The Stolen (16 page)

Outside it was almost sunset.

Helen put down the telephone somewhat irritated. She was running late for her first Monday morning lecture. Professor von Holindt had now actually called her requesting a meeting, having been given her name when he'd contacted the anthropology department asking for a Romany specialist. It was a strange coincidence, that accidental encounter. But Helen had learned through life and her studies to distrust coincidence. She was one of those people who believed everything happened for a reason. People came into one's life for a purpose – the trick was to direct the encounter so that it was beneficial and not a trigger for the usual emotional chaos she'd found charismatic men tended to cause. The challenge was her own chemical reaction to Herr Professor von Holindt. She'd made a vow to herself not to be tempted to get involved with any more men; her last affair – with a married professor – had ended disastrously.

Steeling herself against such temptation, Helen glanced at the paper she'd been writing – a lecture on the influence of migration on language in nomadic people. She'd been citing examples of Romanes tracking back to Sanskrit and the Ur-Rom as an illustration, but now it was difficult to concentrate. She had to finish the lecture by the end of the day but the physicist had insisted it was urgent that he talk to her.
Who the hell does he think he is?
she thought, trying to dismiss fragments of their accidental meeting: the band of green that his gaze had become, framed by those high flat cheekbones, the bemused irony that had played around his mouth. She stared at the half-written paper – the words jumping like wilful sheep, impossible to herd into order. Why would a physicist want to come to talk to her about an artefact – an historical artefact? What was the big mystery? He'd been deliberately vague on the telephone, almost as if he was worried someone was listening in. ‘Damn him,' she said out loud, ‘if he thinks he can get round me with his charm, he's wrong,' then slammed her folder shut.

 

 

Klauser stood by the office window staring at a pigeon trying to mount another one on the narrow guttering that broke the monotony of the brick wall opposite. He was wondering about what hormonal madness had triggered such unseasonable lust in the bird that was having trouble trying to find a grip on its indifferent mate, wings flapping wildly. On the one hand, the detective pondered, it could be sheer stupidity, a kind of disconnect to the material world around it and the fact that it was in the dead of winter and spring was at least two months away. On the other hand it could be a defiant stand against the dictates of Time, a Fuck You to the confines of Youth and to the onset of reproductive oblivion. The pigeon, after all, looked scrappy and old, its neck feathers grimy and ruffled, and Klauser couldn't help relating to its desperate machismo. He often used to feel like that in the last months of his marriage, when he would try to make love to his wife in an attempt to stave off the growing gulf of alienation between them. His tactics never worked. Thank God Celine displayed enthusiasm at his overtures; he might be paying her but at least she achieved orgasm – which was more than his wife ever did. Which brought him back to the pigeon: did female pigeons orgasm? The male pigeon didn't seem to care.
That's evolution for you,
Klauser concluded, then pondered whether, in fact, the pigeon might be more highly evolved than
Homo sapiens
in these matters?

Perplexed, he took out his yo-yo and started spinning as he stared at the telephone. Why hadn't Matthias von Holindt contacted him? Had he confronted Christoph von Holindt with the book of antique clocks yet? What had happened at the company's anniversary dinner that had made Liliane von Holindt leave so early? Klauser was sorely tempted to ring Matthias directly but he knew it would be better to wait, let the physicist do some of his own investigation prompted by guilt and horror. Besides, Matthias would have access to company files that would take Klauser weeks to procure – that's if he actually stood any chance at all of getting past Christoph von Holindt's powerful friends in the Stadtrat. And there were other avenues to explore. Now, having reached a decision, the detective pocketed his yo-yo and walked over to the door, locked it and pulled down the old paper blind to cover the glass. Then he reached up to the top shelf of the narrow metal bookcase to lift down a thick volume entitled
The Collected Works of Erasmus.
Inside, the centre had been neatly hollowed out to conceal pages and notes lifted from cases he'd worked in the past – the unresolved cases, the ones that had troubled him, the victims of which floated aimlessly in his dreams, like women he'd slept with and thought he'd forgotten. He found what he was looking for, carefully held together by a paperclip.

It was a bundle of notes lifted from a private investigation Christoph von Holindt's name had been linked to years ago, and attached to these notes was a large envelope. He emptied it out on the desk. It contained four A4 black-and-white photographs, images he'd developed from a roll of microfilm he found on the private investigator's body after he'd been fished out of the lake. Klauser was the first detective on the scene and, suspicious of the unusual indifference the rest of the department, especially the young, ambitious Engels, had displayed towards this private dick and the Jewish family he was representing, he had been monitoring the police radio that night. He got lucky and intercepted a call. The private detective, an intense man who'd approached Klauser only a week earlier as a possible ally, was splayed out on the foreshore, his skinny legs pitifully stick-like through the soaking trousers. His skin was bluish and there was a large bruise on one side of his head. He looked as if he were embracing the earth laid out like that, like a starfish. Klauser had liked the man; he'd liked his fearlessness.

