The Stolen

by T. S. Learner

  The policeman handed the papers back to Latcos.

  ‘They appear to be in order, but be gone in an hour, otherwise I’ll book you.’

  ‘Thank you, officer, sir, thank you, and may God bless you,’ Latcos fawned.

  The officer turned back to Matthias and studied him. The gypsy’s face looked curiously familiar and he cast his mind back to the sketches of criminals that had been circulating round the station that morning. He focused on the petty criminals, low street life.

  As the officer continued to stare at him, Matthias’s heart dropped right through his body.

  ‘What’s wrong with him?’ the officer finally asked Latcos.

  Latcos pointed to his own mouth. ‘Mute. Born that way. It’s the will of God.’

  The officer took one last look, trying to match Matthias’s high cheekbones and rugged jawbone to a particular profile. The gypsy’s face did not fit. He must be mistaken. Reluctantly he turned away, his colleague hurrying after him. Matthias looked back at Liliane and Destin, struggling with the overwhelming desire simply to break away and run over to his daughter.

  ‘They’re here, just across the road,’ he said.

  ‘Stay calm. Let the hunter walk into his own trap. Remember you are invisible,’ Latcos said under his breath.

  ‘Tell the violinist to play the Carmen theme – it’s Liliane’s favourite tune,’ Matthias murmured back, and a moment later the tune drifted over the square as the clock tower began to chime nine o’clock. As Destin and Liliane crossed the road the girl looked at the gypsies, noticing the tune they were playing.

  ‘If your father lets me down, you pay,’ Destin hissed at Liliane and in that moment she recognised Latcos. The Rom shook his head as if to say don’t react and Liliane held her nerve. Then the tall flute player looked up from under his hat and met her gaze. As she recognised her father, her stomach lurched and she struggled hard to keep her expression neutral. Oblivious, Destin walked them under the clock tower, with his back to the band.

  ‘I hate this kind of music,’ he said. ‘I give him three more minutes…’

  ‘I’m here.’

  Matthias’s voice came from behind, startling Destin. He turned round, gazing in astonishment at the dark-haired gypsy who was holding out a plastic bag.

  ‘Papa…’ Liliane murmured, too frightened to speak loudly.

  ‘Are you okay?’ He kept his voice friendly, as if they were just having a normal conversation and Liliane nodded.

  ‘I’m a gentleman; I keep my word.’ Destin spoke softly and carefully.

  Matthias held out the bag. ‘The statuette. Now give me my daughter.’

  Liliane moved towards him, but Destin pulled her back sharply. ‘How do I know it’s the right statuette?’

  Matthias led the two of them into the shadow of the tower. He put the bag on the ground and held out his left hand. Sitting in the palm was the fragment of metal he’d taken from the original statuette and he quickly placed a small magnet over it. It floated a few centimetres above the metal. Destin looked stunned. Keeping a poker face, Matthias indicated the bag sitting on the pavement between them.

  ‘Look inside – you’ll see it’s made from the same material.’

  Still holding onto Liliane’s wrist, Destin knelt down and pulled open the bag, then folded back the cloth covering the statuette. He caught a glimmer of the distinctive surface and Matthias knelt and held the fragment against the exposed portion; the surfaces looked identical.

  Destin stood.

  ‘The girl’s yours.’

  He released Liliane, who went straight to her father’s side. Destin zipped up the bag and by the time he’d turned back round, Liliane, Matthias and the gypsies had disappeared.

  Latcos steered the van through north Zürich, out towards Glattbrugg and the camp. Already the morning traffic had thinned, and the van, one of the Sinti’s, a battered Volkswagen with little acceleration, struggled to compete with transport trucks, many of them with German or French number plates. He looked in the rear-view mirror; the Sinti family he’d borrowed it from normally used the van to transport all kinds of goods and a pair of ducks, alive and quacking, sat in a bamboo cage hanging from one of the corners. Every time he swerved they would quack in fright and the cage would swing dangerously.

