The Stolen

by T. S. Learner

  ‘So was the American really DARPA?’ Jannick’s voice broke into his reverie.

  ‘CIA, I suspect, here on behalf of DARPA.’

  Jannick whistled. ‘So, what did he want?’

  ‘My soul,’ Matthias answered flatly.

  ‘I hope you sold it and for a good price. They could fund us for decades.’

  They were interrupted by a polite cough; the slim, sharp-featured man Matthias had seen earlier stood holding out his hand.

  ‘Destin Viscon, entrepreneur. We met earlier.’ At closer view, the Frenchman was older than Matthias had originally thought, perhaps late thirties. His muscular physique seemed at odds with his face which had a Renaissance beauty about it. But most striking were his eyes: the left was blue while the right was green. It was hard not to stare.

  ‘You are, of course, Herr Professor Matthias von Holindt and this is Herr Doktor Jannick Lund.’ The three men shook hands, Matthias noting that Jannick appeared impressed the man knew his name.

  ‘International Alliance Industries?’ Matthias ventured. ‘I can’t say I’ve heard of you guys.’

  ‘Discreet, small but not without power. Herr Professor, I couldn’t help overhearing your conversation with the American giant – I’m obnoxious that way.’

  Matthias laughed. ‘You’re forgiven.’

  ‘He was a little overbearing, but you are looking for investors, potential partners, right?’

  Just then Matthias noticed Bertholt Tannen standing at the back of the hall. The fact that his father’s assistant should be here was disturbing; he had no choice but to deal with it immediately. ‘Will you excuse me? Jannick can answer all your questions as well as I can,’ he said, before pushing his way through the milling crowd.

  ‘I’m assuming that man is important,’ Destin said, slightly offended.

  Jannick shrugged apologetically. ‘Christoph von Holindt’s assistant.’

  ‘So it’s true the son has lost the father’s backing?’ Destin asked, gambling on the resentment he’d sensed from the younger scientist towards his employer.

  ‘Maybe,’ Jannick said. ‘Where did you say your company was based?’

  ‘I didn’t, but my clients are mainly in the Middle East and North Africa. An interesting man, your employer.’

  ‘A little black and white when it comes to business partners. He doesn’t understand the importance of compromise.’

  ‘Indeed? And it must be constraining having such a strong personality always looking over your shoulder.’

  It was rare a potential investor took an assistant’s feelings into account. Jannick warmed to the Frenchman.

  ‘It is, although we conduct our research quite separately. In fact a number of the lab’s breakthroughs could be attributed to my research.’ This was an exaggeration, but Jannick felt he never got the recognition he deserved.

  ‘So maybe I should go into partnership with you?’ the Frenchman joked; Jannick did not smile.

  ‘Matthias might be a genius physicist, but he’s naive economically. An idealist. Science should transcend petty morals, don’t you think?’

  Now Jannick had Destin’s full attention.

  ‘Absolutely. I do understand how a career like this is often a labour of love, and love doesn’t pay the bills, especially when it’s accompanied by a lack of recognition. I know how painful that can be.’

  Jannick smiled wryly. ‘Indeed. I’d like to think I’d have somewhere to go, to really let my own vision fly – a place where innovation can be transformed into hard product, science into commerce. I am a practical man and Matthias’s… sensitivity… is getting in the way of my practicality.’ There was no need to be more specific; both men knew the negotiation was on. ‘So if there’s anything you’d like to know about the laboratory and the research, anything at all…’ Jannick pressed his card into Destin’s hand. Destin studied him carefully; the Dane was young, egocentric and hungry – the perfect entry into the Kronos Laboratory.

  ‘Oh, don’t worry, I’ll be calling you.’

  It was past one by the time Klauser stepped out of the discreet doorway, wiping lipstick from his neck. He started to hum, an old pop song from his early years as a detective, when the whole future seemed to stretch out in front of him, when he thought he was on a real moral quest, when evil seemed simple. Suddenly the words to the tune formed themselves and danced across his tongue: ‘… Like a puppet on a string…’ Sandie Shaw, Eurovision winner 1967. Was that what he’d become, a puppet on a string? Had he been played all these years? And was the man in the mask the puppeteer? He needed to start at the beginning again, at the very first clue – the dead gypsy. He glanced up at the street sign then changed direction and began to walk towards the city morgue. As he turned, a young man in an anorak moved out of the shadows and started walking several paces behind.

  The milling journalists seemed to be getting louder and drunker. Pushing his way through, Matthias cornered the assistant, who, in his dark suit, looked like an undertaker at the wrong funeral. ‘Spying on me, Bertholt?’ Bertholt’s lubricious expression shifted into the semblance of a smile.

  ‘Not at all, Matthias, but your father wanted a report.’

  ‘If he wanted to see me fail, he could have come himself.’

  ‘But I see there’s some real interest here.’ Bertholt glanced round the room. ‘The military, pharmaceuticals, aviation – all kinds of bedfellows, desirable and less desirable.’

