The Basel Killings

by Hansjörg Schneider

  “Sit down,” he said, “but don’t disturb me.”

  Hunkeler sat down and waited. He liked what he saw. The worn carpet, the two plastic chairs, the bare walls, the unshaded bulb on the ceiling. Basically, Hauser was OK. He was always on the ball, worked a lot, didn’t sleep much. And in the evening he was a good guy to have a drink with.

  Hauser got up, came across and sat down in the empty armchair. He seemed to be thinking something over, then he wrinkled his nose. “What’s that stench?”

  “That’s my sheep’s cheese,” Hunkeler said, “from next door.”

  “Oh, right. I thought I’d have to get a cleaner to come in. I hate cleaning women, they muddle everything up.”

  He took a toffee out of the dish, put it in his mouth and sucked it. The he spat it out in his right hand and threw it in the wastepaper basket. “They’re no good, they’re all too sweet.”

  “Do you know anything about the corpse in the Petite Camargue?” Hunkeler asked.

  “Yes, if you buy me a beer.”

  Hunkeler nodded.

  “The dead man’s called Adrian Prela. Stabbed with a switchblade. Used to live in Tirana. Entered the country on a tourist visa. Reason given was to visit relatives. The stupid thing is that there’s no Prela registered as living anywhere in Basel and the surrounding area.”

  “Why near Blotzheim in Alsace? Why not in Weil am Rhein or in Allschwil?”

  “That I don’t know. The gendarmerie don’t seem to know either. Anything else?”

  “Yes. What are you working on at the moment?”

  Hauser got up, went over to the espresso machine and filled two cups.

  “I don’t have any sugar,” he said, “it’s OK without as well.”

  He emptied his cup.

  “Don’t you want any?”

  Hunkeler shook his head. Hauser drank the second cup as well.

  “Basically,” he said, “it would be a huge story. A dead tart in the pond, a strangled pensioner outside the Cantonal Bank, a charred body on the edge of the woods, a drowned corpse in the conservation area. It’s got everything: sex and drugs and murder. And all this either side of the border in an area where the three countries meet. It’s an area that doesn’t get enough coverage in our paper. And besides that, what’s happening here is something that points to the future. The area is actually coming together, slowly and unspectacularly. And not only in the sphere of criminality.”

  “But?” Hunkeler asked.

  “I’d need facts. I can publish conjectures and hints now and then, I can tart up the story a bit, that kind of thing, but it can only go so far. There comes a point when you have to start dealing in facts. And facts are what I don’t have. I’m almost certain that the police don’t have them either. And that Madörin’s an absolute idiot. He goes for the Albanians like a mad bull, locks a few up, drives the rest away and he’s got absolutely nothing to show for it. What do you think?”

  “I think that one story has nothing to do with the rest.”

  “Oh, you do, do you? That’s something at least. Get your cheese out.”

  He took a packet of crackers down from the shelf, tore it open and spread some sheep’s cheese on one. He took a bite and started chewing.

  “I’m writing a series about the St Johann district. Hardy’s murder is the starting point. But that’s just the plug. The new editor doesn’t want that much blood in the paper. He wants more social stuff, the real problems in present-day society, whatever that might be. He didn’t like my photo of the dead Hardy. Times change.”

  He cut off a piece of the Mont-Soleil and ate it, this time without the cracker.

  “In the St Johann district,” he said, “forty-seven per cent of the population are foreigners. Any number of social problems, therefore: disturbed, furious Swiss pensioners, kindergartens and schools where no one can speak German. And among all this block after block is being torn down for an autobahn tunnel to be built. Clearly the kind of story our editor wants to use to soothe his social conscience. A man who lives in a villa above Lake Zurich with a view of the Alps.”

  “Please leave a bit of the Mont-Soleil,” Hunkeler begged. “The sheep’s cheese you can keep, I only bought it for reasons of nostalgia.”

  “Longing for what?”

