The Zurich Conspiracy (34 page)

“A deer,” Helene explained. “Somebody hit it on the road and left it there. I sent the kids home, it was too cold for them today anyway, and went to take care of this animal. The game warden is sick, and his assistant is going after a large dog that’s been attacking game. So he asked me to bring the deer here and start working on it.”

She put on an apron and plastic gloves and picked up a knife lying on the table. Josefa saw a big bucket of bloody guts in the corner.

“Was the deer already dead?” she asked, unable to take her eyes off the exposed flesh.

“I had to shoot it, it couldn’t be saved.” Helene separated the skin from the flanks. She worked quickly and skillfully in spite of the low light. After a while, she muttered, “You’ve got to kill animals sometimes if you want to help them.”

The room was ice cold and reminded Josefa of a dungeon.

Helene cast a glance at her. “Sorry, I can’t heat this room. The meat stays fresh longer. Erwin, he’s the number-two game warden, he’ll be coming later on to cut this animal up. I’ll get a few choice cuts for sure. And you will be invited for a saddle of venison.”

But Josefa didn’t respond; she wasn’t in the mood for jokes so Helene turned back to her work again.

Josefa sat down on an overturned plastic pail beyond the lamplight beam and announced in a firm voice, “Helene, I’ve got to ask you a few questions.” Her friend mumbled something unintelligible and kept her head down. “Why did you lead me to believe you were in Canada when it appears that you were in Germany?”

If Helene was surprised, she didn’t show it. “I never told you I was going to Canada,” she answered calmly and kept on working. “I only said that I’ll be meeting Greg. Who told you I was in Germany anyway?”

Josefa ignored the question and pressed on. “There are just too many extraordinary coincidences—too many extraordinary situations. Your cousin was in Tenerife precisely when Thüring disappeared. She was also in the bar where Thüring was partying; she was even photographed with him. She happened by chance to be in the same hotel as I was, she recognized me and just happened to know Pius Tschuor’s name. Then Salzinger dies, supposedly shot with his own hunting rifle.” Josefa was rocking back and forth on the pail, her arms folded on her chest in an attempt to keep warm.

“Just by chance he died near Vals in Graubünden, and just by chance that’s where you and your father always went hunting. I phoned your mother, Helene, and she told me that you were in Vals for a few days at the end of July—precisely when Salzinger had his accident. You’ve never breathed a word about this. And then I met you a little while later at the Münster. Wouldn’t it have been natural for you to say something about your trip?”

Her friend turned away from the deer and looked at her as she wiped her knife on her apron.

“I know that the Swixan bankruptcy was tragic for your father,” Josefa continued, “and it certainly was for you too. I’ve got to get it out, Helene, sorry that I have to open old wounds.”

Helene said nothing.

But this time Josefa did not want to keep anything back; the issue was too important. “I also know that Freya’s father paid a terrible price for Swixan’s downfall. And Freya probably did too.”

“Josefa, I—” Helene started to say.

“No, please let me finish,” Josefa begged, “or I’ll lose my train of thought. Where was I? Oh, yes. So then you spent the Christmas holidays in Germany and not in Canada. At the same time as Karl Westek, who was in Germany like you, was killed in his Porsche because somebody tinkered with the brakes or the motor. All of that can’t just be coincidence, Helene, do you understand? I simply can’t get over it. And that’s not all.”

Josefa cleared her throat, then carried on bravely.

“Feller-Stähli loses his life in a hunting accident somewhere in the bush around Prince George. And who’s a guide in Prince George? Your boyfriend Greg. There’s something not quite right here.” Josefa took a deep breath. Now it had to come out. Whatever the consequences, it had to come out. Her heart was pounding right up to her throat.

“Helene, did you have anything to do with the deaths of Thüring, Salzinger, Feller-Stähli, and Westek?”

Josefa couldn’t bring herself to look her best friend in the face. Instead she stared past her at the deer’s half-open mouth, its tongue hanging out as if somebody had tried to pull it out.

It was deathly quiet for a while. Then Helene turned her back to her. The scraping and poking of the knife was audible once again, as were the soft squeak of the rubber gloves and the shuffling of her hunting boots. Josefa’s throat grew tight. So that was it. Helene was turning away from her because of the monstrous suspicion Josefa harbored.

