pinching her.
“You look tired,” she remarked, the words just slipping out. How typical of a woman to say something like that, she thought.
“Oh?” he said, turning his cup around on the saucer. “I’ve a lot to do. Long days, short nights, irregular working hours.”
“But of course your family is overjoyed about your flexible hours.”
“Oh, sure—a few years ago my wife had it with ‘overjoyed.’ We couldn’t plan anything. I was an unknown quantity and still am. That’s why she filed for divorce.”
“I know about that.”
“Divorce?”
“No, unknown quantities. Can’t plan anything. Always on call.”
Why am I telling him all this? Fortunately he didn’t pursue it. Josefa was wondering if she should offer him another cup of coffee when there was a knock on the door and Esther and the other policeman came in.
“We’re finished,” the policeman said.
“So are we,” Sauter replied, getting up and holding his hand out to Josefa. “Thank you for the coffee,” he said, shaking her hand in goodbye. She escorted the two men to the door, locking it after they left.
“Would you rather spend the night here?” Josefa asked Esther who was sitting at the kitchen table.
“That would be awfully nice, but you haven’t even unpacked, Josefa.”
“I’ve still got a few days for that. A cup of tea?”
“He forgot something,” Esther said, nodding at the cap on the chair beside her. Josefa put the kettle on the burner.
“It can wait,” she replied as she put Sauter’s cap in her dresser drawer.
Josefa woke up in the middle of the night. It was unusually quiet; not even the sound of the occasional car could be heard. Josefa genuinely wished this silence would go on forever, but something told her that this moment of calm would be her last for a long, long time. Although she could just make out the sound of Esther’s breathing from the next room, Josefa suddenly felt very much alone.
The next morning Esther had just retreated to her apartment when Claire Fendi arrived.
“I thought it best to come by in person,” she explained, her voice as thin as a violin string.
“Come on in,” Josefa said and was soon sitting with somebody in her kitchen again. Claire folded her arms across her chest protectively.
“Won’t you take your jacket off?” Josefa asked.
“No, no, I must get to the office right away. Officially I’m at the dentist.”
Claire was not well; Josefa could see that at once. Her face was a sallow, gray color, her eyes were red, and her nervous hands were nestled in her jacket sleeves. Josefa could almost feel her tension.
Claire took a deep breath. “Werner…I mean, Herr Schulmann…He’s put forward a plan for the music festival to the management board.”
The music festival…Josefa and Claire had been working for months on a plan they were both very proud of. They had culled their experience from years past and added a few splendid new ideas to it as well.
Josefa stared at Claire, flabbergasted.
“I don’t get it…He can’t work that fast; he doesn’t have any idea what it’s all based on, or what the management board wants, all the records from past…All he can possibly come up with is hot air.”
Claire fixed her eyes on the table in front of her. She had folded her hands now, white-knuckled.
“Wrong, Josefa, he knows all the details…He got them from my computer.”
The air in the kitchen turned to ice.
“What is that supposed to mean? Did you show him any data?”
“No…No. I had our plans on my computer. You know I often work on the details at home. Sometimes…Werner would interrupt me when he came over. I didn’t always turn off the computer; he’d often catch me by surprise, and I intended to go back to work afterward. I honestly didn’t have any idea that he’d…” Claire paused and shut her eyes for a second. “He must have looked at my files when I went to the bathroom or the kitchen or something. But it could also be…I mean, it’s possible he got to my data when the computer crashed, and he got it running again. He…he knows what he’s doing with technical stuff. He probably simply copied the data.” Claire buried her face in her hands.
Josefa was dumbstruck. It slowly dawned on her what all of this implied.
“You mean to say, then, that he copied our plan. Stole it.”
“He didn’t copy it exactly. He stuck in a few technical items, but I recognized our plan right away. Bourdin crowed about how fantastic Werner’s plan was. So I went to Werner’s office one night and…looked around a bit. Werner was so damn sure of himself that he simply left the papers on his desk.” She rested her head on her fists. “I recogni
zed it immediately.”
Josefa slapped the table.
“He’s not going to get off so easily,” she said vehemently. “This time he’s gone too far.”
“What can you do? Even if we tell Bourdin or Walther that Werner stole our project—they’d never believe us in a million years. They’ll think we want to cut him down. They’ll think we’re out for revenge because you didn’t get Werner’s job.” Then she suddenly sounded resigned. “And of course Werner will deny everything. We’ve got no proof.”
