Eye Collector, The

by Sebastian Fitzek

  Detaching my hand from Alina’s, I went over to the swivel chair in the middle of the room. I had lashed Traunstein to this with a length of extension cable – certainly not the smartest decision I’d made in my already screwed-up life. However, once Stoya learned of my relationship with one of the victims (no one would believe it was platonic in view of our habitual rendezvous), the tied-up widower would be the least of my problems.

  I swung the chair round so Traunstein was facing in Alina’s direction. He uttered a grunt.

  ‘You gagged someone?’ Alina said behind me. ‘Are you mad?’

  No. Dr Roth says I’m completely sane.

  ‘I only did it to prevent Traunstein from raising the roof while I went to fetch you.’

  I bent over him. Sweat was streaming down his face, but he looked considerably more together than he had a few minutes ago.

  ‘Traunstein?’ I heard Alina exclaim in the background. ‘The father of the kidnapped children? Good God, are you giving him the third degree? I don’t want to be part of this. Get me out of here at once.’

  ‘Who said anything about the third degree?’ I retorted. ‘Listen,’ I said to Traunstein, ‘here’s the deal: I’ll remove the gag but you keep quiet, okay? I don’t want to hear a peep out of you, just the answers to a few questions. Is that clear?’

  Traunstein nodded and I tugged the handkerchief out of his mouth. He coughed and spluttered for a while before quietening down. Determined to discover, step by step, whether the last phone call had really followed the course Alina had described to me on the houseboat, I used the time to marshal my thoughts.

  ‘Right,’ I said. ‘Did you phone your wife shortly before you came home yesterday?’

  ‘She...’ He broke off to cough and had to start again. ‘She called me ,’ he said breathlessly. His tongue seemed to be obeying him with great reluctance.

  ‘Okay, she called you.’

  So Alina’s account checks to that extent.

  ‘What did she say?’

  What did the woman, with whom I almost fell in love with, say before she died?

  ‘She...’ – he gulped – ‘... she was hysterical. I could hardly understand a word.’

  ‘Did she say something about a game of hide-and-seek?’

  ‘Huh?’ His face registered total incomprehension. He tried to answer, but it was only at the third attempt that he got out something resembling a coherent sentence. ‘No, nothing like that. She just yelled on and on because the kids were missing.’

  ‘What about you?’ Alina asked in the background. I was surprised she’d intervened in the conversation and wondered if something had struck her about the man’s voice.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘what did you say to that?’

  Traunstein’s head sagged forwards. He seemed about to doze off, but before I could grab him by the chin he straightened up with unexpected vigour.

  ‘I told the bitch to cool it. It wasn’t the first time the little tykes had run off.’

  I drew several deep breaths. Taking hold of Traunstein’s shoulders, I looked straight into his angry, bleary eyes. On the one hand, I was strongly tempted to slap his face for every abusive reference to Charlie he’d uttered; on the other, I felt a sneaking sympathy for him. It always took two people to destroy a relationship, and whatever his faults, he’d had to pay dearly for them.

  ‘You didn’t tell her not to go down into the cellar under any circumstances?’

  ‘Oh my God, how could I have been so blind? It’s too late. Don’t go down into the cellar whatever you do.’

  As I fired the question at Traunstein I watched to see if, and how, his expression changed. I had conducted hundreds of interrogations in my first life and as many interviews in my second, so I felt capable of interpreting the emotions beneath almost any facial expression. In Thomas Traunstein’s case I could detect not the slightest sign of bewilderment or surprise as to how I could have got hold of this information. He reacted as he had before, in a confused and aggressive manner.

  ‘The cellar? What cellar?’

  Not that he knew it, but that question got to the heart of the matter. All the previous victims had been murdered in upstairs flats – locations in which forbidding someone to go down into the cellar would have made no sense. If there was a grain of truth in Alina’s vision, it could only refer to Charlie’s murder.

  ‘I said nothing about any fucking cellar.’

  Traunstein must have choked on his own spit. The ensuing paroxysm of coughing shook his whole body.

  Okay, this is getting us nowhere. Time for Plan B.

