Damnation Read online

  Luckily there was directory enquiries. He had himself connected to the priest in Kargmatt, the nearest settlement. Presbyteries were usually well-positioned with a good view.

  The call was taken by a woman with a strong local dialect. Winter didn’t understand her name, but he got the impression that it wasn’t anything out of the ordinary for the elderly woman to take calls at this late hour. As the area was in the country’s Catholic heartland, he assumed he was speaking to the housekeeper.

  ‘Good evening, my name is Winter. I’m awfully sorry to disturb you, but I really need your help.’

  ‘The house of God is always open, Herr Winter.’

  ‘Thank you. A colleague of mine is on her way to the Gemsstock mountain, near your village.’ Anne was more than a colleague, but he had never admitted that to anyone. ‘She’s in a helicopter and called me earlier to say that it was on fire.’

  ‘Good heavens!’

  ‘Have you seen anything?’ Kargmatt was a kilometre or two from the Höllentobel. As an optimist, he didn’t want to use the words ‘helicopter crash’. Not yet.

  ‘My dear man, the ways of the Lord are inscrutable, but I’ll happily help you if I can.’ Winter began to doubt that the kindly housekeeper would be able to help him.

  ‘Can you see the helicopter?’

  ‘The helicopter?’

  ‘Yes,’ Winter replied, trying to keep a lid on his simmering anger.

  ‘Wait a second. I need to take a peek out of the window.’

  Clunk. The telephone was put down on a hard surface. The same sound that Anne’s phone had made.

  An age later: ‘Are you still there? I can’t see any helicopter.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘It is rather dark, sir.’

  ‘Have you seen a light?’

  ‘The light of the Lord shines…’

  ‘Or a fire?’

  ‘Yes, down in the Höllentobel. Jakob sometimes burns cleared branches down there.’

  Winter stared into the distance. A pause. Then the housekeeper finally twigged.

  ‘Oh my God! You mean the helicopter crashed down there?’

  Ignoring her question, Winter delved further: ‘What’s Jakob’s full name?’

  ‘Jakob Zbinden.’

  ‘Does he have a telephone?’

  ‘I believe he does have a mobile phone.’

  ‘Do you have the number?’

  ‘In the card index we have the numbers and addresses of our entire flock.’ After what seemed like an eternal search, the housekeeper found Jakob Zbinden’s mobile number in the presbytery’s card index. The time was 21:17. The cowherd, who had to milk early in the morning, was probably in bed already. But Winter needed to be certain. Jakob answered after the second ring. A bad sign.

  ‘Jakob.’ Cool, terse, and youthful sounding, he pronounced his name in an American way. Not exactly the country bumpkin under the protective wing of the Church that Winter had imagined.

  ‘My name’s Winter, I’m calling from Bern. I got your number from the presbytery. Please excuse me for phoning so late, but I’ve got an urgent question.’

  ‘Are you a journalist?’ Jakob asked aggressively. ‘Hot on the heels of a story?’

  ‘No, I’m not a journalist. One of my colleagues was on a helicopter in your area.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ All of a sudden the cowherd’s tone was restrained.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘The helicopter crashed in the Höllentobel.’

  Purgatory.

  JULY 24 – 21:22

  On the drive to the Höllentobel Winter tried to comprehend the tornado twisting inside him. He sought to observe the storm of his emotions from a safe distance, as if from a weather plane flying above a whirlwind. He saw the anger churning him up and hurling images through his mind. Anger at the helicopter that for some reason had crashed. An indeterminate anger at the people who were guilty. The pilot? A careless maintenance mechanic? A religious fundamentalist?

  And beneath all this, anger at himself. For, in truth, it ought to have been him in that helicopter.

  The anger mingled with the pain this had stirred.

  Anne was his deputy, his right hand, but she’d become more than that in his head. They got on so well together. Earlier, he’d been so looking forward to the evening, the night and the day afterwards. Now the Höllentobel had devoured the helicopter.

  A lightning strike.

  Winter shook his head.

  He wanted to see Anne.