“Sure we’ve got proof. We’ve got the draft in our computers. How could those plans get there if we hadn’t come up with them in the first place? Schulmann could never argue that he planted them in our computers!”
“Oh, yes he can,” Claire contradicted. “He can claim he told me about them.”
“And how can he?” Josefa pushed her chair back. “How’s he going to back it up? How’s he going to tell our guys he let us in on his secret project even before he took the job at Loyn?”
Claire kept her eyes off Josefa. “He could tell them about our love affair, and the fact that it’s now over.”
“I thought he wanted to keep that a secret. Didn’t you say so?”
“Werner always does what’s best for Werner,” she said, quickly getting to her feet. “I’ve got to get to the office. I’m sorry, Josefa. I’m so terribly sorry.”
Josefa didn’t say a word. She would have to think about this whole business in peace and quiet.
When Claire was at the door Josefa asked, “Are you really not seeing Schulmann anymore?”
“Yes, it’s over.”
“What will you do?”
“I don’t know yet…I’m sticking to my job. And I really like working with you.”
She looked so slim and fragile, but Josefa was well aware of her strength. Claire was just the victim of a cunning, malicious man, she thought to herself. And she wasn’t the first.
A flock of green-and-brown spotted ducks was bustling over the meadow around the parking lot on Zurich University’s tranquil Irchel campus. Gulls had taken over the ponds. A student occasionally rushed over the little bridge; mothers were walking with their small children, but it was mainly a place for dogs and their owners to romp around.
Josefa saw a little girl burst into tears at the sight of an off-leash Great Dane.
“Leash your dog right this minute!” shouted the little girl’s mother, who was pushing a stroller some distance away.
She could hear the woman’s cries from across the meadow, but Josefa chose to ignore them; she had her fill of drama. Walking up the hill, past the university’s model agricultural operation, which reeked of horse droppings and pig manure, Josefa sat down on a bench beneath a knotty linden that overlooked the city; from this spot on top of the hill it didn’t even look like a city. The icy Alpine peaks shimmered in the distance, and a gentle range of wooded hills could be seen just in front of them. Josefa took some deep breaths. The sun was blazing down on her face. She closed her eyes. Maybe this is where she could sort out her thoughts and calm her feelings. But she had scarcely taken one deep breath when she heard footsteps.
An old man was making his way along the path, stopping every five or ten feet to catch his breath; a Siamese cat, its tail held high, followed close behind. The cat sometimes stopped to sniff some blades of grass, then sat down and blinked at the sky.
“He wants to have a rest,” the old man said to Josefa. “Me too. Say, is there enough room on this bench?”
Josefa moved a little to one side. The old man sat down, and Josefa saw that he had a half-finished crossword puzzle in his hand.
“Nice day after all this wet weather, isn’t it?” he asked.
She nodded. “Your cat seems to be enjoying it too,” Josefa answered, since a conversation appeared to be inevitable.
“It’s a tom. We go for a walk almost every day.”
“All those dogs don’t bother him?”
The man laughed. “Ueli is much faster. And smarter. More than one dog has gotten himself a sore nose.” He laughed again then looked at her out of the corner of his eye. “Do you have your dog with you?”
“No, only my thoughts.”
“Aha…I hope you don’t have any problems.”
“I do, with the office.”
“Aha.” The old man fell silent for a moment. “You know, when I look back I often say to myself, ‘Most fights aren’t worth it.’ It would’ve been smarter for me to run up a tree like my cat and observe things from a safe distance.” He scratched his face. “Ueli does it, and his pride doesn’t ever seem to get hurt.”
Josefa smiled. Maybe the old guy wasn’t so far off. “I’ve got a tricky problem here.” He waved his newspaper in the air.
“I’m not good at crosswords,” Josefa admitted.
But the old man was undeterred. “It’s the key word, and the clue is in verse. Here it is.” He cleared his throat. “He moves our personal belongings, strangers’ worlds pass through his hands. He knows their comings and their goings, but never tells us where he stands.” He showed Josefa the letters he already had: __O__ __ E__T R__ __ G__ __.
Josefa shook her head. “Sorry, I’m really not an expert in these matters.”
