The White Circle

Book 7: The Black Forest Investigations

by Oliver Bottini

Genres: International Crime & Mystery

Synopsis

"A fitting and frightening conclusion to a magnificent series" The Times

The final instalment of the acclaimed Black Forest Investigations brings the series to a shattering close.

Louise Bonì, Chief Inspector of the Freiburg criminal police, gets intelligence from an informer that two guns have been bought from a Russian criminal network. Desperate to prevent a fatal act of violence, Bonì is swift to investigate. Before long she identifies the vehicle used to collect the weapons, but the car's owner has a watertight alibi. The man driving that night was Ricky Janisch, a neo-Nazi and member of the extreme right-wing group, the Southwest Brigade.

"Bottini is one of the most sophisticated crime writers of our times" JOAN SMITH, Sunday Times

Bonì and her team put Janisch under surveillance, and identify others belonging to the extreme right. The further they probe, the more shocking their discoveries. Could this be part of a much more powerful neo-Nazi network which will stop at nothing? And how will they prevent an attack when the perpetrators are always a step ahead and they don't know the target? By the time Bonì pinpoints the victim, it may already be too late . . .

Translated from the German by Jamie Bulloch

Release date: June 6, 2024

Publisher: Quercus Publishing

Print pages: 272

Sample

A Sunday evening on the balcony, night already creeping across Annaplatz. In the distance she heard piano music, in her head she saw a film, memories laden with melancholy. Not a moment when you want visitors.

The doorbell rang again.

Louise Bonì took the blanket off her legs and got up. The candle, which had burned halfway, flickered with her movement. A birthday candle, fat and with a blue rim, virtually no smell. Occasionally it crackled and spat into the evening, which suited the occasion.

The birthday of a dead person.

Squeezing past the little table she peered over the window boxes, which had been empty since anyone could remember, and down to the entrance. To begin with she couldn’t make out anything in the dark, then a silhouette moved slowly into the light of the streetlamp. Leather jacket, shoulder-length hair, a man’s face she hadn’t seen in months – half a year to be precise.

She pressed the button to open the door. Kilian came up quietly and quickly.

“Hi,” he said softly.

“I do have a phone,” she said.

He pushed her into the apartment and closed the door. She realised he hadn’t come to celebrate the birthday with her. His eyes appeared exhausted and twitchy, his skin rough. He looked gaunt. Not the surfer boy of six months ago, when she’d envied his youthfulness and sense of adventure.



She followed him into the kitchen. No light, he indicated.

“OK,” she said, feeling tense.

He stood right beside her, talking under his breath. A few weeks ago, a man, probably from Freiburg, had ordered some illegal weapons, two pistols with silencers: a Makarov and a Tokarev. They’d been picked up yesterday.

“Slowly, slowly,” Louise said. “Start at the beginning.”

“It’s a long story.”

“Keep it short – I want to go back onto my balcony.”

Kilian rubbed the sides of his nose with two fingers. “You know I’ve changed sections?”

She nodded. From surveillance to organised crime, an act of youthful despair. He’d made mistakes in investigations half a year earlier. Over the winter she’d occasionally wondered why she never bumped into him at police HQ, in the cafeteria, on the stairs, not even at the Freiburg Kripo Christmas party. Now she understood. He’d gone undercover in December and was now on secondment to the regional Criminal Investigation Bureau.

“Who are you after?”

“Russians up in Baden-Baden.”

“Do they have names? There are loads of Russians in Baden-Baden.”

“Forget it,” he said. “We’ll nab them in a couple of weeks. Until then you’re not to even think about Russians in Baden-Baden.” He smoothed back his straggly hair. “But that’s not what this is about.”

“So the weapons aren’t connected to your case?”

“No.”

“How do you know?”

“From my informer.”

“Does he know the buyer?”

“No.”

“How does he know he’s from Freiburg?”

“Because of the number plate. He wrote it down. Or part of it, at least.”

“Does he know what the buyer is planning to do with the pistols?”

“No.” Kilian turned his head and the light from the hallway fell on his face. For a moment she fancied she could see something in his expression other than exhaustion: fear.

Kilian and fear – this was new too.

“Maybe just someone who collects weapons.”

“No,” he repeated. A man had ordered the guns by phone and someone else had picked them up. Two pistol buffs? Unlikely. The weapons were needed for something else. And why would you need illegally acquired pistols with silencers?

