The projector’s beam brightened once more and the invisible cameraman no longer limited himself to shooting inanimate bathroom objects. The towel had disappeared and the new camera angle showed a corner bath in which a woman was seated, her back turned whilst she pinned up her hair.
Before I could tell what made me feel so uneasy about this, a man’s naked buttocks came into shot, almost filling the screen. The giggling, which had sounded faintly frivolous until now, took on a suggestive note when the man stepped up to the bath and proceeded to massage the woman’s shoulders. His slightly stooping posture indicated that her shoulders were not the only parts of her anatomy he was kneading.
I felt suddenly dirty, a voyeur who had invaded a stranger’s privacy and was on the verge of crossing a threshold that would make it impossible for him to regain his decency.
I’d felt as shabby as this once before, just before I married Nicci. She was having to put in a vast amount of overtime, and I’d developed an irrational fear that she might be having an affair with someone. Her mobile, which she always left overnight on the shoe locker in our hallway, found its way into my hand. I don’t know what eventually deterred me from looking through her text messages. Today, years later, I was glad I hadn’t done so, even though I’d never been able to shake off the faint suspicion that she might have been cheating on me. I had retained my decency, and that was more important to me.
I felt doubly uncomfortable now, as I peered through that living-room window and caught the owner of the house watching a home-made porn film. Although I still hadn’t sighted Traunstein himself, I felt sure that the overflowing ashtray and half-empty bottle of bourbon on the coffee table beside the leather armchair were his.
I went right up to the terrace door and stood there irresolutely. I hesitated just as I had when I was on the point of opening Nicci’s mobile and checking her text messages. But tonight, I knew, I would go a stage further.
Maybe I’m only here because of a blind girl’s demons, I thought as I put out my hand. Maybe Alina is just a screwball and Traunstein has nothing to do with his children’s disappearance.
In the firm expectation that the door would be locked, I turned the cold brass handle.
But the fact remains, something here stinks.
Then, when the door yielded and swung silently inwards, I added an even feebler excuse for my curiosity: And I’d be a poor journalist if I didn’t get to the bottom of it.
58
I recognized Thomas Traunstein the instant he turned towards me. He was still wearing the pale-brown double-breasted suit he’d worn at yesterday’s press conference, when he made a public appeal for help in finding his children. But it looked as if he’d slept in it in the meantime. Crumpled and stained in several places, it looked thoroughly incongruous on the owner of Berlin’s biggest dry-cleaning chain.
But not as incongruous as this whole scenario.
Traunstein hadn’t heard me come in at first. It wasn’t until I cleared my throat and called his name that he made a rather clumsy attempt to heave himself out of a deep armchair.
Without success. Half a bottle of bourbon had completely sapped his energy.
‘W-what’re you doing here?’ he mumbled when I was standing in front of him. His bleary eyes displayed the dull-witted aggression typical of a drunk who is only looking for an excuse to start a punch-up.
‘I could ask you the same thing,’ I retorted, glancing at the screen. The images were growing more and more explicit. The woman in the bath had turned round, her head level with the man’s hips and both her hands clutching his buttocks. Watching porn in the privacy of your own home certainly wasn’t prohibited. Not even when you’d been a widower for only a day and a half and you knew that your offspring were in the clutches of a madman.
It isn’t prohibited, but that doesn’t make it right.
‘Don’t you have anything better to do?’ I asked him.
He ran his fingers through his tousled hair and stared at me uncomprehendingly. I couldn’t tell whether he was puzzled by my question or simply wondering who the hell had suddenly invaded his living room.
‘What do you want?’ he asked after a longish pause. I had been looking around for some indication of where the kitchen was. If I was going to get the man back on his feet, I would need to brew him some coffee.
‘We need to talk,’ I said curtly.
‘What about?’ Traunstein barked. He blinked wearily, making no attempt to wipe the dribble off his chin.
‘About whether you may know something that could lead us to the man who murdered your wife.’