The memory of that freezing night in Zollikon still haunted him. Walking round and round the corpse, looking for clues, he finally noticed that one of the heels of the man's ankle boots was built up. He waited until the others there were distracted before slipping off the shoe. Inside the heel, wrapped in watertight plastic, was the tiny roll of film. Later, alone in the chilly darkroom of HQ, he'd developed the microfilm. The four large grainy photographs were the result. They were lists of precious objects and, in true Nazi fashion, the record-keeping was faultless. On each page there was a series of headings: he saw
Juden Geld
, and
Zigeuner Geld
, this subdivided into
Kalderash
,
Manush
,
Kale and Sinti
– the four main Rom groups were clearly named. A variety of
objets
d'art
, paintings and antiques were listed, with at least two Chagalls mentioned, as well as a Rembrandt and a Monet; jewellery and objects such as a Hebrew prayer book with a gold and silver cover, and a gold chalice for Passover, were listed on all four pages under
Juden Geld
while gold candlesticks through to gold coins, pendants, charms, hair clasps, gold jewellery, brooches, dagger sheaths – even charms and amulets – were listed under
Zigeuner Geld
.

He reached the sub-heading
Kalderash
– the clan of his dead gypsy. One description caught his eye: ‘Unusual Statuette – confiscated 1943 Ukraine, of unknown metal, value indeterminable'. There was the symbol of an hourglass drawn next to this particular description and the exact same entry appeared on all four lists – the only repetition he could see. Could this be a connection to the gypsy's murder? Yojo Stiriovic had been in the camps, and now he'd been found in Zürich, assassinated outside one of the most expensive watch stores in the world, as if looking for something – something that might have once belonged to him.

Reflecting on a possible connection Klauser laid the photographs next to each other in a line. Then he began pacing the room, his way of tricking his mind into a lateral sensibility. As he walked past the photographs he noticed a hidden pattern in the way the words had been laid out in each list. He walked past again, deliberately using his peripheral vision. Now he could see there were symbols made from the gaps between the words, symbols that clearly stretched across each page as if defining that list. They were all triangles – four of them. Two were pointing down, one with the tip of the point marked off, the other triangle blank. Two triangles were pointing up – one also with the tip marked off and the remaining one blank.

Then it came to him – the watermarks were the symbols for the elements Earth, Water, Fire and Air and their positions on the pages suggested some relationship to the confiscated objects themselves. But what about the Kalderash statuette and the hourglass symbol next to it? Why did it alone appear as an entry on all four lists and how did this hourglass symbol relate to the symbols for Earth, Fire, Air and Water? Was it suggesting Time as a fifth element somehow? He remembered the book of clocks. Four clocks commissioned to represent Water, Fire, Air and Earth. Coincidence? And was it a coincidence the book had once belonged to Christoph von Holindt and had been listed among the Nazis' stolen treasures?

He packed the notes carefully back into the tome, then replaced it on the top shelf. Back at the desk he took a sheet of paper and wrote the names he knew of the men who had been seen at Christoph von Holindt's anniversary.

Christoph von Holindt, Johann Engels and two unidentified men.

He stared at the paper. Von Holindt and the two unknowns looked like they could be of the same generation, but Engels was much younger – perhaps it was some connection in their past. Suddenly Klauser remembered the description Celine had given of one of the men in the orgies – the individual she described as the ‘bull'. The reaction to the thickset man who'd entered Holindt's private study later than the others, as witnessed through Klauser's binoculars, had indicated he had power over the other men, power enough to terrify. Was this the bull himself, the actual leader? Klauser picked up the phone and instructed Timo to collect the names of all the members of the various exclusive clubs and societies of Switzerland – particularly Zürich. If there was a pattern there, Klauser would find it. Patterns gave logic to an irrational and unfair world, which was why he liked them.

In the corridor outside he could hear a couple of the other detectives arriving for the day – loud and boisterous. He needed to think. Standing, he slipped the list into his breast pocket. It would be quieter at home, and he knew no one would miss him.

 

 

‘A holy relic, you say. Do you mind being more specific?' Helen said, hovering behind the safe barrier of her desk, trying not to feel dwarfed. Matthias was, she estimated, a good six foot three next to her five foot, but again his undeniable attractiveness was a further irritation. Somewhere down by the desk her fingers found a paperweight and curled themselves round it, as if seeking an anchor. Small comfort. Worst of all was the fact that Matthias's query – unlike a lot of the banal amateur ‘gypsyologist' requests she had to deal with – was actually informed.

Matthias, awkward in the proximity of this feisty woman, glanced round the room shyly.

Tucked away in a backroom of the anthropology department of Zürich University, sandwiched between Indo-European studies and the Nordic centre, it was a large room flanked by floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. A simple wooden table served as a desk. On one corner, as if holding back the sea of paper scattered over it, sat a cluster of figurines: Buddha, the Virgin Mary, a Sphinx and a mermaid – a curious collection of deities and mythological creatures which, Matthias surmised, probably reflected the eclectic beliefs of their owner. With her wild, shoulder-length auburn hair and propensity for long, beaded necklaces, she herself appeared a little diverse in her dress sense.

‘I believe it was known as Sara la Kali's statuette, Frau Professor Thorton,' he said.

Helen started at the name of the object and Matthias noticed immediately. ‘You've heard of it?'