  ‘Who I partner up with is my own business, not my father’s. When he withdrew funding he withdrew his stake in the laboratory.’ Matthias ushered one of the hotel staff over. ‘Gustav will see you out.’

  He waited until Bertholt had been escorted out of the hotel then went back to Jannick, who was standing by himself.

  ‘Trouble?’

  ‘Just some amateur sleuthing. I guess my father isn’t as indifferent as he pretends. By the way the French entrepreneur – any luck there?’

  ‘Maybe, but you won’t like his client list.’

  ‘Why’s that?’

  Jannick smiled. ‘Well, let’s just say they involve nations like Libya and Uganda. And I know you take a certain moral stance on such matters.’

  ‘Not me, the whole laboratory. I haven’t dedicated my life to superconductivity so that the arms industry can have a new generation of weapons.’

  ‘You really think it’s that simple, don’t you?’

  ‘It is that simple.’

  The morgue was cold, inhospitable and a fantastic reminder of how transient life was. It was one of Inspector Helmut Klauser’s favourite places, coming a close second to brothels – another venue he found to be a bracing reminder of one’s own mortality. One of the benefits of being an atheist, he noted as he waited for the attendant to open the cold steel locker door behind which John Doe No. 457 lay, was to find eternity in strange places. The attendant unzipped the body bag with professional indifference, like a greengrocer about to display an unusual piece of fruit.

  ‘Still unidentified?’ he asked.

  ‘Sort of.’

  ‘Well, that sort don’t recognise borders, do they?’

  ‘What sort?’ Klauser asked tersely.

  ‘Jews.’ The attendant turned one of the corpse’s wrists over so the tattooed number could be seen. ‘The number; stands to reason, dunnit.’

  ‘There were gypsies in the camps also.’

  ‘Were there?’ The attendant seemed surprised. ‘That explains the hands, then. The calluses. When did you see a Jew with working hands?’ Sometimes the attitudes of his own people profoundly depressed Klauser. ‘Though as murders go, this was a top-notch job – professional, one bullet through the brain. He won’t even have known he was dead.’

  ‘Until afterwards?’

  ‘Exactly my point,’ the attendant, missing the irony, retorted smugly. Just then a telephone rang and he rushed off to answer it. Klauser walked round the corpse and looked at the blanched face.

  ‘So, who are you, and why were yo
u outside the von Holindt store?’ he asked quietly, as if the dead man might sit up and reply. He was interrupted by the reappearance of the attendant.

  ‘You’re in luck, detective; there’s a young man at front office, looking for his uncle. Thinks he might have ended up in here. Thing is, he’s a gypsy.’

  The detective watched respectfully as Latcos said a prayer in Romanes before covering up the face. The young gypsy had seemed shocked but not entirely surprised to see the corpse.

  ‘So it is your uncle?’ Klauser asked gently.

  ‘He survived so much and to die like this…’ Latcos’s voice broke.

  ‘Do you know why he might have been murdered? It was a professional job.’

  Latcos, angered by the use of the word professional, stared defiantly at the inspector. He didn’t like police and he particularly disliked Swiss-German policemen. He’d heard the stories of how the Swiss used to hunt out gypsies like animals, stories handed down by his grandfather and his grandfather before him – then in his living memory.

  ‘Professional?’

  ‘I think someone paid an expert a lot of money to kill your uncle. Did he have any enemies, for example, in his own community?’

  Latcos stared at Klauser. ‘No one even knew he was in Switzerland, but no, my uncle had no enemies; he was very loved. A great man.’ Already he regretted sharing that much with the policeman. Forgive me, Uncle, he told himself silently.

  Klauser pulled out the folded drawing he’d found on the corpse. Crumpled and grimy with dust, it looked rather pathetic.

  ‘Does this symbol mean anything to you?’

  Latcos looked him straight in the eye. ‘No,’ he lied.

  Keja sat on the wooden doorstep of the caravan, staring over the river. Zürich glowed in the near distance and the moon was loud above her head, its whispering seeming to weave in and out of her grieving, the rocking of her shrunken body wrapped in her blackest shawl.

  ‘I am remembering,’ she whispered to Yojo’s spirit, dancing as it was on the water’s surface, ‘my phral, I am remembering.’

  She leaned back against the cool wood, eyes closed, Yojo’s medallion clutched between her fingers, her mind cast back to the day the world changed, the morning her brother, bare-chested, galloped away from the German soldiers.

  ‘Run,’ she willed him, defiant and beautiful in his youthfulness. ‘Run and never be caught.’

  When she opened her eyes the spirit was gone, but there was another voice, a girl’s, and her soul was calling blindly out from the direction of the city.

