Eye Collector, The (15 page)

‘Where?’ Stoya had momentarily wondered whether they ought to waste any more time on Hohlfort’s effusions, but the crippled academic had now regained his full attention.

‘Deep in the earth,’ the professor said. ‘He hid his children in Tartarus. That was the gods’ name for a part of the underworld even deeper than Hades.’

Stoya’s involuntary nod evoked a nod of agreement from Hohlfort. ‘I see you recognize the analogies.’

‘So what happened to the one-eyed children?’ asked Scholle, who had briefly stopped tilting his chair.

‘They were personally freed by Zeus, the most senior of all the Greek gods. The Cyclopes were so grateful for their release, they made Zeus a gift of thunder and lightning.’

‘Your general knowledge is most impressive, professor, but—’

‘Have your deliberations produced a theory we can actually work with?’ asked Stoya, completing the sentence before Scholle could end it on a considerably less courteous note.

Hohlfort gave another of his grins. He suddenly looked so filled with vitality, Stoya half expected him to leap out of his wheelchair.

‘I would go so far as to state that I’ve developed more than just a theory. I can provide you with a very, very important lead.’

Hohlfort inserted another pregnant pause for effect. Nothing could be heard but the incessant gurgling of the decrepit central heating system. Then he cleared his throat and said, in an almost
pastoral tone, ‘The Eye Collector selects children who have been disowned by their fathers.’

‘Why?’ The two detectives spoke almost in unison.

Hohlfort’s expression conveyed that it would be beneath his dignity to utter such a self-evident truth aloud, but he finally deigned to do so:

‘Because, like the Cyclopes of Greek mythology, those children are the product of an illicit relationship.’

(9 HOURS 11 MINUTES TO THE DEADLINE)

ALEXANDER ZORBACH

‘This is wrong,’ Alina said dully. She was breathing fast and her eyes were fluttering restlessly beneath her closed eyelids. ‘We shouldn’t do
it.’

‘Don’t worry,’ I told her, hoping that she couldn’t hear the desperation in my voice. ‘This won’t take long.’ I tried to shepherd her into the room, but
she indignantly pushed my hand away.

I understand,
I thought, relieved that she couldn’t see the tears in my eyes.
I don’t want to go back in there either, but this isn’t just professional any more.
It’s personal.

Stunned by the fact of Charlie’s death, I initially made no attempt to defend myself against her husband. I didn’t know how the gun had suddenly appeared in his hand – nor, to
be honest, had I any wish to speculate on that or the reason why he hadn’t shot me.

You don’t have to be a psychologist to guess what an unfortunate man intends to do with a loaded gun in the darkest, loneliest hour of his life. If Traunstein had meant to turn it on
himself, alcohol had not only robbed him of the strength to do so but rendered him even less capable of shooting me. And so, while we stood confronting one another, paralysed by the shock of
realization, the gun had slipped from his hand to the thickly carpeted floor. It was still lying beside the armchair.

‘Why are we here?’ asked Alina.

‘For some answers.’

My fate seemed to be linked to that of the Eye Collector by an invisible rope that was tightening around me minute by minute. Although I could barely endure my grief for Charlie, whose real name
I’d just been compelled to learn in the cruellest way, I couldn’t simply leave. I needed certainty, which was why I’d gone back to the car and persuaded Alina to accompany me into
Traunstein’s house.

‘I smell cigarette smoke, drink and sweat,’ she said distastefully, one hand on the door handle, the other gripping my arm at the spot where I’d stuck the nicotine patch.
‘You mean there’s something else?’

Oh yes, there is.

I gently removed her hand from the door handle and led her into the living room, where the projector still supplied the only lighting. I had stopped the film so as not to see those unbearable
images any longer. They reminded me that I had lost yet another important person in my life, this time for good.

I cleared my throat. Traunstein raised his head and began to whimper softly.

Alina froze. ‘Who’s that?’ she demanded. When the moans became louder she squeezed my hand tightly. ‘What on earth’s the matter with him?’

‘He’s fine,’ I said.

‘Why doesn’t he speak?’

‘I gagged him.’

With the handkerchief from his breast pocket, to be exact.

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.’

(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.’

(8 HOURS 52 MINUTES TO THE DEADLINE)

ALEXANDER ZORBACH

‘At his place?’

‘Yes.’