The Stolen (5 page)

 

 

The ghost had been at the periphery of Liliane's vision, smiling and gesturing for her to come with him. He'd sat with her all the way through her geography lesson, then halfway through English in his wide-brimmed black hat, his dark eyes twinkling beneath it, the moustache and gold tooth gleaming from the smile that was as real as the pen in her hand, exotic yet familiar. She'd tried to ignore him. It had been then that she'd asked permission to use the toilet.

Half an hour later she was at the Autonome Youth Centre, at the back of the main train station, where she knew she would find Wilhelm, her boyfriend, and where she could score. Her timing, as usual, had been impeccable. Wilhelm turned up five minutes after her; more importantly he had money.

 

 

The front door was closed but unlocked and a trail of muddy footsteps encrusted by dirty snow led into the house. Matthias tensed. He pushed the door open; music blared out and the open-plan living room was a mess: a leather jacket tossed on the floor, a half-drunk bottle of whisky in front of the fireplace and a half-eaten cheesecake next to an ashtray overflowing with cigarette butts. The Ramones boomed out from the stereo while an episode of Liliane's favourite show,
Tatort
, played out on the muted TV screen. Where was the housekeeper? Matthias spun round, despairing at the chaos, then remembered it was her day off.

 

Liliane let Willi roll the sleeve of her school shirt up. She liked the feel of his guitarist's callused fingertips on her skin, his large-knuckled hands firm in their intent.

‘Cool school uniform,' he told her, grinning. ‘Kinky.' He pulled the tourniquet tight and tapped for a vein on the inside of her elbow, his head with the letter X shaven into the scalp bent over her. She could smell him, could smell herself on him: their lovemaking, cigarette smoke and his cheap cologne. She loved the danger of him, so raw, so unobtainable. Son of an Italian cabdriver and older than her by a good five years, he was her portal to a world that pushed up against the edge of life, one that promised to keep her sharp and alive. But right now she just wanted to make her ghosts disappear.

On the stairs leading up to the bedrooms Matthias found an abandoned bra, then a pair of black stilettos. As Liliane's laughter burst from her bedroom, Matthias's chest started to tighten in the nausea of expectation. He raced down the corridor and tried opening the locked door; in seconds he'd kicked it open. Liliane was lying on the bed, half-dressed, a rubber tourniquet around her upper arm and, kneeling over her, a half-naked, rake-thin youth with a shaven head and a used syringe in his hand. Matthias hauled him off then threw him against the wall.

‘Papa!' Liliane cringed on the bed.

‘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
.