The Zurich Conspiracy

protection? You have to protect yourself, Helene! What happens if the police see what I’ve seen? When they come to the same conclusions I did? Then what are you going to say?”
    Helene shook her head. She put out her hand as if she wanted to draw her friend closer. “No need to worry. The police have no reason to suspect me. Or at least, no more or no less than any other person.”
    She pulled back her hand but kept her eyes on Josefa. “If I were you, I’d worry about myself.”
    “Why?” she asked warily, freezing again in spite of the heat from the stove.
    “Think about it.” Helene moved her head back and forth. “What do you tell the cops if they ask you why you were in Tenerife in July, of all months? And met Freya in the hotel there? What do you say if the cops discover that you were a prize-winning sharpshooter in your early years? And what do you say if your old colleagues tell them that you tried everything you could to stop Schulmann from coming to Loyn and that you lost your job because of him? That you hated each other’s guts and you swore eternal revenge on Schulmann?”
    “What are you trying to say?” Josefa stood up so quickly that her coffee spilled.
    Helene picked up the cup. “Maybe now you see how I feel right this minute, after your interrogation. Do you really think I am capable of planning a murder—or several? Do you think your best friend is capable of a thing like that?”
    Josefa was so confused she said nothing. Disappointment was written all over Helene’s face, though.
    “I just meant that you’re as much a suspect as I am—or as little as I am.” Helene picked up her bandana and wiped the puddle of coffee off the table. She looked at the bandana. “I was just about to polish my glasses with that,” she said with feigned resignation before turning on the tap and rinsing out the colorful cloth. Then she turned toward Josefa and said in a conciliatory tone, “We mustn’t drive ourselves crazy. We should concentrate our energy on what’s essential. There are more important things than whether Thüring was full of coke or Johnny Walker when he landed in the water.”
    Josefa dropped back down onto the bench. “How did you know about the sharpshooter thing?”
    Helene laughed and put a hand on Josefa’s shoulder, giving it a little squeeze. “Look, you won’t find the answers to all your questions. And when you think you’ve got one, another one will pop up.”
    They could hear the sound of a vehicle outside.
    “That’ll be Erwin, I’ve got to run and help him.” Helene was at the door in a bound.
    Josefa washed up the cups. She was glad to be busy. She’d have happily washed the dishes for the whole class, scratched off the dirt with her bare hands. She held the spoon and the two cups under the ice-cold water until her hands hurt.

Heinz Zwicker put on the Dixieland CD his son had given him for Christmas. He’d spread the contact sheets out on a table in the room that used to be his son’s, before he’d moved out years ago. Zwicker looked upon this room as his refuge now. His wife must have wondered what he did for hours on end in there. But she never asked questions, hadn’t asked questions, and that was something he was secretly thankful for. That, and for so much else.
    That evening he went one more time through the enlargements of the pictures he had checked off on the contacts for the police lab. He’d already spent countless hours studying hundreds of photographs—incredible, how much film photographers shot. If he took that many pictures, Zwicker thought, he too would’ve come up with one good shot eventually. He turned the music up a little; his wife was out at a course on reflexology and foot massage.
    He picked up his magnifying glass once again to search the background in the pictures, one by one, writing notes on a pad of paper, the number of the photo, and remarks like “upper right,” “standing together,” and “before the swing.” His foot beat time to the music. He would report his observations to Franz Kündig tomorrow.
    The instincts of a long-serving criminal investigator told him that the case was finally off and running.

The mattress was spotted and well worn but would do its job. Esther was standing on it with both feet and looking up. “I’m ready!” she called, raising her arms as if she was at an Evangelical revival meeting.
    Josefa was ten feet above her at the balustrade, on the highest stairwell landing on