www.munda.ch
In a stately Zurich Villa, an unexplained case of fire results in a fatality. Was it arson, and if so, what could have been the motive? Greed, sabotage? Or was the cause simply carelessness?
The narrator, a disillusioned journalist, is hired to play detective. His client is a former tobacco merchant who became a missionary do-gooder in old age. The old man wants to know more about the life of his nephew, an engineer, who looks critically at social trends. Underlying the investigation of the fire case, there is a quiet struggle between the journalist's moral attitude and the engineer's sense of responsibility. In the end, they both contribute to the solution of the fire case.
Andreas Pritzker was born in Windisch (Switzerland) in 1945. He studied physics at the ETH Zurich and worked as a researcher, consulting engineer and in science management. As a writer he has published nine novels, two novellas and three non-fiction books. Moreover, he has edited various texts as a publisher.
Originally published in German as Der Andere by
BoD, Norderstedt (Germany) in 2019
Translated from the German by
DeepL Translate and Ursula Reist
© 2021 Andreas Pritzker
Produced and published by
BoD – Books on Demand GmbH, Norderstedt (Germany)
Cover photo from CanStockPhoto
ISBN: 978-3-7534-9270-4
More books in German and English
by Andreas Pritzker
are presentetd on
www.munda.ch
The „Hummingbird“ bar was almost empty. When I entered, I saw Eugen Anderegg pushing himself with difficulty onto a barstool. His limited mobility had already become evident when I followed him. I took a seat at a small table in the rear, my back to the wall, ordered a tonic, which I paid for immediately, and watched him.
Anderegg looked around, briefly surveyed the group of silent drinkers in the far corner, and eyed me suspiciously. I stared back, whereupon he lost interest and turned away. His face brightened when a newcomer sat down next to him. Instead of a handshake, the two greeted each other with a pat on the back. In front of Anderegg stood a bulbous cocktail glass. By the look of it, it contained a margarita. The newcomer ordered a beer. Anderegg pulled a piece of paper from his jacket, unfolded it and placed it on the counter. The two men seemed to be discussing something, talking engagedly, with serious expressions. Anderegg's counterpart looked familiar. Then I remembered. I had once seen him at a press conference as head of operations for the fire department.
It was the first day of the observation. Observation! I'm already talking like my old friend Stucki, who hunts criminals at a high level as a detective with the cantonal police.
*
Anderegg was a self-employed engineer. His office was located near the main train station, in the neighborhood north of the tracks, where rents were still affordable for small businesses. I had waited in a café across the street from his office, which was located in a building from the middle of the last century. A building without any charm. The curse of architects: Either they put up an unconventional building, which is not practical at all. The residents are happy for a while because they can show off the exquisite style. Then everyday life takes over. They become annoyed by inconveniences and realize that the maintenance is not affordable. Or the building is functional, in which case it looks average, faceless, and is doomed to oblivion.
The September day was mild, but dull, the daylight subdued, nothing of the atmosphere possessed intensity. At noon, for a short time, the sun's disk appeared milky in the high fog. Then everything became gray again. I sipped my coffee, which had grown cold, and thought: gray like my life, which has lost its color.
Outside the panoramic window of the café, people were going about their business. It was five o'clock in the evening. There was no traffic jam yet. I noticed a group of younger people coming out of the office building and hanging out next to the ashtray at the entrance, enjoying a smoke. Addicts. The smokers, however, seemed to be in the best of moods. No trace of guilt. The mood was obviously relaxed, I noticed smiling faces. I could imagine what they said: „Nowadays we are not allowed to smoke indoors, but the fresh air is good for us, too. Well, but what's fresh in this exhaust-filled air?“ Then Anderegg appeared in the entrance to the foyer, stopped, also lit a cigarette and joined the smokers happily.
