The Stolen

by T. S. Learner

  ‘Okay! Okay! Mister, there’s no need to freak!’ Willi shouted, struggling to get into his T-shirt, the track marks in the creases of his arms clearly visible.

  ‘Get out before I call the police!’ Matthias lunged again.

  ‘Papa! Don’t!’ Liliane, the heroin now flooding her body, tried to stop her father, but didn’t have the coordination.

  ‘I’ll have you prosecuted for dealing and statutory rape!’ Matthias shouted in the young man’s face: all pimples, his pupils black pinpricks.

  ‘She’s eighteen!’

  ‘She’s fifteen, moron.’

  Willi swung round to Liliane. ‘You told me you were eighteen?’

  Liliane ran over and grabbed his arm. ‘I can explain…’

  He shook her off. ‘I have to go, he’ll have me arrested.’

  ‘Get your hands off her!’ Matthias swung a fist towards the youth, who ducked just in time.

  ‘You know where to find me,’ Willi told Liliane then made for the door.

  ‘Don’t go!’ But the youth grabbed his battered leather bag and bolted, the door slamming after him. Seconds later Matthias helped the weeping Liliane to her feet.

  ‘Don’t touch me! You drove him away! He’s my boyfriend…’

  ‘He’s a thug and a drug addict. I could have him arrested if I wanted. You promised me you stopped?’

  ‘I have. I just wanted a taste; it’s the only way I can blank the pictures in my head…’ Her voice began to slur and she flopped back onto the bed, her eyelids half-closed. He hated seeing her like this.

  ‘Why, Liliane? I’m sure if your mother was still alive…’

  ‘Well, she’s not, is she?’ she managed to snap back.

  He flinched then stroked her hand.

  ‘Why can’t you tell me what you see? Is it something to do with Mutti?’

  ‘You don’t understand me at all, do you?’ She stared up at him. ‘But then why should you? When you’re never around… and when you are, you’re always wrapped up in your work or your fucking flute playing…’

  Matthias struggled to keep his temper. Even in her somniferous drugged-up state Liliane had managed to wound him. ‘That’s not fair – I do the best I can.’ He got up wearily from the bed. Despite her accusations he was aware of the equation waiting for him, beckoning like a seductive mirage, something he could understand, escape into – like a cool pool for the brain to swim through, brushing up against all kinds of scientific possibilities – so much easier than the unfathomable emotions of an adolescent daughter. Just then Liliane’s cracked voice broke into his thoughts.

  ‘Four months, Papa, then I won’t be a minor any longer. I’m going to leave, go travelling. It’s going to be great…’

  ‘From now on you’re to stay in after school every night until I feel I can trust you again,’ he said firmly, but by the end of his sentence she’d nodded off.

  Matthias sat back down at his desk and stared out at the panorama beyond. How simple other people’s lives looked from afar: the lights of the houses glinting on the other side of the lake, the yellow cocoon of a car as it swung round the hillside, all so uncomplicated and straightforward while his own felt as if it were careering out of control – Liliane’s problems, the argument with his father, losing finance for the laboratory as well as the impending fundraiser. There was, at least, one definite means by which he could raise some of the money and continue his research, but it would mean forfeiting his financial security – his inheritance. He picked the telephone up and called his broker.

  Early that evening Timo Meinholt burst through the door of Klauser’s office interrupting the detective who was in the middle of a slice of pizza while studying the evening papers. Timo threw his considerable weight into a chair.

  ‘Ever thought of knocking first?’ Klauser growled, wiping the grease from his chin.

  ‘As instructed I started shadowing von Holindt,’ Timo retorted, ignoring his boss’s bad temper. ‘Apart from a trip to his doctor he visited his daughter-in-law’s grave at Friedhof Nordheim cemetery at three p.m. – five hours after you interviewed him. But it was odd.’

  ‘Odd in what way?’

  ‘Why would a man in a wheelchair visit the grave of his daughter-in-law on a freezing winter’s day? It’s not the anniversary of her death, and von Holindt is not religious by all accounts. It gets weirder. The first thing Christoph does when he gets to the grave is to reach up to the top of the gravestone and peel away a envelope someone has left there. He looks round then opens it. And I’m telling you whatever was written inside scared the shit out of him.’

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘Boss, his hands were shaking so much I thought he was going to have another stroke there and then. Anyhow, just as I thought that was it, I see another man, an overweight one in an expensive suit and city shoes, making his way across the wet grass. Thomas Mueller – two of the most prominent businessmen of this city, without security, on a fucking cold hill battling the wind.’

  ‘That makes sense. Marie von Holindt worked for Mueller Bank before the Holindt Watch Company. Thomas Mueller was her mentor.’ Timo looked at him, surprised. ‘Don’t look so amazed.’ Klauser waved the paper at him. ‘The business section of the Neue Zürcher Zeitung – worth reading; you learn a lot about crime on their pages.’

  ‘Both men might have known the dead woman, but I’m telling you they weren’t there to pay their respects, they were there to discuss something, something that ended up in an argument,’ Timo said.

  ‘About what?’

  ‘I couldn’t get close enough, no cover.’

