Eye Collector, The

by Sebastian Fitzek

  Tauchersteig... The second name, roughly translated as ‘Diver’s Rise’, struck him as a bad omen.

  The radio in his hand crackled. ‘There are masses of private moorings here,’ the task force commander replied. ‘Around a dozen cabin cruisers have been laid up here for the winter.’

  ‘Forget the cabin cruisers.’

  Zorbach had said something about a big compartment with a massive steel door, and you didn’t find those aboard a cabin cruiser.

  ‘It would be something sizeable – a vessel in commercial use, probably.’

  ‘That leaves only two possibilities.’

  Stoya nodded. A coal barge and a container ship. Although very little moonlight was filtering through the overcast sky, the landing stage was bathed in a sulphurous yellow glow by several street lights, so Stoya could easily make them out from where he was.

  Goods traffic on the Berlin waterways had greatly declined with the advent of winter, and even the two commercial vessels seemed to be out of operation. They were lying motionless on the opposite side of the Teltow Canal.

  ‘The coal barge is nearer the landing stage,’ the team leader said over the radio.

  Stoya was still nodding. That was why he had returned to the parking lot, to gain some idea of how the Eye Collector might have transported the two unconscious children from there to his hideaway.

  ‘In a wheelchair,’ Zorbach had said. So the perpetrator must have had to do everything twice over: open the boot, ensconce his drugged victims in the wheelchair, trundle them unobserved to the landing stage on the other side of the road, and then...

  Yes, and then what? Unless the Eye Collector had grown wings, there was only one possibility. He must have put them in a small boat of some kind and rowed them across to the far bank.

  But why? Why hadn’t he simply driven his car around to the other bank?

  ‘Let’s take the container ship,’ he said, privately wondering whether he’d lost his marbles like Zorbach. The man had clearly flipped, but he seemed to be well-informed. First the ultimatum, then the parking ticket, and last but not least the bungalow. He still couldn’t believe that his former colleague was personally implicated, but he couldn’t dismiss the possibility that Zorbach had access to inside information. Quite how, they didn’t have time to find out now that Scholle had so obviously screwed things up. Hell, they didn’t even have the time to run a careful check on the blind girl’s hallucinations.

  ‘Mind you,’ said the task force commander, ‘the coal barge can be reached more quickly from the landing stage.’

  Stoya could hear the sound of an outboard motor in stereo, over the phone and from across the water. The rubber dinghy containing the commander, four of his men and a sniffer dog had set off for the far bank. They seemed to be obeying his instructions and making for the long-hulled vessel on which at least forty steel containers were stacked in three layers.

  ‘The very fact that it’s moored a bit further away makes it our first choice,’ said Stoya.

  The coal barge was readily visible from the busy waterway, whereas the container ship was partly obscured by it. There was nothing but a rubble-strewn wilderness beyond the landing stage – an ideal set-up for someone wanting to convey bulky objects aboard unobserved.

  Besides, thought Stoya, the coal barge looks too squat. Too squat to have a lower deck capacious enough to accommodate a hiding place like the one Zorbach described.

  But he kept that thought to himself. If he proved wrong he didn’t want to be blamed for basing his decision, not on hard facts, but on the recommendations of a blind medium.

  Not to mention those of the principal suspect!

  ‘Wow,’ said the task force commander, who was steadily nearing his destination. ‘This tub is huge.’

  ‘Exactly. And we certainly don’t have time to raid them both.’

  Stoya detached his sweaty fingers from the radio microphone and prayed he was doing the right thing.

  14

  (13 MINUTES TO THE DEADLINE)

  TOBY TRAUNSTEIN

  After PE one time, Kevin had – just for fun – released the strap that attached the heavy blue plastic safety mattress to the wall of the gym. Toby, busy doing up his shoes, had failed to react quickly enough and was buried beneath the monstrous great thing.

  What pinned his skinny body to the floor more firmly even than the thick foam plastic mattress was paralysing fear. He couldn’t get up because several chortling classmates leapt on top of it to prevent him from doing so. Convinced that he would suffocate within seconds, he’d screamed...

