Eye Collector, The (6 page)

Call me!
said the text message, and the ringing in my ear grew louder.

Quick. Before it’s too late.

In hindsight, I guess it was then that my race with death began.

‘What’s up?’

Frank had answered after the first ring. He sounded even more agitated than I felt.

‘I’m worried.’

Worried?
I couldn’t remember a single occasion on which Frank had referred to his personal feelings. He usually went to great lengths to distract attention from his true emotional
state by being flippant. He had, for example, christened his article on the maltreatment of old folk in nursing homes ‘the geriatrics’ charter’. But I could read between the lines
and sense his underlying anger and despair, especially in the passage about an old woman with dementia and cancer of the breast who had been denied painkillers on grounds of expense. Frank had
quoted a remark made by a cynical nurse who was doing his national service at the squalid nursing home in question:
‘Who’s she going to complain to? Her children visit her once a
week, but she doesn’t make sense when they do.’
Although he never admitted as much, I knew he was privately exultant when the all of the staff were replaced after the publication of
his report.

‘Where are you?’ he asked quickly.

‘Researching,’ I said, emerging from the clinic’s revolving doors. So far, only Nicci knew of my health problems, and I wanted it to stay that way. ‘What on earth has
happened?’

‘I’m sure you’re aware that ninety per cent of all miscarriages of justice are down to defective circumstantial evidence.’

‘Just for once, spare me a lecture and come to the point. What’s all this about?’

‘Your wallet.’

Damn it.
I clutched my head. Thanks to all the excitement, I’d completely forgotten to cancel my credit cards.

‘Have the police been in touch?’ I asked, looking up at the overcast November sky. The temperature had taken a noticeable dive during my appointment with Roth, but at least the rain
had stopped.

‘They came here to the office when they couldn’t reach you on your mobile or at home.’

So that was why Stoya had persisted in calling me while I was on my way to Dr Roth. I’d meant to call him back after my session with the psychiatrist.

‘Don’t say my credit accounts have been drained!’

‘Worse than that.’

Worse? What more can anyone do to the owner of a lost wallet once they’ve fleeced him?

‘Oh hell, maybe I shouldn’t tell you this over the phone.’

I scanned the hospital car park for my car. The place was considerably fuller now that lunchtime was approaching.

‘Are you drunk, or something?’

‘I only overheard it by chance when I passed Thea’s office on my way to get a coffee.’

Thea? What could the police have been discussing with my editor?

‘Stop beating about the bush, Frank, and tell me what the trouble is.’

‘Well, unless I misheard, they’ve found your wallet with everything still in it. Even the ready cash.’

Some idiot had parked his four-wheel drive so close to my Volvo, I would have to climb in on the passenger side to avoid damaging its paintwork.

‘But that’s good news,’ I said.

‘Is it hell! They discovered your bloody wallet near the crime scene. Somewhere in the garden.’

Near the crime scene?

That was impossible. All at once the phone call seemed totally unreal. I couldn’t— no, I didn’t
want
to believe what my trainee had just told me.

‘What garden?’ I asked, although there could be only one answer.

‘The one where they found the kids’ mother,’ Frank said in a low voice. ‘The Eye Collector’s fourth—’

I cut him off before he could complete his sentence.

I eventually squeezed in on the driver’s side. Why should I show any consideration to someone inconsiderate enough to crowd me with his massive car? He might at least
have retracted his wing mirror, which was the size of a tennis racket.

I had to force myself to observe the speed limit in the hospital grounds, but I put my foot down as soon as I emerged from the exit and sped off along Potsdamer Strasse.

Think. You’ve got to think.

I have never been noted for my circumspect and levelheaded behaviour. Only a few months earlier I’d crossed swords with one of our paper’s biggest advertisers, a food manufacturer.
He offered me money not to publish some revolting photographs, taken with a concealed camera, of a slaughterhouse he owned. One of them showed a cow being winched out of an overloaded lorry
dangling by one dislocated foreleg. I got him to pay me the 50,000 euros in cash. Then I put the picture on page one, as I’d always intended, and donated the hush money to an animal charity.
Our paper lost one of its best customers; I got an award from the Press Club and a roasting from Thea.

