The Stolen

by T. S. Learner

  ‘A little detective work.’

  ‘So you are following me!’ She tried not to sound too enthusiastic but it was exciting to see him – too exciting. Reaching over, Destin patted her knee, her stomach lurching at the touch.

  ‘Just a lucky guess. I was passing, it’s got cold again, and I thought since I’m here I should just check whether Liliane needed a lift. So would you like to come back to my place? I’ve got a great album collection – including some really early Iggy Pop.’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘I promise to get you home by seven-thirty – you could just lie and say the nuns kept you back an extra hour.’

  Their eyes met in the rear-view mirror. Something challenging, provocative played over the Frenchman’s features, as if he were daring her. He put his hand back on her knee. ‘Promise. It’ll be fun,’ he added flirtatiously. She stared down at the hand, the manicured fingernails, the elegance of his long tanned fingers… ‘So is it a yes or a no?’

  Liliane swallowed and turned to face him.

  ‘It’s a yes,’ she finally replied.

  It was past seven o’clock; Matthias, anxious about Liliane, had found himself staring out at the driveway, expecting her to appear any minute. Just then Johanna interrupted his vigil.

  ‘Herr Holindt, the school said they’d given Liliane an hour’s detention – she should have been home long ago…’ Her expression took Matthias back to eighteen months before, when a patrol car had pulled up having found Liliane unconscious in the notorious Platzspitz, a needle still stuck in her arm. For weeks after that Matthias had taken to cruising along the river by Bellevue during school hours, double-checking his daughter was actually at school and not scoring heroin either in some seedy alleyway or at the back of the AJZ – the Autonome Youth Centre, another place he knew all the young punks and junkies collected. It had been one of the grimmest times of his life. The housekeeper didn’t need to say any more. Matthias grabbed his coat then paused. He couldn’t face going out there alone and yet he should leave Johanna here in case Liliane phoned home or got back before him. He needed company, someone objective enough to be supportive.

  Liliane stared out at the Zürichberg, over which the moon had now crept. The window was floor-to-ceiling, part of a single-storey modernist villa that sat incongruously between two far larger chalets. Surrounded on all three sides by greenery, it felt strangely isolated and, if she was honest, a little frightening.

  ‘Drink?’

  She swung round. Destin was standing next to the drinks cabinet – a slick cube of chrome and glass. Everything appeared to be made out of chrome and glass, Liliane suddenly noticed. There was absolutely nothing personal in the décor, she realised – she might as well be in a hotel suite. It was unnerving.

  ‘Vodka and tonic.’ She liked the way vodka dampened down her mind, stopped the hallucinations. She needed that right now.

  She glanced at the front door; Destin had bolted it behind him. Looking at the complicated lock, Liliane found herself calculating that it would take at least five minutes to get out if she panicked.

  Now alone with the Frenchman, she was painfully aware of his presence. It was as if the space between them was stretched taut, like guitar strings or, even more disturbingly, spiders’ webs. Liliane couldn’t decide whether it was because she wanted him or because she was scared of him. Fear and lust: they both fluttered against her ribcage.

  Stop it, Liliane. Stop being paranoid; didn’t you make the decision when you stepped into his car? she told herself silently. You’re just frightened because he’s a man, not a boy like Wilhelm, someone who is a little mysterious, a little dangerous. Don’t you like that?

  Behind her Destin started mixing the drinks. The tinkle of ice as it fell into the crystal glasses emphasised the thickening awkwardness. Should she run or should she make a pass? she nervously wondered. Instead she concentrated on the room, searching for insights into his personality, something she could learn about him. There was very little – just the usual generic indications of wealth: an expensive ashtray, a genuine Picasso etching on the wall, a Persian rug upon which a low coffee table sat, a deep leather couch, a Bang and Olufsen TV, a hi-fi with speakers set in the corners of the room. The record collection – at least that was something she could relate to. She went over. The records were all neatly stacked in a chrome rack. She began sifting through them: The Ramones, Patti Smith, The Clash, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Marie et les Garçons, the Nina Hagen Band, some heavy metal, the Iggy Pop he’d promised and Jacques Brel. Although she approved of his choices, they seemed out of place with the villa itself, as if there might be some hidden other Destin locked up in another room who was the real lover of this music, or perhaps locked up within Destin himself?

  She glanced over. He was very handsome, his narrow face an ethereal contrast to the muscularity of his shoulders, the shoulder-length brown hair groomed neatly around his ears, the expensive suit and loafers. Conservative with an edge – the tattoos she knew lay under the Egyptian cotton shirt didn’t quite fit with the rest of the persona. Neither did the obviously powerful physique on his svelte frame. And then there were those eyes, one blue, one green. Unique. He wasn’t tall, only a couple of inches taller than her, yet she sensed a great physical strength and confidence about him – almost as if he were an athlete or perhaps even a soldier. Who was he really? She couldn’t decide.