  I turned to Alina. ‘I need you to do me a favour,’ I whispered too softly for Traunstein to hear. Standing close beside her, I caught another whiff of her perfume. The hairs on her neck stood up as my warm breath fanned her ear. I glimpsed the beginnings of a tattoo beneath the collar of her rollneck sweater.

  As if she’d sensed my gaze, she pulled up the collar before I could make out what the letters said. It had looked to me like ‘Hate’.

  ‘What sort of favour?’ she asked.

  I took hold of her hands and led her slowly round Traunstein’s chair until she was standing immediately to his rear.

  ‘You said you began with the man’s shoulders.’

  ‘Hey, what is this?’ Traunstein jerked his head back in an attempt to see what was happening behind him.

  ‘Yes,’ said Alina, ‘but—’

  ‘Fucking hell, what are you playing at? Who is this bitch?’ Traunstein tugged at his bonds.

  ‘Then do it again,’ I told her. Prove to me that you were telling the truth. Look into the Eye Collector’s past once more.

  I placed her hands on Traunstein’s shoulders.

  ‘Now tell me what you see.’

  55

  (8 HOURS 55 MINUTES TO THE DEADLINE)

  PHILIPP STOYA

  (DETECTIVE SUPERINTENDENT, HOMICIDE)

  The Eye Collector selects children who have been disowned by their fathers. Because, like the Cyclopes of Greek mythology, those children are the product of an illicit relationship...

  Stoya repeated the professor’s last few words in his head. He was beginning to share Scholle’s dislike of the know-it-all profiler, whose statements were deliberately designed to provoke questions that would expose his listeners’ ignorance. Stoya eventually obliged him.

  ‘Meaning what, exactly?’

  ‘Uranus was Gaea’s son.’

  ‘Hang on!’ Scholle guffawed. ‘You mean old Mother Earth had it off with her own son?’

  ‘To whom she’d given birth by immaculate conception. Yes, the ancient Greeks weren’t as squeamish as we are. For example, Zeus was intimate with his sister. These days, of course, such a relationship would be frowned on.’

  Stoya shook his head thoughtfully. ‘We’ve checked the victims’ family backgrounds. There wasn’t even a hint of incest.’

  Hohlfort cocked a forefinger. ‘When I spoke of an illicit relationship, I didn’t mean it in a legal sense. The Eye Collector’s point of view is all that matters. To him, even a bit on the side can be sufficient.’

  ‘You mean...’

  ‘I mean that the kidnapped children are probably not their fathers’ biological offspring.’ Hohlfort gripped his wheelchair’s chromium-plated hand rims and began to propel himself gently back and forth. ‘That’s why the fathers hate them. That’s why the Eye Collector kills the women who have betrayed their husbands so shamefully.’

  Galvanized by what the professor had just said, Stoya stood up and nervously kneaded the nape of his neck. ‘That would mean he’s an avenger!’

  ‘Precisely.’ Hohlfort continued to glide back and forth, looking like a gleeful schoolboy. ‘The murderer punishes errant mothers for their infidelity. He plays the part of Uranus by hiding the children he detests in the bowels of the earth. And that provides us with yet another clue to where we should look. He holds his victims captive in a bunker or cellar of some kind, not at ground level or above.
’

  ‘Oh, thanks a lot, that narrows it down dramatically,’ said Scholle, who had also risen to his feet. His stomach bulged so far over his waistband, it was impossible to tell if he was wearing a belt.

  ‘You can waste time making snide remarks, or you can check the victims’ family backgrounds for hushed-up affairs and extramarital escapades. Maybe all these women had a fling with the Eye Collector himself and gave birth to children whom he hates as much as Uranus hated the Cyclopes.’

  ‘And maybe I’ll go to the john and scratch my arse,’ Scholle said with a dismissive gesture. ‘I’m getting sick of all this mystical, mythical mumbo-jumbo. I prefer hard evidence. After all, we’ve at last got a suspect who not only has inside knowledge of the latest crime but left his wallet at the scene.’

  Hohlfort smiled his TV smile and glided over to the hatstand beside the door. ‘You wanted to hear my theory, gentlemen. I’m sorry if you feel you’ve wasted your time.’