  ‘Are we all alive in there?’ he shouted over the blaring horn of an overtaking fourteen-wheeled juggernaut. The two other band members sat tightly against the rocking side: a gypsy of about thirty with his arms wrapped round his cello trying to protect it from being bumped, and a thin youth with his legs drawn up shyly, busy trying not to look at Liliane, who was nestled between Matthias and Keja, her face buried in her father’s shoulder.

  ‘Just get us back in one piece,’ Matthias said, as another lorry streaked past the van, terrifying the ducks.

  Liliane clung to her father’s arm. ‘Why aren’t we going home?’ she asked him, bewildered.

  ‘We can’t, not yet.’

  ‘We’re running away, aren’t we? Did he kill Johanna?’ she whispered.

  He nodded. ‘The police think it was me.’

  ‘But can’t we just tell them? I know it was Destin.’

  ‘Liliane, it’s complicated. You have to trust me for now, promise? And you must trust Latcos and his mother Keja.’ He indicated Keja, who smiled at Liliane.

  ‘And your grandmother,’ Keja said, her smile revealing a gold tooth.

  ‘I know. I’ve seen you.’ Instinctively Liliane knew she didn’t have to elaborate – there was something about the expression on her grandmother’s face that told her she knew about the visions, about the man at the edge of her dreams.

  ‘And I you.’ Keja reached across and touched Liliane’s cheek. ‘We have the same eyes.’

  Latcos turned down the road to the camp and immediately the traffic slowed to a walking pace. Peering through driving rain he could just make out a blue flashing light ahead and the outline of several figures.

  ‘Police roadblock. They’re searching the cars!’ he yelled out to the others.

  ‘How long have we got?’ Matthias asked.

  ‘About five minutes.’

  Keja pulled a red headscarf from her bag. ‘Here, put this on – it will make you a married woman,’ she told Liliane. Uncertain, Liliane glanced at Matthias.

  ‘Do what your grandmother suggests.’

  Keja helped her to put it on, then slipped off her own traditional brightly coloured embroidered blouse, revealing an old jumper underneath. She held it up. ‘And this,’ she instructed the girl and helped her take off her school coat. As Liliane did, Keja noticed some hair wound round one of the buttons. It was shortish and brown. She glanced back at her granddaughter – the hair was definitely not hers; it must be the Frenchman’s, Keja concluded silently. She pulled the button and the hair off and pocketed them before anyone noticed. Then she helped Liliane put the gypsy blouse on; with both women wearing traditional headscarves, the physical resemblance between them was remarkable. Smiling at this, Keja made a bundle of the girl’s coat and slipped it under her blouse so she looked heavily pregnant.

  ‘You, here!’ Keja commanded the young violinist, pointing to a place beside Liliane. Blushing, he took his place.

  ‘Hold her; she is now your wife and about to have your baby, may God bless the both of you.’ She turned to Liliane. ‘If the police speak to you, just groan like you’re about to go into labour.’

  Liliane nodded, a growing panic showing in her eyes. Matthias took her hand. ‘It’s going to be all right, trust me.’

  Outside they could hear the sound of the police officers searching the vehicle in front of them. The gypsy violinist shyly put his arm about Liliane’s shoulders and she huddled up beside him.

  Keja turned to Matthias. ‘My son, take the bird cage, put it on your lap, guard it like it’s your own possession, and pull your hat over your ears. If they ask you questions, speak gibberish and we will pretend you speak Romanes.’ Matthias unhooked the ducks
, and took his place in the far corner of the truck, in the shadows with the cello player. He clutched the cage, trying to ignore his growing panic, the smell of bird droppings and small white feathers thrown up by the startled creatures. The van edged forward then came to a bumpy halt. In the front he could hear Latcos.

  ‘Good morning – is there a problem?’

  ‘Papers?’ The policeman’s voice was unfriendly. A rustle of paper followed as Latcos produced his ID documents.

