The Zurich Conspiracy

skin-tight tank tops baring their stomachs stretched out on the rough-hewn stone blocks beside the stairs to the university buildings; wild grass was shooting up among the stones. A few punk teenagers were banging their mountain bikes together in a sort of bullfight.
    Farther along the footpath old folks from the nearby retirement home were sitting on wooden benches every few yards, reading the paper or offering remarks on what was taking place on the green lawn in front of them. Families spread out their picnic paraphernalia—big and little Tupperware containers with potato salad, pickles, nuts, dried fruit, sliced tomatoes, and cream cheese with herbs. Chicken thighs, steaks, and bratwursts were poked and turned on barbecues, often by gesticulating men in fluttering T-shirts.
    Even Paul Klingler had taken on this task. He considered himself a barbecue specialist, and his homemade marinade was the best-kept secret on Zurich’s Bahnhofstrasse. “After the banking secrets, of course,” he’d assure everybody with a wink.
    The potatoes wrapped in foil were still a long way from soft so Paul could abandon his observation post for a couple of minutes and cool his feet in the pond.
    But then he spotted a Labrador headed single-mindedly for his grill.
    “Go away,” Paul roared, storming toward the dog. The dog’s owner came running from the opposite direction and grabbed the animal by the collar. Then he looked up at Paul, who in the meantime had picked up the tongs and was brandishing them in a threatening manner.
    “Hey, what are you doing here?” the man said and took off his sunglasses. “How come you’re not at the office? It’s Sunday, after all.”
    Only then did Paul recognize the dog’s owner. “ You should talk, Bruno. You’ve got every reason to be poring over your files.”
    “No cynical remarks, my good man, there are enough of those in the newspapers. And that’s why I have to listen to constant complaints from my family.” Bruno Zicchun, a man in his midforties in jeans and a crocodile shirt, took a look around. “Do you have family here?”
    “My daughter’s over there,” Klingler said. “There’s a whole bunch of us. The kids like it; there’s lots of room.” He wiped his hands on the striped dish towel on his shoulder. “You guys have landed another hopeless case,” he said as a gambit.
    “Hopeless?” Bruno emitted a loud laugh. “You might be in for one hell of a surprise. I’m telling you, my client will walk out of that courtroom a free woman.”
    “Dream on. Everything’s stacked against her. The cops caught her red-handed. Even the murder weapon was there, a gift for the crime scene investigators.”
    Bruno Zicchun leashed his dog—it was still greedily sniffing the air—before answering. “Nothing’s ever as it seems, you know that yourself.”
    The lawyer looked around. A woman in wide, colorful pants and an embroidered vest was sitting on a bench several feet away. Her graying, black, curly hair was tied back by a wildly patterned scarf. A young boy, who looked Eastern European and had big jug ears, was watching her repair a kite. Although Bruno assumed the two didn’t speak German, he lowered his voice anyway.
    “This is completely confidential, Paul, between you and me, but we’re building a case that’s rock solid. There’s only circumstantial evidence for Westek’s murder. No evidence, no witnesses. Sure, she was with him in Düsseldorf, but no way does that make her a murderer.
    “I grant you she worked as a teenager in her uncle’s car repair shop now and then. But is that proof that sabotaging the Porsche was her work? OK, she had top-secret documents from Loyn on her home computer. But Schulmann and Westek both used her computer, and she was naïve enough to give them her password.”
    When Paul gave him an ironic smile he took him by the arm. “So who says that it wasn’t Thüring who knocked off Westek? Westek was a confidant, a potential danger. He knew Thüring’s new identity. And Thüring knew a thing or two about automobiles.”
    Paul raised his eyebrows in feigned horror. “And you want to sell that to the court and the public? Just a few too many coincidences need explaining, don’t you think? And then she knocks Thüring off in an isolated chalet and is sitting in his car when the cops arrive. How do you guys explain that one?”
    “Sit, goddammit!” Bruno’s dog was pulling so hard on the leash that the lawyer had trouble