Eye Collector, The (34 page)

A minute later three policemen stormed the internal cargo spaces while their colleagues on deck began the Sisyphean task of breaking the seals on the locked containers.

‘Toby? Lea?’

Their voices went echoing across the waters of the Teltow Canal. Several interested spectators had gathered on the bank: two joggers, a man out for a walk and a female dog-owner, all of whom
were debating the significance of an ever-growing array of police vans, patrol cars and emergency vehicles in the early hours of the morning.

The cries of the men in the bowels of the ship rang out, unanswered, amid the steel plates and pipework and in the cable tiers below deck.

Growing more and more desperate, some of the policemen threw caution to the wind when opening bulkhead doors, dashing round corners, or shining their torches down passages that hadn’t been
secured beforehand.

Another seven minutes.

It simply can’t be done,
thought Stoya, who had also come aboard by now.

We were wrong,
he told himself – just as the dogs in the engine room started barking.

(5 MINUTES TO THE DEADLINE)

ALEXANDER ZORBACH

‘It’s too late.’ The flashing lights of the police cars looked somehow ominous. I knew, as I stared at them, that the operation hadn’t a hope.

‘What can you see?’ Alina asked me. She had got out of the car accompanied by Frank and TomTom.

We had parked the Toyota at a safe distance from the police cordon, some 200 metres before the road became a bridge that spanned the Teltow Canal.

A bridge!

Again I was up against the clock, and again fate had directed me to a bridge.

Fate or luck?
I thought, and Alina’s tattoo took shape in my mind’s eye.

I was just about to tell her that there were too few men to search the ships in time when my mobile rang. I expected it to be Stoya, but a glance at the display compounded my despair.

‘Well, are you on your way?’

No form of greeting, no name, just a curt, reproachful question.

Nicci seemed to know the answer, because her voice dripped with scepticism.

No, damn it. I won’t make it.

Not knowing what to say, I started blathering. The truth – that I was watching a bunch of policemen vainly attempting to save two children from death by drowning – was so
unendurable, I didn’t want to misuse it as an excuse.

‘Honestly, Alex, you promised him. He’s been awake for the past hour, terribly excited because you said you’d have breakfast with us at seven. Can you imagine how sad
he’ll be when he comes downstairs to find that his father has forgotten his birthday yet again?’

‘I haven’t forgotten it.’

‘But you aren’t here. There’ll be no family breakfast and your present won’t be on the line.’

I groaned and clutched my head in despair. Frank looked at me inquiringly.

His present!
How could I have promised Julian a watch? A cruel, lethal contraption whose only purpose was to tick away the seconds separating us from death.

I looked at my own old-fashioned watch, a bequest from my father, and hoped that the expensive Swiss timepiece was malfunctioning for the first time ever; that the hands had revolved too fast
for some reason. I blinked, suddenly aware that my brain had registered something in the vicinity – something I couldn’t immediately interpret. Closing my eyes, I tried to recall what
had occurred to me just before fear crept deep into my pores. And then the penny dropped. I opened my eyes, tilted my head back, and there it was.

The street sign!

‘He’ll get his present,’ I whispered into the phone, and hung up.

‘What is it?’ asked Frank.

My fingers felt clammy and bloodless as I took off my watch. ‘It isn’t the make Julian wanted, but it’s worth ten times as much.’

I held it out with a trembling hand.

‘Oh no.’ Frank shook his head. ‘I’m not leaving you. Not now.’

‘Please, as a personal favour. You know where I used to live. Take the thing to Nicci. Tell her to give it a clean and wrap it up. And tell her I’ll make it up to the boy.’

‘No.’

‘Please, we’re running out of time.’

Alina, who had been leaning against the car without moving, turned an ear in my direction. She looked as tense as I felt. It was as if she could sense the threat I’d just become aware
of.

The threat inherent in the street sign.

‘What if you need help?’

Frank looked me straight in the eye, and I could tell he knew. He might be young, but he was no fool and had proved it more than once. Frank could put two and two together. He guessed, of
course, that I wouldn’t send him away for no good reason.

