The Stolen

by T. S. Learner

  Matthias recognised the young detective’s voice immediately but what was more disturbing was Timo Meinholt’s low and anxious tone.

  ‘Timo?’ Why was he phoning so early?

  ‘You have to get out now… there’s been a murder at the laboratory, Jannick Lund…’

  ‘Oh no…’ So the retaliation has finally started. All he could think of was Jannick’s face when he looked up from the microscope: the same expression of excitement and astonishment he’d known was on his own face. Whom had Jannick told?

  ‘Matthias, listen to me, focus on my voice, there is a patrol car heading over to your house to bring you in for questioning right now. Engels’ men. You don’t stand a chance. Leave immediately, go out the back way, don’t use any of the main roads, disappear for a while.’

  ‘What about my daughter?’

  ‘They want you not her. Is there someone else at the house?’

  ‘My housekeeper.’

  ‘Good, tell her not to let anyone in until I get there, which will be in an hour or so. But promise me you get out now.’

  ‘I’m going, how do I reach you?’

  ‘You don’t. They’ll be watching me too. You’re on your own.’ The line went dead.

  In minutes Matthias was in his car, accelerating down the back roads of Küsnacht.

  Helen tried to call Matthias again. The first time she’d dialled the line was engaged. The phone, she knew, was by his bed. This time the phone just kept ringing out, as if there were now no one there to answer it. Where had Matthias got to?

  Matthias watched the freeway. There were hardly any cars on the road. The odd commuter roaring past, a tractor, a car with German plates – most workers went into Zürich by train. Still, he had to get off this road. He pulled back out then took the next turn-off. There was no doubt in his mind that Jannick had been murdered for information and that whoever wanted that information also wanted to set Matthias up for the murder. Was it the cartel? Was Engels really involved? Either way he was now a wanted man. His car was registered; they would know his number plate. He’d left Liliane sleeping after telling Johanna to make sure that under no circumstances was Liliane to know about the murder or that the police wanted him for questioning. To his relief the housekeeper, ever unflappable, had remained calm. Matthias’s first impulse had been to pack Liliane into the car, and drive across the border. But what good would that do? How would his arrest serve his daughter? They would both be fugitives. Stop panicking. Think straight, logically. I can’t go to the authorities and proclaim innocence – the cartel is too powerful. I have to gather evidence first, finish what I have begun.

  There was a car rental place he knew of. Hopefully the police hadn’t radioed out a warning on his papers yet. But first he’d have to visit a chemist and buy some hair dye, make a withdrawal at a friendly bank, then find a bathroom at a garage. Finally he would make a few untraceable phone calls from a telephone booth.

  Destin moved round the side of the physicist’s house, hugging the walls. He’d arrived some time after eight and parked in the neighbour’s empty driveway and waited, concealed by trees. He watched the police come and search the house then depart without Matthias, leaving behind a patrol car parked on the opposite kerb. Idiots.

  He reached the corner then slipped around it. He liked this sense of slow stalking, of making his limbs flow like mercury, soundless, deadly. The night before he’d noted the location of the box containing both the telephone wires and the connection to the security system; it took him all of a few seconds to cut them. ‘You’re silent,’ he whispered to the immaculately polished concrete wall. ‘Silent until I make you scream.’ Inside the house there was a cascade of footsteps then Liliane’s voice yelling that she should call the school.

  He peered round the corner; from this angle he could see the kitchen window and the housekeeper, a stout, dark-haired woman in her mid-fifties, standing over the sink filling a kettle, the back door only inches away from him. Just then a large cat leaped out of the bushes and after an imperious look at him, walked up to the back door and began miaowing loudly. Keeping low so that he couldn’t be seen from the window, Destin hid himself against one side of the door, then slid out his hunting knife. As the housekeeper opened the door it concealed him completely.

  ‘Stupid animal, where have you been?’ she said, and as she bent down to pick up the cat he stepped out, grabbed her with one hand clamped over her mouth and slit her throat. She died in seconds. He waited until the body stopped convulsing, then lowered it to the ground, pushing the door until it was just ajar. The knife, wet with blood, went back in his pocket.

  ‘Johanna?’ Liliane called from the kitchen. Destin could hear her footsteps getting nearer as she walked towards the door. He slipped his hand into his other coat pocket and took out a wad of chloroform-drenched cotton. A cold breeze was blowing in from the back door. From where she was standing Liliane would be able see it had been left open.

  ‘Johanna?’ Liliane said. The back door opened tentatively. Destin saw her hand on the door and whipped out his arm and covered her mouth and nose with the wad. After a short struggle she fell limp. God, her weight felt so good in his arms.

  Matthias stood in the telephone kiosk with the receiver pressed against his ear, the call ringing out into empty space.

  ‘Answer the phone, answer the phone,’ he muttered, trying not to panic. Where was Liliane? Had Johanna managed to protect her? Had the police got there already? The image of Liliane being questioned by the police, confused and horrified by the idea her father was possibly a murderer, was too terrible to contemplate.

