by Tanja Pleva
It took him a one-hour ride till he crossed the last mountain that was still between him and his hacienda. Afar, he saw a cloud of dust approaching his small piece of land. Ever since he had settled there nobody had ever come to visit him. The farmers nearby, whom he was medically supplying, had no cars; they came either by horse-drawn cart or walked. Perhaps he had not been careful enough.
Moreover, post-infection fatalities among adolescents and women were rising and in addition there was this failed appendectomy of the little boy.
The description in the book had simply been bad, and so suddenly the entire bowel had been lying outside, on the table. He had rashly sutured the child in panic, and it was probably here that something had gone wrong. The appendix might have ruptured.
He got off his horse and hid behind a bush.
Two men left the car and entered his house. Only at dusk did they come out again and departed.
He had been expecting for some time already to be discovered. It was often written that Israel's secret service was probing South America. Now they were homing in on him. It was time to pack the bags.
He would send his daughter back to her mother in Germany and abandon the maid who was expecting his child. It was safer to travel alone, less obtrusively, than with a pregnant and - even worse - swarthy appendage.
By this he had betrayed his Order. Of course, he had never expected the Order to be reanimated. Yet mail from Brazil had arrived just the other week. They were expecting him.
13.
Paris The Paris murder case did not only annihilate all of Sam's opinions and considerations, it confirmed as well what he had already fathomed, yet stubbornly refused: being that another victim was bound to follow. Only the short interval between the two deeds irritated him.
Peter Brenner did not say much about this act of violence on the phone and when Sam arrived at the scene, the sight of the dead woman on the bed veritably scared him. There was the very same expression of incomprehension and disbelief on her face about what had happened to her. Her long blond hair was over her breast, or what was left of it, as if arranged there. She was lying in the same position as Jasmin Rewe.
A room attendant who had come to bring a bunch of red roses into the room had discovered the body. The young man had already been questioned by the French police and was now in medical treatment.
Sam browsed the initial report, put it in his file that he carried beneath his arm and observed the French officers doing their job. Everyone was hustling and bustling about, Sam did not notice anybody who seemed willing to brief him.
The chief of the French homicide squad was announced by his own booming voice. As this heavy man entered, the eyes in his rosy bearded face met Sam's immediately. At first, hesitation made him frown, then insight came.
The French officer approached with a smile and stretched out his hand. 'Bien sûr, Monsieur O'Connor.L‘Allemand with the American name. Je suis Mathis Germain, you remember? … We hunted the children butcher down with Argault years ago.'
'Mais oui, je me souviens encore très bien.' Sam hoped that he would get away with this lie. He could not remember this officer despite all effort. The name did not ring a bell at all, for his memory in this respect was just hell, but he had a good memory for faces. Then recollection slowly wound its way.
Back then the officer had still been dark-haired, now he was grey to white all over, which was why Sam had not recognized him at once.
'You are here on behalf of your compatriots, aren't you?' Germain turned around and pointed at the body. 'Though this case should maybe rather be passed to Ukrainian authorities.'
'She is from the Ukraine?'
'According to her name, yes.One Katarin Gromova. That's what her passport says at least. We are still trying to pinpoint M. Harry Steiner, that's her mate. We were told he was attending a conference. Cruel, mon Dieu. Quelle cochonnerie.' Germain made a face of disgust.
Sam swallowed nausea, rising, crawling up his throat, like a fat earthworm that was struggling upwards through the soil. The smell of death had its own aroma at every scene, sometimes more, sometimes less. This one had a powerful dose of it.
'Was she covered when she was found?' A detail in which Sam was most interested in.
'She was, with a white linen, just fresh from the laundry', answered Germain. And he added, when Sam looked gloomily, 'I heard already that there was a similar case in Barcelona.'
Sam nodded. Similar, yet different. 'Has petroleum ether been injected into the victim's heart?'
'What? That we will only know after the autopsy. Surgical spirit?' Inspector Germain scratched behind his ear. 'C'est curieux.'
'Why do you call that curious?'
'No idea … the thought has just escaped me.'
For one moment Sam felt as if his French colleague had intentionally allowed this thought to escape.
'Well, here is the reason why you were asked to come here. We found this beside the body.' L'Inspecteur produced a plastic bag in which was a snippet.
Sam immediately noticed the handwriting and the red ink.
The healthy were crippled, and hushed is their cry,
Death the Reliever, to free them, drew high.
'I understood only a few words of that. A translation would be helpful, Monsieur O'Connor. What exactly is written there?'
'In other words, if healthy persons are getting severed, then death will be their savior', explained Sam in French. 'We thought that in the first case we had got a proverb, but this now seems to be a sequel. Sort of a poem maybe.'
'Une poème?'
Sam nodded; he mused that these lines would have fit the first murder better, and the others to this one.
'Do you think as well that she might have been a prostitute?'
'C'est faisable.Où une maitresse, mais …?'
Suddenly approaching noise distracted them. Both turned around when another man rushed into the room.
He stared around like a hunted beast, his gaze fell on the face of the young woman who had already been wrapped into a body bag but which had not been fully zipped yet. An appalling cry left his throat as he jumped at the body.