Louise said nothing. She sensed her thoughts and body getting into gear. Her soul was dragging behind, still sitting on the balcony, remembering a bear of a man who was no longer around. His death last October had silenced the corridors of Freiburg police HQ, and the heart of Kripo had been beating more slowly ever since. In fact it wasn’t beating at all anymore, and she wasn’t the only one who felt this; lots of her colleagues did too. A large proportion of the organism’s energy and strength had emanated from this man who’d always been there, and now was there no longer. Whether you bowed to him or opposed him, the result was the same: the willingness to give it your all.

“Will you deal with it?”

She sighed. “Have you got anything else?”

“No.”

“That’s not going to be enough for me.” She raised her hands, at a loss. “I need to talk to your informant.”

Kilian gave the hint of a smile. “Alright then, let’s go.”

“To Baden-Baden?”

He nodded and put a hand on her arm. For a moment she sensed the intimacy from before, but the fear and exhaustion in his eyes remained. He said they had to be very circumspect, they couldn’t put the informer in danger. If he were exposed, his life wouldn’t be worth a damn and the entire operation would be wrecked, which would be a disaster for all concerned. “Five minutes, not a second longer. And nobody’s to find out you’ve spoken to him, not the Russians nor our lot.”

“OK.”

He took his hand away. “Have you got anything to drink?”

“Water.”

“That’ll do.”

He took the glass she’d filled from the tap. His hand was shaking slightly.

When he put it down she came over and gave him a hug. His body felt cold, bony and strangely timid. “You look awful,” she said. “You smell awful. Your hair . . . my God.”

She heard him breathing; his hands were clenched behind her back. After a while he mumbled, “Only a few more weeks.”

“Or months or years.”

“So be it, then.”

“Want a shower?”

“No time.”

In the hallway she turned towards the balcony. The candle had gone out, maybe a draught when she’d opened the door to her apartment. The quirks of fate, she thought. That Kilian should turn up on Rolf Bermann’s fiftieth birthday. Six months ago he was on the investigation team and she’d last seen him at Bermann’s funeral.

When she reached for her bag Kilian said, “No gun, no police ID. Absolutely no ID.”

“Naked, then?” she said, putting the bag back.

“As God created you.”

She laughed. “God created me with a police ID, Kilian.”

*

Spas, thermal springs, casino, festival theatre, parks and, of course, Russians since the nineteenth century. Not much more than that came to mind when Louise thought about Baden-Baden. Of the towns in Baden with more than fifty thousand inhabitants, it was one of the few she didn’t know. She’d never been here before, not even driven through it.

And a remarkable crime statistic: not a single homicide last year, 2005 – the only district in Baden-Württemberg to record zero. In Freiburg, five times bigger, the corresponding figure was ten.

They’d driven via the A5 but didn’t come off until the Rastatt exit, to be on the safe side, then doubled back to approach Baden-Baden from the north. Kilian took labyrinthine detours to end up in one of the posh parts of town and for the last ten minutes they’d been waiting, parked in a quiet little street, beneath the dense foliage of a tree. Behind hedges Louise could see the odd light, but most houses were in darkness – the ladies and gentlemen of the district were already asleep.

“Tell me about the informer,” she said.

“Later. I want you to be impartial.”

“Tell me about yourself instead.”

“Can’t do that. Right now I don’t exist.”

“Not even privately?”

“Especially not privately.” He shrugged. “Well, I suppose the holiday wasn’t bad.”

“Girlfriend?”

“Gone, I think,” he said, giving her a fleeting smile. “What about you? Ben?”

“In Potsdam, I think.”

“You’re not together anymore?”

“He comes down sometimes. We’re together then.”

Just before midnight a text message pinged.

“We’ve got to be quick,” Kilian said.

*

They walked as quietly as they could between hedges down a narrow, cobbled path that lay in the cold glow of a few streetlamps. After a hundred metres they turned off and headed up a dark slope between lighter gables. Muffled voices from somewhere, Kilian immediately stopped, put an arm around her shoulders and Louise clasped his waist. They kept wandering in silence; she felt his pounding heart and tensed muscles. They took another turning, then Kilian stopped at a head-high garden gate set back in a hedge and hugged her hesitantly.

Ben, Louise thought, closing her eyes. You can come down more often.

But it didn’t work. She only loved him when he was here. When he was away she didn’t miss him. What she was missing was the great love, the partner for the second half of her life. As if youthful dreams returned when you were in your mid-forties. A bit of hope.

When she heard the hinges of the gate squeak softly she realised they weren’t alone. Kilian pulled her into a garden, past a woman dressed in dark clothes who rapidly shut the gate again.

The woman led them along the hedge and away from an elaborately decorated villa beyond trees and shrubs. She stopped by the rear wall of a garden shed and turned around. She could be in her mid-thirties and her face was so bright that even without any light Louise could clearly make out her features.

