The Basel Killings E-Book

Hansjörg Schneider

• Herausgeber: Bitter Lemon Press
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

It's the end of October, but it could be December. It is just after midnight when Basel Police Inspector Hunkeler, on his way home and slightly the worse for wear, approaches old man Hardy sitting on a bench under a streetlight. The usually very loquacious Hardy is ominously silent—his throat a gaping wound. It turns out he was first strangled, then his left earlobe slit, its diamond stud stolen. The media and the police come quickly to the same conclusion: Hardy's murder was the work of a gang of Albanian drug smugglers. But for Hunkeler that seems too obvious. The trail leads him deep into a dark world of bars, bordellos and strip clubs, but also into the corrupt core of some of Basel's political and industrial elite. On a more sinister level, he will soon discover the consequences of certain events in relatively recent Swiss history that those in power would prefer to keep far from the public eye.

Leseprobe

THE BASEL KILLINGS

Hansjörg Schneider

Translated by Mike Mitchell

BITTER LEMON PRESS

LONDON

Contents

Title PageThe Basel KillingsAbout the AuthorCopyright

THEBASELKILLINGS

Peter Hunkeler, inspector with the Basel City criminal investigation department, divorced with one daughter, came out of the Milchhüsli onto Missionsstrasse. It was early in the morning of Monday, 27 October, half past midnight to be precise – he’d looked at the clock on the wall of the inn before heading outside. There was a shimmer of white in the air, cast down from the street lamp in the fog. The end of October and already the town was grey and wet, just like the beginning of December.

Hunkeler felt a need to pee. The sudden cold, he thought: inside it had been nice and warm. Not just because of the heating but also because of all the people sitting round the regulars’ table, one next to the other, like beasts in the cowshed. He wondered whether to go back inside to the toilet. Then he heard a tram approaching from the right, from the city centre. The soft sound of the wheels on the rails, metal on metal, a round light, the outline hardly discernible. A ghostly gleam gliding through the fog. Then the lighted windows of the number 3, a man with a hat on in the front car, a young couple in the rear. The girl’s light hair was draped over the boy’s shoulder. The tram disappeared in the fog, heading for the border. A sudden screech of the wheels – the light on Burgfelderplatz was presumably on red.

Hunkeler waited until he heard the tram setting off again. He crossed the road to the Turkish pizzeria and looked in through the window of the Billiards Centre. He saw the artist Gerhard Laufenburger sitting at the round table with his girlfriend Nana, beside them little Cowboy with his Stetson on his head and his black dog. He didn’t want to see them that evening, so he headed off towards Burgfelderplatz.

After he’d taken a few steps he came to the Cantonal Bank on the corner that had a little tree in a tub outside. He thought the plant was ridiculous. Either a tree or no tree, rather than an apology for a tree. But now the little tree was just what he needed. He went over to it and pissed on the slim trunk. Bloody prostate, he thought, by now he couldn’t even hold his water for the few hundred yards to his apartment.

He turned his head and saw a dark figure sitting on the stone bench in the corner, leaning against the wall. He went over to see who it was. It was Hardy, the old vagabond who always had a diamond in his left earlobe. He appeared to be asleep, mouth open. Hunkeler sat down on the damp seat beside him, grasped the collar of his jacket and pulled it up. He looked across the square, where there was nothing but fog. After a while he heard the sound of a car approaching. Two bright headlights appeared and slowly went past.

“Shitty weather,” Hunkeler said. “Shitty town, shitty time of year.”

He looked back at Hardy, who wasn’t moving. His false teeth had a strange white glow.

“My Hedwig,” Hunkeler said, “is a lousy bitch. When you need her, she isn’t there. At the moment she’s away in Paris, studying the Impressionists. A sabbatical, that’s what she calls it, for three months, until the new year, to recharge her batteries. Being a kindergarten teacher is obviously an extremely stressful job, normal holidays aren’t enough for you to recover. You need an extra three months’ further study in Paris to be able to withstand the psychological pressure of the brats. That’s a quarter of a year.”

He spat on the wet asphalt, three yards away, and lit a cigarette. He took a drag, coughed and leaned back against the wall.

“I’m finding it a real effort getting through this dreary time,” he said. “Not smoking too much, not drinking too much beer, not going to bed too late. I could use a sabbatical too. Just imagine, Manet’s women in the park with their lovely hats and white blouses and the sunlight falling through the foliage. Monet’s water lilies. Van Gogh’s blue church. And now just look across this square. What do you see? Just muck, and so grey you don’t even recognize it as muck.”

