The Basel Killings

by Hansjörg Schneider

  “The things you get up to,” she said. “I’ll come at once.”

  She took him to the cantonal hospital in her own car. At first she’d wanted to call an ambulance, but he’d said no. Then she got Dr Ryhiner out of the meeting. Then Lüdi and Madörin had come running over. Then Suter had appeared and given poor Kaelin a dressing-down. Hunkeler had been spared that, his face looked too battered.

  It was all useless, Ismail Binaku had vanished.

  Hunkeler shut them all out. He didn’t want Ryhiner’s help, he didn’t want Lüdi’s concern, he didn’t want to see Madörin’s anger, he just wanted to be driven to the cantonal hospital by Frau Held.

  The diagnosis was concussion: ten days in bed, then two weeks’ convalescent leave.

  That evening he was lying in a single room in the cantonal hospital, having been given a strong sedative.

  He called Hedwig.

  “Listen, I’ve a confession to make, but it’s not that bad.”

  “If you’ve been unfaithful,” she said sharply, “keep it to yourself. Is it an affair?”

  “No, not an affair. Someone knocked me out.”

  “Oh really?”

  She seemed relieved. She thought for a while, then he could hear concern in her voice. “Is that why you’re talking in such a funny way?”

  “I’m talking in a funny way because two of my left bottom teeth are missing. And I’ve got concussion.”

  Now she did become furious. “You are and always will be a lout. Why can’t you use your aggressiveness productively? Why do you have to get into a fight?”

  “I wasn’t in a fight. I was punched. A prisoner on remand gave me a right hook. It was enough to make me see stars.”

  “And the prisoner?”

  “He’s disappeared.”

  “My God, Peter, what have you been getting up to? And now you think I’m going to drop everything here and come and look after you?”

  “Yes,” he said, “as soon as possible.”

  She came the next evening. Hunkeler was already in bed, in his green nightshirt. He’d tried to eat the evening meal, semolina with cinnamon accompanied by plum puree. He’d pushed the plate away, he didn’t want it. Moreover, the places where the teeth were missing hurt.

  Then the door opened and Hedwig came in. She came over to his bed; she was wearing a new, black-and-white-check jacket.

  “How are you then?” she asked, her voice full of concern.

  “Not well. But what’s that jacket?”

  “I bought it in a boutique on the Boulevard St Germain. Do you like it?”

  “Come here,” he said.

  She bent down to give him a kiss. He embraced her, pulling her down onto the bed.

  “Are you crazy?” she said. “We can’t do that in a hospital bed. It’ll roll away.”

  “Let it roll,” he said, “that won’t bother us.”

  Peter Hunkeler was sitting at the kitchen table in Alsace. It was 7 November, nine o’clock on a Friday morning.

  He’d had a copious breakfast, the first time he’d had an appetite for a week. Two fresh eggs he’d got from the hen coop. Four slices of bacon he’d bought in the Jettingen butcher’s. Accompanied by white bread and a pot of tea. He’d been careful to chew on the right side, the left still hurt. He lit a cigarette, his first for a week. Things were going quite well.

  He picked up the letter the senior public prosecutor had sent him. Even though he knew it by heart, he still read it through again. Suspended from duties with immediate effect, his office to be cleared out and keys handed in by a week on Monday.

  He got up, opened the stove door and put the letter on the fire. So what now, old man? Should he buy some Bermuda shorts, a Hawaiian shirt and a sombrero and get on a flight to Tenerife? Or just get the train straight to Paris? Or stay stuck in the fog here in Alsace, buy two donkeys and look after the hens? No, he wouldn’t do that. At least not while there was some guy running round in Basel strangling people and slitting their ears open.

  He took out his notebook and checked out his appointments.

  Monday, 10 November: clear out office and hand in key.

  Friday, 21 November: cardiologist, Dr Naef.

  Saturday, 22 November: dentist, Dr Steinle.

  Monday, 24 November: urologist Dr von Dach.

  He was faced with a general overhaul, a major service for an old wreck. Moreover, he was his own master now.

