The Zurich Conspiracy (28 page)

Josefa forced a smile, the flash blinding her. Klingler smiled too, showing his teeth—he was very good at posing—and took her into the large meeting room where a stand-up buffet was lavishly set. Maybe this wouldn’t be all bad, Josefa thought, taking in the array of goodies.

“Come and meet René Hinkel, for starters,” Paul said, relieved. “René,” he called, and a short man turned quickly around. “René, this is Josefa Rehmer, my esteemed colleague. She’ll turn the company’s anniversary into an event that will be the envy of all Zurich.” The man eyed her with curiosity; he had a glass of wine in one hand and a napkin in the other, which he quickly wiped his lips with.

“Now we can go ahead and open up a youth club,” Hinkel said by way of an introduction, yelping out a laugh. Josefa didn’t get it. “The three of us here grew up on Schlingenstrasse: Paul, my humble self, and Michi Gantz back there, the artist among us,” he explained. “Does great oils. Have you seen any? Hanging in banks. I’ve never made it that far.” He laughed again.

Josefa twisted the corners of her mouth into a smile. She didn’t want to appear standoffish.

“Don’t I know you from somewhere?” Hinkel was saying.

“Probably from the TV ads for herbal cough drops,” Josefa answered, in a pointedly friendly voice. “I’m the Alpen-Heidi.”

Hinkel laughed loudly. “Very good, very good. So you work for Paul?”

“Yes, but I have my own company,” she said while inconspicuously eyeing the buffet. Her mouth watered at the sight of the Japanese gyoza.
Stop thinking about the food! You have to sell yourself, nail down contracts, land jobs
. Hinkel kept moving his face closer and closer to hers, and she kept moving subtly away from him. Did he learn that technique at a management seminar?

“Where did you work before?” Hinkel asked, nibbling on a toothpick that surely had speared one of those tempting delicacies.

“At Loyn,” she responded curtly. Did she have to be ashamed of that name after all that had happened? Or even worse—would she have to endure endless questions about who might have killed Werner Schulmann?

“Loyn!” he exclaimed. “I’ve just been talking to somebody who was at Loyn too. Where is he?” He turned around to look. Before he could point out the person with his toothpick, Josefa had already discovered who it was and fled straight to the buffet.

“Frau Rehmer, how nice to find you here!”

She gave such a start that a hairpin came out of her chignon. Richard Auer was wearing a black suit and a dotted bowtie. His watery blue eyes glistened.

“Frau Rehmer, I’m so happy to run into you. We went our different ways in a…er…rather unharmonious terms. But I did you wrong. I know that now!”

Auer’s voice sounded artificially muted, like a priest’s in a confessional. Josefa felt her temperature rising. Auer gave the impression of being somewhat tortured, and she did nothing to make it any easier for him.

“You know I’ve stopped working for Loyn?” he said, sounding like a conspirator.

“No, I didn’t know that.” She tried to cover up her surprise and keep herself from asking, Did they throw you out?

“Yes, two weeks ago now. I was able to leave immediately because I’d accumulated so much vacation time.”

Why has nobody told me?—Claire, for instance. But I haven’t talked to Claire in a long time. And Pius? He surely must have gotten wind of it.

More and more guests were pushing their way to the buffet. Richard Auer steered her to a quiet corner.

“You know, you were sooo right about Werner Schulmann. Too bad I didn’t spot it at the time. But then he showed his true face.” He lit a cigarette nervously. Josefa thought this wasn’t a good place to smoke, but she was so gripped by what he was saying that she didn’t want to interrupt.

“His true face?” she asked with feigned indifference.

“Yes, unpleasant business, extremely unpleasant. Schulmann took liberties that were simply inexcusable.”

Now Josefa couldn’t hold back. “Like what?”

“I can’t tell you. They were below the belt, if you get my meaning.”

She didn’t get it, naturally. Auer nevertheless looked at her as if expecting some acknowledgement that he’d done the right thing. As if they were in the same boat now. Well, he could wait till the cows came home. So Auer was now back on the job market; she probably looked like a good contact, might even be useful to him. She asked herself why he was so open about leaving because of Schulmann—under highly mysterious circumstances, as he put it.