‘You’ll help me most of all by taking my son his birthday present, okay?’

I saw him purse his lips to utter a final objection. Then he yielded. He got into the car, gave me a rueful, disappointed look, and drove off without saying goodbye.

My gaze returned to the street sign. According to the faded lettering we were in Grünauer Strasse. Not just anywhere in Grünauer Strasse, either, but immediately outside a dark,
dilapidated warehouse.

Grünauer Strasse.

That was what my brain had registered even before my eyes took it in.

217 Grünauer Strasse.

The numerals on the back of the photo I’d found on my mother’s bedside table weren’t a date, but the number of a building.

21.7 Grünau.

And we were standing right outside it.

(3 MINUTES TO THE DEADLINE)
ALEXANDER ZORBACH

It wasn’t very long since I’d made a trip to the Babelsberg film studio with Julian and looked at the set of a war film in production there. I still recalled how
impressed we’d been by a mock-up of a bombed building. Dilapidated walls, shattered window panes, charred roof timbers through which remnants of masonry jutted skyward like splintered bones
– all these features had been reproduced with convincing but spurious authenticity. However, that set was nothing compared to the scene that confronted me now.

Why is he doing this? Why is the Eye Collector giving me all these hints?

Standing in the outer yard of the derelict industrial estate at 217 Grünauer Strasse, I felt yet again that I was being led to perdition on an invisible leash.

He’s playing a game with me,
I told myself, trying to marshal my thoughts.
Hide-and-seek, the oldest children’s game in the world, and I’m playing it according to his
rules – following the leads he drops at my feet like the trail in a paperchase.

‘You’ve got to help me,’ I told Alina.

Daybreak wasn’t far off, but Berlin lay beneath heavy cloud cover, dampening sound like a bell jar over the city. If you looked up at the sky the moon seemed reminiscent of a torch under
an eiderdown. The pre-dawn light barely penetrated the alleyways linking the various factory yards.

‘I need a clue from you.’

Alina clenched her left hand and I saw her grimace with pain.

I need another memory!

I had informed Stoya as a matter of course of the new clue as a matter of course, but he’d made it quite clear that he wouldn’t withdraw a single man, just to check on yet another
figment of my imagination. Even if he’d sent a whole army right away, it wouldn’t have been enough.

‘The area is simply too big, Alina. There are at least four yards surrounded by ruined factories and warehouses. That’s all I can make out from here.’

‘I’m sorry, Alex.’

She opened her eyes but promptly shut them again, stung by an unpleasant gust of fine, icy drizzle.

‘All I felt before was a ship. No factories or warehouses.’

You must be wrong. The photograph, the numerals – it can’t be a coincidence.

Why were some of Alina’s visions so consistent with reality and others so wide of the mark?

‘Anyway, I can’t see anything more because...’

‘Because what?’

‘Nothing,’ she said dismissively, but I knew what she’d almost blurted out.

‘Because the children are already dead.’

‘What about TomTom?’ I asked.

‘He can’t help either. Even if we had a sample of the children’s scent, he isn’t a sniffer dog.’

I know.

I also knew that the ultimatum had almost expired. Although I no longer possessed a watch, I could sense that there were only seconds left.

Think, Zorbach, think.

Dark, deserted buildings surrounded us on every side, each indistinguishable from the other. There were no lights on anywhere. Every gate and door gaped open, every entrance was choked with
mounds of mysterious industrial waste. I could make out a lot of it, but I couldn’t see a lead or pointer of any kind.

The Eye Collector wants to play. He lays down clear rules. Forty-five hours seven minutes...

The outer courtyard was so huge, the stack of HGV tyres in the middle resembled the remains of a toy truck. There were countless places the twins might be hidden. They could be immediately
beneath our feet or behind that stack of empty cat-food tins against the wall over there.

‘Where are you going?’ I heard Alina call as I went back to the entrance that led to the street. I was obeying an urge to do
something
rather than following a definite plan
when I opened my mobile and used the display’s feeble glow to illuminate the board on which old firms’ nameplates were mounted.