He spat out the cigarette in a wide curve; it landed by the tree. He watched the glow gradually die out.

Hardy still wasn’t saying anything. He’d leaned his head back, his eyes half open. It almost looked as if he wasn’t breathing.

Hunkeler suddenly felt a chill on the back of his neck. He got to his feet, grabbed the man’s upper arms and tried to pull him up. But he was too heavy. At least Hunkeler managed to heave him up so far that his head tipped back, as if it wasn’t firmly attached any more. A sharp wound appeared across his throat, going from one side to the other. The left earlobe had been slit. He had a closer look to see if the diamond was still there. It wasn’t.

He let the man’s corpse drop back and went to the little tree to throw up. He didn’t want to, but he had to. Beer ran out of his mouth, dripping down. Odd, he thought, why am I being sick on the tree and not simply on the ground – as if that would make any difference?

He took some fast, deep breaths, like a dog panting, forcing the stuff back down that was coming up. He wiped his chin and forehead with his handkerchief; they were suddenly dripping with sweat. He could feel himself swaying. For a moment he thought of running off, going to the Billiards Centre and joining Laufenburger and Cowboy as if nothing had happened. But then he took his phone out of his pocket and called the emergency number.

The ambulance was the first to arrive, with its siren sounding and its blue light flashing through the fog. It came from the cantonal hospital on Hebelstrasse, down towards the Rhine. The doctor, a youngish man with rimless glasses, leapt out. He went over to the slumped figure of Hardy and grasped him by the chin, making his head tilt to one side. He had a close look at the wound on his neck and his left ear.

“Broken neck,” he said. “Strangled. What’s this with his ear?”

“He wore a diamond in the lobe,” Hunkeler said.

“There’s no diamond there any more,” the doctor said, carefully leaning Hardy’s head back against the wall. He took a cigarillo out of a tin, lit it and looked across the square, a nauseated expression on his face. The first onlookers were standing there in the fog.

“Turn that bloody blue light off,” Hunkeler said.

The driver nodded, got into the ambulance and turned it off. The crossroads were grey in the light, which was so diffuse you couldn’t tell where it came from. It was quiet, an almost unnerving silence. The men could all feel it: no one was moving any more. The onlookers stood there like spectres, no one came close.

Then a light flared up, sharp and brutal. It was directed at the dead man, tearing him out of the protective darkness, his white teeth, the cut on his neck. It was fat Hauser, the newshound, a reporter, always first on the scene. He lived just round the corner on Hegenheimerstrasse.

Hunkeler went over and grabbed him by the arm, but Hauser was young and strong.

“I’ll break every bone in your body,” Hunkeler said, “if you press that button again.”

“Not necessary, I’ve got what I need.” Hauser wriggled out of his grip and disappeared in the fog.

Hunkeler went over to the onlookers. He knew them all. Nana was there from the Billiards Centre and little Cowboy with his dog. Luise in her leopard-skin jacket. Dolly with the long legs, little Niggi, pale Franz, Richard the foreign legionnaire. They’d all been sitting at the regulars’ table in the Milchhüsli. There were also a few old people there from the surrounding apartments – they’d presumably also heard the siren.

“Hardy’s dead,” Hunkeler said. “Someone broke his neck.”

He’d no idea what else he could say. No one moved, no one cried. Out on the street a taxi slipped past.

Then Hermine appeared out of the fog. She lived directly opposite, in an apartment over the pharmacy she managed. She was over fifty but still had a model’s complexion, like Dresden china. She was wearing slippers and had slung on a blue dressing gown. She went over until she was three paces from where Hardy was slumped, stopped, put her hand over her mouth and seemed to be swaying for a moment.

“You must get away from here,” the doctor said. “It’s a crime scene, no unauthorized person is allowed. Actually, that should be your task, Inspector. You should know what is to be done.”

“She’s Hardy’s lover,” Hunkeler said. “She wants to say farewell to him.”

“No,” Hermine said, “I’m not saying farewell to him. We’d only had an argument, it wasn’t a farewell for good. Why is he dead?”

“That I don’t know. Go now, have a cognac.”

Putting his arm round her skinny shoulders, he took her to the others.