“Helene, please…” she implored in a low voice.

It seemed an eternity until Helene spoke. Her voice sounded constricted, as if it took all her energy to hold back a powerful stream of emotions.

“I knew you’d ask me these questions one day, Josefa, that’s obvious. You’re anything but stupid. But now…now that I hear you, it’s…hard to take it calmly.” She turned toward her, but Josefa still couldn’t see her face.

“That’s a big bombshell you’ve thrown. And because I know how concerned you are for me—at least that’s what I’d like to think, and, yes, I think you’re still loyal in spite of everything—only for this reason am I going to tell you the whole story. But I’ve got to keep going here, or I won’t be finished in time. Do you want to hear it now or later?”

“Now,” Josefa said wearily. A deep sadness overcame her, as if something had been irretrievably destroyed.

“Whenever something bad happens in the family, you’ve got two choices, maybe three. You can blame others and be bitter. Or you can blame yourself and get desperate. That almost happened to me. I was filled with feelings of guilt over my father; it was for me that he sold the company. At least, so I thought. He lost everything that was important to him on my account. All we had left was our house because that belonged to my mother.”

Helene’s words were broken up with little pauses as she concentrated on her knife strokes. Josefa followed every motion of her hand as if she could understand all the more easily what Helene was saying.

“I would certainly have gone into a deep depression if two things hadn’t saved me: the injured birds I nursed back to health at the Mythenquai bird station—you should have seen the will to live in those little bodies; it was incredible—and my mother. She had me go into therapy. She had just lost her husband and did not want to lose her daughter as well.”

Josefa had the feeling her body was slowly turning to ice. She’d finished her coffee and was now completely abandoned to the cold. She pulled her down jacket tightly around her. She didn’t want to interrupt Helene for anything. Her friend might never want to talk to her again.

Helene gulped down her coffee and moved over to the deer’s other side.

“I fought against therapy at first, as you can imagine. But my therapist was a wonderful woman with much life experience and good common sense. She was the best thing that could’ve happened to me. I learned to take responsibility for the things I could have some control over and to delegate the responsibility for everything else wherever it belonged. That gave me the strength to act, several years later.”

She carefully wiped the blade on a rag and leaned over the carcass again.

“I worked with Freya to contact the sons and daughters of shareholders and employees who had lost all their money—and in some cases their relatives—because of the Swixan swindle. We wanted to make every effort to ensure that something like that wouldn’t happen again, you understand? We wanted to prevent those bastards in Swixan’s top management from causing people so much grief ever again. And we didn’t want to see them enjoying their millions guilt-free after they were let off.”

Helene put her knife away and undid her apron. Josefa sat cowering on her plastic pail, her whole body quivering.

“You’re nearly frozen, Josefa. Come on, let’s go upstairs and have a warm drink. Erwin will be coming any minute now.”

The water was steaming in the pot in the warm kitchen. Josefa saw that the stove was heated with wood. She stirred in some more instant coffee and sat down near the stove without saying a word.

Helene took off her colored bandana and ran her fingers through her hair.

“Do you know the story of Al Capone, the American Mafia boss? Capone was responsible for dozens of deaths. But since he never carried out the murders himself—he used hired killers—the police could never pin anything on him. But the police found a way to lock him up anyway. Capone actually was in fact sentenced to eleven years in prison. And do you know what for? Tax evasion! Something that gangster hadn’t figured on.”

Helene looked out the window, fir branches seeming to stretch endlessly into the distance. Her face showed great concentration and something like quiet triumph.

“Those guys got off with one of the biggest frauds in the history of Zurich. Unbelievable, but true. But that doesn’t protect them for the rest of their lives.”

Her voice was now perceptibly livelier, as it had just been in that cold dungeon. Josefa gripped her warm coffee cup.

“They made mistakes. Little illegal games. So-called gentlemen’s crimes. Forgivable stupidities. But they weren’t going to get away with them; we’d see to that. That’s why we watched them like hawks. Karl Westek can thank us for his dirty divorce. He was a notorious two-timer, and we let his wife in on his indiscretions, photos and all. If you get my meaning.”