“Irina,” Kilian whispered. “The informer.”

As Louise nodded in surprise she felt Irina’s hand in hers. A note: the registration number.

“The two last numbers are missing,” Irina whispered. “A white Polo or Golf, very clean, how do you say it . . . well looked after.” Her breath smelled of alcohol – red wine, perhaps – and espresso. Her voice was breathy; she appeared to have a cold. A classically beautiful woman, 1950s Hollywood, only Russian-style, everything a bit more powerful, more proud, confident.

But frightened, too.

“Ask your questions!”

“The buyer . . .” Louise began.

“Slim, as tall as Alex, no older than thirty-two.”

She was about to ask who Alex was but caught herself in time. It must be Kilian. “German?”

“From here. Baden-Württemberg.”

“Did he speak in dialect?”

Irina nodded. “Keep asking. Quick!”

“What does he look like?”

Irina put her hands to the sides of her head. “Light, short hair, almost bald, but not completely. Simple man, bit nervous. A . . . courier, not a boss.”

“When and where did he pick up the weapons?”

“Yesterday evening, perhaps eleven thirty, in my husband’s restaurant in old town: Iwan and Pauline. Already closed, I was doing till, my husband already gone, then he came.” A bodyguard had taken the buyer to her husband’s head of security, Niko. Few words were exchanged. An envelope full of money was placed on the table, followed by a tightly sealed shoebox containing the pistols that Niko had put in there earlier: a Makarov and a Tokarev, as per the order. The buyer didn’t open the box; he just took it and left.

“Ordered by phone?”

“Yes. Beginning April.”

“And you don’t know who ordered them?”

Irina shook her head; her hands signalled regret. All she knew was that Niko at least knew the caller and must have vouched for him. Otherwise her husband would never have let the deal take place; it wasn’t at all lucrative for them. But Niko didn’t know the “courier” who’d come to pick up the guns.

Having wandered to the corner of the shed, Kilian now came back and said, “You’ve got to go back in.”

Irina returned his glance, then looked at Louise. “Quick!”

“If Niko knows the caller, surely it means—”

“Not Russian. Not business partner. Niko said to my husband: ‘A German acquaintance. You don’t know him.’”

The muffled laughter of two men drifted over from the villa. Then a faint buzzing: an electric blind.

“Irina,” Kilian urged, his hand on her right arm. Irina placed her left hand on his and took a step back.

“Can you find out who the caller is?”

“How? I cannot ask!”

Before Louise could thank her, Irina had turned away and was heading back to the house.

“Come on,” Kilian whispered.

“Do you know Niko?”

Without responding he pushed her towards the gate. His hand remained at her back as if he were trying to ensure she didn’t stop.

“So?” she said when they were on the footpath.

A disgruntled sideways glance, then he put a finger to his lips and pulled her along.

When they were back inside the car he said, “He’s not called Niko. Just like Irina isn’t Irina.”

“A ‘German acquaintance’, Kilian. That must narrow it down.”

“Forget it.”

“And after you’ve arrested them?”

“If Niko’s still alive then you can interrogate him.”

They left Baden-Baden via a different labyrinthine detour and Louise felt she knew a little more about this small town. Now Baden-Baden had a face, a beautiful, pale face full of gentleness and fear.

*

“Irina and Alex,” she said when they were on the motorway.

Kilian didn’t react.

“Are you in love with her?”

His eyes flashed at Bonì. “Promise me you won’t try to contact her. That you won’t come here on your own. If you need anything, text me.”

“Yes, yes, I promise. Well, are you?”

His focus back on the road, Kilian didn’t reply. Awkward and aloof – he’d never been like that in the past. His worry for Irina couldn’t explain this alone. Of course, it was also down to the debilitating investigations, working undercover against organised crime, and for months on end. But most of all, Louise thought, it was down to Kilian himself; in his enthusiasm for the job he hadn’t been sufficiently equipped to deal with his own mistakes. Six months earlier, a witness whose house he was watching had tried to take her life. The light had been on in her bathroom for three hours, and Kilian did nothing. And why should he have? Who hadn’t forgotten to turn off the bathroom light once in a while? The man they were looking for at the time had pulled the witness out of red bathwater, and Kilian said, “I fucked up.” And because he was a daredevil he then rushed into the dirtiest job Kripo could offer, to make up for his mistake.

*

When they were back in Freiburg Louise said, “Let me out in Stühlinger, at Babeuf.”

“Didn’t you want to go back to your balcony?”

“The bosses are at Babeuf.”

“You’re taking it seriously then?”