Sam was the only one to react at once. He just prevented Harry Steiner from descending on the dead body by tossing him aside so that he crashed against the cupboard instead. Then he helped, with apologies, the man get up and into a chair.
Dr. Harry Steiner did not listen. He only watched in bewilderment as his beloved one's body was taken away, then he turned catatonic and stared blankly into nowhere.
Sam tried to talk to him but gave up five minutes later. He kept an eye on the older man and waited for Dr. Steiner to pass the initial state of shock. Half an hour later he tried again.
'Dr. Steiner, I am here to help you. Can you tell me what your relationship was with the dead woman?'
'She was my mistress.'
'Are you married, Dr. Steiner?'
'Who would do such a ghastly thing? She had had only me, my little Katarin', Harry Steiner whispered, hiding his face in his hands.
Sam began to abhor his position as an investigator. How often this occupation forced him to delve into people who had just lost a loved one, for the sake of squeezing a drop of information from them. Here was all the reason to turn violent.
'You are an ophthalmologist, aren't you?', he insisted, though knowing the answer.
Harry Steiner looked at Sam out of a reddened face, his tired eyes glanced. He nodded sluggishly, while his look moved to the bloodstained bed. 'What did they do to her? … There is … there is so much blood?' he murmured haltingly.
Silent and embarrassed, Sam played with the corner of his file, which was lying on the table.
'So much blood – judging from that … she was still alive for a long time … Isn't that so?!' Harry Steiner grabbed for Sam's arm. 'Please!'
'I shall be able to tell you about that precisely after the autopsy', Sam answered calmly, trying to x-ray through Harry Steiner. He could not bear the des
perate look of this man.
Steiner began to sob, and then he stared at Sam with wide-open eyes. 'I cannot go home without her … Impossible', he said slightly hysterically.
'For now, I will get another room for you, Dr. Steiner. You are not even capable of traveling now.'
'Indeed', the doctor said resignedly and tolerated being taken by Sam out of the room.
On the way down to the reception, Sam tried to get some more details from the doctor. 'Tell me, this conference for ophthalmologists … what is it about, exactly?'
'Innovative surgical methods in retinopathy. In its final state, visual deprivation, loss of eyesight, it had been inevitable until now. Now a transplant …' Dr. Steiner held on to the wall of the elevator. He staggered like a drunken man. 'I cannot believe … my life was utterly destroyed.'
Sam put his hand on the man's shoulder. 'Dr. Steiner, I passed through this myself just four months ago. I sympathize with how you're feeling.'
The doctor raised his head and looked at him with watery eyes. 'You did?'
'Yes, I did.' It was not Sam's purpose to get involved in this himself, therefore he said briefly, 'Time is a great healer, sir, believe me.'
The word transplant had caught his attention. He had no reason to appear thick-skinned, yet the question burned his tongue. 'Dr Steiner, you mentioned transplants before', he said carefully.
'I said so indeed?' The doctor wondered, scratching his head, as the manager at the reception expressed his sympathy and assigned Harry Steiner another room on the fifth floor.
Sam went back with the doctor to the elevators to take him to his new room and he found that he had to support the doctor at times.
'Oh yes, now it occurs to me again … Transplanting retinal cells allows us today to prevent a patient from loosing visus…'
'You are carrying out transplantation's, too?', asked Sam amazedly.
'Now and then.'
'Where do these “parts”, or organs come from?'
'Why from bodies. But some cells are produced already in the lab.'
They had reached room 505. Sam kept the door open for Steiner, led him to the bed and helped him to take off his shoes. Then he called for another doctor, to make sure that Steiner would be able to sleep.
'But you are not committed to research, are you?'
'Not at all.'
'And you never were?'
Dr. Steiner answered only with a shaking of his head, looking like a sad bulldog.
'What will I do without my Katarin? She meant my life, my sunlight, everything I ever yearned for …'
'Lie down, Dr. Steiner, please. Close your eyes and try to sleep.'
Harry Steiner sat slowly down on the bed and did as told.
'Is there anybody whom I might call for you?'
Dr. Steiner looked at Sam in horror. 'No, no. I'm fine! Thank you. If anything else should come to mind, then I will call you. Leave me your number, please.' He pointed at the bedside table and closed his eyes again.
Sam placed his visiting card under the phone and quietly left the room. He got his mobile from the pocket and clicked the first stored number.
'Nice that you are calling, Sam. We found our Picasso!' Sam could hear from his voice how proud Juri was of this. Yet his own mind was twisting quite different thoughts.
Serial murderers rarely killed at such short notice. Moreover, this one went from town to town to deposit the same handwriting. Sam was not only concerned about the time span but also about the concise planning. This individual was well organized, and thus, the more dangerous. The next strike might follow the next day or the day after. The only question was, where? Again during a conference? And which couple would be stricken this time?
'Sam? Hello? Are you listening at all?'
'Yes, of course I am listening. You found the dating site and are squeezing the operator to reveal Picasso's real name.'