“Take her with you. Give her something to drink, put it on my tab. The square will be cordoned off, there’s nothing more to see here.”

Luise nodded. “Come on, you lot. We can’t do anything more for Hardy now.”

They vanished in the fog, heading for the Milchhüsli.

The police squad finally arrived, a good quarter of an hour after Hunkeler had called. It consisted of Detective Sergeant Madörin, Corporal Lüdi and Haller, with his cold curved pipe in his mouth. They got out, a bit too slowly as it seemed, and went over to the dead Hardy.

“He’s dead,” Lüdi said. “Strangled.”

They looked round the foggy square, nauseated by their profession, the work that was waiting for them.

Haller scratched his neck ostentatiously. “A stupid business,” he said. “What have you been getting up to?”

“I haven’t been getting up to anything,” Hunkeler said. “This is my way home. I just happened to come across him.”

“You said on the phone that you knew him. You know what he’s called.”

“He’s called Bernhard Schirmer. Known as Hardy. He used to have a diamond in his left earlobe.”

“I didn’t see a diamond in his earlobe,” Haller said. “I saw a bloody gash.”

“Your way home?” Madörin asked. “From where? The Milchhüsli over there isn’t exactly a top-class establishment. Nor the Billiards Centre. That’s where the Albanians go.”

“That doesn’t bother me,” Hunkeler said. “I drink my beer where I want.”

He was trying to give his voice the sharpness he usually had at his disposal. But he couldn’t summon it up.

“I had a drink in the Milchhüsli and studied the Barbara Amsler file. That case just won’t leave me in peace.”

“Night work then?” Madörin grinned. “Which file was that exactly?”

“I call the emergency squad,” Hunkeler said, “and you take more than quarter of an hour. What’s going on?”

“Calm down,” Lüdi said. “We can’t tear along through the fog. You really ought to know that.”

“Hauser was here,” said Hunkeler. “He was faster than you. He took a photo.”

“And you allowed that?” Madörin said nastily.

“I didn’t see him coming, because of the fog. What’s more, I feel as depressed as if it was just before Christmas.”

“It’s this shitty fog,” Haller said.

They stood there and waited. No one sat down on the stone bench, it was too damp.

Then the crime scene squad arrived, in three cars. They parked on the pavement. The spotlights were set up, the square was cordoned off, the usual work began.

A chubby man with a reddish face came over to Hunkeler and grasped him by the arm. It was Dr de Ville, from Alsace, head of the section.

“Hélas, Hünkelé,” he said, “why did you have to go across this of all squares on your way home? The man could quite happily have stayed sitting there until the morning. No one’s going to bring him back to life again.”

Hunkeler took a cigarette out of the packet and put it between his lips, but seeing Madörin’s venomous look he put it back in the packet. Then he went to find the cigarette butt he’d spat out at the tree and picked it up.

“The crime scene must stay the way it was,” Madörin said. “Who’s actually in charge of the squad here?”

“I threw this butt away while I was waiting for you and the ambulance. I’m in charge of the squad. And my instructions are to let the forensic team get on with their work. Lüdi and Madörin are to go over to the Billiards Centre and take the customers’ details.”

“If it was one of them,” Lüdi said, “he’ll have been across the border long since. And no one will know him.”

“No one is to leave the place,” Hunkeler said, feeling the sharpness returning to his voice, “before their names and addresses have been taken down. Haller and I will do the same in the Milchhüsli.”

*

As Hunkeler went into the Milchhüsli, he felt a slight dizziness. He stopped and clutched his forehead. He could see the bar with no one sitting at it. The darts machines on the walls with no one playing at them. The regulars’ table, which was fully occupied, the pall of tobacco smoke over it. He felt as if he was going back to a long-past time that he could hardly remember any more but which had him in its grip and wouldn’t let him go. Most of all he would have liked to turn round at once and stride out towards the border and into Alsace. To tramp over the wet meadows, through the clayey woods, up the rise to Folgensbourg, across the plateau to the village where his house was. He would have opened the door, called the cats, lit the stove and gone to bed, pulling the blankets up over his head. Then the crackle of the logs, the purring of the cats, the calls of the owls in the trees outside.

He took his hand off his forehead, as if he’d just been wiping off the sweat, went over to the bar and ordered a cup of coffee from Milena. He watched Haller sit down at the regulars’ table, light his pipe and take a notepad out of his pocket. That was all so pointless, so boring, so stupid. He saw Hermine whimpering in Luise’s arms.