  He was just about to take his cashmere scarf off the hook when the door burst open and a young secretary hurried in.

  ‘Sorry to interrupt, sir,’ she said breathlessly, blowing her blonde fringe off her forehead.

  Stoya frowned. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Zorbach,’ was all she said, puce in the face with excitement.

  Stoya felt everything inside him tense up.

  ‘Has he been found?’

  ‘No.’ She handed him her mobile. ‘He’s on the phone.’

  54

  (8 HOURS 52 MINUTES TO THE DEADLINE)

  ALEXANDER ZORBACH

  ‘At his place?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Tied up?’

  ‘With an extension lead.’

  ‘Tell me you’re kidding!’

  Stoya’s voice was trembling with anger. In the background I could hear the medley of noises typical of a busy police headquarters: phones ringing, a babble of voices, doors slamming, computer keyboards clicking. It sounded unusually loud – more like eleven in the morning than late at night – but all available staff must have been on duty. Metaphorically speaking, it was always five minutes to midnight when the Eye Collector had issued an ultimatum.

  ‘There’s a DVD in the player in his living room. You should take a look at it.’

  ‘Don’t tell me what to do!’ Stoya bellowed into the receiver.

  I lowered the phone and gestured to Frank to turn left at the next intersection.

  After Alina and I had been waiting outside Traunstein’s villa for what seemed an eternity, my trainee had turned up just as Stoya took my call, so we’d got into our new getaway car as quietly as possible and without a word of greeting.

  ‘Where are you?’ Stoya demanded, his voice still at parade-ground pitch.

  ‘Wrong question. You’d do better to ask why Traunstein has been getting blotto instead of helping to look for his children. The DVD could provide you with a clue.’

  By this time, however, I seriously doubted whether there was any connection between Traunstein and the Eye Collector – and not only because Alina’s visions had come to nothing. The garden shed wasn’t made of timber and the crime scene wasn’t near enough to the Teufelsberg, so her knowledge of the odd ultimatum was probably just a fluke.

  Stoya changed his tactics. ‘Come down to headquarters,’ he said in a lame attempt to win me over. ‘I promise we’ll give you a fair hearing.’

  ‘You’re just wasting time. Forget about me. You should question the dead woman’s husband.’

  I swallowed hard, feeling my eyes grow moist.

  Oh Charlie...

  ‘Listen Stoya,’ I said. ‘I’m still on your side, believe me. That’s why I’m now going to tell you something potentially incriminating, okay? I’ll tell you it in confidence, as a former colleague.’

  To help me retain my composure I opened the passenger window a crack and let the icy headwind blow into my face. ‘Traunstein’s wife had affairs. Lots of them.’ Then, so softly that the wind and engine noises almost drowned my words, I added, ‘I knew her well myself.’

  ‘What is this, a joke? You had an affair with Lucia Traunstein?’ Stoya sounded flabbergasted.

  ‘No. At least, not in the way you mean.’

  I saw out of the corner of my eye that I’d failed in my attempt not to be overheard. Frank glanced at me and raised his eyebrows.

  ‘I’m only telling you this because I don’t want your investigations to get sidetracked. The children’s father may know where they are, understand? Traunstein has a motive, I don’t. His wife had affairs with other men and he doesn’t think the kids are his.’

  ‘Tell me at once where you are!’ Stoya’s tone of voice had changed. The anger had receded into the background. Unless I was much mistaken, he sounded far more impersonal, as if I’d finally dispelled his doubts about my guilt.

  ‘I’m on the move, but don’t bother looking for my Volvo. It’s in Kühler Weg. The keys are in it.’

  I looked at Frank, who was just signalling right and threading his way into the Theodor Heuss Platz roundabout. My own car was at least ten years younger than our new getaway car but far less spick and span. The Toyota looked as if it had spent its life in Frank’s granny’s garage except for the occasional Sunday airing. Not a scratch on the dashboard, just 12,000 kilometres on the speedo, and floormats that had been vacuumed after every outing. The glove compartment was neatly adorned with platitudinous stickers:

  Carpe diem

  The early bird catches the worm

  It’s easy to foretell the future

  when you shape it yourself

  I treated Stoya to a final piece of advice: ‘Give my car a going-over. You won’t find anything that connects me to the Eye Collector.’