As she was about to give a polite excuse and move on, an idea came to her.
Use your enemies
. “I admire the way you drew the consequences,” she said with a forced smile and could have killed herself for saying it. Auer returned the grin; if he’d seen through her mock flattery, he didn’t show it. “By the way, we have a common acquaintance,” she went on to say. “Helene Meyer.”

“Oh, how interesting. You know Helene.” Auer faked surprise.

“Yes, and I also met her distant cousin, Freya Hallmark.”

“Oh, really.” Auer wet his lips.

Josefa was feeling her way, as if on thin ice. “You know Freya too, Herr Auer?”

“Yes, her father and mine were close friends. But Helene has certainly told you that.”

Josefa ignored the remark. “Your father, Herr Auer, was also a friend of Peter Meyer’s, wasn’t he?”

His eyes flitted back and forth as if looking for an escape. Some cigarette ash fell to the floor. “Yes, they became friends shortly before his…his demise. But Hilmar, Freya’s father, came off badly when Swixan went broke.”

“Was Peter Meyer to blame?”

“Blame…” Her former colleague scuffed the ground with his right foot and studied the floor. “Peter certainly got Hilmar involved. Hilmar really did think a lot of him. My father warned him not to put virtually his entire fortune in Swixan. And after it went belly up, Hilmar got very sick. He never got over it. He wanted to help all his kids build their homes—that was his goal. He worked his fingers to the bone and saved up for that his whole life long.” Auer fumbled around with his bowtie. “And when Peter took his life, Hilmar…he took the catastrophe personally. He totally withdrew from the world. He’s being treated now in a special clinic, but you can hardly speak to him. It’s a disaster for his daughters, especially Freya, who was closest to him.”

Richard Auer sounded sincerely shaken. But he blew some smoke up into the air and said, “Hilmar didn’t listen to my father. You’ll always pay a big price for your stupidity at some point. I was just talking about this with my father at Christmastime when I was visiting up in Mannheim.”

Josefa thought she’d heard enough for now and was about to sidle off, but then he said something that stopped her in her tracks.

“You probably know all of this from Helene. She visited Freya’s father two weeks ago.”

“Two weeks ago? Are you sure?”

“Oh, yes. My aunt went to see him in the clinic and Freya and Helene were there. She told my father about it.”

Paul suddenly interrupted and took her away after a few words of apology.

“I thought I should pry you away from your old colleague,” he whispered when she’d left Auer.

“Very nice of you, Paul. But why did you invite him in the first place?”

Paul shrugged. “Why not? It’s Open Doors Day, I can’t discriminate against anybody.”

“He’s an ass-kisser, and you know it,” Josefa fumed.

“Josefa, half the world is full of ass-kissers. If I ignore them, there goes my business. You’ve got to develop the hide of an elephant. Don’t let them get to you.”

“Maybe that creep doesn’t bother you, but that guy would sell his own grandmother.”

Paul grinned. “Knew that already.”

“Very funny. Anyway, I think I’ve got to go somewhere quiet and catch my breath. Auer stressed me out,” she said.

“Go to my office; it’s open.”

“You’ve left your office open?”

“Obviously, that’s why it’s called Open Doors Day—anything that shouldn’t be seen is safely locked away.”

Josefa went up the wooden stairs with the wine-colored runner. Paul’s office reminded her of Athena Meyer-de Rechenstein’s living room. It was so rich in history. There was even a tile stove in the corner. The room had been painstakingly tidied up. A glossy prospectus lay on a little coffee table. Josefa dropped into a leather chair near the large bay windows. Her eyes wandered over the gray lake and the fog-shrouded mountains. She slipped off her high-heeled shoes and put her feet up on the table.
What a blessing!

A babble of voices and a clattering of dishes filtered up to her. Classical music was playing softly in the background. She closed her eyes and tried to calm down, but she couldn’t get the business about Helene and Freya off her mind.
What dark secrets were these cousins hiding?

Then she heard approaching footsteps. She quickly took her feet off the table and grabbed the brochure.
Klingler & Partners. We make a difference in your company because your company makes a difference in the world. We give your company our best because your company gives the world its best.