  ... like a girl. Jesus, how embarrassing...

  ... and burst into tears...

  At least I didn’t wet myself, though I nearly did...

  And afterwards, when Herr Kerner had quelled the rumpus, he didn’t speak to Kevin for a whole week.

  Or was it Jens? Oh well, whoever it was...

  Now, as he lay on the cold floor with his knees drawn up, staring into the darkness, he realized how absurd he’d been to be scared that time. The mattress hadn’t touched the ground all around, so he’d had plenty of air to breathe. Now that he’d extricated himself from the wooden chest, oxygen was no longer a problem either. It seeped through the cracks in the metal compartment in which he was lying. The difference between now and that day in the gym, it dawned on him, was the absence of a Herr Kerner. There was no PE teacher around to put an end to the nonsense and haul the mattress off him. Then, his ordeal had been over within seconds; now, he’d been in total darkness for ever so long. Not a thing to eat or drink. His prison stank of shit and piss, but he’d ceased to notice that. He was drifting off...

  ... Did I bring my atlas? he wondered. It’s geography after PE, and I’ve forgotten my atlas...

  He heard something go bang immediately beneath the steel floor pressed against his ear. The floor had stopped swaying, which could be a good sign – in fact the whole compartment seemed to have stopped moving the way it had moved just after he pulled that confounded rope.

  ‘The rope!’ he groaned. ‘Why on earth did I do that?’ Then he slipped back into the feverish dreamworld in which his direst fear was to get a black mark in the class book.

  Herr Pohl will give me another black mark if I turn up again without my atlas. That would make three, and Dad’ll be really mad at me...

  Another noise made him jump, but it sounded nicer than that bang just now. It was like a gentle whisper. Soft and soporific. Toby started to drift off again...

  ... because three black marks in the class book equal one detention...

  But he was prevented from drifting off by a novel, quite genuine sensation. Suddenly it was everywhere – wherever in the darkness he propped himself up on his hands or stretched out his fingers and touched the floor: icy cold, invisible moisture!

  Greedily, he opened his mouth and licked the wet floor like a dog.

  Water at last.

  The first few drops stung his raw throat like acid, it was so long since he’d drunk anything. Then things improved a little. Whatever the source of the water, it was seeping into his prison from below and rising higher every second. Although this made it easier for him to drink, he became too greedy.

  He choked and started retching. When he vomited he thought his skull would explode into fragments and land in the slightly brackish water around him.

  I’ve had it, he thought in despair, suddenly feeling too weak even to drink.

  Only a couple of centimetres deep at first, the water rose steadily higher, chilling him to the bone and making him shiver violently.

  That’s it. I give up.

  Swallowing, even opening his mouth, was taking superhuman effort. Standing up was out of the question, even lying there was tiring, and staying awake seemed impossible.

  The best thing I can do is go back to sleep, he thought, half in the present and half in a merciful dreamworld.

  Daddy can’t get mad at me if I go to sleep, can he? I won’t get a black mark in my
sleep, will I?

  He was lying on his side, curled up like an embryo with his left eye already submerged, when – somewhere outside the walls of his prison – someone called his name.

  13

  (10 MINUTES TO THE DEADLINE)

  SPECIAL TASK FORCE

  (ON BOARD THE CONTAINER SHIP)

  ‘Toby?’

  Within minutes of boarding the boxy, ungraceful-looking vessel, the men had grasped the futility of their task and started to bellow the children’s names.

  ‘Lea? Toby?’

  In spite of the reinforcements that had joined them from the shore, they couldn’t possibly break open and search each container in the time remaining. Besides, the dogs hadn’t made a sound on the bridge or on the first of the lower decks, which reeked of diesel and lubricating oil. The only time they’d barked, and then only briefly, was outside a cabin in which the ship’s captain, awakened by the sound of his door bursting open, had been scared to death when men in black combat gear and ski masks dashed in and dragged him out of his bunk.

