The Zurich Conspiracy (44 page)

Josefa was thunderstruck and stared at her. “But the needle… They found the hole where the needle went in.”

“That’s another thing. Schulmann had blood drawn shortly before—supposedly for an AIDS test, if you can imagine that. The police are just now coming out with the whole story. They found the Rohypnol in his glass; there were traces in the whiskey. But the drug wasn’t the cause of death. Pius apparently smothered Schulmann with a plastic bag while he was unconscious.”

Bürglen, in March

Dear Frau Rehmer,

You do not know me, and Claire might never have told you about me. My name is Berta Fetz, and I am Claire’s aunt. Konrad, my husband, died a year ago. He had a weak heart, but a good one, that much is certain.

Now Claire is in a detention center, and she is supposed to have done some bad things, but nothing is proven yet, and I hope justice will be done. Only the Lord God knows what really happened and why Claire knew no other way out and went astray.

But I do know one thing for certain: Claire is not a bad person. She had a hard life, and she has always had to fight for everything and never got anything for free. I must explain it to you some more. Martha, Claire’s mother, is my younger sister by six years. I had good luck with Konrad, but Martha married a bad man, and that destroyed her character.

And yet they had such a pretty, clever, diligent daughter, a “Wunderkind,” Konrad used to say (we have no children of our own unfortunately.) My sister Martha is not pretty, nor am I, but Claire was such a sweet girl, with her blue eyes and her strawberry blonde hair and her delicate features. She probably got them from our grandmother Jeanne—a Swiss Frenchwoman from Geneva who married down, unfortunately, but Jeanne was always something special, like Claire.

When she started school they quickly saw that she was ahead of everybody else. She always had the best grades. And could she draw! Frau Rehmer, you should see the drawings she made for Konrad. And she was also very good in arithmetic. But Martha and Emil were never pleased with Claire. Many were the times I asked my husband why they were not happy about their Wunderkind. Konrad always said she was outgrowing them. Not physically, because Claire is rather small. But I think because she was smarter than her father was. And prettier than her mother. Many parents would have wished for a child like Claire.

They never praised Claire, they criticized everything about her. She could never please them. But Michi, her brother, he was three years younger, was spoiled rotten. And he was a ne’er-do-well. He could not even finish his apprenticeship; they threw him out. But he tore around in the most fantastic cars, a new one every year. Where does he get the money from, I would ask Konrad. Well, where do you think, is all Konrad would say. Is that not mightily unfair!

Claire often worked with Konrad in his garage. She was interested in motors. She was interested in everything. Konrad would have taken her on as an apprentice but Claire’s teacher talked to my sister and my brother-in-law. He said she should go to an advanced high school; such a good pupil must be encouraged. But Emil and Martha would not hear of it. They wanted to make a secretary out of Claire. That is of course a good job, but not for Claire.

My husband gave Claire money for a business college. Emil found out about it immediately, unfortunately, from a post office employee, because the money went through our postal savings account. There are no secrets in a small village like ours. I always suspected that Emil had something improper going with that woman in the post office. He ranted and raged, not at Konrad, he didn’t have the courage to do that, but at Claire. She then secretly took all her things out of her room and put them in the shed because she was going to run away. Her boyfriend Lukas was going to pick up her things for her. But Emil found out and set the shed on fire. We were never able to prove it, but Konrad and I were convinced he did it.

After that Claire could never go back home, and I think she did not want to. She was just seventeen at the time.

But she did finish business college, and she kept on with further training. She always wanted to be something, and she managed to do just that. I have to congratulate you, dear Frau Rehmer. You helped Claire so much, and she so liked it at the company. I want to aim high, she told me once. I want to aim high. Then they’ll get an eyeful. She meant her parents, naturally. We had a nice chat in the kitchen once. I can still see her standing before me as if it were only yesterday. She was wearing a pretty, bright purple dress and looked so elegant! She was a delight for the eyes. That was the only time she came for a visit after Konrad died.

And now she is in jail. And Martha and Emil are living in Spain, in the sun, living the good life of retirees. They have never once written to Claire. Or phoned her. As if she were not their child.

I think it all had something to do with men. She always latched onto the wrong men. Those men they talked about on television, they were certainly a bad influence on her. They were criminals, if you want to call them what they were. They surely promised Claire the moon and did not keep their promises. And she believed them.

But she did not really need that. She was such a hard worker, such a smart woman. Her teacher always said, Claire is so highly gifted. And she was right at the top. Herr Walther made her his right-hand man. Those men would definitely have wanted to stop that. Because Claire had no need of them anymore. That is how it looks to me. Believe me, Claire is not a bad person. Luck was simply not on her side.

Frau Rehmer, do pay Claire a visit, maybe later when things have settled down a little. She has such respect for you. If you had stayed with Loyn, all this would surely not have happened. Claire was very angry at the way they treated you at Loyn. She told me on the telephone: they are not going to treat me like that.

But a person can be wrong.

I have never written such a long letter in my life, but it is for Claire. After all, she is my niece, and I am really the only person she has.

May the Lord give you strength to bear these difficult times.

I wish you the best with all my heart, Frau Rehmer, and please, do not forget Claire.