Well, Paul says a real mouthful there
, she thought, amused. But he was right: It was exactly what his clients wanted to hear. The footsteps outside the room receded. She leafed ahead; terrific pictures, cool design, big words. Plastered above it all was a statement from the late Andy Warhol:
Being good in business is the most fascinating kind of art
.

When Josefa finished translating the quotation, her heart skipped a few beats. Trancelike she closed the pamphlet, picked up her handbag and shoes, and tiptoed into the library across the hallway. She went systematically along the book spines, row after row. At last she found what she was looking for; her quivering finger searched through the index. She found the Warhol quotation. And she found all the other quotations, one after the other: Dorothy Parker, Lord Chesterfield, Oscar Wilde, Elizabeth Barrett Browning...

But it couldn’t be!
Paul sending me threatening e-mails?
She rooted around in her bag. The page of messages was still there. She read through the sayings with absolute concentration. Was there anything that might point to Paul, a turn of phrase, an undertone? She couldn’t find anything.
A lot of people have reference books like this one
, she rationalized. That wasn’t necessarily significant; anybody could set up an address with Hotmail and invent a sender. “Nonoose”—what a curious expression. Maybe it was in the index as well. She went down the alphabet again. Nothing.
Nonoose, no blues, no shoes
—she rhymed them off to herself.

That was it:
no noose
.
Two words, not one!

She went along the rows of books again and took out an English-German dictionary.
noose (nu:s) 1. (n.) Schlinge (also fig.) to slip one’s head out of the hangman’s noose—to barely escape the gallows.

The clamor from downstairs grew louder. The soft background music was practically inaudible now. “
No noose”—keine Schlinge
.
What’s that supposed to mean? No hangman’s noose? Who for? For her? Why do I suspect Paul so quickly? Why should he of all people…
She paused. Her pulse began to race. Schlingenstrasse! Didn’t René tell her that her friend grew up on Schlingenstrasse? So it was Paul after all! But why would he do a thing like that? It was absurd!

The door creaked open. Josefa spun around. Paul was standing in the doorway with a full plate and a glass of red wine. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you,” he said. “I thought I’d better get some meat on your bones so you’re well armed for the evil world of financial sharks.” He put the plate and the glass down on the massive oak table. Josefa didn’t move a muscle. She glanced at the glass on the table.
The murderer first anesthetized his victim
.

Paul looked at her expectantly. Then he discovered the reference work in front of her. “What—you’re at work again? You’re not serious.” She just looked at him in silence, frozen stiff. “Josefa, what’s the matter?” Paul asked, a note of concern in his voice.

By way of an answer she pushed the printouts at him. She saw from the expression on his face that he got the picture immediately. Her body felt like lead.

Paul sat down at the table, near the opened door. He buried his face in his hands for a while, then folded them as if in prayer and looked at her. He suddenly seemed old and gray. “I’m glad it’s out in the open,” he said. “I’m glad you know.” He paused. His voice was flat and soft. “I’ve wanted to tell you for a long time but didn’t have the guts. I was too cowardly. Simply a coward.”

Josefa saw fine beads of sweat glinting on his forehead. He pressed his hands together.

“I wanted to poach you from Loyn, get you out of there. That’s all I wanted, nothing more. I knew Bourdin was talking with Schulmann long before anybody else. Schulmann saw to it that it made the rounds fast in our circles. That show-off.” He stopped. Paul Klingler—the continual speech-maker, the linguistic acrobat, the well-oiled talking machine—was struggling for words. “That’s why I was trying to warn you when you were still in St. Moritz. When you didn’t yet know what was coming down the pike.”

She looked him square in the eye, and he returned her gaze.

“I think Schulmann’s a very, very dangerous guy,” he began slowly, forgetting he was talking about a dead man. “There are psychopaths in this world who are easy to spot and others who are never unmasked.” He wiped his mouth several times before continuing.

“I’ve read a scholarly article on the subject, Josefa. The writer—a psychiatrist recognized the world over—estimates that about one percent of the population in the West can be considered psychopaths. These sick obsessives can cause people unimaginable pain—even destroy them—without a single pang of conscience. Because they have no conscience at all. They’ve no fear of punishment. They can’t understand other people’s feelings or empathize with them. They’re simply…evil.
Evil
, do you understand?” He looked at her imploringly. His shoulders sagged; his long torso looked compressed.