  Pulling out the Patti Smith album Horses, she opened the cover of the turntable. After switching the record player on, she crouched down and watched the stylus drop automatically onto the spinning vinyl. She loved this moment, when sound appeared to pour magically from a diamond scratching its spiral path across black plastic. Often in her own bedroom, when she was stoned, she would lie on the floor and watch the stylus fall over and over. To her it was like darkness bursting into life, a beginning she could control – when there were so many she couldn’t. A shadow fell across her. She looked up. Destin stood over her, holding out the drink. Standing, she took it from him.

  ‘Great album. It was my mother’s, one of the last she bought before…’

  She faltered, and took a long gulp of the vodka, Patti Smith’s haunting voice now shuddering through the room like an obscenity – rawly sexual.

  ‘Before the accident,’ Destin finished the sentence for her, his gaze steady – no judgement, no fake sympathy and she found she liked him more for it.

  ‘It totally fucked up my father, you know. I was twelve, but even then I knew it was like my mother did all the feeling in the relationship for him. She was the heart and he was the brain and I was always on the outside, I still am… It’s funny but all the other girls at school are always complaining about how their parents really hate each other and only seem to stay together because of the kids. But with me it was different. My parents were totally in love. They didn’t need the world or anybody else, not even me. Then Mum does this really dumb thing and gets killed.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘You said that before.’ She got up, pulling her skirt down as she did. ‘I don’t need your fucking sympathy, or anyone else’s.’ Trying to distract herself, she started walking slowly round the room. Now she noticed a row of books propped up isolated on an otherwise empty bookshelf. They all seemed to be about Africa: Sierra Leone, Zaire, Nigeria, Uganda – maps, guidebooks and histories, but what had that to do with the Frenchman? All she knew about such places was that most of them were war zones or under dictatorships. What had he been doing in Africa?

  Latcos pushed his way through a low privet hedge, the lights of the living room shining at the top of the slope like a beacon. He could see Liliane moving nervously around the large room, tottering on platform shoes looking ridiculously young in her school uniform, like a child pretending to be a woman, and a cold rage began to clench in the pit of his stomach. This girl was so clearly of his family, in her appearance, in the way she moved – it was as if she were his daughter up there in that back-lit glass cube – alone with a
man he could tell was little more than a predator. Moving closer in the shadow of the house, he hid behind a holly bush, near enough to see the frightened look in the girl’s eyes, the half-empty bottle of vodka on the low coffee table.

  Destin moved closer. Liliane felt as if she were disappearing into each eye, the left a blue aquatic world, mute in its aquamarine depths, the other a green world, a forest of waving leaves, a meadow. She stood as if hypnotised – one half of her wanting to see what would happen if they touched, the other half wanting to run.

  ‘Your mother must have been beautiful.’ He lifted his hand and ran his fingers along the side of her face and the spell was broken. The stroke along her cheekbone had felt patronising, as if he were both objectifying her and flexing his superiority. Flinging herself onto the couch, she crossed her long legs, silently cursing the shortness of her school uniform.

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  Destin sat on the arm of the couch, smiling down at her. ‘Because you are.’

  ‘But she didn’t look like me. She was blonde like my father, and taller than me. I have her mouth and maybe her hands. I can’t remember any more. I hate that, the way she’s starting to fade from my memory.’

  ‘You do know you’re beautiful, don’t you?’

  ‘I don’t give a shit about any of that.’ She glanced at the lock on the front door, the sense of being trapped suddenly hammering at the back of her throat.

  ‘So what do you care about?’ Destin edged nearer.

  ‘My music, seeing bands, getting out of this provincial shit-hole of a city, my father – when he’s not driving me crazy. And maybe the idea of a simpler brain.’

  ‘That’s a strange thing to say.’

  ‘I’m a strange girl. Really screwed up. You should be careful.’ The bravado she wanted to project ended in a nervous squeak.

  He slipped off the arm of the couch and landed next to her. ‘I like screwed up, makes me feel at home.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ Liliane finished her drink in a long gulp and peered up at him through her fringe.

  ‘No, I’m never sure – but normal is boring.’ He lifted the glass of vodka out of her hand, then leaned over and kissed her. Her heart was thumping as loudly as the music, the pounding colliding with the rush of alcohol to beat in her ears, his thick tongue pushing its way between her lips. It was then, too late to stop, that she realised this was not what she wanted. She tried pushing him away, but his hands pinned down her arms, the weight of him pressing her down into the couch.

  Outside Latcos watched Liliane’s thin body struggling beneath the bulk of the man. Horrified, he grabbed a handful of gravel and threw it hard against the windows. The Frenchman stopped trying to kiss Liliane, got off the girl and walked to the window. Latcos edged round the corner of the house. Fuck you, you animal, he thought, the knife in his belt burning to be used.

  Liliane, shocked, sat up. Destin had his back to her and was staring out of the window, oblivious to her distress.

  ‘What was that?’ he said, more to himself than Liliane. She seized the opportunity and got off the couch, grabbing her school satchel.

  ‘I need the bathroom.’ She kept her voice deliberately calm.

  Distracted, he pointed to a door in the far wall. ‘Through there.’ Then he turned back to the window. Liliane hurried across the room, then bolted herself into the bathroom.