Whether she called you just before her death. Whether you actually warned her not to go down into the cellar.
‘Lucia was a whore!’ he yelled hoarsely. ‘A filthy whore!’
I started as if his hate-filled words had slapped my face.
‘All she did was screw around.’ He reached for a remote control on the coffee table and, with an accuracy remarkable for a man in his condition, zapped the volume control.
The moaning left no doubt as to what the couple in the corner bath were up to.
‘My house,’ Traunstein said thickly. ‘This is my house. My bathroom. My wife.’ He laughed hysterically. ‘Even my fucking camera. But that wanker there...’ – he gestured derisively at the screen, which was once more occupied entirely by the man’s hairy hind quarters – ‘... isn’t me.’
‘Look,’ I said soothingly, ‘your marital problems don’t concern me…’
The truth is, nothing here concerns me. I’m merely chasing around after a blind girl’s visions.
‘… But shouldn’t you be helping to look for your children?’
‘For Lea? For Toby? The hell with them!’
I thought I’d misheard at first, but he repeated the last words and actually spat on the floor.
‘Those lousy brats aren’t mine!’
Traunstein dropped the remote control but finally managed to haul himself to his feet. Standing there unsteadily with one hand on the back of the armchair, he looked me in the eye. I felt he was on the brink of a nervous breakdown.
‘They aren’t mine, understand?’
No, I didn’t. To be honest, I didn’t understand a thing right then. The truth was to hit me all the harder only moments later – roughly at the same time as Traunstein, too, began to catch on. He stared at me intently.
Some disturbing thought was slowly but surely surfacing in his drink-fuddled mind. His features tensed, as did the rest of his hitherto limp physique.
‘I know who you are, damn it! I found your wallet today – I saw your ID.’
I nodded. Not in agreement but because pieces of the jigsaw were slowly fitting together in my head too.
I now knew why the woman’s giggle had disturbed me so much when I heard it outside on the terrace. Why Traunstein’s personality seemed so familiar although I’d never met him in the flesh. Not that that was necessary. I’d heard so many descriptive anecdotes about him, I’d stored a very detailed picture of him in my mind. It was not only negative but corresponded to the real thing in every detail. Even his crude vocabulary was familiar to me.
‘Lucia was a filthy whore. Those lousy brats aren’t mine.’
‘Shit, you’re that newshound! You already shot one woman, and now you’ve done for my wife as well!’
Traunstein was now standing so close to me, I could smell his foul breath. It reeked of Jim Beam and tobacco.
‘It was you. You did it!’
I shrank back and caught sight of the screen, driving the last nail into a coffin of terrible certainty.
Her picture hadn’t yet been published, perhaps because photos of her kidnapped children were more attention-grabbing and news editors wanted to save shots of her corpse for a day when there was no fresh information about the Eye Collector to print. Or perhaps I’d simply failed to see her picture because I’d disappeared from the scene for the last few hours.
I’ve been far too intent on my
self.
The woman had got out of the bath. Her pinned-up hair had come loose again and was cascading over her breasts. When she laughed at the camera, recognition smote me like a fist and expelled every last vestige of joy from my soul.
Dear God, please don’t let it be true, I thought, simultaneously realizing why she hadn’t answered my calls. We would never again meet in that seedy club, never again pursue our intimate conversations.
And never fall in love.
I felt like weeping and yelling at the same time, but nothing I did would make any difference.
Charlie was dead.
And I would very soon join her, if I copped a bullet from the gun her husband was pointing at me.
57
(9 HOURS 17 MINUTES TO THE DEADLINE)
PHILIPP STOYA
(DETECTIVE SUPERINTENDENT, HOMICIDE)
Hohlfort was in his element. He had reassumed his benign, talk-show smile and seemed, in spite of his disability, to be a thoroughly happy man. Happy to acquaint two humble policemen with his theories on motive and modus operandi. Stoya wondered if he himself would some day find the time and leisure to parlay his professional experiences into a book. Nowadays every idiot wrote his memoirs, signed autographs at book festivals and presented his mug to the camera. Why shouldn’t he be granted an opportunity to boost his income, not to mention his public image, as soon as he left this shit behind him?