'Unfortunately, it's already too late for that today …'
'Juri, find out as quickly as possible which towns will be hosting medical conferences in the near future. That's most urgent, do you hear me? I will tell you everything else when we meet.'
They had no time; the police were operating too slowly to keep up with the speed of the murderer. Sam's spine shivered. He felt powerless.
In the elevator he met Mathis Germain, who was frowning at him. 'Mon ami, you are looking as if you were spent. Come on, I will invite you for a coffee.'
Sam smiled hesitatingly.
'Don't punish yourself too much, you cannot prevent things from happening. One thing is for sure, though: You are not alone, Sam. The Barcelona police are working on one case and we are busy on the other. And I am sure that we will soon have a few more colleagues joining the game.' He hit Sam encouragingly on his shoulder. 'He will make a mistake, if he hasn't already done so. There are a lot of fingerprints in the room.'
'There were a lot of guests, too. You're not going to tell me that the light switches are cleaned after each touch?'
'Let's wait and see.' Mathis winked at Sam, who had again the feeling that Germain knew or realized something, which he preferred to withhold.
On the fifth floor, in room 507 of the Georges V Hotel, somebody was preparing another stroke.
14.
Colombia The funeral service was small and private. A few family members of Aleida had arrived at noon from the coast to pay their last respects to their sister and aunt.
Lea had been informed on the same night already of her employee's death and she had then taken care of the formalities. She had selected a simple coffin, being sure that dead people were burnt without the coffins, which were afterwards resold.
When studying, Lea had once found the mother of an acquaintance on the table of the pathology department, ready for dissecting, who actually had been buried the day before. In this country, everything was possible.
She looked at Aleida's photograph, which was placed next to the urn. A good soul had departed. She had been the best one in the House of Rodriguez, thought Lea.
Aleida had always been available for her as long as she could remember, more so than her own mother. When she had been a girl, Aleida had sung her to sleep, blown away her complaints and protected her from her bigger brothers.
Well, her two brothers.
At the moment Rafael was in Europe and Felipe was standing beside her with his head lowered and shaking hands. Apparently he was in the process of being dried out.
The night nurse had called her in the early morning and informed her about Aleida's death. As Lea was fetching the few belongings from the hospital, the nurse had taken her aside, to inform her about the last intelligible words, which had still passed over Aleida's lips, asking to tell them to Lea.
Lea`s brother … an awful secret … that was all which the nurse had understood. What she had wanted to tell and which brother she had been referring to, Lea kept wondering about since.
Felipe had serious drug problems, but they all knew it, although their mother denied it intensely, while the others preferred to sweep it under the carpet. This made any problems non-existent for them. Felipe occasionally worked in a home, but only if he needed money for drugs and alcohol. Then he helped washing and preserving corpses. He had given up his study of medicine and relied on his mother to give him money, which she regularly did, but it did not seem to support his consumption.
And Rafael, her favorite brother?
Rafael ran the home since their father was locked to a wheel chair. He had suffered some terrible strokes of fate, which were no topics for talking in the family. He was a dark horse of sorts - maybe Aleida had had him in mind?
Lea looked around.
Aleida's sister, Daniela, was sitting on the other side, close to the altar. Maybe Lea should talk to her soon. And just when she was pondering that, Daniela turned her head and gazed at Lea icily. Lea got such a fright that she leaned back again to get out of the targeting line.
Then she folded her hands in prayer and asked Ale
ida secretly to help her.
15.
Paris L'Inspecteur Mathis Germain was an old hand from the French homicide squad. He had already seen a lot during his years of service. Yet this skinned woman lying on the autopsy table was a cas extraordinaire, as he described it.
On another table the pathologist had prepared the peeled heavy parts of the skin and now he was rejoining them meticulously to the body. When he was finished, he proudly claimed – as if having correctly placed the last one out of ten thousand parts from a jigsaw puzzle, 'It seems, Messieurs, that no piece is missing.' He expectantly glanced at Sam and l'Inspecteur over his small and narrow glasses.
'What else do you have for us?' Germain looked at the clock. They were all aware of their overtime. It was just before midnight.
'He did inject petroleum ether into her heart. But only after he had peeled off some parts of her skin. This is all that I can tell you right now. Will you excuse me now? I will continue tomorrow morning.'
He covered the body and Sam traced his movement.
All pathologists covered a body the way the murderer had done it. But so did members of other professions, such as morticians, doctors and nurses. It was something that they slowly internalized, like craftsmen keeping their tools in shape.
'As for the time of death...?' Germain asked.
'In the afternoon, at about three o'clock.'
Clouds loomed in the Paris sky. A light drizzle polished streets and pavements beneath the lantern lights and covered the parked cars with a humid layer when Sam and Germain emerged from the forensic pathology building.
L'Inspecteur looked at Sam for awhile, then loudly cleared his throat and began to tell that his father had died one month before and the family heritage, an old farmhouse near Paris, now belonged to him. It had been his grandparents' estate and they had died during the Second World War, which had turned his father into a fervent Germanophobe. Having to grow up without parents had been a problem that he could never forgive the German people for. Till his death, this hatred had dwelt in him, turning him into an old and bitter man.