“Hardy’s dead, isn’t he?” Milena said as she put the cup down in front of him.

“Yes.”

“Who did it?”

“I don’t know.”

Milena was Serbian. She had two children who were at school, whom you could sometimes see doing their homework in the kitchen. She was paler than usual. She gave Hunkeler a long keen look. Then she shook her head slowly. This slowness was one of the reasons he liked her so much.

“I can’t imagine,” she said, “that there would be any reason at all to kill Hardy. He wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

He stirred the two sugar lumps in his coffee, equally slowly.

“You never know who can hurt whom,” he said. “Did you notice anything out of the ordinary this evening?”

She thought, then shook her head again. “It’s the end of the month. A few had already had their money, they paid for rounds. A lot was drunk, but no more than usual for the time of the month.”

“Was Hardy in here? I mean before I was?”

“Yes, at eight, as always. He was drinking apple juice until nine. Then he set off on his walk, as he did every evening. He doesn’t drink alcohol any more, since Hermine threw him out of her apartment. He couldn’t sleep any more. Every night he walked round the block where she lives, as if he wanted to guard her. But you know all that, of course.”

She lowered her eyes and brushed a strand of hair out of her face. “Now he’s dead,” she said.

“Was there anything that struck you while Hardy was here, between eight and nine? Was there anyone here you’ve never seen before?”

She thought about it, her expression brightening. “Yes, two middle-aged men. Powerfully built, well dressed, ties and all that. They had coffee. One certainly weighed more than two hundred pounds. The other had a thick chain on his left wrist, solid gold.”

“Do you know where they came from?”

“They were speaking Turkish. Presumably they’d been collecting money from the Turkish pizzeria opposite. I’m pretty sure of that actually, I know that kind of gentleman. They were laughing very loud, that did strike me. They left immediately after Hardy.”

Hunkeler looked across at the regulars’ table, where Haller was writing something down in his notepad. No one was speaking, they were just waiting tensely for the questions.

“Do you think the two of them killed Hardy?”

“No. They were pros. They wouldn’t just go and kill an old man like that.”

He took out his notebook and wrote down: Two Turks,professionals, one with a solid-gold chain on his left wrist.

“It wasn’t them,” Milena said. “They only use violence when there’s no other way.”

“I know. Still, it’s remarkable for two Turks to be drinking coffee in a Serbian cafe. Isn’t it?”

“Not necessarily. That’s all ancient history, we have to forget it.”

She took a bottle of vodka out of the fridge, put schnapps glasses on a tray and filled them.

“Do you want one too?”

“No.”

He watched her take the tray over to the regulars’ table, looking a bit slipshod but still charming.

“How’s Hedwig?” she asked, once she was back behind the bar. “Still in Paris?”

“She’s doing fine, excellently.”

Now she did smile, with a trace of mockery, or so it seemed to him.

“Let me give you a piece of good advice. Go home and have a good sleep. You’ve got dark rings round your eyes.”

*

Outside he crossed the road and saw that Gerhard Laufenburger was still in the Billiards Centre. Nana and Cowboy were there as well. Most of all he’d have liked to go home, but there was still something he wanted to know. Skender, the Albanian landlord, came over to him as soon as he went in.

“Listen, Herr Hunkeler,” he said, agitated, “this is all a misunderstanding. We are peaceful people. We don’t kill anybody. Our religion forbids it. Recently everyone seems to have come to think we Muslims are bandits and murderers. That is an insult.”

“I know,” said Hunkeler.

“You’re the boss. Send these two policemen away. They’re bad people. They treat us like dogs and want to know our addresses.”

Hunkeler looked across at the billiards tables, which were empty. Crushed together at the coffee tables beside them were the Albanian customers. Young folk, mostly men, a few couples.

“Next please,” Madörin, standing before them, said in his sharp officer’s voice. “Precise name, precise address, precise telephone number. And no sly tricks. Anyone who lies will have problems. We check everything.”

Lüdi was sitting beside him, stony-faced, noting down everything he heard.

“I liked Hardy,” Skender said, “especially after he stopped drinking alcohol. Who would kill an old man like that?”

“He wasn’t that old,” said Hunkeler, “he was around sixty.”