The uppermost and biggest bore the name
Köpenicker Textilfabrik.
The other enamel plaques had either been wrenched off or were so scratched and grimy, the lettering that had
originally listed the individual departments was almost indecipherable:
Printing, Design, Administration, Sales...

I rested my palm against the cold metal.

Think, Zorbach, think. He wants you to look for the children. It’s a game, and a game isn’t a game unless every player has a chance of winning. If he’s giving you clues,
it’s only to level the odds.

Why should he lure you here?

To humiliate you? To see you fail at the very last minute?

Or perhaps he’s left you another clue?

I stepped aside and shone the display on one of those obligatory notices forbidding unauthorized access to a prohibited area.

Another lead?

‘Danger – No Entry,’ I read aloud.

Most appropriate...

My eye lighted on a second warning just below the first: ‘Cellar 77 completely flooded!’

I shouted so loudly, TomTom started barking in the yard.

Cellar 77!

Was that the answer? Was it another ploy?

I had a sudden, vivid recollection of the photo as I dashed back to Alina.

Grünau 21.7 (77)

From that point on, everything was terrifyingly straightforward.

(ONE MINUTE TO THE DEADLINE)

TOBIAS TRAUNSTEIN

He was swimming. Treading water. Dying.

Toby had never given any serious thought to death until the last couple of days. Why would he? He’d only just turned nine, after all. ‘You’ve got your whole life ahead of
you,’ his grandfather used to say whenever they came to Sunday lunch.

Wrong, Grandpa, I’ve got nothing ahead of me any more. My head’s already nudging the roof of this iron coffin. I’ve only got a tiny space left to breathe in, and even that
is gradually filling up with water.

He wept and spat out the first few drops of water that had found their way into his mouth. Pouring in through every chink in the metal compartment, seeping up through the floor and in through
the seams in the sides, the water had converged from all directions to form a reservoir whose surface had now reached the roof. A deep, dark, ice-cold reservoir in which Toby was on the verge of
drowning.

I’ll suffocate,
he thought. It was like that time beneath the gym mattress, but this was completely different. Although he’d wept then too, he’d known in his heart of
hearts that Herr Kerner would come and rescue him. Except that this wasn’t a gym and his father wasn’t a PE teacher who would haul the mattress off him so he could breathe again. His
father was...

... a write-off. Dad’s never been there for me, so why should he show up now? Mum, more like.

Yes, Mum was bound to be looking for him. Like when he and Lea forgot the time while out toboganning and Mum had come running through the woods to meet them, worried sick.

Toby,
she’d kept calling.
Lea, Toby...

He’d been half pleased and half ashamed. Although it had naturally saddened him that Mum had cried on his account, at least he knew how much she loved him.

Toby? Hello? Where are you, Toby?
He seemed to have heard someone calling him earlier, before the water (
which isn’t
caldo
in the least, but
molto freddo) finally woke
him up. Could Mum be coming?

Yes, Mum. Not Dad. Stuff Dad and his lectures at the dinner table and his lousy Italian. Most of all, stuff his job, which always prevents him from playing with me in the garden. Dad
won’t come, but Mum...

His lips sucked in the last of the air between the surface and the metal roof. Then the water level rose another millimetre and his head became entirely submerged. He knew he was drowning, but
he was still hopeful that Mum would find him soon.

(INSIDE THE FINAL MINUTE)

PHILIPP STOYA

(DETECTIVE SUPERINTENDENT, HOMICIDE,
ON BOARD THE CONTAINER SHIP)
‘What’s behind there?’ Stoya thumped the steel door with his fist.

‘You mustn’t open that,’ said the ship’s captain.

‘Why not?’

‘It’s a bulkhead door. Open it and we’ll be in trouble.’

Stoya gripped the rotary valve. He strained at it with all his might but failed to budge it so much as a millimetre.

‘Hey, what are you doing? Didn’t you hear what I said?’ the captain protested loudly when Stoya asked the task force commander if he had any C4 explosive. ‘I’ll
lose my job if you open it.’