  ‘We’re a band of travelling musicians, sir,’ Latcos explained, his voice wheedling and submissive.

  ‘Open the back, please.’

  There was the thud of the van door as Latcos climbed out and walked round to meet the policeman. Keja took Liliane’s hand and squeezed it reassuringly just as there was the sound of the bolt being pulled across the back. The doors were opened, letting in the freezing air and a gust of rain. Latcos stood with a tall police officer, who was clutching a torch. He immediately lifted his sleeve to his nose.

  ‘What’s that smell?’

  ‘Ducks, sir. We are going to play at a farmer’s wedding and the ducks are a gift.’

  ‘I see.’ He lifted the torch and shone it into the faces of the others, huddled silently in the back.

  ‘A cellist and…’ The beam hit Matthias’s face, blinding him for a moment, and on his lap the ducks flapped their wings, one making an indignant quack. ‘And a duck player,’ the officer joked. ‘And who are these three?’ The beam had caught Liliane, the young violinist and Keja.

  ‘The violinist, his wife and her grandmother. He refuses to go anywhere without her, especially in her delicate condition.’

  ‘Delicate condition? The girl looks young enough to be in school. You people disgust me.’ He flicked off the torch and turned back to the road. ‘You can go.’

  Destin carried the bag carefully over one shoulder; already he’d begun calculating how much he could demand from both the Libyans and Zellweger. Such an object was priceless – the key to a new generation of weapons, the likes of which humanity had yet to witness. Thirty million? Fifty million? It was just a question of conducting a bidding war, and with those two buyers he couldn’t lose. Distracted, he wound his way up to the door of the villa. As he approached the mat, he noticed shallow footprints in one of the flowerbeds. The soldier in him froze, extending senses to both the left and right. The garden was empty; a blackbird hopped hopefully across it looking for food, and a stillness had fallen across the lawn. He couldn’t feel the presence of anyone – whoever it was had gone, probably a good few hours before. He stepped up to the front door cautiously. The first thing he saw was two cloth legs poking out from the letterbox. He pulled the doll free and stared down. A voodoo doll. He’d seen such objects in Africa but this one was different; it had a tiny scrap of red cloth tied around its waist and stared up at him with two drawn eyes – the left one coloured in with blue ink, the right eye with green. A large pin pierced the back. Superstition is the religion of the desperate, he thought, smiling. A child’s scare tactics. Such things had never frightened him; nevertheless it irked him someone knew where he lived. After this job is completed I’m leaving, maybe back to Paris or New York, he concluded, switching his thoughts back to the money. He slipped the doll into his jacket pocket and let himself into his apartment. He didn’t have much time; there were phone calls to make.

  Chief Inspector Engels did not like attending house searches. Actually he didn’t, as a rule, like searches at all, preferring to read the reports and examine the evidence back in the civilised warmth of his own office – it was one of the great advantages of being a chief inspector – an avoidance of fieldwork. But this von Holindt case threatened to destroy all that he had worked for, as well as blowing open the veiled web of wartime business transactions. A revelation that could destroy not just his late father’s sterling record but possibly the careers of half the prominent businessmen in the city. Johann Engels, for the first time in his own career, was really beginning to wonder if this time he could control the fallout. To make matters worse, the newspapers had begun to speculate how such an eminent figure could disappear so easily; there were veiled accusations of police incompetence and on top of all that the anarchist journalist Bruno Munster (a close friend of Klauser’s and a man Engels personally loathed) had raised questions about the nature and coincidence of Helmut Klauser’s ‘suicide’ and the suicide of another friend of the detective’s – Dieter Schwitters – found hanged on the same day. The left-wing press were demanding an independent inquiry.