But my present predicament differed from my problems in the past, most of which had been caused by my own impetuosity, in one important respect: I didn’t know what I’d done to
unleash the avalanche that was threatening to descend on me.

So the police had turned up at the newspaper office. A logical reaction, on the face of it. It wasn’t just a Hollywood cliché that criminals tend to emulate a dog returning to its
vomit. Whenever I hear that some guy has been spotted at a murder scene although its location is known only to the police, I start doing some research into him.

Then there was the wallet. I had searched all my pockets at the hospital hours before. It couldn’t possibly have fallen out of my trouser pocket at the Traunstein villa, especially as I
was wearing the white forensics coverall designed to prevent a crime scene from being contaminated by so much as a single fibre from my clothing. Stoya had seen me in this. At best, he might assume
that I’d deliberately dropped the wallet there for some reason, but the worst assumption, which made me a suspect, was far more likely.

My brain bore an increasing resemblance to a bag of popcorn in a microwave. Countless thoughts were bouncing around in my head and bursting before I could catch hold of them. Sooner or later I
would turn myself in for questioning by the police, but first I had to sort out my ideas. I needed to calm down and discuss things with someone I trusted.

I tried to call Charlie. She didn’t answer her mobile, which was par for the course, and she’d never given me another number – any more than she’d told me her real
name.

She normally called me back as soon as she got a chance, but today I lacked the patience to wait until her husband was out of the way. So I tried again, and again I got the anonymous mailbox
message.

Where are you, damn it?

I hadn’t spoken to Charlie for days.

Our affair, if you could call it that, had begun on the day when Nicci told me she wanted a divorce. The circumstances of our first meeting were not only absurd but embarrassing.

I could blame it all on the level of alcohol in my blood, which had exceeded a critical limit within only a few hours of the final breakdown of my marriage. My desire to take revenge on all the
faithless women in this world probably also played a role. In retrospect, though, I think it was mainly a wish to punish myself that made me enter that place.

While getting undressed in the tiled anteroom and locking up my clothes in a locker, I tried to persuade myself that tonight marked the beginning of a new Zorbach era: a phase of existence
during which I would never fall in love again, merely have sex. As soon as I made my way into the bar area, however, I realized I was making an utter fool of myself.

Although this was my first visit to a swingers’ club, I felt as if I’d been there a hundred times before. Everything looked just the way I imagined: brothel-red lighting, furniture
that wouldn’t have looked out of place in a pizzeria, and walls adorned with surprisingly innocent pictures of nudes. A sign directed patrons to the sauna, the S&M cellar and the jacuzzi.
Immediately beside it was a notice reading:
Fuck and the world fucks with you.

Above the bar that occupied the centre of the room was a small television screen positioned so that users of the ‘playing field’ to the right of the counter could watch a porn film
while disporting themselves. The latex-covered mattresses were deserted on my first visit, but several couples and single men were seated at the bar. Nearly all were wearing flip-flops and towels
around their middles.

I was surprised to note that most of them didn’t look half as bad as I’d expected. One young couple made a very attractive impression. So did the slim blonde who came and sat down
beside me, her hair still wet from the shower. I later learned that Charlie had just had enjoyed a threesome with two men and was merely intending to have one for the road before going home to her
unsuspecting husband. She saw at once that it was my first time, and she was just as quick to see through the lie I’d concocted in case I bumped into an acquaintance.

Although it was wholly irrational, I felt embarrassed to tell her the truth – probably because I didn’t want such a pretty woman to think I
needed
to patronize a
swingers’ club.

She grinned. ‘So you’re here doing research for your paper. Sure, and I’m a health and safety inspector.’