The cat hopped onto the bench and rubbed his head on the old man’s sleeve.
“Ueli, you rascal,” he muttered affectionately.
Josefa got up, and the old man looked up at her.
“Oh, of course, you’re probably busy with your own thoughts anyway. Hope all goes well. Would be a pity for a young girl like you if it didn’t.”
Josefa smiled. “Good luck with your crossword,” she said walking away.
She had already climbed to the brow of the hill when it suddenly hit her. She spun around; the old codger was still sitting on the bench.
“Koffertraeger,” she said, gasping for air. “The word you’re looking for is Koffertraeger, a porter.”
For a moment the old man looked puzzled, and then his face suddenly lit up. “Right,” he exclaimed in delight. “K-O-F-F-E-R-T-R-A-E-G-E-R!”
When she got home she unpacked the last few things from her suitcase and kept repeating what the old man had said: “Observe things from a safe distance.” She decided that whenever things got to be too much, she would just climb a tree—a make-believe one—and look down on what was happening from there.
Her phone rang at the same time as there was a knock at the door. She chose the phone: it was Paul Klingler.
“Are you in your office? I’ll call you right back,” she shouted into the receiver while rushing to the door. It was the man from downstairs, an Albanian from Kosovo, as she’d discovered thanks to Esther.
“You me help?” he asked, expectantly. “I no understand.”
She reluctantly took the paper he held out to her and quickly scanned it. It was a form from a primary school. It had something to do with getting access to the school’s psychology service.
“Doesn’t the school have to fill this out?” she asked impatiently. Or a counselor at some facility for asylum seekers? Why did this man come to her of all people? Just because they’d exchanged two words?
“No, I must do,” the man insisted. “It is because my son. But I no understand.”
Josefa held the form gingerly between two fingers, as if afraid of catching something, then remembered that Paul was waiting for her call. “I have to phone someone first. I’ll be down to see you in half an hour.”
“Half an hour,” the Albanian repeated, as if holding her to it.
“Half an hour,” Josefa confirmed, closing the door and dialing Paul’s number.
“What’s the matter?” he asked in his usual penetrating voice, a voice completely at odds with his gaunt physique. “Did I get you out of the shower?”
“No, my neighbor just dropped by.”
“What neighbor was that?” Paul asked, ever curious.
“The one downstairs, a Kosovo Albanian.”
“A
Kosovo Albanian? What did he want from you?”
“Listen, I thought you wanted something from me!”
“Maybe…I heard that Loyn’s gone shopping for a character called Schulmann.”
“I just knew you’d know that! Even I didn’t find out until the day before I went on vacation.”
“Sure, I’m in the same game. Tell me, who ever brought him on board?”
“You know him?”
“Slightly. So who brought him on board?”
“Probably Bourdin, but I don’t know exactly. Schulmann worked for us in San Francisco once.”
Josefa did not want to tell Paul about Schulmann’s assault. But her friend could figure out easily enough that the new man was a slap in her face.
“Yes, I remember. He’s very good on technical things, but he’s an absolute misfit as head of marketing. You just have to ask the people he’s worked with,” Paul remarked. He clearly had his ear to every wall.
“Nobody at Loyn ever asked the staff,” Josefa remarked bitterly.
“Have you got anything on for today?” Paul continued.
“Yes, I’m expecting a visit any minute.”
“Too bad, I wanted to talk you into leaving that gang and coming to work for me.”
Josefa was nonplussed. Working with Paul? How do I respond to this left-field offer? Fortunately he changed the subject immediately.
“And how was St. Moritz?”
“Good. The horses were really eye-catching, and the guests were totally pleased.”
“That might have been Feller-Stähli’s last bash. By the way, they’ve brought the body back to Switzerland. The funeral was huge.”
“That business is really peculiar. What’s a Swiss lawyer doing hunting bears in Canada?”
“Grizzlies, dear girl, grizzly bears. Rich hobby hunters are particularly keen on them. They’re trophy hunters, understand? They’ll pay ten, twenty, fifty thousand for one, just so they can brag about it in their villa on Lake Zurich afterward.”
“Is that even permitted in Canada? I mean bear hunting?”
“Apparently in Prince George it is.”
“Prince George?” That made Josefa sit up and take notice.
The Zurich Conspiracy Page 6