“We are a place for my Albanian countryfolk but also for people from here. We are tolerant, we serve alcohol, even though the Swiss sometimes drink too much. But these are decent premises, we don’t need the police.”

“I’m sorry, but that’s how it has to be. It won’t be any use, but we have to be doing something.” He grinned, tried to wink with his left eye. It wasn’t really a success, he was simply too tired.

Hunkeler sat down beside Nana at the round table. Laufenburger had brought his Siamese cat, which was purring in his lap. Cowboy’s black dog was lying asleep on the floor. In the twenty-foot-long aquarium a few fish were calmly swimming. A video clip was running on the TV in the corner but no one was watching it. On the table was a half-full bottle of red wine. Hunkeler would have liked a glass, but he ordered coffee.

“Why did you stay sitting here?” he asked. “Surely you heard the ambulance?”

“I couldn’t get away because of the cat,” Laufenburger said.

“But you usually take her everywhere with you.”

Laufenburger lowered his eyes, picked up his glass and had a drink.

“I didn’t like Hardy,” he said.

“Why are you saying that? You can’t have known it was anything to do with Hardy.”

Again Laufenburger took his glass. His hand seemed to be trembling slightly.

“Nana ran out to see what was going on. She came back in straight away and said Hardy was dead. Then she rushed out again.”

He raised his head and looked Hunkeler straight in the eye.

“Hardy always used to get on my nerves. He wasn’t quite clean. Didn’t you know that?”

“What do you mean?”

“Crooked things, fiddles. Why was he always going away?”

“He told me,” Hunkeler said, “that he had a hut in Alsace. By Morschwil Pond, I think.”

“He had, had he? And how did he pay for that? And his diamond was worth a good twenty thousand francs. Where did he get that?”

“He was a truck driver,” Cowboy said, “before he got stomach cancer. They cut out half of it. He had a large pension. At least, he always had enough money. And he’d always worn the diamond.”

“If you believe that, you’ll believe anything,” Laufenburger said.

“Who actually was it who told Hermine?” Hunkeler asked.

“Me,” said Nana. “I’ve got a mobile phone.”

Hunkeler looked at her. Her name was actually Natasha and she was a Belarusian. A fifty-year-old woman, hair dyed blonde, a bright, finely featured face, a trace of freckles. He looked at Laufenburger, his ridiculous sailor’s cap, the silver chain round his neck, his nicotine-stained fingers. He suddenly hated this guy, he hated himself.

“How can you stick it out with this wreck?” he asked.

“He’s not a wreck,” Nana said. “He’s just drinking too much at the moment. But I cook for him and sometimes he eats a bit. I love him.”

Hunkeler dumped the money for his coffee down on the table and left. He was now really furious. He hated these pubs, he hated this town, he hated his profession. Riff-raff the lot of them, he thought. Do nothing, don’t work, sit around drawing their pensions. And are even loved.

Over at the crossing he saw the forensic team at work in the floodlit fog. Two young guys were kneeling down beside the little tree examining the ground. Hardy’s corpse was on a stretcher.

He walked past without any greeting and turned onto St Johann’s-Ring, heading for Mittlere Strasse.

He had a restless night, even though he was dead tired. He curled up in the foetal position, which usually gave him a sleep that dissipated all his worries: hands over his temples, knees drawn up, wreathed in the warmth of the blanket. And he did manage several times to submerge and dock with things that were unknown to him, with the old familiar realm of the undefined, where he felt at home. But he kept on waking with a start, having to emerge from the protective world of dreams. It was a painful rising that took place at breakneck speed and was almost physically painful. And then he would see Hardy’s face tipping to the side once more.

Hunkeler had had too much coffee. He wasn’t used to coffee late in the evening. He’d ordered an espresso when he went into the Milchhüsli at ten and sat at a table by himself because he wanted to reread Barbara Amsler’s farewell letter. Again. Barbara had been a whore who paid tax on a regular but not particularly high income as a prostitute. Having grown up in Schinznach Dorf in Aargau canton, she’d had a difficult youth; her father had originally been a farmer and wine-grower, and later had worked at the power station down on the Aare. Her mother had been an incomer called Rosa Minder; both parents were dead. Barbara had run away from home at a very young age, with almost no education, and had been in various children’s homes and institutions. Then she’d come to Basel and worked as a cashier at a grocer’s. On 14 August, aged just thirty-two, she’d been found in Allschwil Pond, strangled with a noose of white raw silk. Allschwil Pond was in the Basel Rural Area. And since the place where the body was found determined who had investigative responsibility, the Basel Rural CID was in charge. However, as the murder had possibly taken place in the city, Inspector Hunkeler had also been called in.