  He gave a sly grin. Basically it suited him very well that he was now a man of leisure. They hadn’t been able to find the least trace of the culprit, the ear-slitter, with the usual police methods. The investigation into the Amsler case had been shelved. Füglistaller had withdrawn his men. And their efforts in the Schirmer case would peter out after weeks or months, of that he was quite sure.

  He felt slightly dizzy and held onto the table and waited until it was over. Why had he lit a cigarette again? Could he really not give up this stupid habit?

  What had just come into his mind? Had the word “slitter” not just occurred to him? What did it mean? Slit, slitter, slit-ear?

  His head wasn’t clear enough for him to think this right through. He went over and lay down on the bed. He picked up the novel he’d bought, Broken April by Ismail Kadare. He started to read, but after a few sentences the book fell out of his hand.

  He was woken by the roar of a corn harvester driving past his house. The bed was trembling, woodworm sawdust trickling down from one of the ceiling beams. He saw the light of the headlamps sweep across the room. The rattling died away down into the valley.

  He decided to take a walk. Cool, damp air, muted light, slow strides, that would do him good. He put on his boots and his old jacket, and a felt hat on his head. He followed the trail of the harvester, whose huge wheels had torn up the clay. He entered the wood. There was only a little light, giving the damp tree trunks a dull gleam. He heard the creak of a branch. He saw two men disappear behind the trunks of the beech trees – the fog seemed to have swallowed them up. Then they could be seen again, though not very clearly, two dark figures.

  He’d stopped immediately when they’d appeared. They were wearing black jackets and were carrying white plastic sacks. He heard them talking, in a language he couldn’t understand. They only noticed him when they were right in front of him. They started, hesitated and walked past without saying hello. He saw that the sacks were full to the top with snails. He watched them as they disappeared into the fog; they didn’t look back at him.

  He went through Knoeringue and followed the country road via Muespach-le-Haut to the Cäsarhof. He went in and ordered Münster cheese with caraway seeds and mineral water.

  Why had he been so startled in the woods, why had he suddenly become so timorous? Was it the punch from old Binaku or was it being suspended without notice? What kind of men were those two, what were they going to do with the snails?

  There were three old women in the inn, nicely done up in flowered dresses and permanent waves. They were eating cakes and drinking coffee. They were telling each other in the local dialect, a mixture of French and German, what was happening among their relatives: d’Fröi vo mim neveu, dr mari vo minere Schweschter, dr beaufrère, la nièce, dr Onggle. Everything was clearly as well as it could be in the extended family.

  He decided to go and see Stallinger, the old actor, who lived in Heiligbronn near Leymen. He walked straight on through the woods, taking care not to lose his way. He walked slowly, he didn’t yet feel really fit, but walking was doing him some good.

  It was already starting to get dark when he reached the track to Heiligbronn. So his sense of direction was still in working order, he thought with a satisfied grin. He avoided the puddles in the gravel. Strange, he thought, all this water; after all, it hadn’t rained for a long time.

  He saw a dark animal going along the path in front of him. It wasn’t in a hurry, it hadn’t noticed him. Then his boot struck a stone. The animal stood up and looked at him. It was a badger, he saw the dark stripes
on its snout. Without moving, they stared each other in the eye for some time. Then the badger went back down on all fours and disappeared, heading towards the edge of the woods.

  Hunkeler had watched it, spellbound. It was an animal out of a fairy tale, a magic animal. He looked the way it had gone, heard the rustling. Then all was quiet again.

  He was still looking across to the edge of the woods, which could be made out as a bright line in the fog. He tried to establish what he could see there. He walked over slowly, going through nettles and damp undergrowth. He came to a car. Someone had driven it across the meadow into the scrub, the tracks could clearly be seen. Someone had removed the licence plates. Someone had poured something over the vehicle and set it alight. And someone had been sitting in the passenger seat while it burnt.

  He took the packet of cigarettes out of his pocket and lit one. He looked up into the empty crowns of the beeches, saw the branches disappearing into the fog. At the third puff he felt dizzy. He threw the cigarette away but picked it up again, extinguished it and put it back in the packet. No, he thought, please not again. Who was that following him?