  A minute later three policemen stormed the internal cargo spaces while their colleagues on deck began the Sisyphean task of breaking the seals on the locked containers.

  ‘Toby? Lea?’

  Their voices went echoing across the waters of the Teltow Canal. Several interested spectators had gathered on the bank: two joggers, a man out for a walk and a female dog-owner, all of whom were debating the significance of an ever-growing array of police vans, patrol cars and emergency vehicles in the early hours of the morning.

  The cries of the men in the bowels of the ship rang out, unanswered, amid the steel plates and pipework and in the cable tiers below deck.

  Growing more and more desperate, some of the policemen threw caution to the wind when opening bulkhead doors, dashing round corners, or shining their torches down passages that hadn’t been secured beforehand.

  Another seven minutes.

  It simply can’t be done, thought Stoya, who had also come aboard by now.

  We were wrong, he told himself – just as the dogs in the engine room started barking.

  12

  (5 MINUTES TO THE DEADLINE)

  ALEXANDER ZORBACH

  ‘It’s too late.’ The flashing lights of the police cars looked somehow ominous. I knew, as I stared at them, that the operation hadn’t a hope.

  ‘What can you see?’ Alina asked me. She had got out of the car accompanied by Frank and TomTom.

  We had parked the Toyota at a safe distance from the police cordon, some 200 metres before the road became a bridge that spanned the Teltow Canal.

  A bridge!

  Again I was up against the clock, and again fate had directed me to a bridge.

  Fate or luck? I thought, and Alina’s tattoo took shape in my mind’s eye.

  I was just about to tell her that there were too few men to search the ships in time when my mobile rang. I expected it to be Stoya, but a glance at the display compounded my despair.

  ‘Well, are you on your way?’

  No form of greeting, no name, just a curt, reproachful question.

  Nicci seemed to know the answer, because her voice dripped with scepticism.

  No, damn it. I won’t make it.

  Not knowing what to say, I started blathering. The truth – that I was watching a bunch of policemen vainly attempting to save two children from death by drowning – was so unendurable, I didn’t want to misuse it as an excuse.

  ‘Honestly, Alex, you promised him. He’s been awake for the past hour, terribly excited because you said you’d have breakfast with us at seven. Can you imagine how sad he’ll be when he comes downstairs to find that his father has forgotten his birthday yet again?’

  ‘I haven’t forgotten it.’

  ‘But you aren’t here. There’ll be no family breakfast and your present won’t be on the line.’

  I groaned and clutched my head in despair. Frank looked at me inquiringly.

  His present! How could I have promised Julian a watch? A cruel, lethal contraption whose only purpose was to tick away the seconds separating us from death.

  I looked at my own old-fashioned watch, a bequest from my father, and hoped that the expensive Swiss timepiece was malfunctioning for the first time ever; that the hands had revolved too fast for some reason. I blinked, suddenly aware that my brain had registered something in the vicinity – something I couldn’t immediately interpret. Closing my eyes, I tried to recall what had occurred to me just before fear crept deep into my pores. And then the penny dropped. I opened my eyes, tilted my head back, and there it was.

  The street sign!

  ‘He’ll get his present,’ I whispered into the phone, and hung up.

  ‘What is it?’ asked Frank.

  My fingers felt clammy and bloodless as I took off my watch. ‘It isn’t the make Julian wanted, but it’s worth ten times as much.’

  I held it out with a trembling hand.

  ‘Oh no.’ Frank shook his head. ‘I’m not leaving you. Not now.’

  ‘Please, as a personal favour. You know where I used to live. Take the thing to Nicci. Tell her to give it a clean and wrap it up. And tell her I’ll make it up to the boy.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Please, we’re running out of time.’

  Alina, who had been leaning against the car without moving, turned an ear in my direction. She looked as tense as I felt. It was as if she could sense the threat I’d just become aware of.

  The threat inherent in the street sign.

  ‘What if you need help?’