  It was past midnight. Liliane waited until she heard the click of Matthias’s bedroom door, then smoothed down her studded leather miniskirt. If she hurried she could still get to Rote Fabrik in time to see Willi’s band – they wouldn’t be on until one a.m. and she was determined to see him. She stood in front of the mirror and gelled her fringe so that it stuck up like a quiff, then painted her eyelids and lips black. After putting on her favourite bangles she slipped her hand under the top drawer of her dressing table and peeled off an envelope that had been stuck to the underside. Inside was a hundred Swiss francs, money she’d made selling on some cocaine to an assistant teacher at school. She tucked the notes into her bra, then after packing her stilettos into her handbag, she slipped on her walking shoes over her torn fishnets, opened the window and climbed out into the chilly night. She looked over at her father’s window. The light was off. She jumped, landing neatly on both feet. Somewhere in the dark recesses of the garden an animal shrieked. Holding her breath, Liliane glanced back up at Matthias’s window. His light stayed off.

  The body, still in its cassock, swung gently at the end of the rope that had been thrown over a wooden beam. The face, a purple swollen grotesque parody of its living counterpart, spun gently round like a stuffed toy at a funfair arcade. The beam was at least eight feet up and the Spartan iron bed in the corner of the room wouldn’t have been high enough for him to have reached the beam or the end of the rope. And, mysteriously, there was nothing else in the room that could have helped him climb. Klauser had seen enough.

  ‘Cut him down,’ he instructed his men.

  As they placed the corpse into a body bag, he pulled out his yo-yo and paced the room, yo-yoing as he brainstormed – for a bedroom, even for a priest, it appeared suspiciously empty. Apart from a wooden cross on the wall, a rosary hung over a bedpost and a box with a spare cassock and underwear pushed under the bed, the only item of note was the threadbare rug on the stone floor. Earlier the housekeeper of the boarding house, almost hysterical with shock, had told the detective that the priest could not possibly have been in his right mind to commit a mortal sin knowingly. When Klauser had managed to calm her down, she finally remembered that the priest had received two visitors earlier that evening – two older, well-dressed men.

  ‘Ever so polite,’ she’d told Klauser. ‘Real gentlemen. I thought they must have been rich patrons of the parish.’

  After which Klauser had noted the time of their arrival and the curious fact that the housekeeper had not noticed them leave. He had no doubt the priest had been murdered. The question was – why?

  Klauser slipped the yo-yo back into his pocket, then threw off the bed’s thin cotton blanket, flipped the mattress and ran his hands over it. Halfway down his fingers came across a bulge hidden under the striped cotton. Using his pocket knife he cut along the side of the cover.

  It was a leather-embossed book, full of pictures of clocks, its publication date recorded as 1792. A clear plastic cover protected it, printed with a name and address:

  Eberhard Neumann Galerie

  Rindermarkt 56

  Zürich

  Crouching down, Klauser examined the spine of the book. There was a slight kink a third of the way through, and a brown stain ran like fine strata at the same point. He opened the book to the stained pages. The first paragraph was covered by the same rusty-brown mark, as if something had been spilt over the paper accidentally. Blood, old blood, maybe decades old. Klauser could tell by the way it had begun to fade, the words still visible through it. They described a set of box clocks commissioned by Marie Antoinette in 1790. The paragraph finished with the fact that the French queen had been executed before the commission was completed; even more intriguing were etchings of the clocks on the opposite page.

  Each one symbolised a different element – a blue case for Water, with waves etched into the glass, a ceramic case for Earth, a gold metal case symbolising Fire and a clear glass case representing Air. Next to each clock was the symbol for that particular element: a blank triangle balancing on a point for Water, another blank triangle sitting on its base for Fire, a third triangle, its base sitting on the ground with its tip marked off symbolising Air, and beside the last box clock, representing Earth, a triangle balancing on a sectioned-off tip.

  Klauser recognised the clocks immediately – they were the ones he’d seen in Christoph von Holindt’s study only two days ago. He turned to the flyleaf and there, on a card in bold print, were the words: Given to me for preservation work on the leather by Christoph von Holindt.

  Liliane leaned over the bar and, shouting over the frenetic guitar and drums, ordered a vodka. The cocaine she’d snorted in the ladies’ toilet was roaring through her and she had the added thrill of knowing that by even being in the bar she was breaking the law. Wilhelm was on stage tearing at the struts of his guitar; she’d arrived late and his band was already halfway through their first set. He hadn’t yet seen her in the crowd and already a knot of adoring female fans were head-banging in front of the stage. A particularly good-looking blonde in tight leather pants strutted in front of the guitarist.

  When the band finished their set, Willi took off his guitar, stepped from the stage and joined the blonde. Liliane started pushing her way to the front.

  Destin Viscon, leaning on the wall near the speakers and unrecognisable in black jeans and a tight strategically ripped black T-shirt that displayed his toned torso and tatt
oos, watched the physicist’s daughter make her way through the bobbing heads. He’d been there for an hour biding his time. Her profile had been thorough, it had been easy to locate her school, and both the Rote Fabrik club and Baph Records on the Marktgasse – hangs of the local punk scene. Destin had calculated that she would be at the gig that night. Nevertheless it was intensely gratifying to see the prey flutter so easily into the trap.