  Destin had the distinct feeling someone was outside, watching, but that wasn’t possible. He’d been very careful about keeping his location secret – and he knew he hadn’t been followed. He reached over and flicked a switch on; immediately spotlights flooded the snow-covered lawn.

  Inside the marble bathroom Liliane searched her schoolbag for something to protect herself with. The steel comb and pepper spray she carried on her at night were both in her evening bag at home – the bag she always carried to go out to the clubs. But there was nothing more dangerous in the schoolbag than a leaking biro. Feeling like an idiot, she stared into the mirror above the sink. Her lipstick was smudged down one side of her chin, she could still taste Destin’s tongue in her mouth and it made her feel sick. Pulling tissues out of a box she rubbed vigorously at her face to get the lipstick off. Her school shirt was torn and one of the buttons had been pulled off – she needed a safety pin. There were four drawers set below the bathroom sink. She yanked three of them open: they were filled with clean hand towels, neatly stacked. But when she pulled the fourth drawer it didn’t slide open smoothly like the others. It felt strangely heavy, as if weighted with something.

  Latcos held his breath, willing himself out of his body to project the same inanimate sense of being as the ornamental boulders around him. He was wearing black, his face angled so that it would not catch the light or the gaze of the man staring out of the house. But just then he felt the presence of something else, something alive near him. At the perimeter of his vision was a brown hare. Its huge eyes bulbous in fear, its lean body frozen mid-step as the veined, translucent ears, erect and twitching, strained for sound, its nostrils flaring as it judged whether he was a predator or not. With one tiny movement it cocked its head slightly towards Latcos, one eye fixed now on the gypsy. Man and hare stared at each other, Latcos immobile as a rock.

  The yellow light from a flickering candle lit up the faces of the addicts clustered round the plastic crate on which the dealer had arranged his cooking equipment – spoons, syringes, used candles. A young boy, already smacked out, was sprawled on the riverbank, oblivious to the wet and the snow. He didn’t look much older than seventeen, Helen observed silently as the Citroën drove slowly past. Matthias’s anxiety was filling the car with tension. They had visited the youth centre and he’d ended up having a shouting match with a youth worker there – Liliane had been nowhere to be seen, and none of the other kids, most of them blank-eyed and stoned, seemed to have the slightest idea as to where she might be. Matthias also had not been able to find Willi, her estranged boyfriend. Now they’d been cruising for over twenty minutes looking on the street. From out of nowhere there was a tap on the car window: a wild-eyed man in his forties, rake-thin with a ponytail, held up a syringe. Reluctantly Matthias wound the window down and the dealer lurched forward, revealing drug-rotted brown teeth. ‘You buying? I got good rocks, best smack on the block – clean, mister, blast your brains out.’

  ‘No, I’m looking for a young girl, long black hair, in her school uniform, very young-looking…’

  ‘No young girls here, night’s too cold, but if you two are into that shit I have a friend…’

  Disgusted, Matthias wound the window up and accelerated away.

  ‘Matthias, shouldn’t we keep looking?’ Helen tried to keep the fear from her voice.

  ‘No, she’s not here. I should go back and wait at the house in case she turns up.’

  ‘I’ll come with you.’

  He glanced over gratefully. ‘Thanks.’ Outside a cold wind had started up, making a blizzard of the road ahead. If Liliane isn’t trying to score on the Riviera, where is she? Matthias wondered, trying desperately not to panic.

  Crouching down, Liliane slid her hand into the small gap, trying to find what was making the drawer stick. Her fingers touched cold metal – something had been taped up to the base of the drawer. Using all the strength in her fingers she managed to pull it away, the cold metal shape instantly recognisable to her touch. She examined the revolver under the light of the bathroom mirror. It looked new, state-of-the-art. Had Destin been a soldier or something more sinister? What was he now? Suddenly, with the weight of the gun in her hand, Liliane felt a lot more confident. She knew what she had to do. After wrapping the revolver in her school scarf, she hid it in her satchel.

  Destin moved closer to the window, his face almost pressed up against the glass. What was that, down near the base of the rosemary bushes? As though aware of being seen, a hare sprang out into the beam of one of the lawn lights. It sat for a second, staring up at the house, then bounded away towards the tre
es. Mystery solved. Destin smiled.

  ‘I need to get home,’ Liliane’s voice sounded behind him. Destin swung round. Had he moved too fast? He couldn’t tell, but there was a new resolve in her gaze. ‘My father will be worried.’

  ‘It’s still early.’ He stepped forward and she stepped back – damn it, he had frightened her. He was losing the game, the strategies of entrapment he used to be so good at – or was it just her youth, that delicious sense of vulnerability pinned beneath him that had made him lose control?

  ‘No, it’s not.’ She moved towards the door.

  ‘I’ll drive you home.’ Did she still want him? He couldn’t tell.

  ‘No, I can make my own way. I have money for a taxi.’

  ‘C’mon, it’s dark. I would be letting your father down if I just let you step out like that.’

  She stood by the door, the awkwardness of her thin adolescent body highlighted against the pristine white wall. She turned, careful to keep her back to him.