Anderegg was a smoker! The first item on the list I began to keep for old Küng. A grave negative item. Küng thinks that smoking should be completely banned in public. The harmful molecules, he believes, spread in the air we breathe and cause cancer. „Those who smoke around their fellow human beings act immorally,“ Küng likes to exclaim, adding, „Moreover, these addicts wreck themselves and cause high health care costs.“
Anderegg smoked, and I would have liked to light a cigarette. But I gave up six years ago on urgent medical advice. I was only thirty-seven at the time, but the pump was becoming prone to failure. I took stock of myself. I'm not crazy about life, but I said to myself, maybe something good will come of it after all. So I gave up looking at the world through the blue haze.
After a few puffs, Anderegg stubbed out the cigarette in the ashtray and marched off. It was the end of the day, so I could follow him in the crowd at a short distance. At first he walked leisurely. Then he glanced at his wristwatch and quickened his pace. And as he did so, he began to limp. He obviously could not take big steps with his right leg. The man had a hip problem! I am familiar with that. Not because of myself. But in my family, corpulence is rampant. I cannot exclude myself from it. It may be that the same fate will befall me. Anderegg, on the other hand, was slim. He must have caught his affliction in another way.
The man I observed could not be mistaken. Being tall, his head hovered above the crowd. Limping slightly, he strode forward and deftly weaved his way through the people. I noticed there was energy in him. Anderegg is sixty, but seems to be in enviable physical shape despite his disability. His pace certainly made me – an untrained, overweight journalist with a professionally high alcohol consumption – sweat.
*
Since Anderegg had purposefully visited the bar at the end of the day, I wondered whether I had to report to Küng that his nephew was not only a smoker, but also an alcoholic. But he did not allow himself a second drink this evening. Anderegg asked for the bill. When his counterpart pulled out his wallet, he waved it off. He paid, and presumably gave a considerable tip, because the barman grinned broadly. The two men slid off their barstools, which seemed awkward for Anderegg, and took their leave. I followed them outside.
Anderegg was no longer in a hurry. He strolled back to his office, which was on the same street as the bar. Because he had spotted me in the bar, I kept a careful distance this time. Arriving at the office building, I saw him enter the elevator to the garage in the foyer. Shortly afterwards, he drove up the ramp in a Jeep Cherokee. That gave me a second item on the list for Küng. Anderegg lived on the northern edge of town, so he could easily have taken the streetcar. Küng got upset when someone in such a situation used a car to get to work. And he insisted that in times of climate change, even people with walking difficulties should be expected to use public transport.
For today, the observation was over. It had already shown that Anderegg was not willing to adapt to social requirements. I felt provoked by his selfish behavior and strongly expected that the negative list would continue to fill up.
Anderegg seems to be an inveterate loner. This is a provisional finding. I observed the man during the next two weeks. For this purpose I asked for unpaid leave and got it immediately. Our newspaper was doing so badly that editor-in-chief Steinemann virtually came to life when I submitted my request to him. Küng compensates me for my work, and in comparison with my journalist's salary, the payment is princely.
Since I was shadowing Anderegg single-handedly, there were periods of time about which I knew nothing, since I had to devote myself to my own needs – eating, sleeping. However, I strove to get as complete a picture as possible. I parked in front of his apartment at six in the morning, registered how he drove to work shortly afterwards and followed him through the morning traffic. In accordance with Stucki's advice, I kept a suitable distance. Anderegg as an attentive person could have discovered me. But since I knew his destination, it didn't matter if I lost sight of him – which happened a few times. I parked my old car – much more modest than Anderegg's Cherokee – in a nearby parking garage and placed myself in the café opposite his office.
Here, I occupied a window table and took care of various journalistic tasks on my laptop. Again and again, I peered over at the business premises and kept an eye on the foyer and the entrance to the parking garage. Luckily, the young man who shuffled through the dingy restaurant and served the guests unwillingly didn't care about anything. Apparently he didn't give a damn that I sat here all day, consumed only little and wrote my texts. When I saw Anderegg leave in the evening, I got my car and followed him.