  He took out his flashlight and shone it on the wreck. Apart from the skull, teeth and bones there was little to be seen. He shone the light all around the area. The bark of the surrounding trees had burst open, the heat had presumably made the sap boil.

  His eye was caught by something that had been cut into one of the trunks. Someone had taken the trouble to carve the shape of an animal into it with a sharp knife. A writhing snake, its tail down, its mouth wide open, pointing up, its tongue forked.

  Hunkeler went out of the woods and into the meadow. He walked slowly, trying to breathe calmly. He didn’t want to see any more snakes or falcons, or any eagles. He’d had enough of burnt-out and blown-up cars, of strangled and charred corpses. That was nothing to do with him any more, he had that in writing from the senior prosecutor. Finding the wrecked car was a stupid coincidence. It was the fault of the badger, the mythical creature, sly Master Brock. Had it all been a dream? And what would happen if he forgot the dream?

  After a few hundred yards he came to Heiligbronn Chapel, where Stallinger’s farmhouse was. After a cursory knock on the door he went in. The old actor was sitting at the table in his lounge with a volume of poems open in front of him. He was pleased when he saw Hunkeler.

  “Listen,” he said, “what a magnificent poem I’ve just read:

  “Shipped Oars

  Drops fall from my shipped oars

  Slowly into the depths below.

  Nothing to distress me or irk me now:

  A painless day just dripping down.

  Below me – oh, vanished from the light,

  My fairer hours still dreaming bright.

  Yesterday is calling from the depths of blue:

  Are some of my fellows still up there with you?

  “It’s by Conrad Ferdinand Meyer. When you get as old as I am it’s only the present moment that matters. The quiet, the light, the fog. Will you have a drop of wine?”

  “Over here at the edge of the woods,” Hunkeler said, “there was something burning recently. A huge fire. Didn’t you see anything?”

  “I did. It was two days ago, in the middle of the night. It really blazed. It will presumably have been the lads from Leymen. When they come out of the inn at midnight and don’t want to go home yet, they make a fire now and then.”

  “No,” Hunkeler said, “it was a car that was burnt. And there was someone in the car. Call the police immediately.”

  “Sorry? There was someone in the car? That’s none of my business. You call if you think it’s necessary.”

  Officer Herbst from the Leymen force drove up after half an hour. He was very nervous. They’d never had a charred body in the area. He’d reported it to Mulhouse, he said. They’d send specialists over that evening, he couldn’t do much about it himself.

  Though resisting, he let them take him over to the wrecked car.

  Around seven, six firefighters from the Leymen brigade came, with gleaming helmets and hatchets at their sides. They too went briefly over to the edge of the woods to have a look.

  At eight they were all sitting in the actor’s living room with red wine, ham and bread. It was scandaleux, they said in their mixture of French and Swiss German, to burn a car with a man in it over there in the woods, affreux, horrible, a disgrace. Who would do such a thing? Doubtless those people from North Africa, ces Arabes, riff-raff they were, hoodlums, they were sick to death of ces salauds.

  At ten they decided to pop over to Bertelé’s for a quick drink. Only the actor and the gendarme stayed behind, with two of the firefighters, who were to show the specialists, who would arrive soon from Mulhouse, the way from the road to the crime scene.

  Around midnight the firefighters drove Hunkeler back to his house. You’ve a lovely place here, they said as they had another beer in the kitchen. A bit très vieux, a bit of a ruin, but cosy. It had been a nice evening, it had been pleasant d’avoir fait la connaissance.

  The next morning the telephone out in the corridor rang while Hunkeler was having his breakfast. It was a Monsieur Bardet, chef des services techniques. Could he come round? He had a few questions.

  Bardet was a tall, gangling guy of around thirty. He spoke perfect German, he’d studied in Karlsruhe, he said. They sat in the kitchen drinking coffee.

  Could he please tell him, Bardet said, precisely how he’d found the wrecked car. He’d heard he was a Basel policeman. And a Basel policeman finding a car with a charred corpse in it, just across the border with France, was a bit odd.

