The Basel Killings

by Hansjörg Schneider

  “I don’t think it’s a good idea,” Hunkeler said, “for my name to be mentioned in this case.”

  “In which case? Some guy out for a walk happened to find the car. Unfortunately, we don’t know his name.”

  They grinned at each other.

  That evening Hunkeler went into the cowshed across the road. He sat on the bench where the farmer was already sitting. His wife was milking.

  “We might just as well dump the milk in the cesspit,” the man said.

  Hunkeler picked up the pitchfork and started to load the cart with dung.

  “It’s the same with all of us,” he said, “we’re just old buggers who’re in the way everywhere.”

  “How was it in the war, how was it back then?” The farmer flushed; it was an outburst in which he was suddenly giving vent to his rage. “Back then the Germans came running after us. They took us to Karlsruhe and put us in uniform. We were blockheads from the countryside, they said, and they’d send us to the Eastern Front. I ran away, home. Now no one’s coming for us any more. Back then they gave you clothes and boots and a rifle. How much do you think that cost? Now the state gives you just enough to keep you from kicking the bucket. But for these criminals from North Africa, the state pays everything. Health insurance and the rent and school for their children. Did you hear about the charred corpse in Heiligbronn? Who does something like that, eh?”

  Hunkeler nodded. Yes, he had heard about it.

  “When I get my pension, and that will be soon,” he said, “I’m going to buy two donkeys. A male and a female. Keep your ears open to find out where there are some to be bought. Then we’ll breed donkeys here.”

  “If you like. At least you don’t get milk from donkeys.” Hunkeler stood between the handles of the loaded wheel-barrow. He pulled them up, pushed the barrow out over the plank and up to the dung heap. There he tipped it out.

  His heart was thumping, he could feel the beats right up in his neck. He looked across to the walnut tree with his house behind it. He gave a satisfied grin, he’d made it with the wheelbarrow. And he liked what he saw.

  At nine that evening he called Hedwig. She was, she said, sitting in the Bistrot Saint André in the market of the same name, in the African quarter. It was much livelier and merrier than in the Quartier latin.

  “The colours, the scents, the general chatter,” she said, going into raptures. “Here they’re delighted at every red tomato, every white cauliflower, every corncob. And then the fish, the scales, the bright fins, the crabs. Incredibly beautiful. Only they have dead eyes. How are you? When will you manage to come and see me at last?”

  “Soon,” Hunkeler said. “At the moment I’ve got rather a lot of free time.”

  A pause, clearly she was thinking.

  “Why have you suddenly got some free time?” she asked. “What about that old man who beat you up?”

  “He’s disappeared.”

  Now she had her suspicions. He could tell from the way she held her breath. “What’s going on?”

  “I’ve been suspended. I have to clear out my office and hand in my keys.”

  “And since when have you known that?”

  “A few days ago. The senior prosecutor sent me a registered letter.”

  “And you’re only telling me that now?”

  “I had to spend a bit of time getting used to it first. I wanted to be nice and calm when I told you, as I am now. I’m trying to see the positive side of it, as you keep telling me.”

  “What did I tell you?”

  “You said we’d have a lovely life together.”

  “But not with a coward who doesn’t dare tell me the truth.”

  “But I’ve told you now,” he shouted. “Now are you happy?”

  She hung up.

  He sat down at the TV and zapped around a bit. He found nothing he liked. He opened the window and lay down in bed. He heard the screech owl in the poplar calling and the response came back from down in the valley.

  At nine on Monday morning he parked outside the entrance to the Waaghof, right in the no-parking zone. He saw Frau Held waving. She handed him a bag of läckerli on which there was a picture of the Rhine with the ferry and the cathedral.

  “Nice of you,” he said. “I like Basel gingerbread.”

  “You take care of yourself. I wish you a happy retirement. And don’t keep on getting up to things like that.”

  She blew her nose and even wiped away a tear, almost making him lose his composure.