  ‘I reckon I’ve already got enough on you to—’ I heard him say before I cut him off. Then I turned to Frank.

  ‘You mean you had it off with—?’ he started to say, but I hurriedly interrupted him by jerking my head in Alina’s direction.

  ‘Thanks for coming so quickly,’ I said.

  Frank gave a nod that conveyed he’d understood. ‘I had to wait for a suitable moment before I could sneak out of the newsroom,’ he said. He managed to stifle a yawn, but he couldn’t conceal his look of fatigue. Work-related lack of sleep had imprinted dark smudges under his eyes, and the rest of his appearance reminded me of my own reflection after a night on the juice. It had taken only a few months in a newspaper office to transform the wholesome youth into a typical Internet junkie: hair unwashed, cheeks unshaven and clothing sketchy (his shoes lacked laces and all he wore beneath his anorak was a faded Depeche Mode T-shirt), but incredibly focused on his work. I doubted if he had a girlfriend who would tolerate her partner coming home at half-past two in the morning – not to sleep, just to have a quick shower before embarking on the next of his research projects for me.

  ‘By the way,’ I said, turning round in my seat, ‘allow me to introduce Alina Gregoriev, the witness I told you about. The character sitting beside her is TomTom, her tail-wagging satnav.’

  ‘Pleased to meet you,’ said Frank, glancing at the rear-view mirror. ‘And I’m the idiot who’s allowing his boss to paddle him up shit creek.’

  ‘Welcome to the club,’ said Alina.

  I put my hands up. ‘No need to panic, people. I haven’t been arrested or convicted, I’m merely under suspicion. In this country, no suspect is under a legal obligation to turn himself in, so none of us is currently committing an offence.’

  ‘What about the trespassing and torture you involved me in?’

  ‘You tortured Traunstein?’ Frank gasped incredulously.

  I ignored the question. ‘You touched him for a moment, Alina, that’s all.’

  She hesitated, thinking hard, then turned to face the window and slowly shook her head.

  ‘Nothing?’ I asked her again as I had at the villa, when she removed her hands from Traunstein’s shoulders. ‘You really saw nothing at all?’

  ‘No.’
/>
  ‘No images? No light?’

  I wondered if I’d seriously counted on getting a different answer to my question from this blind girl.

  ‘I didn’t recognize him,’ she said.

  ‘Hey, hello? Anyone?’ Frank changed lanes and glanced at me. ‘Can someone explain what’s going on here?’

  ‘But you can’t say for sure that it wasn’t him?’ I persisted.

  ‘I can’t exclude anyone from being the killer,’ Alina retorted angrily. ‘And now, can you please stop asking these stupid questions? I mean, first you call me and ask me to meet you in the woods...’

  ‘That wasn’t me,’ I cut in, ‘it was...’

  ...someone who wants to pin something on me. But why? If the Eye Collector is really trying to make me his scapegoat, why should he complicate matters by sending me this blind kook?

  ‘... and then,’ she went on, ‘after I’ve almost broken my neck getting there, you can’t remember calling me and try to throw me off your houseboat – only to lure me into a house and make me maul the father of the kidnapped children. And all this even though you believe me about as much as the police did yesterday.’

  ‘The police? One moment...’ The car swerved dangerously to the right as Frank turned his head to look at her. I grabbed the wheel and kept us from straying out of our lane.

  ‘I don’t believe this,’ he said, looking ahead again. He switched on the interior light and glanced in the rear-view mirror.

  ‘What?’ Alina and I asked almost simultaneously.

  It had started to sleet again.

  ‘I know who you are,’ said Frank, turning on the windscreen wipers at minimum speed. The rubber blades squeaked like fingernails on a blackboard. ‘I think we ran into each other.’

  53

  ‘Really?’ Alina stretched. She had removed one of her three sweaters and tossed it carelessly on the seat beside her. Beneath her remaining rollnecks I caught another glimpse of the strange tattoo and wondered what could have prompted a blind girl to go in for body art.

  ‘It was you that blundered into me at police headquarters yesterday, wasn’t it?’ he demanded.