Anderegg lives in a modern, elegant building. I had done some research and knew that the apartment belonged to him. „Considerable living space, not quite cheap,“ my informant at the tax office had stated. By comparison, my own accommodation is modest. But I am not complaining. Especially because the rent in the municipal property is very cheap and the administration allowed me to keep the place after my divorce. In such cases, connections are invaluable.
Arriving in front of his house, Anderegg's car disappeared into the driveway of the parking garage. In the urban avenue lined with young trees, I always found a parking space from which I could observe Anderegg's apartment. After a short time, I saw the windows being opened on the third floor. Anderegg used to air the apartment as soon as he came home. I sat in my car until ten in the evening, listening to music, chewing on a sandwich that I had bought at lunchtime together with a liter bottle of mineral water, and cursing the job. The autumn evenings were getting chilly, but in order not to attract attention I did not dare run the engine from time to time to heat the interior of the car. I would like to mention that, true to the advice of Detective Stucki, which he likes to announce after the third beer, I drank very little – because there was no public toilet in the vicinity of Anderegg's apartment, and I did not trust myself to piss into the empty water bottle.
So, during these two weeks Anderegg went home in the evening and did not go out. No participation in club meetings, no regulars' table, no visits to the cinema, theater, musical performances. He was not invited and he did not entertain guests. A girlfriend or boyfriend – I still had no clue about his sexual preference – was not in sight.
Stop. I must correct that. I don't like to admit it and will suppress it in the report to Küng. I lost him one Friday evening and didn't see him again until Sunday evening when he returned to his apartment. Maybe he wasn't the stubborn loner after all that he had initially appeared to me to be.
At lunchtime, he left his office, bought a sandwich at a nearby takeaway – I had a view of everything from my window seat – and returned to eat the meager haul in his office, probably while working.
His work consisted mainly in writing expert opinions. According to his website, Anderegg specialized in the security of technical systems. And it looked like he didn't have to fight for contracts.
During the observation, he left the office twice on foot and, followed by me, went once to the chemical institute of the university and once to the cantonal police. The third time he took the car and visited a plumbing company in the suburbs.
*
As soon as Anderegg had left the police headquarters, I called Stucki and wanted to know what dealings Anderegg had with the law enforcement officers. „And save the crap about 'confidential, ongoing proceedings' and so on,“ I said.
„You're not standing downstairs, are you? And have just seen him walk away? I want an explanation from you. And why do you want to know anyway?“ he asked, not expecting an honest answer.
„Journalistic research in the interest of the nation,“ I said, as usual.
„All right, it's not a secret. Anderegg is investigating the fire in a villa on the Zürichberg.“
„I thought you guys had your own experts?“
„We have, the fire department has too, but it's the vacation season, everyone in attendance is booked.“
„This isn't about the Kuhnert case, is it?“
„Nothing can be hidden from you. That's what it's all about.“
Our newspaper had also reported about the case. So far, only the facts the police had announced at a press conference. But this was certainly not the end of the matter. „Affaire à suivre!“ Steinemann had remarked at the editorial conference. Because the fire case was discussed in public. A classic drama involving three people: Grandmother Lydia Kuhnert, who owned the villa and played a role as a patron in the fine arts scene. Son Silvio, successful entrepreneur, also considerably well-off, at times a liberal cantonal parliamentarian. He lived on the Gold Coast in Küsnacht. Finally, his daughter Tamira. She was supposedly studying journalism, but in reality was pretty rotten and had certainly not seen the inside of a lecture hall for a long time. She lived with her grandmother and regularly held wild parties in the villa.
Then it turned out that son Silvio had planned to move his mother to a retirement home and put up luxury apartments on the grounds of the villa. A tabloid newspaper had found out that the old lady refused to leave the villa. Instead, she had started renovating the kitchen and bathroom. The newspaper had written that the fire „came in handy“ to son Silvio. If they had worded it less carefully, a charge of defamation would probably have ensued. Of course, Silvio the liberal politician and entrepreneur was an ideal bogeyman for many of us.