  Klauser thought for a minute.

  ‘It was probably about investment. Mueller is a major shareholder – there are rumours the watch company is in financial straits and Mueller Bank has had to bail them out a few times. He’s probably worried about what is going to happen when Holindt steps down.’

  ‘A business meeting in a graveyard?’

  ‘Secrecy is paramount in business,’ Klauser retorted. ‘Mueller doesn’t have the testosterone to get involved with something like this.’

  But why leave a message in such an obscure place and what could have been in it to have terrified Christoph von Holindt, a man not easily scared? Having just lost his appetite, Klauser looked back at Timo. ‘Why meet now? And why one dead gypsy with a number tattooed on his arm?’

  ‘Maybe the murder’s just a coincidence.’ Timo’s gaze fell on the open file on Klauser’s desk. ‘So Christoph von Holindt’s son plays the flute?’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘Well, it’s not exactly very manly, is it?’ Timo offered.

  ‘What the fuck would you know about masculinity? Get out of here!’ Klauser yelled, throwing the rest of the pizza at him.

  It had been a long and tiring drive, winding around back roads and across fields, an afternoon and a sunset and now another dawn. Behind the wheel Latcos had used the hours to let a jumble of loosely connected emotions and thoughts stream through him as seamless as the changing road ahead. He loved this state – it was always when his most inspired ideas came to him – but this time it had been a softening of anger, a question of fighting his own ambivalence. The task of finding this half-monster, this half-brother, was his. A three-month-old baby is not responsible for his origins, he’d told himself; he is still half your blood. He found himself clinging to the argument: I must be the greater man – I am Rom.

  The branches of the surrounding forest were half-tipped by the rays of the rising sun. A rabbit bolted in front of the caravan, its white tail disappearing into the undergrowth on the other side. Latcos came to a fork in the road. He stopped the engine and climbed out. There was an old wooden signpost in the centre and a neglected apple orchard in the middle of the fork – the abandoned land of a forgotten farm. Latcos stepped over the low wooden fence and picked several of the apples, still grasped tightly by the trees. He bit into one – the withered apple was delicious – then he squinted up at the road sig
n. The shape of the German letters looked right, and the Sinti who had told him the best way of getting across the border into Switzerland had described a fork like this. His eyes travelled down the signpost and settled on a small Rom sign carved into the wood: two carved strokes with a circle marking the one on the right. It was a patrin, a secret sign left for him by the others who had come before. He was in the right place; they would be in Zürich by the afternoon. He turned to watch the rising sun, a flat disc against which the gnarled branches rested, the twisted arms of old men against a red pillow, wondering what the end of the day would bring. Was his uncle still living? Would he find this lost half-brother? Just then Keja called from the caravan.

  ‘He’s still alive, isn’t he, Latcos?’ She was lying on her side in the upper bed and he could see, even in the half-light, that her face was further marked by pain, a spider web of lines etched deeply into her skin. ‘The Nazi? He is still alive.’

  Reaching up, he took her hand and stroked it.

  ‘Were you dreaming?’

  ‘Not dreaming, seeing. Now there’s less time in front of me, the Past comes to steal my hope. But you know, don’t you? You know whether he lives?’

  ‘I don’t know. But I think there’s a chance he’s alive.’

  Keja let out a great sigh. ‘No matter, he is cursed. I cursed him, you know, the most terrible curse of your great-grandmother’s…’ She sounded delirious. Latcos leaned over and touched her forehead. She was burning up. He reached for the morphine.

  He was aggressively atheist, was Inspector Helmut Klauser. It was a reaction to his religious parents, country people who he believed had limited their lives and ambitions through the fear and superstition Christianity had imposed upon them. And the more horror he saw on the job, the more he thought he saw God for who he was – an absurd fairytale big daddy who would never rescue anyone, no matter how many times you asked, begged or pleaded. Yet now that he found himself facing a priest in a professional capacity it was hard not to like the earnest young man, his thin frame dwarfed by his robes, the shy stutter failing to hide the deep fear behind the large eyes. They sat in the detective’s office the morning after the murder, the file on the dead gypsy open between them at a photo of the body lying in the morgue, the dead man’s face clearly visible.

  ‘So, let me just get it straight for the record: you are Father Naverres and you are from the parish of Munsterhof. Does that mean you are based at St Peter’s?’

  ‘Goodness no, there haven’t been Catholic monks at St Peter’s since the Thirty Years’ War.’ The priest smiled.

  ‘Sorry, I’m an atheist myself – one cassock looks just like the next.’

  ‘For an atheist perhaps,’ the priest said dryly, ‘but many have died fighting over such differences.’

  ‘Another reason I’m an atheist.’

  ‘I will still pray for your soul.’

  ‘Thanks, but I wouldn’t want to waste any more of your time, so let’s get to the real reason you’re here.’ Klauser pushed the photograph across the table. ‘You recognise this man?’

  ‘Absolutely. He came to the parish about four days ago. He’d heard that I’d worked with his people.’

  ‘His people?’