  He wanted to take Anne in his arms. Protect her.

  Then, all of a sudden, Winter was in the eye of the tornado. Silence. A dull why? Winter was in the purring quietness of his silver-grey Audi. It was dark and there was little traffic. He drove quickly, over the speed limit. He couldn’t understand the stillness. Was it fear? Fear of making a mistake? Fear of failure? Just one false move and the tornado would seize hold of him, tear the ground away from beneath his feet, suck him high in the air and throw him off course once more. The whirlwind left a trail of devastation inside. The dead eyes stared at Winter. Glassy. He screwed up his own eyes. He didn’t want to visit this place in his memory ever again.

  When Winter opened his eyes he found himself racing towards the taillights of a car driving at the right speed in front of him. He slammed on the brakes. The tyres screeched and smoked and the seatbelt cut into his stomach. The electronic braking system had just managed to prevent a collision.

  Winter ran his tongue across dry lips. He consciously pictured himself placing a heavy lid on the past. From this moment he would focus only on the task in hand. He put his foot down again and overtook.

  A helicopter crash involving a filthy-rich sheikh and a beautiful woman on the way to a remote mountain hut didn’t fit well with the discreet image of the bank.

  What disturbed him was the thought of the people who’d get to the helicopter before he did. The fire brigade, police, locals, curious journalists. A tabloid was advertising with the slogan ‘Earn money with a single call!’ It was purely a question of time. He had to be quicker.

  As usual his line manager, Känzig, failed to answer Winter’s call, so he rang von Tobler, but the private bank’s CEO was at a barbecue. His booming greeting suggested he’d already had a few glasses. Winter pictured the boss in shorts with pale calves rather than a bespoke suit. Within ten seconds he’d managed to ruin von Tobler’s good mood.

  None of the guests chomping on their steaks would have had an inkling of what was going through von Tobler’s head. The boss was a master of the art of jovial conversation and of the impenetrable poker face.

  The account managers loved taking their clients out to eat with the boss, potentially bumping up their fees by two or three tenths of a per cent. On fortunes running into a hundred million francs, such a cut easily matched Winter’s annual salary. But business was getting ever more difficult. The Asian banking centres were on the march. Swiss banking secrecy was crumbling.

  Over the past thirty years the chief had run the bank almost singlehandedly and with great success. Profits had multiplied. When he realized a few years back that the bank was too small to keep pace with global growth, he persuaded the other family members to sell a portion of their shares in a complicated transaction.

  Today almost half of the bank was owned by an anonymous financial group that consisted of a large bank, an insurance firm and two other private banks. At the time, commentators and financial analysts had been in agreement. The financial group had paid a hefty price for the bank; the timing of the deal – just prior to the crisis – was perfect and von Tobler’s personal wealth had increased substantially.

  Von Tobler was a patriarch of the old school and knew what he had in Winter. Winter had met him while still commander of the Bern police ‘Enzian’ special unit. Von Tobler’s daughter, Miriam, had been abducted. The banker was prepared to pay an enormous sum to get back the apple of his eye. And Winter had negotiated her release in return for the ransom.


  Winter had handed over the ransom money personally and brought Miriam to safety from the kidnappers, before arresting them after a frenzied pursuit. As a result the overjoyed chief made him an enticing offer.

  For a few years now he’d been in charge of security at the exclusive bank, which boasted clients from all across the world. Clients who expected that nothing would happen to them and their money in Switzerland.

  At the bank Winter enjoyed greater freedom and less bureaucracy than with the police. He was his own boss and could manage his own time, just so long as nothing happened and nobody was inconvenienced by the security measures in place. Normally security could be taken for granted. After all, this wasn’t the Wild West. And here was the irony: as head of security he was doing his job best when nobody noticed anything. Nobody said, ‘Thank you.’

  Apart, that is, from von Tobler, who would give Winter the occasional clap on the shoulder in appreciation. But now the CEO didn’t say much. He merely authorized Winter to do all he could to limit the damage to the bank and get to the bottom of why the helicopter crashed. Von Tobler wanted to be kept updated around the clock. He said he’d inform the board and, before hanging up, asked Winter to put the HC – head of communications – in the picture.