‘We may safely assume that there was some key event in the murderer’s formative phase – a traumatic experience, probably. Killers have often been bullied, maltreated or abused in childhood.’
‘Oh, sure,’ Scholle said derisively, ‘the Eye Collector is the real victim. That’s every criminal’s stock excuse!’
He had risen to turn the heating down a little. It was almost impossible to maintain an even temperature in the windowless interview room at police headquarters. In summer you shivered because of the air conditioning, which had been installed as an afterthought, and in winter the overheated room gave you a headache.
‘You’re right. Nearly every violent criminal hails from a dysfunctional background, so that assumption isn’t much of a help to us.’ Hohlfort picked up his briefcase, which he’d deposited beside his wheelchair, and put it on his lap. Deftly opening it, he removed a bulky folder. This he placed on the table in front of them. ‘Fortunately, however, these mutilations provide us with some important clues.’
He opened the folder with a flourish and turned it so that Stoya and Scholle could see the horrific photographs of the murder victims.
As if I could ever forget those little bodies and their empty eye sockets, thought Stoya, stung by the professor’s histrionic gesture.
‘Clues?’ he said impatiently. ‘Can you be more specific?’
‘Every criminal has an objective. It may be incomprehensible to a normal person, but it exists nonetheless. And, in the Eye Collector’s case, it’s patently obvious.’
‘Of course it is,’ Scholle snapped, pointing to the folder. ‘He’s a sadistic paedophile. He gets his rocks off by torturing little kids.’
‘Wrong. What suggests against that theory is the absence of any other traces of abuse on his victims.’ Hohlfort gave a schoolmasterly shake of the head. ‘And a sex crime wouldn’t account of the removal of the left eye, would it?’
Although the question was directed at Scholle, who was clearly the professor’s target, it was Stoya who replied.
‘Killers who cover their victims’ eyes are usually performing a symbolic act and trying to undo what they’ve done. Unable to endure the sight of their handiwork, they shut their victims’ eyes in lieu of their own.’
‘But then the Eye Collector would have excised both eyes,’ Hohlfort countered. He picked up a photograph of the first victim, little Karla Strahl, and held it so the two detectives could see it. Suppressing an urge to look away, Stoya stared instead at the elderly profiler’s permatanned face.
‘So he collects trophies?’ said Scholle.
Hohlfort gave a thin-lipped smile. ‘Trophies, mementoes, rewards – those are the first thing a profiler in a cheap thriller thinks of whenever some portion of a victim’s anatomy is missing.’ He shook his head vigorously. ‘No, I think we’ve been misled by the Eye Collector sobriquet. He isn’t a collector.’
‘So what is he?’
‘I would prefer to describe him as a transformer. He manufactures a physical condition. He changes the nature of children by transforming them into Cyclopes.’
‘Huh?’ Scholle had sat down again and was tilting his chair back.
‘The mythical creatures whose most noticeable feature was their single eye.’ Hohlfort’s tongue shot out and moistened his upper lip, reminding Stoya of a lizard. ‘Although I’m sure you’re well acquainted with the ancient Greek myths,’ he went on with a complacent smile in Scholle’s direction, ‘permit me to indulge in a brief digression.’
He returned the photo of murdered Karla to the folder, which he closed.
‘The first and probably best-known Cyclopes were the offspring of Uranus and Gaea, who, as we all know, symbolizes Mother Earth. Gaea and Uranus, the sky god, produced three Cyclopes in all, but they were hated by their father. Uranus detested them so much...’ – Hohlfort paused briefly to lend his ensuing words greater emphasis – ‘... that he hid them!’
‘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.’
56
(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.