  ‘He was a Kalderash gypsy – originally from the Ukraine, his people have been settled in Romania since the war. They are traditionally metalworkers, copper, gold… My fellow priests ridiculed me when I made the decision to try and reach out to the community: a gypsy in a congregation will clear a church quicker than a fire, they all said. All gypsies will lie to us, the gadjés, they claimed. They all regard this as their prerogative, they warned me. But I saw it as my spiritual duty, a calling if you like. I learned Romanes. I requested a posting in Subiu in Romania. Here, though, I work with the Jensch and Sinti.’

  ‘Fascinating,’ Klauser said, trying to sound more interested, ‘but what did this particular gypsy want?’

  ‘He wanted me to write a letter for him – he was illiterate – to send to his sister if he was to be found dead.’

  ‘You have the letter?’

  ‘I sent it as instructed as soon as I heard about the murder.’

  ‘Can you tell me what was in it?’

  ‘That would be breaking my holy vow – the letter was a confession.’

  ‘And by not telling me you could be breaking the law.’

  Stalemate. The priest directed his gaze somewhere above the detective’s head as if searching for a possible halo. He’ll find no redemption there, Klauser reflected. The young man’s hands were clasped, knuckles white with tension, and fear rose off him like sweat. Some revelation in the letter had terrified him. Finally he spoke, his faltering voice barely a whisper.

  ‘The letter was an apology for failing to find the people who had stolen the great treasure of their family – he called it the statuette of Sara la Kali. And he said that if he died they should burn his vurdon as is the tradition, sell his house and paint the door so that his spirit wouldn’t recognise it, and that his nephew should inherit his copper-making tools.’

  ‘Did the old man name the people who stole this… what did you call it?’

  ‘The statuette of Sara la Kali – the black Sara. She is the patron saint of the gypsies, famous for escorting Our Lady to shore and to safety in the town of Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer. Gypsies from all over the world make the pilgrimage there. I had heard of the statuette – in Romania. An old woman told me of it once. It was the great secret of one of the clans there, so powerful that it was considered bibaxt – bad luck – even to whisper of it. It disappeared during the war.’

  ‘Interesting…’ Klauser wondered what the priest wasn’t telling him. ‘So, back to my original question, did the victim name the people he thought had stolen this holy relic?’ He failed to keep the scepticism out of his voice.

  ‘No. But I think we can assume they are powerful in this town.’

  ‘Powerful enough to hire an assassin,’ Klauser said. ‘So, did our victim have a name?’

  ‘Yojo, that was all he told me.’ The priest looked back down at the photograph. ‘Was his death swift?’

  ‘Instant. I doubt whether he even knew.’

  ‘Then thanks be to God that I gave him his last rites.’

  Surprised, the detective looked across at the young cleric. ‘That’s a little unorthodox; he was only in his fifties. Why did he think he might die?’

  ‘He insisted.’ Again, there was that gleam of terror.

  ‘They tried to kill him before they actually succeeded, didn’t they?’ Klauser hazarded. The priest didn’t answer, but his face said everything. ‘Father, are you in need of police protection?’

  ‘Goodness no, I have higher powers protecting me,’ he retorted, as if it were the detective who was in need of reassurance. And Klauser, to his chagrin, found himself feeling paternalistic towards the young cleric.

  FOUR

  The large placard announcing the Kronos Laboratory Press Conference, Wednesday 13 January 1982, was placed outside the reception room of the Dolder Grand hotel, a white fairytale castle with turrets set high over Zürich on the Kurhausstrasse. Matthias loitered outside the door trying to relax, Jethro Tull blaring into the headphones of his Walkman. Dressed in a suit and the scarf Marie had knitted him years ago, a lucky talisman he seldom took off, he closed his eyes and let the music clear his mind. For a moment the world transformed into a kaleidoscope of shifting molecular structures – beautiful and sound in their spatial place and logic. A tap on the shoulder jolted him rudely back into the moment. An attractive woman in her late thirties looked up at him, grinning.

  ‘Good luck, Herr Professor, or should I say maestro?’ she added cheekily referring to his swaying to the music. Taken aback, Matthias tried to place her.

  Smiling at his confusion, she pointed to her nametag.

  ‘Vogue – I’m covering you as a von Holindt for the social pages, so your dancing skills are duly noted.’ She winked then swirled round. With a sinking h
eart Matthias watched her sashay into the reception room; beautiful women terrified him, and it was still a surprise to him that he was attractive to women. As it was, his wife had originally seduced him, and in total, he’d only known a couple of women. One like that would eat me for breakfast then spit me out for tea, he concluded, determined not to be distracted. Through the half-open door he could see the rows of journalists, some seated already, dictaphones and notebooks at the ready. Now he felt the onset of stage fright. He glanced down at his presentation notes – IBM can give them statistics, grind out the figures, but can they give them innovation? No, Matthias reminded himself, beginning to pump up his confidence, Bern laboratories might present a good angle on the esoteric application of superconductivity, but when it came to commercial application… He tried to dismiss an intrusive sense of reality that threatened to undermine his bravado. We will attract money but that might involve compromise and am I ready to compromise? he wondered. To sell out, to open Pandora’s box on the whole question of superconductive weapons, even if the future of the company is jeopardised?