  “Do you know what?” he asked. “Come round to the Milchhüsli at midnight one day. The lonely pensioners are all sitting there then. We’ll dance a waltz together.”

  “Oh, come on,” she said, beaming, “it’s ages since anyone took me out dancing.”

  He went up to his office, sat down on his wooden chair, tipped it back and tried to put his feet up on the edge of the table. He couldn’t manage it and he didn’t want to either. He picked up the jotters and a pile of notes on the table and leafed through them. He stared at the scribble with which he’d filled the pages. You could presumably call it untidy. But for him it was all in order.

  He opened the drawer, took out a plastic bag and stuffed the papers into it. Then he looked at the photo at the bottom of the drawer. It showed Hedwig and himself in Crete, after they’d driven a hired scooter over a mountain pass and down to the beach. It must have been a good twenty years ago, they’d only just got to know each other. The white wall of the hut where they’d slept, an open door, a green-painted window shutter. In front was the scooter, the two of them beside it, and Hedwig’s hand on the saddle.

  Was that all over now? He knew she felt insulted that he’d kept quiet for a few days about being dismissed. But he hoped her love would hold out.

  He stuck the photo in the bag and looked round. It was a hole, a cage. Thirty-two years in the service of justice and you get a kick up the backside. He spat on the floor three times, one after the other. He put the key down, picked up the bag and the chair, and went out.

  He knocked on Lüdi’s door.

  “I was expecting you,” his colleague said. “Come on in and sit down.”

  Hunkeler put his chair down and sat on it.

  “A lousy business,” Lüdi said. “We couldn’t do anything, we weren’t even asked.”

  He laughed, an almost soundless laugh, it was clear he didn’t feel like laughing at all.

  “The senior prosecutor wants to take it further, at least that’s what he said. Madörin was furious. He wasn’t going to let you screw things up for him. However did you get that crazy idea of going to see Binaku when he was in prison awaiting trial? He was no business of yours. And then you let him thump you.”

  “I wanted to talk to him, which I did. Now I know something you lot don’t.”

  “Oh, do stop, right?” Lüdi was getting really angry. “Keep your paws off it. There are legal proceedings in progress against you, for serious insubordination. At least wait until it’s over. We’ll see that it’s swept under the carpet. You’ll be pensioned off honourably.”

  “That’s the last thing I want.”

  “What do you want then?”

  “I want to find the man who slits open earlobes.”

  Lüdi gave a hoarse giggle. “Huh, the ear-slitter of Basel, not bad.” Then he became serious again. “As you very well know, you won’t find him. Because there’s no even vaguely recognizable connection between the victim and the perpetrator. You won’t be able to sort out the business with the Albanians either. Because that’s a foreign, self-enclosed world. No one here in the CID can speak Albanian. And they all keep their mouths shut anyway. We could perhaps lock two or three of these guys away for a few weeks, but we’d never find out what was going on. You can spend hours searching the computer, there’s nothing there.”

  “There’s a family of the falcons,” Hunkeler said, “a family of the eagles and a family of the snakes.”

  “Aha, so that was you.” Lüdi shook his head, then gig
gled again, this time with pleasure. “You really are a bomb waiting to go off. So Bardet got it from you. He informed us.”

  “No,” Hunkeler said coolly, “I got it from him.”

  “And you expect me to believe that?”

  “Yes, please. Otherwise I can’t go on working.”

  “Right, let’s assume I believe you. Bardet was talking about someone going for a walk and getting lost in the fog near Leymen and just happening across a burnt-out Fiat Punto. I was asking myself who the crazy guy going for a walk could be. But that’s the gendarmerie’s business, isn’t it?”

  Hunkeler nodded.

  “I am of course wondering what’s actually got into you. If you go on like this, you’ll be locked up for endangering an ongoing investigation. You could take things easy just now.”

  “Alone I’m powerless,” Hunkeler said. “What I need is access to your computer.”

  Lüdi stood up abruptly, went over to the window and looked out. “I really am an ass,” he said after a while. “I’m much too nice. Why do I help you? Can you tell me that?”