It was in her apartment in Schneidergasse that he had found the letter he called her farewell letter. It said, If youkick me, I will long for you. If you hit me, I will crawl back to you.If you kill me, I will stay with you for ever.

Hunkeler had read these lines time and time again, as if they held the key to the murder case. He’d got caught up in this case in a way that was rare in his career. And he refused to even contemplate the idea that he couldn’t solve it. The North Italian Enrico Casali, for whom Barbara had worked in the Singerhaus and the Klingental over in Lesser Basel, had a cast-iron alibi. And her colleagues had no information to offer at all.

Hunkeler couldn’t forget her slim face with the full mouth that reminded him of a plant. He himself came from the Aargau. He had a soft spot for those kinds of women, who were dear and gentle like the valleys from which they came.

In the Milchhüsli he had gone over to the regulars’ table at eleven and drunk three small beers. He’d needed company, human warmth. He’d left the place after twelve and found Hardy’s dead body. Around two he’d had another coffee in the Milchhüsli and then one more later on in the Billiards Centre. And that had clearly been too much.

He could feel his pulse pounding. It wasn’t something he was used to. Usually he slept like a log; sleeping was one of his strengths. Now his heart was thumping, as if he’d been climbing a mountain. Was it old age, was his circulation collapsing?

He heard the nearby clock tower striking; he counted: one, two, three, four times.

He got up, went to the telephone and dialled a Paris number. He let it ring fourteen times until Hedwig answered. “Yes?” she said, almost in a whisper.

“I need you,” Hunkeler said, “right now. You have to talk to me.”

“What’s wrong? I was fast asleep. Call me in the morning.”

“No, don’t hang up. I need your voice.”

“What do you want with my voice? You must be joking.”

“Are you alone?”

She giggled; she’d finally woken up. “No, I’m with someone. With a dream.”

“I’ll kill the guy!” he screamed.

Hedwig laughed, taking her time. “I’m with Seurat and Sisley. They’re pure light.”

“Seurat I know. He’s the one with all the dots. He can’t even draw a decent line. Come over to me.”

“In the middle of the night? Are you crazy?”

“Hardy’s dead. Someone broke his neck.”

Silence. She was shocked.

“Are you still there?” he shouted.

“Yes. Is he the nice alcoholic, the one with the sexy voice?”

“Yes. Him. But he hadn’t had a drink for two months.”

She waited, he heard her sitting up.

“So that’s it for Paris next weekend,” she said coolly.

“Yes. But I’ll call you every night.”

“Listen,” she said after a pause, “I do like that kind of call now and then. But I’ll be switching off my phone the next few nights. I’m taking this sabbatical to have a good rest.”

She hung up.

He went out onto the balcony and looked down into the courtyard. He could see nothing but fog. All that could be heard was a quiet rustling. It must be the last autumn leaves of the maple tree.

It was already nine when he woke, but that didn’t bother him. There would be difficulties anyway, you could bet your bottom dollar on that. There had been huge restructuring when the public prosecution office had moved out of the Lohnhof and into the Waaghof. Anyone who couldn’t – or wouldn’t – adjust to the new structures was sure to be faced with difficulties sooner or later. And one of those people was old Inspector Peter Hunkeler.

However, he didn’t feel as old as he was. But that was presumably one of the main difficulties associated with getting older. The image you had of yourself lagged behind the reality.

He paused for a moment while he was soaping his face in the bathroom to scrape off the grey hairs, and looked at himself in the mirror. He knew the face he saw very well; after all, it was his own face. He quite liked it, though not particularly. It was just his own face looking at him from the mirror.

He picked up his razor and started, as always, at the bottom right. That face would last the few years until he was pensioned off, at least he hoped so. And until then he had no intention of letting himself be substantially restructured.

Out in the street he decided to leave his car there because of the fog. He went into the Restaurant Sommereck and sat down beside Edi at the regulars’ table and ordered coffee. He picked up the papers and leafed through them both, but there was nothing about Hardy. Hauser the newshound hadn’t been that quick after all.