  Frank looked me straight in the eye, and I could tell he knew. He might be young, but he was no fool and had proved it more than once. Frank could put two and two together. He guessed, of course, that I wouldn’t send him away for no good reason.

  ‘You’ll help me most of all by taking my son his birthday present, okay?’

  I saw him purse his lips to utter a final objection. Then he yielded. He got into the car, gave me a rueful, disappointed look, and drove off without saying goodbye.

  My gaze returned to the street sign. According to the faded lettering we were in Grünauer Strasse. Not just anywhere in Grünauer Strasse, either, but immediately outside a dark, dilapidated warehouse.

  Grünauer Strasse.

  That was what my brain had registered even before my eyes took it in.

  217 Grünauer Strasse.

  The numerals on the back of the photo I’d found on my mother’s bedside table weren’t a date, but the number of a building.

  21.7 Grünau.

  And we were standing right outside it.

  11

  (3 MINUTES TO THE DEADLINE) ALEXANDER ZORBACH

  It wasn’t very long since I’d made a trip to the Babelsberg film studio with Julian and looked at the set of a war film in production there. I still recalled how impressed we’d been by a mock-up of a bombed building. Dilapidated walls, shattered window panes, charred roof timbers through which remnants of masonry jutted skyward like splintered bones – all these features had been reproduced with convincing but spurious authenticity. However, that set was nothing compared to the scene that confronted me now.

  Why is he doing this? Why is the Eye Collector giving me all these hints?

  Standing in the outer yard of the derelict industrial estate at 217 Grünauer Strasse, I felt yet again that I was being led to perdition on an invisible leash.

  He’s playing a game with me, I told myself, trying to marshal my thoughts. Hide-and-seek, the oldest children’s game in the world, and I’m playing it according to his rules – following the leads he drops at my feet like the trail in a paperchase.

  ‘You’ve got to help me,’ I told Alina.

  Daybreak wasn’t far off, but Berlin lay beneath heavy cloud cover, dampening sound like a bell jar over the city. If you looked up at the sky the moon seemed reminiscent of a torch under an eiderdown. The pre-dawn light barely penetrated the alleyways linking the various factory yards.
>
  ‘I need a clue from you.’

  Alina clenched her left hand and I saw her grimace with pain.

  I need another memory!

  I had informed Stoya as a matter of course of the new clue as a matter of course, but he’d made it quite clear that he wouldn’t withdraw a single man, just to check on yet another figment of my imagination. Even if he’d sent a whole army right away, it wouldn’t have been enough.

  ‘The area is simply too big, Alina. There are at least four yards surrounded by ruined factories and warehouses. That’s all I can make out from here.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Alex.’

  She opened her eyes but promptly shut them again, stung by an unpleasant gust of fine, icy drizzle.

  ‘All I felt before was a ship. No factories or warehouses.’

  You must be wrong. The photograph, the numerals – it can’t be a coincidence.

  Why were some of Alina’s visions so consistent with reality and others so wide of the mark?

  ‘Anyway, I can’t see anything more because...’

  ‘Because what?’

  ‘Nothing,’ she said dismissively, but I knew what she’d almost blurted out.

  ‘Because the children are already dead.’

  ‘What about TomTom?’ I asked.

  ‘He can’t help either. Even if we had a sample of the children’s scent, he isn’t a sniffer dog.’

  I know.

  I also knew that the ultimatum had almost expired. Although I no longer possessed a watch, I could sense that there were only seconds left.

  Think, Zorbach, think.

  Dark, deserted buildings surrounded us on every side, each indistinguishable from the other. There were no lights on anywhere. Every gate and door gaped open, every entrance was choked with mounds of mysterious industrial waste. I could make out a lot of it, but I couldn’t see a lead or pointer of any kind.

  The Eye Collector wants to play. He lays down clear rules. Forty-five hours seven minutes...

  The outer courtyard was so huge, the stack of HGV tyres in the middle resembled the remains of a toy truck. There were countless places the twins might be hidden. They could be immediately beneath our feet or behind that stack of empty cat-food tins against the wall over there.