their return. She answered him with a clipped, `Ja?' and her eyes threw invisible stilettos at him. He was certainly not her most popular man of the month.
Though she had more than accepted his apology, in the ultimate way that a woman could, Fredericka appeared to have withdrawn again. She was not the ice queen, nor was there obvious anger, but the conversation finally dwindled into one of monosyllabic, sometimes terse, responses, and she drove out to Grindelwald in near silence.
The police presence was obvious. Two cars and a police van blocked the little road to the chair lift, and a large sign, in three languages-German, French and English-proclaimed that the chair lift up the mountain, to the First area with its great view of the Grindelwald Basin, was closed until further notice. The entrance was also blocked off with yellow crime scene tape. A uniformed inspector stood, with a plump, untidy-looking man in civilian clothes, by the chair lift entrance. The plainclothes man held a pigskin folder loosely under one arm, and paid scant attention to their arrival.
The uniformed officer obviously knew Fredericka, for he greeted her by name and, in turn, she introduced Bond to `Inspector Ponsin'. He nodded gravely, and turned to the civilian.
`This is Detective Bodo Lempke, of the Interlaken police department, in charge of the investigation.' He waved a hand between them, flapping it like a fish's fill.
`I already know Herr Lempke,' Fredericka said somewhat distantly.
Lempke gave them a smile which reminded Bond of the kind of greeting he might expect from an idiot, for the man s face had about it a lumpish, peasant look, his lips splitting into a wide curving clown's mouth.
`So,' he said in uncertain English, the voice gruff and flat, with little enthusiasm. `You are what my friends in the Metropolitan Police call 'funnies', yes? Read that once, funnies', in a spy yarn, and never believed it until my British colleagues said it was true, what they called you.' He laughed, mirthless and without the smile.
All in all, Bond considered, Bodo Lempke was the most dangerous type of policeman. Like the best kind of spy, the man was totally grey, lacking any colour in his personality.
`Well,' Bodo continued, `you wish to view where the deed was done, yes? Though there's nothing interesting about it. Few clues; no reasons; except evidence which gives us the name or assumed name of the killer.' `You have a name?' `Oh, sure. Nobody tell you this?' `No.' This one, Bond thought, was as tricky as a barrelful of anacondas. His type was usually described as one who had difficulty in catching the eye of a waiter. Mr Lempke would have had problems catching the attention of a pickpocket, even if he had just flashed a wad of money and crammed it into the sucker pocket at his hip.
Fredericka rode up the chair lift with Inspector Ponsin, while Bond drew the heavy Bodo Lempke who certainly carried enough weight to tip the double set of chairs slightly. It was a beautiful, short ride up the slope during which Lempke remained silent except to remark on the cause of death.
`You were told of the tetrodoxin, yes?' `Yes.' Fight innocuousness with blandness.
`Exotic, no?' `Very.' `Very exotic?' `Exceptionally.' `So.' At the First viewing point, several policemen, uniformed and plainclothes, were doing what Bond presumed to be yet another careful search of the area which was marked off with more crime scene tape. A small group of men and women stood beside the long, log hut which was the restaurant.
They looked dejected, as well they might: with the chair lift closed, their usual business would have dried to a trickle of probably discontented policemen looking for they knew not what.
The air was fresh and clear, while the view from this vantage point was almost other worldly. Bond had his own reasons to feel overawed by mountains. For him, their grandeur an overworked word when people described the peaks and rocky graphs of the world's high places was tempered with respect. His parents had died on a mountain and, since childhood, while he was often moved by the beauty of the crags, bluffs and jagged outcrops of stone reaching towards the sky, he was also aware of the dangers they represented. To him they were like wanton beautiful women beckoning sirens waiting to be conquered, yet perilous, requiring deference and care, like so many of God's great wonders.
In spite of the warm sun, he shivered slightly, turning to see that Fredericka had come from the chair lift to stand close beside him.
She had said he would feel something strange and frightening in this place, and she had been right. Sites of sudden death, or evil, often gave off signals of fear, just as old places houses, stone circles, ancient churches seemed to hold good or evil vibrations trapped in walls like inerasable recordings. Fredericka's eyes gave him an I- told-you-so look, and Bodo Lempke coughed loudly.
`I show you where the body was found, yes?
Where murder happened. Always good for the laugh.' He treated them to his mirthless smile and set off, guiding them between the tapes that marked a pathway to a small enclosure. The screens which the police had originally set up around the body were still in place, and signs of sudden death remained two gashes in the soft springy turf where Laura March's shoes had scarred the ground when her legs had involuntarily shot out and stiffened as the deadly capsule poured the poison into her bloodstream.
`We have snapshots.' Lempke reached into the pigskin folder.
`They're not exactly your average holiday snaps, are they?' Bond leafed through the stack of eight by ten glossies, all of which showed Laura March in death at this very spot. Apart from an unnatural rigidity, she looked oddly peaceful.
`Sleeping beauty, yes?' Bodo took back the photographs.
`Dead beauty,' Bond corrected, for, in life, Laura March had been undoubtedly attractive. He felt irritated by Bodo's seeming callousness, but tamped down his anger. Cops the world over seemed to develop a hard second skin when it came to sudden death.
Lempke turned and pointed up the smooth green slope, towards a small outcrop of rock.
`When the forensic folk examined the body first, they drew my attention to the bruise on the back of her neck I have snapshots also of that. We took some bearings from the position of the body, worked out a possible trajectory. It's up there, sniper's hide.' `But you had no idea that the bruise came from something fired at the victim.' `This also is true. Could have been inflicted from very close, but there were no signs that anyone else had been in this spot. I used brain.' He tapped his forehead. `I watch sometimes the television of that detective, Hercule Poirot, by Agatha Crusty..
`Christie,' Bond corrected.
`That's the one. Yes, he calls the brain his little grey cells, no?' `Yes.' `Then also that's what I use. Little grey cells, only I think mine are possibly pink. I have a liking for red wine. Okay?' There was really no answer to that, so Fredericka and Bond simply followed Bodo up the neatly marked track, rising towards the little outcrop of rock, which was also cordoned off by crime scene tape.
`This is where the sniper laid his eggs.' Bodo made a small gesture to the area immediately behind the rocks.
Laid his eggs? Bond thought, and knew in that moment his first impression of the man had been correct. Bodo Lempke, with his slept-in appearance, and feigned naivete', coupled with a disarming misuse of the English language, was as sharp as a razor blade. He almost certainly suspected everybody of being guilty of something until he, in person, proved otherwise.
`You see,' Bodo continued. `You see how the marksman had a clean shot. Straight down, sixty metres: a good clear shot with plenty of cover.' `How do you know? Did the shooter leave a calling card?' Bodo gave his blank stare, followed by the imbecilic smile. `Sure. Of course. People like this always leave the visiting cards. Part of their stork in trade. They like you to know they've been here, and this one for quite a long time was here.
Overnight, in fact.
`Overnight?' `Came up as one person. Went down as someone completely different. It rained, quite hard, like dogs and cats even, on the day before Miss March died. The shooter got wet and cold, then dried out the next day when the sun came out and when his victim rode up on the chair lift. See, the ground here was softened by rain. He left perfect marks of his body.' Behind the little cluster of rocks there were indentations which undoubtedly showed that someone had lain there for a considerable period.
Lempke gave them his fast humourless smile.
`Come, he said, with a conspiratorial wink.
He led the way up the rise to a small clump of bushes, also corralled by crime scene tape. At the base of the bushes was a shallow hole, around two feet square and a foot or so deep. `Maybe he planned to come back for his