  “Actually, I could keep sheep out in the Franche-Comté,” Hunkeler said. “That would be a quiet, peaceful life. Or don’t you think so?”

  “No,” Hauser said, “take it with you. It stinks too much.”

  That evening, shortly before eight, Hunkeler drove with Hermine out through the customs post at Huningue. The road was empty, the commuters were sitting at home. The fog had thinned, you could see the brightly lit factories that Basler Chemie had moved out into the EU. They drove at twenty miles per hour through the old garrison town with the little bars and grocery stores, on the left the closed-down station, on the right cheap high-rise housing. Then came the elongated fishponds, all that was left of the old arm of the river. The sandy fields in which asparagus was grown in the spring. Now there were Brussels sprouts and leeks in them. Then the narrow strip of woodland that went down as far as the Petite Camargue.

  He turned off up to the dam that canalized the Rhine and parked close to the water. The lights of the weir could be seen faintly across on the other side. There were swans on the bank and ducks, which had flown down from the far north to overwinter there. On the right was the Piste du Rhin restaurant.

  During the journey Hermine had sat unmoving in the passenger seat. Not once had she turned her head towards Hunkeler. He’d said a few things, asked how she was. She had remained silent.

  They sat at a table looking out over the river. Hermine wanted to keep her coat on, it was too chilly for her, she said.

  “You have to eat the simple dishes here,” he said. “They do them very well.”

  She still wasn’t saying anything. She was pale and very thin.

  “Eat something, drink something,” he said, “otherwise your clothes will start falling off. I suggest sirloin with chips and salad. With a half-bottle of Bordeaux to go with it.”

  She nodded and he placed the order.

  “I knew Hardy as a pleasant, sociable guy,” he said. “But basically I had no idea what kind of person he was.”

  He looked out over the dark water, on which the rear light of a barge was going past.

  She had put her hands on the table, neatly beside each other.

  “I’ve never seen a pearl like that,” he said. “It has a dark glow. Where did you get it?”

  “It’s a Tahiti pearl,” she said, “they’re very rare. Hardy gave it to me. For our engagement.”

  “Did he now? I never knew you two were engaged.”

  He watched as the woman who was serving them poured the wine.

  “Cheers,” he said.

  Hermine picked up her glass, clinked his and tried to smile. “I’m so done in,” she said. “The feelings of guilt are almost killing me.”

  “I can understand that very well. But it’s wrong.”

  “If I hadn’t thrown him out, he’d still be alive.”

  Two tears appeared in her eyes, stayed hanging there for a moment and then ran down her cheeks. She didn’t wipe them away.

  “When someone dies,” he said, “the people closest to them almost always feel guilty. Because they hadn’t paid enough attention, they think. But no one expects their partner to die. You couldn’t live, couldn’t love like that. And suddenly death comes along.”

  He would have liked to say something more fitting, but he couldn’t think of anything.

  “I’m aware of that in theory,” she said. “But it doesn’t help. I imagine him dropping off on that bench and a man coming along and strangling him. And thirty yards away I’m asleep in my bed.”

  “It’s tough, that thought. I can understand that.”

  He shifted to the side a bit to make room for the woman bringing the food.

  “How did you get to know each other?”


  “It was nine years ago. I’d given up my job as a pharmacist and was working as a bartender in the Express Bar. I wanted to have normal conversations again, not all that doctor-chat any more. At the time I was together with Garzoni. Then, one evening, Hardy came in and sat at the bar where I was. I liked him immediately. He didn’t drink much, just two or three beers. There was something optimistic about him, he was something of a cheeky guy. He told me he’d had stomach cancer and was on a disability pension. That despite that he still drove trucks now and then, moonlighting, of course. He was so trusting. He said he was divorced and had a daughter he’d lost contact with. He wanted to enjoy the time that was left to him, he wanted to get something off the ground. After that he came every evening. A week later I took him home with me. By the very next morning we were already engaged. He went to a jeweller’s with me and bought me the ring. It was a lovely time.”

