The Zurich Conspiracy

police are only in possession of the originals and are still searching for the copies. Otherwise they would not have asked Anita if Werner had a safe somewhere. Or a holiday home. Or a girlfriend.”
    “Questions like that are routine,” Josefa objected.
    Verena did not let herself get distracted. “The police explicitly asked Anita about the tapes. That was after the lawyer had given them the originals. Why should they ask her about them if they already had them? They wanted to know for certain who has the copies. That does make sense, after all. They probably thought Werner gave them to Anita for safekeeping. Many mothers would do anything for their sons.”
    “I don’t know,” Josefa said upon reflection. “Sounds to me it’s all a bit confused. Suppose Schulmann was blackmailing somebody with the tapes. Suppose that’s why he was murdered. And suppose the murderer found the tapes in his house and took them.” She shook her head. “They might easily have guessed that Schulmann had copied them. Or that the originals were somewhere else. Then why the murder? It doesn’t make any sense.”
    Verena had folded her arms across her chest. “Maybe someone just went crazy. Maybe it was a panic reaction. And the police want to find the copies—because they might lead to the murderer.”
    Josefa found it extremely humorous all of a sudden that she was sitting with her stepmother in the small parlor spinning out murder theories.
    “Possibly,” she said. “Oh well, in any case we’ve got something to think about. Thank you for the tea, but I must be getting on home.”
    Her stepmother seemed a bit disappointed that the parlor mystery novel ended there. But she regained her composure at once and smiled. “You have a lovely coat,” she said in the vestibule. “I can recommend a good dry cleaner, right nearby.” Nothing really escaped Verena’s sharp eye.

An avalanche in the Alps in the Canton of Wallis buried thirty-nine of the fifty-one houses in a single mountain village. Josefa heard it on the morning news. More bad tidings came at noon: A steel company was closing its doors because the bank had cut off its credit. Five hundred people would lose their jobs. When Josefa turned on the TV that evening, the announcer reported three top items: the avalanche, the mass firing—and Karl Westek’s fatal accident. “A car driven by Karl Westek, the former CFO of Swixan AG, rolled over several times on the autobahn near Düsseldorf. Westek was found dead at the scene. No other cars were involved. Police are investigating. Foul play has not been ruled out.”
    Karl Westek. A fourth man connected to Swixan dead. The third man at the table in St. Moritz. Only Curt Van Duisen’s left. What must be going through his mind right now? Nobody could claim now that these were accidents. Lost in the Canadian bush. Drowned off Tenerife. Killed by a shot from his own hunting rifle. And now this weird car accident.
    She’d seen Westek recently at the bar in the jail, with the young woman in the black chiffon blouse. And now he was dead. Josefa felt as if she’d been in an earthquake and the aftershocks would never end. Everything in her life suddenly felt as if it was beginning to totter.
    Then she saw a picture of the red Porsche on the screen. A write-off, demolished beyond recognition. The reporter said that Westek was alone in the car. A retrospective of his life followed: His relentless rise and then his merciless fall. His attempt at a comeback by starting up a venture capital company. Westek, a “close friend” was quoted as saying, had never gotten over his failure at Swixan. And “the public,” she continued, never forgave him for cushioning his fall with money he’d sluiced off beforehand. Then came some earlier sequences of Westek going before the cameras to state that there was no way he could have known how things stood at Swixan AG, his massive jaw trembling a little as he lied. He then made the claim that it was malicious slander to say he had inside knowledge that enabled him to profit from his timely dumping of Swixan shares before the price sank like a stone. Another interview from the TV archives showed the ousted manager complaining that he was the victim of a conspiracy.
    Josefa’s phone rang, interrupting the televised retrospective.
    “Have you heard yet?” Paul asked. Josefa could nearly feel his excitement. He went right on talking. “By the way, Van Duisen has gone into