  Meanwhile the ‘other’ police department – the political police, Engels’ rivals – had also begun to pressure the Kantonspolizei department, threatening to take over the case. It had taken all of Engels’ charm and power to convince them to back down – but even he knew it was only a matter of time before they would take over. It was all getting rather uncomfortable and he’d already wasted hours following a lead from the homicide department involving the grave of Matthias von Holindt’s wife. One of the detectives had claimed to have evidence the physicist visited the grave daily, regardless of anything else. Engels had posted a man there until he learned the officer supplying the information was no less than Detective Timo Meinholt – Klauser’s old partner, a man he suspected of colluding in some way with the physicist. Holindt could be as far away as Holland by now, Engels thought bitterly. All in all it was not a good time to be the top representative of the Kantonspolizei. Weighted down by these troubles that hovered like thunderclouds over his head, Engels stood at the front door, flanked by four officers as the landlady fumbled with the keys.

  ‘If you didn’t have a search warrant authorised by the mayor himself, I wouldn’t be opening this door, I can tell you that much. Fräulein Thorton is a nice girl, a good girl and I don’t for a minute believe she could have done anything illegal,’ the landlady, a tall, willowy, well-spoken woman in her late fifties, insisted, unimpressed by the show of weaponry on Engels’ men.

  The door swung open, revealing the bohemian furnishings Engels might have expected of an anthropologist. The small living room with the balcony seemed undisturbed, the cushions on the couch neatly stacked, the ashtray empty. Immediately the men fanned out, one climbing onto the balcony, another preparing to dust the glass-topped coffee table for prints. Engels and the other two walked through to the bedroom.

  The contrast was extreme: clothes, books and papers lay flung across the room. Engels wasn’t sure whether she’d been robbed or had just packed in a panic. Three of the chest drawers were open, clothes spilling onto the floor, hangers scattered everywhere, and the bed looked as if someone had just climbed out of it.

  ‘Chief Inspector!’ One of the officers beckoned him over to the desk, where there was a map marked up with pencil – like routes or tracks. Lying next to it was an open address book.

  As he looked at the entries, Engels noticed a business card on the floor. He picked it up. ‘Phone this number and find out if she’s booked any flights to France, and I’ll contact our French colleagues.’

  ‘But, Chief Inspector, shouldn’t we contact the US Embassy?’ the officer said. ‘She’s an American citizen…’

  ‘Who is wanted in connection with the murder on Swiss soil of a Swiss citizen. I think we might find a reason to delay that call, don’t you?’

  Matthias woke and lay for an instant not knowing where he was and whom he was with. Then it came to him – his brain lurching to make sense of the lurid print of Jesus with his chest flayed open, his heart studded with the crown of thorns, Sellotaped right next to a postcard of Elvis Presley. The long curve of a woman’s body was nestled against him. The gypsy camp, Helen, Liliane’s kidnapping. Hiding for hours among the Sinti, almost paralysed. That night he had fallen into one of those deep, dreamless sleeps more akin to being unconscious, surrendering dressed and in Helen’s arms. The two of them just fitted into the double-bed alcove, the roof only a couple of feet above their sleeping heads while, in the alcove below, Lilian
e shared a bed with her grandmother.

  Across the caravan Latcos lay on the couch under the window, the bluish light from outside filtering onto his sleeping face. With a shock, Matthias remembered how young his half-brother was, despite his swaggering authority and the fact that he was already a grandfather to a son from his twelve-year-old daughter. Latcos had already lived several lives.

  The air was stale with cigarette smoke and the smell of so many clothed people sleeping in the same space. The fire in the pot-belly stove had gone out and it was chilly inside the caravan. Carefully Matthias lifted Helen’s head without waking her, then swung his legs over the edge of the bunk and lowered himself to the floor. His watch said five a.m., and outside it was early dawn. They’d gone to sleep around one in the morning, which meant they’d had four hours’ sleep, but this was better than nothing. He rubbed his chin, the beard itchy and now thickening from a light growth. It feels alien, but that is good, he reminded himself. It was a reflection of how transformed he felt – an observation as perturbing as it was liberating. And so it was with some trepidation he pulled off the black cloth Keja had hung over the sliver of broken mirror above the kitchen sink (out of respect to the deceased Yojo) and looked into it.