  “I’m an inspector with the Basel CID,” Hunkeler said, “but was suspended a few days ago.”

  Bardet lit a second cigarette. Clearly he was a chainsmoker. “Why?”

  “Because I made too many mistakes.”

  “A man of your experience makes too many mistakes? Oh, come off it.”

  “Two people were strangled in Basel. There’s a theory that one of the victims, a man called Bernhard Schirmer, who had clearly been working for an Albanian drug organization, had been executed by that organization.”

  “And you don’t believe that theory?”

  “No.”

  “Ten days ago,” Bardet said, “the Basel police put out a warrant for a young Albanian called Gjorg Binaku. His van had been blown up. With explosives or some kind of fuel?”

  “I’m old and stupid, I don’t know.”

  “And that’s why you were suspended,” Bardet said with a grin.

  “I’ve come here to Alsace to recuperate. I was knocked out by the father of that Gjorg Binaku. I’d gone to see him where he was being held on remand. He hit me and escaped. I assume there was a warrant put out for him as well.”

  “True, his first name’s Ismail.”

  “I went for a walk through the woods yesterday. I saw a badger. I followed it and then found the wrecked car. Pure chance.”

  “Really?” Bardet asked, with a cold, inquisitive look.

  Hunkeler poured more coffee. “Yes, it was.”

  “We haven’t got any photos, neither of the father nor of his son. Which doesn’t surprise me. Those kind of people don’t like being photographed. How might he have looked?”

  Careful, old man, he told himself, he’s a smart guy. But he still told him.

  “On 28 October I went to Morschwil Pond for a walk. There I saw a red Albolives Suzuki driving away. At the wheel was a young man with black hair. It struck me that I’d seen him before. On the night Bernhard Schirmer was murdered, that is: he was sitting in the Albanian Billiards Centre. And it was the Suzuki that later exploded.”

  “Why was it blown up? Could it be connected with the goods it was carrying?”

  Hunkeler thought about it. Should he or shouldn’t he?

  “An angler at Morschwil Pond,” he said, “a Baseler called Alois Bachmann, told me a man had taken a black bag from the anglers’ hut, which had belonged to Bernhard Schirmer. There
were some kind of drugs in the bag.”

  Bardet lit his third cigarette. “And that all came out by chance, did it?” he said. “That Madörin doesn’t tell us anything at all. But I’ve already realized that there’s something fishy about it. You can smell it. We presumably won’t be able to identify the corpse, not even with DNA. We’ve nothing to check it against. The car’s a red Punto. We’ve got the chassis number.” He looked at his hands, which were spread out on the table. He seemed to be checking his nails, first the left hand, then the right. “What about the snake someone scratched into the bark of the beech tree?”

  Hunkeler hesitated. But then he told him that as well.

  “Old Binaku has a ring on his right hand. He is, by the way, a handsome, well-turned-out man with perfect manners, when he doesn’t happen to be knocking someone out. In the ring is a black stone with a falcon engraved on it. He said the falcon was the symbol of his family, that his son also wore a ring like that. He talked about three families who were in conflict with each other. The clan of the falcon, the clan of the eagle with wings outspread and the family of the poisonous snakes.”

  Bardet stubbed out his cigarette and looked out of the window at the fogbound meadow.

  “Blood feuds then,” he said. “I know nothing at all about those.”

  He stood up, his head almost touching the ceiling beam.

  “Wasn’t Red Zora Albanian? Yes, I remember now. Red Zora fled with her mother from Albania to Croatia because all the men in their family had been killed. Haven’t you read the book by Kurt Held?”

  Yes, Hunkeler had read it. But he couldn’t remember it.

  “The guys ought to shoot each other down in the Balkans,” Bardet said. “What are they after over here?”

  “Serious money,” Hunkeler said, “like the rest of us.”

  Bardet grinned, he really was a jolly guy. “Thank you. I’ll be in touch. Keep your eyes open. There’s my number.” He put it down on the table.