  She was sawing away at her sirloin a bit. It was clear that she didn’t feel like eating meat.

  “And Garzoni,” Hunkeler asked. “how did he take it?”

  “He felt insulted. He didn’t actually admit that, but I noticed. He continued to fight to get me back. A few months later he bought the Burgfelder Pharmacy and appointed me. To help me, as he said. In fact, he did it so that he could keep me under control. Garzoni is a cruel man for whom power is everything, and he can’t accept any kind of defeat.”

  “Why did you go along with it then?”

  “Because it made things easy. I’m very well paid at Garzoni’s.”

  She looked out of the window at the river, where a boat was appearing out of the darkness, a passenger ship with long, shining rows of windows. It was gliding upriver incredibly quickly, you could see the white foam of the propeller.

  “Tell me something about Hardy,” Hunkeler asked. “What kind of person was he?”

  “I thought you’d been taken off the case. Or is that not true any more?”

  “It is true. I’m just asking as a friend.”

  She gave him a thoughtful look. Then she nodded. “He was a charming vagrant, a gambler who hated nothing more than boredom. It was never boring with him. That’s probably why I loved him so much. He was a lost soul.”

  She watched the ship go, with yearning, lips slightly apart.

  “He was full of longing for love. He looked forward to every day that lay ahead of him. He was disappointed again and again.”

  “By you?”

  She gave him an astonished look, slightly shocked.

  “No, definitely not by me. I never gave him any cause for that. I was faithful to him.”

  She lowered her eyes. Once more two tears appeared, hanging from her closed lids. She took out a tissue and wiped them away.

  “Who was he disappointed by, then?”

  “By people in general. There was something wild about him, something alien that didn’t fit into our world. He kept on trying to fit back in. He never entirely succeeded.”

  “Do you know anything about his family?”

  “No, almost nothing. He rarely talked about his past. There must have been a dark point somewhere.”

  “What kind of dark point could that have been?”

  She shook her head. Then she looked up again, showing him her sad eyes, watery bright.

  “I don’t think,” she said, “he ever knew his mother. His father, yes, he talked about him. He had a filling station in Herznach, he said. He died early and then Hardy came to Basel and did an apprenticeship as a mechanic. More I don’t know. Now I’d like a coffee so I don’t fall asleep. It’s so stressful.”

  Hunkeler ordered coffee.

  “You assume he never knew his mother. Why do you think that was?”

  “I don’t know. She must have come from Bern canton – he hated that area. Why, I can’t really say. He was a lonely soul.”

  She slowly sipped her hot coffee. No sugar, no milk.

  “When did he start doing these Balkan trips?” he asked.

  “Do you have to ask all these questions? They hurt, now he’s dead.”

  “It’s just because he’s dead that I’d like to know.”

  She put her cup down and looked out at the dark Rhine once more.

  “I don’t know. It must have been before my time. He kept going away for a few days. He never told me why. He said it was better for me if I didn’t know. Once he told me he’d been in Zagreb. I was scared, I can remember that. Back then it was dangerous in that region. He just laughed at that. Nothing would happen to him, he said, he’d managed to slip off the devil’s cart several times. Somehow that was part of him, that aura of mystery, of a vagabond.”

  “Did you know that he was regularly carrying drugs on the return journey?”

  “No, but I suspected he might be. It was no concern of mine.”

  “If he was carrying drugs,” Hunkeler insisted, “he would have been well paid for it. You didn’t know anything about that either?”

  She looked at him anxiously, stroked her lips with her index finger, then slowly shook her head.

  “And Garzoni? Do you still see him now and then? I mean just the two of you together?”

  She stared at him, stunned. There was a trace of fury in her eyes, which she immediately wiped away.

  “I beg you to take my mourning seriously and to respect it,” she said softly. “Please take me home now.”

  Shortly before midnight he was sitting on the bench where Hardy had died, looking across the fogbound square. He saw the faint light shining in Hermine’s apartment opposite, he saw it go out. Now she’d presumably gone to bed. The last number 3 came from the border, heading into town. He saw the pensioner who had recently lost his wife sitting in the front carriage; he seemed to be asleep. Hunkeler had forgotten his name.