“I’ve got a lovely piece of Alsace ham there,” Edi said when he brought the coffee. “The farmer’s wife fattened up the sow on nothing but kitchen scraps and potatoes. It grazed in the meadow, wallowed in the stream and was smoked in the fireplace. With fresh white bread it’s superb.”

“No thanks,” Hunkeler said. “I don’t like ham in the morning.”

“Pity,” Edi said, cutting off some slices from the ham and stuffing a few in his mouth. “Pity about Hardy. Who killed him?”

Hunkeler shrugged. He drank his coffee slowly.

“If you ask me,” Edi said, “it’ll have been those Albanians from the Billiards Centre. They all have a knife on them and they use them at every opportunity.”

“Hardy wasn’t stabbed.”

“And the cut on his neck? Where did that come from?”

“How should I know? Don’t chatter so much this early in the morning.”

“Early in the morning? It’s almost ten.”

Hunkeler paid and went out. He squeezed through between the cars waiting at the red light. Their wipers were on, even though it wasn’t raining. The drivers ignored him, seeming to be asleep with their eyes open. He crossed the forecourt of the Cantonal Bank and saw that it wasn’t cordoned off any longer. So they thought they wouldn’t find anything else. Or they didn’t want to find anything else.

He got onto a crowded number 3 and went to Barfüsserplatz.

When he went into the Waaghof, Frau Held waved to him from the reception desk. He went over and gave her a friendly greeting, as friendly as was possible for him on that wet morning.

“What have you been up to?” she asked. “People are saying you were boozing last night in Basel’s worst dive with a man who’s dead now.”

“So that’s what people are saying, is it?” He leaned forward and once more regarded the beautiful curve of her lips. “I’ll tell you a secret. I was in the Milchhüsli in Missionsstrasse last night. That’s Basel’s jolliest bar – that’s a tip. You must go there sometime. Perhaps we’ll met there and share a bottle of wine.”

He winked his left eye, she giggled.

In his office he sat down on the wooden chair he’d brought from home. He looked round the room. There were no pictures anywhere – he really liked white walls. In one corner was the swivel chair that could be adjusted to give the correct position for your back. On shelves along the walls box files, beside the computer on his desk two exercise books, piles of handwritten scraps of paper. He felt as mute as a fish in an aquarium. He leaned back, put his feet on the edge of the desk, first the right one, then the left, tilting the wooden chair. He put his arms round his knees and rested his head on them. That always felt good, despite his beer belly. He breathed out, waited for the moment of emptiness, then breathed in again, without stopping. He liked that, the flowing transition, he concentrated on that alone.

Someone knocked on the door. He didn’t react. He heard them come in. He recognized Madörin’s footsteps.

“Am I disturbing you?”

Hunkeler released his knees, took his feet off the edge of the table and let his chair come down again.

“Yes, you are.”

“I don’t know what’s wrong with you,” he said. “I’m really worried about you. There was a time when I liked you very much. I’ve learned a lot from you, you know that. But for some time now you’ve been letting yourself go. You’re letting yourself fall and you’ve fallen quite a long way already. And you won’t let anyone help you, not even your closest colleagues.”

“What’s got into you?” Hunkeler asked. “You don’t usually talk this much.”

Madörin shook his head with the sad look of a devoted hound. “Your sardonic wit won’t help you any more. Nor your sharp mind.” He got up, seemed about to leave, but stood there for a moment longer. “As you know, Suter’s attending a psychology congress in Baden-Baden. I’ve informed him. He’ll be back at 2 p.m. The meeting will be at four. It would be nice if you took part in it.”

“Are you crazy?” Hunkeler screamed. “What do you think I’m doing here?”

“In your place I wouldn’t shout so loud,” Madörin said. “I think you’re mistaken about your situation. The fact is that someone peed on the trunk of the tree outside the Cantonal Bank. And they spewed up as well.”

He quietly opened the door and went out.

Hunkeler watched how the door was shut – very slowly, as if someone was leaving a sickroom. What was going on? Of course they’d established that someone had peed and thrown up. And of course they suspected that it had been him. But what was so bad about that? Was he an old model who had to be pestered until they got rid of him?

There would have been no problem taking early retirement. He’d have enough to do in his house in Alsace. Moreover, he had a woman he loved and who, so he believed, also loved him, even if at that moment she was in Paris gazing adoringly at the pointillistes.