Josefa nodded as if in a daze.

“Salzinger often drove after three or four glasses of wine. That’s why his driver’s license was suspended a year ago. He must’ve wondered who kept tipping the police off. The gun that killed him was not registered, by the way. We found that out too and told the police. But he was already dead.”

Helene was moving her coffee cup back and forth across the table in a random pattern. Josefa kept her arms tightly folded, as if that would help her keep Helene’s words at a distance.

“Thüring had a cocaine habit. We informed the Spanish police on Tenerife, anonymously of course. He’d bought himself off with bribes earlier, but this time it looked bad for him. Maybe he was in a drug fog and hopped off the boat of his own free will.”

Helene leaned toward Josefa and looked her directly in the face. But Josefa couldn’t look her friend in the eye; she just kept her focus on Helene’s cup.

“These guys deserve to be punished, Josefa, but it’s not what you think! We don’t do the judging. Do you think Salzinger’s family didn’t have his death investigated? There’s nothing that indicates anything but an accident.” She let her words hang in the room for several minutes, then leaned back.

“Freya was on Tenerife because she hoped to be on the scene when Thüring was arrested, but the Spanish police messed up. It may sound cynical, but if the police had moved in at the right moment, Thüring would still be alive. He’d be sitting pretty—but in a prison cell.”

She paused. Josefa looked her in the eye now. “And how did she recognize me? We’d never met.”

Helene looked at her in amazement. “But you’re my best friend! I’ve no doubt showed her pictures of you. Of us both, of our hike up the Üetliberg, you must remember that. You are a valuable person in my life. Besides…With those big, dark eyes, your face is not so easy to forget.” Her mouth flashed a wry smile, then she was serious again.

“You must understand that Freya didn’t want to identify herself. She didn’t want to get you involved in the business.”

That wasn’t enough to dispel all of Josefa’s doubts. “And Karl Westek?”

“Westek was in Germany with a prostitute, and he met some shady characters. Then we lost track of him. That’s all there is.” Helene met Josefa’s gaze squarely.

“Now you know more than you ought to, more than what’s good for you. I really wanted to prevent that because you’ve got your own problems. I didn’t want it to be a load on your shoulders.” She gave a bitter laugh. “But you don’t know everything, and it’s better that way. For your own protection.”

“My own protection? Why are you talking about
my
protection?
You
have to protect yourself, Helene! What happens if the police see what I’ve seen? When they come to the same conclusions I did? Then what are you going to say?”

Helene shook her head. She put out her hand as if she wanted to draw her friend closer. “No need to worry. The police have no reason to suspect me. Or at least, no more or no less than any other person.”

She pulled back her hand but kept her eyes on Josefa. “If I were you, I’d worry about myself.”

“Why?” she asked warily, freezing again in spite of the heat from the stove.

“Think about it.” Helene moved her head back and forth. “What do you tell the cops if they ask you why you were in Tenerife in July, of all months? And met Freya in the hotel there? What do you say if the cops discover that you were a prize-winning sharpshooter in your early years? And what do you say if your old colleagues tell them that you tried everything you could to stop Schulmann from coming to Loyn and that you lost your job because of him? That you hated each other’s guts and you swore eternal revenge on Schulmann?”

“What are you trying to say?” Josefa stood up so quickly that her coffee spilled.

Helene picked up the cup. “Maybe now you see how I feel right this minute, after your interrogation. Do you really think I am capable of planning a murder—or several? Do you think your best friend is capable of a thing like that?”

Josefa was so confused she said nothing. Disappointment was written all over Helene’s face, though.

“I just meant that you’re as much a suspect as I am—or as little as I am.” Helene picked up her bandana and wiped the puddle of coffee off the table. She looked at the bandana. “I was just about to polish my glasses with that,” she said with feigned resignation before turning on the tap and rinsing out the colorful cloth. Then she turned toward Josefa and said in a conciliatory tone, “We mustn’t drive ourselves crazy. We should concentrate our energy on what’s essential. There are more important things than whether Thüring was full of coke or Johnny Walker when he landed in the water.”