“No idea . . . Yes.”

“Good,” Kilian said, sounding satisfied.

They were in Egonstrasse and stopped outside Babeuf. Above the door hung a sign saying PRIVATE PARTY. Through the windows, amongst clouds of smoke, were a few faces she knew, a few familiar ones – they seemed to be having a good time. Louise was pleased she hadn’t joined in.

“Is it someone’s birthday?”

“Rolf’s.”

“Rolf? Which section?”

“Rolf Bermann.”

Kilian gave her a look of astonishment.

“He’d’ve been fifty today.”

He looked away and said, “The candle on the balcony?”

Louise didn’t respond. None of his business, she thought. The old Kilian, yes, but not Kilian now; she wasn’t going to talk to him about things like this.

“Could you keep my name out of it?”

“We’ll see,” she said. “Graeve will ask.”

“OK. So long as it’s just him.” When she opened the car door he stroked her hand. “People die. It happens.”

“There are people who shouldn’t die – don’t you know that, Kilian?” She got out and bent to look at him with a tired smile. “Yes, I think you do.”

*

Two drunk bosses stinking of cigarette smoke, not something you saw every day, certainly not the distinguished Reinhard Graeve with tie askew and rolled-up sleeves. The other was Leif Enders, who Bonì hadn’t known long enough to be either surprised or not. He’d arrived in the southwest from Aachen only a week earlier, to succeed Bermann as section head. The bigwigs spent four months looking without really trying, until Louise told Graeve, “There’ll never be another Bermann, why don’t you just have D11 shut down?”

A week later she heard Enders’ name for the first time.

They were standing outside Babeuf, Enders with a beer and a cigarette, while Graeve – tall, slim and visibly peeved – rolled down his sleeves. “Quite a lot of unknowns,” he said in a low voice.

Louise nodded impatiently. “That’s what it’s like.”

“A fellow officer with no name. An informant with no name. An organisation with no name. I’m just saying.”

“They’re not so much trouble when you’re sober.”

He gave a sour laugh.

“Alcohol, dangerous territory,” she said to Enders.

“I know, I’ve read your file, Frau Bonì.” He had a nice voice, warm, slightly hoarse.

“Here in the south we use first names.”

“Leif.” He blew out smoke. “I don’t care what’s in it, your file.”

“We’ll see.”

Enders grinned, he jerked his hands and spilled some beer. Louise and Graeve made a swift retreat; Enders kept drinking to avoid any more hazards. There was a pause in the conversation while Graeve was preoccupied with the buttons on his sleeves and Enders with his beer. Louise stared at him, his features, his eyes. Something about this face wasn’t right. Something was missing.

The moustache. The head of D11 without a tache – absolutely inconceivable. And he drank differently from Bermann, oblivious to the world, with slightly too much relish.

They huddled together again. “The officer and informant, are they reliable?” Enders asked.

“As far as I can tell.”

“What if you’re being used?”

Louise shrugged. “I’m not going to rule out the possibility, but I don’t think so.”

“Where do we go from here, then?” Graeve asked. He was having difficulty doing up his buttons because his jacket was wedged awkwardly between his elbow and ribs. “Half the force is busy with the World Cup. The Dutch are going to be staying in Hinterzarten.”

“I only need Natalie for now.” Louise took his jacket, laid it over her arm and smoothed it with her hand like a housewife from a 1950s film.

“You have my blessing,” Enders said.

Graeve, the Kripo head, was slower, maybe drunker. She sensed he wasn’t able to deal with the situation – work matters on an evening like this that had probably got a bit out of hand. His greatest strength was his rationality, which, like the moon’s halo, shone in every direction and took account of absolutely everything. At the moment it wasn’t up to much; he knew this and it unsettled him. “What is it that you’re worried about, Louise? An assassination? A murder?”

“There’s no point speculating, boss, not in your state.”

“Might be connected to the World Cup,” Enders said. “The intelligence services are already warning of attacks.”

“We ought to notify Stuttgart, then.”

Louise sighed. “Let’s start by looking into the owner of the car.”

“I want the name of the officer,” Graeve said, smoothing down his tie. “You can tell me tomorrow.”

“OK. But only you, nobody else.” Again she looked at Enders, who reacted calmly, briefly closing his eyes and shrugging. “Nothing against you,” she said.

“I won’t know the officer, so what would I do with their name?”

“Right,” Graeve said, taking his jacket from her arm and slipping it on. “Taxi?” He felt for his mobile.

Louise nodded.

“See you, then,” Enders said, heading back into Babeuf.

Graeve ordered the taxi, then asked Bonì, “What do you think of him. . .