  “Because you can’t stand these pig-headed know-alls who’ve no idea, either. And because you’re a sensitive man.”

  Lüdi went back to the table and wrote down a number, blushing slightly.

  “I’ve got another phone. Until now only my friend had the number. It’s switched on while I’m asleep. From midnight to seven in the morning.”

  “Thank you, my angel.”

  Shortly before midday Hunkeler went into the Sommereck and sat down at the regulars’ table.

  “What I have here,” he said, “is a large bag of Basel läckerli. They’ve been made according to an old recipe, with honey and almonds and cinnamon. If you dunk them in your coffee they go soft and you get the whole aroma.”

  “They taste great without coffee as well,” said Edi, tearing the package open and stuffing a handful in his mouth.

  “What’s actually going on in the Basel CID?” he asked as he put the coffee cup down. “It seems a senior inspector’s been dismissed.”

  Hunkeler dipped a läckerli in his coffee and waited until it was soft. He chewed it on the right-hand side of his mouth, it was OK there.

  “Where did you hear that?”

  Edi pushed a tabloid over to him. “Two stranglings in ten weeks,” it said there, “a van blows up, a prisoner on remand escapes, a burnt-out car with a corpse in it is found across the border in Alsace. Are the Basel police fast asleep? From what we hear, at least they have fired a long-serving inspector.”

  There was nothing in the Basler Zeitung.

  “Typical,” Edi said. “The BaZ’s degenerated into a government mouthpiece. Anything that’s to be swept under the carpet isn’t in it. Do you know the inspector who’s been fired?”

  Hunkeler shook his head.

  “Thank God. I was afraid it might be you.”

  “Why me?”

  “Well, you are long-serving. And the packet of läckerli could have been a farewell present from the city of Basel to a retired official.”

  “Are you crazy?” Hunkeler cried. “What kind of a world is this we live in?”

  “Calm down, calm down,” said Edi. “I didn’t intend to insult you.”

  Hunkeler went across Burgfelderplatz. He stopped briefly outside the pharmacy on the corner and looked at the display offering vitamin supplements to ward off influenza. The flu, he thought, what a wonderful, old-fashioned illness. Socks soaked in vinegar on your feet, a warm compress round your chest, lime-blossom tea in your belly and a thermometer in your mouth. He spat on the ground, three times again, and waited until he’d calmed down. What did they think they were doing? How could they chuck him out just like that, without so much as a by-your-leave?

  He went up Colmarerstrasse to Hauser’s press office. Hauser was sitting at his laptop.

  “Just a moment,” he said, “I’ve almost finished.”

  Hunkeler sat down on one of the two plastic armchairs and lit a cigarette.

  “Please don’t smoke,” Hauser said.

  Hunkeler tapped off the ash onto the worn carpet.

  “Didn’t you hear what I said?”

  “No. Did you say something?”

  Hauser looked across, shook his head and continued working. Hunkeler would have liked to wring his neck. A duel, man against man, that would have been good. He didn’t do it; he knew a policeman would never stand a chance against someone from the media. They had the power to reproduce their arguments, opinions or slander a hundred thousand times over. He dropped his cigarette on the carpet and watched as it continued to glow and then died out.

  “You’re a bastard,” Hauser said. “Do you really want to fall out with me?”

  “Yes, because you’ve no sense of decency. You’ve not a shred of decency.”

  “Decency? What’s that?”

  “First you publish a picture of Hardy’s dead body. And I’m willing to bet you touched it up a bit.”

  “That’s part of our profession.”

  He came away from the laptop and sat down in the other chair. Fat belly, shirt soaked in sweat, tie askew, bright, sharp eyes.

  “That’s exactly what I’m talking about,” Hunkeler said. “Your profession has no sense of decency.”

  “Oh God, Hunki, let’s not start talking about that again. That’s just the way things are. People want murder and violence and blood. You wouldn’t sell a single paper with good news. You know that’s the way things are. And you also know that it’s not my fault.”