  An overweight man in a tracksuit and earmuffs jogged past, oblivious to his presence. Conscious of his newly dyed black hair and adopted disguise Matthias turned his face away, the phone continuing to ring out. Three minutes later he put the receiver down, then picked it up again to call Helen.

  She answered immediately.

  ‘Helen?’

  ‘Matthias! Thank God, I’ve been trying to call you and no one’s picking up at your house. I need to talk to you about the inscription. I’ve translated it again and —’

  ‘Not now! Are you alone?’ The tension made his voice tight.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Helen, I’m being framed —’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I haven’t much time, just listen. Jannick Lund was found dead early this morning at the lab and it looks as if I’ve been set up as the killer, probably by the cartel. I can’t get hold of Liliane…’ His voice broke and he leaned against the glass of the booth, incredulous at the surreal events unfolding so quickly around him.

  ‘Matthias? Are you still there?’

  He pulled himself together and turned back to the phone.

  ‘I need you to drive to Küsnacht and tell Liliane to go immediately to her grandmother’s – Johanna has access to money and can go with her. Then go home and destroy all evidence that you know me. Take your passport and any other ID and disappear for a few weeks – leave a false trail if you can, because it’s quite possible they will come after you and I can’t risk that. I’ll contact you when it’s over, do you understand? Helen, promise me you’ll do this?’

  ‘I promise. And if I have to get a message to you?’ A police siren sounded in the distance.

  ‘The gypsy camp is the best place to try. I have to go.’ He put the phone down.

  Pushing through the bushes, Destin carried Liliane into the neighbour’s driveway. Her body was light, bony against his own. With one of her arms slung around his shoulder he half-carried, half-dragged the unconscious girl into the back seat of his car, covering her with a blanket. Glancing down, he noticed a fine spray of blood across his jacket – he quickly took it off, cursing and shivering in the cold, and climbed into his car.

  ‘She’s fast but not glamorous – you okay with that?’ The car rental guy, a tall craggy-faced man in his early thirties who looked as if he’d be more at home farming, slammed the boot on the
1975 Peugeot, then rubbed his hands together to keep warm in the chilly morning air. They were standing in the car yard that was little more than a glorified field, surrounded by a neat row of older cars in various stages of decrepitude, all for rent. Matthias had walked there, having parked his own car in a back lane on the outskirts of the village, well out of sight of passing cars. He opened his wallet, deliberately flashing the large amount of cash he had in it.

  ‘I’ll take it. Cash all right with you?’

  ‘A month, you say?’

  ‘I’ll pay for a month but you might see it back sooner.’

  ‘A deal. I’ll just get the paperwork.’

  ‘About that… I’m afraid I’ve left my ID at the clinic. Had to rush out for an emergency – you know how it is.’

  The man glanced at Matthias’s expensive shoes, then for a second at his gold wedding ring. ‘No. But for another two hundred I might.’

  ‘Make it three,’ Matthias pushed the wad of bills towards the man, who took it eagerly.

  ‘A doctor, you said you were?’

  ‘That’s right, the name’s Wyss – Doktor Wyss of Grüningen.’

  He extended his huge paw of a hand. ‘Nice doing business with you, Herr Doktor.’

  The car started at the first turn of the key – maybe the rental man was a better mechanic than he’d surmised – and minutes later Matthias had parked it behind his Citroën then unloaded the bag of valuables and packed it into the boot of the Peugeot. No one would suspect a battered old Peugeot of carrying millions of dollars’ worth of valuables. Turning back to his own car, he unscrewed the number plates, figuring this might delay the police search once they found the Citroën. He threw them into a waterlogged ditch.

  He took one last look at his own car in the rear-view mirror; sitting there in the overgrown siding it seemed to embody a past existence, an identity that was receding as fast as the police and the cartel were closing in. As Matthias pulled the car into the road he wondered whether he’d ever return to that life again. When he reached the junction he turned back towards Zürich, towards the airport, to the Sinti camp, the one place he knew the police would not be looking for him.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Chief Inspector Engels walked slowly round the chalk line drawn around the corpse, the now milky-white eyes staring up blindly in an expression of bewildered perplexity. The dead housekeeper’s housecoat was drenched in blood, the second mouth of her slit throat a gaping obscenity. Was it possible for such a man as Matthias von Holindt to become so deranged? Or was this merely a cover for another act – a distraction from a greater transgression: one that, if revealed publicly, would have devastating consequences for the custodians of the canton itself? Janus Zellweger seemed to think so.

  ‘The house is empty, the wires to the security camera and phonelines cut, Chief Inspector, and it appears the daughter has been taken.’

  Engels swung round and the young officer stepped back slightly in order not to appear so tall, an unconscious relinquishing of status that immediately irritated the far shorter chief inspector.

  ‘What do you mean taken! Where were you when all of this was happening?’

  ‘Outside, in the patrol car, as instructed. If you recall, the housekeeper insisted on having no one in the house,’ the young officer retorted defensively.

  ‘Well, she certainly paid for that.’