Respectfully yours,

Berta Fetz

Holding the letter, Bianca Schwegler let her hands sink; she shook her head. Leaning back in the soft upholstered chair, she looked out Josefa’s living room window and studied the façade of the hotel across the street.

“I feel sorry for that good woman. First she loses her husband, and now her niece is a murderer. Berta Fetz would certainly never have dreamed that she’d have to cope with a nightmare like this at her age.” She looked at Josefa, who was lying on her yellow sofa wrapped up in a soft blanket. “But then…two years ago we’d never have dreamed of the things that have happened in just a few months, would we have?”

“Never, not in a thousand years,” Josefa replied pensively, twirling one of her black-and-gray curls around her index finger. She was wearing a comfortable velvet lounge suit and warm wool socks. She didn’t exactly know why she was showing the letter from Claire’s aunt to her former secretary, of all people. Maybe because Bianca Schwegler was a woman with so much life experience, someone who had raised her son all by herself. Someone who had been working for Loyn for thirteen years. She’d survived a long string of bosses thanks to her down-to-earth temperament.

Bianca Schwegler had sent her a sweet card with a homemade cut-out and offered to come for a visit “as soon as you’re better and would like to see me.” And one day Josefa did indeed phone her. They had never found time for a good long chat since she left Loyn, and that was Josefa’s fault, not Bianca’s. She had never really found time for people she basically liked a lot.

But now, she found that people were her salvation. Salvation from death and salvation from fear.

“Berta Fetz will get another rude awakening,” Bianca continued, pulling up her sleeves. “What she says about men, I think she’s got that wrong. Sorry to gossip like this—but Claire beguiled and manipulated men every which way. I know, Frau Rehmer, you must think I’m jealous, but I’ve often watched how Claire would turn on the charm. That coquettish look, that Marilyn Monroe whisper. That’s how she aroused men’s protective instincts—but we both know that Claire could very well take care of herself. She knew exactly what she was doing and why.”

Josefa wrapped the blanket more tightly around her. “Isn’t it crazy that she conned Schulmann? Claire had no fear of him at all…She outclassed him.”

“Outclassed? I’m not so sure. But you’re right, there was more to her than we thought. After Schulmann was dead and Herr Bourdin…you know already…she really ran the show, I mean communications and event marketing and everything. Walther relied on her totally. I saw a totally different side of her. Even her voice got lower.” Bianca sighed. “But she was already going down the wrong road, and that was the beginning of the end…Now we don’t know what will happen to Loyn. What the new owners have in mind—the Americans. They don’t give a damn for Switzerland, and they probably haven’t any serious interest in our products. But there’s where you see Herr Walther’s true character. Money. It’s always and only about money.”

She was rocking back and forth. “I’ve got to give Claire credit for one thing. I don’t think it was money that mattered to
her
. I think she simply wanted to be the queen of Loyn. What would have happened if you’d stayed? She would never have rebelled against you, right? Don’t take this the wrong way, Frau Rehmer, but you and Claire always were a team that gave me the creeps.”

Josefa raised herself up, irritated. “The creeps? How so?”

“Because you never argued. There was never really an angry word between you and Claire.” Bianca toyed with her necklace. “It would have only been normal for you to get in each other’s hair now and then, with all that stress.”

“We had our conflicts, Frau Schwegler, even if they weren’t as noisy and wild as Francis Bourdin’s, for example.”

Bianca leaned forward. “It often crossed my mind that at some point one of those two volcanoes had to erupt.”

“So? Which one did you think would blow first—Claire or me?”

“I couldn’t say at the time, Frau Rehmer.” Bianca smiled. “But it turns out that you were the first to erupt.”

“Me?” Josefa looked dumbfounded.

“Yes, of course, all of a sudden you just up and left Loyn.”

“Oh…
that’s
what you mean. Yes, of course, you’re right,” Josefa said in a wobbly voice.

Spring blossomed at the end of April with a force that Zurich hadn’t experienced that early in years, and everybody streamed outdoors to savor the end of the cold season. Ducks sunned themselves on the edge of the pond, a safe distance from dogs, small children, and young football players.

Girls in skin-tight tank tops baring their stomachs stretched out on the rough-hewn stone blocks beside the stairs to the university buildings; wild grass was shooting up among the stones. A few punk teenagers were banging their mountain bikes together in a sort of bullfight.

Farther along the footpath old folks from the nearby retirement home were sitting on wooden benches every few yards, reading the paper or offering remarks on what was taking place on the green lawn in front of them. Families spread out their picnic paraphernalia—big and little Tupperware containers with potato salad, pickles, nuts, dried fruit, sliced tomatoes, and cream cheese with herbs. Chicken thighs, steaks, and bratwursts were poked and turned on barbecues, often by gesticulating men in fluttering T-shirts.

Even Paul Klingler had taken on this task. He considered himself a barbecue specialist, and his homemade marinade was the best-kept secret on Zurich’s Bahnhofstrasse. “After the banking secrets, of course,” he’d assure everybody with a wink.

The potatoes wrapped in foil were still a long way from soft so Paul could abandon his observation post for a couple of minutes and cool his feet in the pond.