  The telephone call with the HC, who’d declared public relations to be a top-level issue when he started his job a few months ago, lasted longer. Relations with the outside world were crucial. The perception of security was as important for maintaining trust as the actual level of security itself. Winter was pleased that it was the PR department rather than he who had to grapple with the media and their poisonous half-truths.

  Helfer, the pretty boy, wanted to play for time, express the bank’s sympathy and avoid commenting on the private activities of its clients. He’d stick to a strategy of passive communication – informal, off-the-record conversations with journalists investigating the story – and insist that the sheikh’s trip had been a purely private one. The term ‘private’ was a mantra to be repeated over and over again, he added. The head of PR also told Winter that scientific studies had shown how messages with repetition turned out to be more believable.

  Fortunately a tunnel cut off the call after almost a quarter of an hour.

  The ‘private’ was where Winter’s problems began, however. He didn’t know much about Al-Bader. A lot of things in the bank functioned on the basis of personal relationships. Winter knew the salient features of the client relationship with Al-Bader: very high net worth individual, politically exposed person, successful businessman and investor, increased vigilance with regard to money-laundering, no known personal preferences or weaknesses. Just over a week ago all that Stefan Schütz, Al-Bader’s account manager, said of the sheikh’s foray into Switzerland was, ‘Actually he’s not here, he’s at a conference in Norway.’

  ‘Interesting. An Arab sheikh at a conference in Norway?’

  ‘I don’t know for sure what sort of conference it is. Something to do with global infrastructure investments. Given the current fluctuations on stock markets, buying a road can be a highly lucrative move.’

  Noticing Winter’s raised his eyebrows, Schütz explained further: ‘You start with an investment. Let’s say you build a motorway, for example. Later you raise the charges, claiming it’s inflation, then you’ve got a nice little cashflow. Of course you need the loose change to begin with. But that’s not a problem for Al-Bader. In fact, he’s von Tobler’s client.’

  It was Schütz who’d asked Winter to organize the helicopter trip. ‘He’s planning to meet someone in Switzerland early in the morning of July the twenty-fifth. He’ll be arriving the evening before in Zürich on his private jet and I’d be grateful if you could arrange for a helicopter to pick him up and take him to the mountain hut on the Gemsstock.’

  Routine. The bank took care of practically every aspect of Al-Bader’s visits to Switzerland. He loved the mountains and had already made a number of high Alpine tours at the bank’s invitation.

  ‘Who’s he meeting?’

  ‘No idea. Some investors.’ Then, rather tersely, Schütz had added, ‘Not our business.’

  Now, in the cocoon of his car, Winter wondered what Al-Bader had been doing in Norway and who it was he’d arranged to meet here. Friend or foe? And why in Switzerland? Did it have anything to do with the range of his jet? What was the range of Al-Bader’s Gulfstream? Winter made a mental note to consult the manufacturer’s web site. At the end of the day truth boiled down to physics. Metres, minutes and kilograms.

  And chance.

  Or destiny.

  His original intention had been to pick up Al-Bader from the airport personally. But instead he’d sent Anne. He’d sent Anne on this flight because he wanted to give her the opportunity of meeting one of the bank’s best clients. And it had suited him to take the time off and work on his terrace. And now, in all probability, Anne was dead.

  Winter set aside his feelings of guilt and the nagging doubts, and concentrated on the immediate future. This was what he could influence, but only if he remained focused. Why had the helicopter crashed? Experience told him that the answer to this question would either be revealed soon or not at all.

  He turned off the motorway. The road became narrower and the bends tighter. The headlights tunnelled into the night. Summer storms had descended on central Switzerland that evening. Winter opened the window and breathed in the cool air that smelled of wet grass. He drove through the narrow streets of Kargmatt and caught sight of the church with its presbytery.