  ‘There are signs of a struggle at the back door, two sets of footprints, probably the girl and that of a man. We think the abductor might have been hiding in the neighbour’s driveway.’

  ‘But why would a father abduct his own daughter?’

  ‘To run with her? He must have come back. Maybe they argued. Maybe she witnessed the murder.’

  ‘Possibly the girl herself was borderline criminal. Remember the possession charge she narrowly avoided a year ago? Perhaps the murder and the abduction are drug-related?’

  ‘Then why the murdered colleague? The scarf Lund was strangled with has been positively identified as belonging to Holindt.’

  ‘Search the house again, look for evidence of an unhinged mind, writings, drawings, professional jealousy, any clues to foul play, and check all his recent contacts. We need to find him and his daughter, before he kills again.’

  ‘Chief Inspector, about that… I found this in the drawer of the bedside table.’ The young officer held out a slip of paper on which a telephone number was written in a feminine hand. ‘Might be a recent girlfriend.’

  ‘Find out who and where, and when you have a name get back to me.’

  Helen pulled up in her car. Police cars surrounded the Küsnacht villa and there was a roadblock across the small cul-de-sac. She got out, looking as casual as possible, and approached the young policewoman manning the barrier.

  ‘Is there a problem, officer?’

  ‘Sorry, there’s a homicide investigation underway.’

  ‘Homicide? My God, my daughter goes to school with the girl who lives in that house – is she okay?’ Helen asked, feigning a wide-eyed naivety.

  ‘Do you know Herr von Holindt?’

  Helen, swallowing, kept her gaze steady and replied, ‘I’ve only met him once or twice… Is he in trouble?’

  The policewoman looked back over her shoulder. The other police on duty were some distance away and she turned back to Helen.

  ‘Between you and me, it’s the housekeeper.’ She ran a finger across her throat. ‘But that’s all I can tell you at the moment.’

  Helen stood in her bedroom, her half-packed overnight bag on the bed. All morning the radio had been running reports of the murder of Jannick Lund along with a clipped summary of Matthias’s life, family and career – sensationalist coverage that made the physicist sound like a privileged scion who’d become deranged due to his father’s death. Helen had been appalled at the speed at which the media had assumed Matthias’s guilt. It made her wonder about the extent of power wielded by the cartel Matthias had talked about. There had been no announcement yet of the housekeeper’s murder or of Liliane who, Helen guessed, was now under police protection. All she could think of was that she shouldn’t run away but join him. I have to warn him about the statuette and I can help him find a way out – I know people at the US Embassy and a scientist of his stature would have negotiating power, she told herself, just as the telephone rang.

  ‘Hello?’ she said in English in her confusion. Silence. ‘Is that you, Matthias?’ she continued, hearing the sound of someone breathing at the other end of the line. Now frightened, Helen switched to Schweizerdeutsch. ‘Who is this?’

  ‘You are the girlfriend of Matthias von Holindt, no?’ The man had a French accent, and his voice was low, spiked with violence. Shocked, Helen leaned against the wall, a nauseating sweep of adrenalin shivering through her.

  ‘Who is this?’

  ‘Listen, and listen carefully. I want you to take a message to Holindt. I want you to tell him if he wants to see his daughter again he must bring the Kali statuette to the Bahnhofplatz, outside the main entrance of the railway station at nine, tomorrow morning. The exchange will take place at the clock tower – the Kali statue for Liliane. Undamaged, otherwise there will be a suicide of a young girl who is already known for drug-taking and her fragile state of mind. And you should be aware, I know where you live, you understand?’

  Trying to keep the fear out of her voice, Helen repeated, ‘The exchange will take place at the Bahnhofplatz, outside the main entrance of the railway station at nine tomorrow morning at the clock tower,’ searing the words into her memory.

  ‘My number is 189378321. Make sure Holindt gets the message.’ It was a full second before she realised the line had gone dead.

  She went to the bookshelves and pulled out a couple of maps from a walking holiday she’d had in Provence. She unfolded one and left it on the desk, then placed an address book open at the entry of some academic friends who lived in the region and the card of a local travel agency on the floor, as though dropped carelessly. />
  She phoned the travel agency and booked a flight to Marseilles for that afternoon with her credit card, the ticket to be picked up at the airport. It was not much of a false trail but it would have to do. Ten minutes later she was in her car driving towards the gypsy camp. As she headed down Winterthurerstrasse three police cars screamed past in the opposite direction. Towards her apartment.

  Cradling her limp body in his arms, Destin carried Liliane to the centre of the concrete storage room he had appropriated and lowered her into a steel chair. It would be only minutes before she regained consciousness; until then she was his… He bent down, jerking his head impatiently when his hair caught on one of her buttons, and tenderly parted her legs so that he could fasten each ankle with a steel band to the legs of the chair, which was welded into a concrete block. He smoothed down her short school skirt. He found nothing erotic about her lifeless body. He wasn’t into passive; he liked a fight, to watch the fear in the face, hear the screaming.