  He went over to the little tree and pissed on the cracked bark. It had to be, he wanted it to be that way. And his thinking was excellent as he did so. He sat back down on the bench and called Hedwig.

  “Yes,” she breathed.

  “Sorry for calling so late. Were you already asleep?”

  “No. I’ve just got in. From the Relais de l’Odéon, where the black people go. Well-dressed men, each and every one of them a beauty. We must go there together sometime. Are you coming at the weekend?”

  “I don’t know yet. I can’t get away from here very easily, I’ve got any number of problems.”

  “Oh.”

  “Don’t hang up,” he said. “You have to help me. I need your advice.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Hardy,” he said, “the man who was killed, you know his lover Hermine?”

  “Yes. What’s the problem with her?”

  “Is she a woman capable of love? I mean, is she the kind of woman who can lose herself in her love?”

  “Oh, you men are all so stupid,” she said. “You fall for every woman with a complexion like Dresden china.”

  “Not me,” he said. “If I’ve fallen for anyone at all, it’s you I’ve fallen for.”

  Now she giggled. She liked to hear that.

  “You can fall for me because I’ll catch you. She’s cold right down to the bottom of her heart. She always knows precisely what she’s doing. She only does things that are to her advantage.”

  “Well, at least she’s a good actress.”

  “All of us women are. That’s the way you lot want it, because you can’t stand the truth.”

  “What truth?”

  She paused for effect. He knew that now something beautiful was to come.

  “The truth is that I have a yen for you,” she breathed.

  He stayed sitting there for a while, thinking of the yen Hedwig had. A nice word, he too had a yen.

  He heard the sound of a dynamo turning, it was approaching from the town. A bicycle appeared out of the fog, he saw its thin light. A lassie with an orange knitted cap and a blonde ponytail was riding on it. White woollen gloves, a blue jacket. She was cycling cautiously, carefully, that struck Hunkeler. She h
alted at the stop light and put both feet on the ground. When the light went green, she got back on the saddle and disappeared in the direction of the border.

  A comforting apparition. Lassie was a lovely word, just like yen.

  He took out his phone again and tapped in Lüdi’s secret number. It rang twelve times before he got an answer.

  “Oui, mon chouchou, are you coming round?”

  “I’m not your chouchou,” Hunkeler said. “I’m your colleague Hunkeler.”

  “Oh right, just a minute.”

  He could hear Lüdi sitting up and the click of a lighter. “So what’s this all about?”

  “Two questions. Firstly, I’d like to know about Hardy Schirmer’s past. Where he came from, what he did. Secondly, what his financial circumstances were.”

  “I can answer your second question. We were interested in them too. He had a considerable stock portfolio with a major bank, which he hadn’t declared. Otherwise he wouldn’t have got a disability pension.”

  “What does ‘considerable’ mean?”

  “It means that before the stock exchange crash it was worth almost a million francs. How much it’s worth today is difficult to say. Perhaps half that.”

  “You don’t say,” said Hunkeler. “And who will inherit this block of shares?”

  “Hermine Mauch.”

  A marten appeared on the pavement opposite. It slowly went along the gutter. Then it crossed the road and disappeared down a passage.

  “Are you still there?” Lüdi asked.

  “Yes. I’m amazed.”

  “We were amazed too. As far as Hardy Schirmer’s past is concerned, there’s nothing I can do. I can’t find anything in the population register. An FA in capital letters, nothing else.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “That means that I don’t know. I can’t get at the data. And I don’t know what FA signifies.”

  “Can’t you do anything about it?”

  “Yes, I could. I could make enquiries. Or I could try to find out on my own, but that wouldn’t be entirely legal.”

  “But his prehistory, the stuff you can’t get at, is important after all.”

  “Not for Madörin. He’s concentrating entirely on the drugs business. Is that all?”