  Afterwards the road ran steeply downhill and across an old bridge. An unmarked turn-off. The dirt track road snaked its way through the forest and up the other side of the valley. The fir forest was dark and fresh after the rain. Winter could see the sickle of the moon through the trees.

  It was midnight when the forest thinned out and the ever-chirpy voice of his sat nav informed him: ‘You have reached your destination.’

  At that moment the phone rang and Anne’s name flashed up on the display.

  JULY 25 – 00:08

  Winter stopped, took a deep breath and brought his pulse under control. He looked around. A slope with cows chewing the cud. Stars in the sky. His mobile was still ringing and showing Anne’s number. He cleared his throat and took the call. ‘Hello?’

  ‘Hello. My name’s Oberholzer. I’m from the police. I do apologize, but we found the phone I’m using at the scene of an accident and your number was the last one called. Who am I speaking to, please?’

  ‘My name is Winter, I know the owner of the phone and I’ll be with you in a minute.’ He broke off the conversation and clutched the steering wheel so hard his knuckles turned white. Winter stared up at the sky without seeing the crescent moon. He pulled himself together and shortly afterwards parked his car in the passing place by the single-track bridge above the Höllentobel. Before him lay the crash site.

  Over the past few thousand years the torrential mountain stream had channelled a deep V-shaped incision into the ground. The deeper the water burrowed, the steeper the sides became and the more earth, plants and rocks were washed away. A vicious circle.

  The Alpine herders had fought an unsuccessful battle against the water, which continued to devour fertile pasture. They had tried to tame nature with wooden structures and newer steel and concrete ones. The steel shafts of one such grill, which was supposed to hold back sliding scree, earth and avalanches, had bored through the glass cockpit of the helicopter.

  The slim rear of the aircraft lay further down the slope. The small tail rotor jutted up from the road. Behind it was a red Toyota Land Cruiser and an old jeep with its headlights dimmed. The local fire brigade and police force. No ambulance; no survivors. The experts from the Federal Aviation Safety Investigation Board hadn’t arrived yet. Two torches were flitting about by the outline of the cockpit up above.

  Winter got out and approached the crash site. The surface of the untarred road was muddy and slippery. He saw debris from the
helicopter everywhere. Part of the casing. Winter picked up the sheet of metal. Full of soot. The main rotor, bent out of shape, was further down in the ravine. The pilot had probably tried to make an emergency landing on the mountain but failed to get that far and instead ended up plummeting into the Höllentobel.

  As Winter began to climb the slope the policeman came to meet him. ‘This is the scene of an accident. Please stay on the road.’ The voice from a few minutes ago.

  Intent on seeing Anne, Winter kept clambering. The under-growth was wet and prickly, the ground beneath it muddy. With each step he sank several centimetres into the sludge and slipped back. Sliding towards him in the mud, the policeman ended up right in front of Winter, far closer than would be ordinarily deemed polite. As he was on higher ground he stood a head taller.

  ‘Please stay on the road,’ the officer repeated.

  Winter placed his hand on the policeman’s forearm, a gesture that allowed him to grip onto the man and reassure him at the same time. Physical contact often had a far greater effect than a flood of words. He smiled, and with his other hand dismissed the officer’s request. Certain things were best not discussed.

  ‘Good morning, Herr Oberholzer.’ It was past midnight. ‘We just spoke. I’m Winter and I’d like to see the woman whose mobile you found. I know her. Her name is Anne. Where is she?’

  Oberholzer nodded in the darkness. ‘Up there next to the cockpit. She was thrown out on impact.’

  ‘May I see her?’ Winter leaned against Oberholzer, who abandoned his resistance. Without saying anything, the policeman turned around and they climbed the last few metres together to what remained of the helicopter. The bent skids pointed upwards. One door was hanging half off. Upside down and still belted in, Strittmatter stared at Winter with lifeless eyes. His blackened arms dangled from his body. There was the stench of burned flesh. The helmet microphone was stuck deep in his mouth. Strittmatter had piloted the flight himself. Once more Winter was gripped by feelings of guilt. He stared back and closed his eyes.