  Leaning forward, he took a toffee out of a bowl on the table.

  “At least I’ve seen to it that my colleagues didn’t put the name of the inspector who’s been fired in the paper. They did want to do that.”

  He popped the sweet in his mouth.

  “Where did you hear that?” Hunkeler asked.

  Hauser stopped sucking, spat out the sweet into his right hand and threw it into the wastepaper basket.

  “It’s too sweet,” he said. “It’s a scandal what’s going on round here. Hardy was my friend. Sometimes my profession is so shitty you can hardly bear it. Hardy understood that. He comforted me when needed, he listened to me at night at the bar. I miss him. I refuse to accept his death without doing something about it.”

  He looked at the sweets in the dish but didn’t take another.

  “If we had to rely on the official channels of information, we couldn’t produce our newspaper. We have our own informants. We only have them because they know we will protect our sources under all circumstances.”

  “Madörin?”

  “Why Madörin?”

  “Because he’s desperate to get rid of me.”

  “I assume he won’t manage that, will he? Surely you’re not going to give up, or are you?”

  He grinned, a pretty unsavoury grin, Hunkeler thought. Most of all he’d have liked to thump him in the face.

  “Calm down now, Hunki,” Hauser said. “Don’t ruin your life. I’m the lowest of the low. Come and have a drink with me instead, if you feel lonely. And have a look at the pharmacy down there. There’s something fishy about it.”

  Hunkeler got up and left without a word.

  *

  At eight that evening he got into his car to drive to Alsace. He switched on the engine and the headlights. A drive through the night, he thought, at first along the lighted streets of the town, then up over the plateau, turning off to the left and parking underneath the walnut tree.

  Then he switched the engine off again, he didn’t want to drive. He walked up St Johann’s-Ring towards Burgfelderplatz. He stopped briefly outside the Sommereck and looked in. Edi was sitting in his seat, looking grumpy. Beside him four pensioners were playing cards.

  A bit further on was the newly built old folks’ home with the Café Oldsmobile, which was open to the public. There were a few old people in it, each with a table to themselves. Some were in wheelchairs.

  He wondered whether he would one day be sitt
ing at one of those little tables himself, a peppermint tea in front of him, making an effort to hear whether there was a voice of memory inside, speaking to him. He put the thought aside, he had other things to do at the moment.

  At the square he saw the little tree in the fog, the stone bench in the corner. He went over, sat down, turned up his jacket collar and pulled his cap down. He leaned back in the corner, crossed his arms over his chest.

  The fog seemed to have thinned a bit. The traffic lights could be seen turning to green, a car setting off. The building diagonally opposite across the square could just be discerned, you could see the bright gleam of the pharmacy’s window display. He couldn’t make out Hermine’s apartment. Either she wasn’t at home or the light of the TV was too weak.

  He ought to have a look at that pharmacy, Hauser had said. What had he meant by that? Who did it actually belong to? Only a few years ago there had been a bar on the corner there. Then the house had been sold and the new owner had set up a pharmacy. That was the way things were. Bar landlords didn’t earn much any more. But pharmacists did.

  He saw the number 3 heading into the town. There was a woman in the front car, no one in the rear.

  He noticed he was getting chilly. The cold was creeping up his body from the stone bench. What was it that made an old man spend hours sitting there? How could someone go to sleep there?

  Once three young women went past. They had linked arms, they didn’t look across at him. They were speaking a language he didn’t understand, they were wearing headscarves.

  Later an oldish, dark-haired man came from the right. For a moment he slowed down and seemed to look across, but then he just went on.

  Several cars went past. They waited for the green light, then accelerated away. From one of them, the windows of which were open, came loud music. Obviously young guys out for a spin.

  The number 3 drove past at regular intervals. First it came out of the town with a few people in it, braked at the red light, set off again at green, disappearing in the fog. A few minutes later you could hear it coming back from the border, mostly empty.