Although my parents had schooled me early in the facts of life, I was having one hell of a job concentrating on our conversation. Stark naked, Charlie told me she still felt she didn’t
really ‘belong’ there, but she was a woman with sexual needs and it was ages since her husband had shown an interest in her. Then she took me on a tour of the premises, showed me the
mirror-lined room in which several couples were partner-swapping, and conducted me to the screen behind which some naked men were masturbating as they watched two women making love.

We ourselves didn’t have sex that night, any more than we did at our many subsequent meetings. The platonic relationship we maintained was almost schizophrenic in view of the location of
our regular chats. But Charlie insisted on meeting me at the swingers’ club, nowhere else, ‘Because the people here are far more discreet.’

So we met there again and again, chatting with increasing familiarity and becoming intimate in the truest sense of the word. Although not in the way a swinger’s club would have
intended.

We talked for hours while the other patrons were copulating. Little by little I discovered that her husband’s cunning intelligence had made him a considerable fortune. I found out how he
had taken advantage of this windfall to play the uncouth vulgarian who regularly got paranoically drunk on the world’s most expensive alcoholic beverages. He had changed soon after their
marriage, becoming moodier and more aggressive, working himself up into jealous rages and constantly accusing her of cheating on him – even though he’d been the first and only man in
her life until a year ago. He even questioned the paternity of their children and threatened to take them away from her if she considered divorcing him. Finally, when he hit her once too often and
called her a whore, she resolved to live up to his abusive description and visited the club, Hothouse
,
for the first time.

It was an act of pure desperation, so she was all the more surprised to discover that she liked this new, permissive environment – an attitude that I had so far failed to develop. And the
more often we met, the more I sensed that our conversations would soon be insufficient, which led to a new problem. There came a time when I could no longer ignore the burning sensation in my gut
when Charlie was at the club without me. The thing I’d wanted to avoid at all costs happened: I became jealous. Before long, if I wasn’t careful, I would be falling in love.

‘Please try again later,’ said the computerized voice of Charlie’s mailbox when I pressed the redial button a third time.

Angrily, I tossed my mobile on to the passenger seat.

Just when I really need you for once,
I thought, and concentrated on the road.

Our many peculiar assignations had turned me into something of a confidant of Charlie’s – I was a psychologist who sporadically broke off his therapy sessions so that his patient
could amuse herself on the ‘playing field’ with some sexual partner who had taken her fancy. Meantime, he would nurse a gin and tonic at the bar.

I listened to you for hours. I waited for you.

Today I was the one who needed some advice from her, but I quickly dismissed the idea of driving to the
Hothouse
to see if she was there.

Damned if I was going to do that.

It wouldn’t be the first time I’d had to cope on my own. All I needed was a place to relax and clear my head. A place where no one would find me for as long as I didn’t want to
be found.

In short, I had to take refuge where I’d last gone to ground two years ago, after trying to kill my mother.

(11 HOURS 51 MINUTES TO THE DEADLINE)

The first snow began to fall an hour-and-a-half later. A little too soon, in other words. If it had held off for another few minutes, my Volvo’s tyre tracks
wouldn’t have shown up so clearly on the forest track. However, I doubted whether anyone had tailed me out to Nikolskoë. The wooded, hilly area between Berlin and Potsdam was popular
with day-trippers but, fortunately for me, not in winter, as the Pfaueninsel ferry didn’t operate and both restaurants were shut.

I had previously made a detour to my flat and stocked up with canned ravioli and mineral water. My emergency bag, which was now in the boot, also contained a change of underwear, my spare mobile
with a prepaid card not registered in my name (I occasionally used it when phoning informants whose lines might be tapped by the police), and my laptop.

How did my wallet land up at the crime scene? For that matter, how did I come to be there myself?

I tried to put off considering the questions to which I needed answers until I’d reached my hideaway. I didn’t succeed, of course.

I was as incapable of ignoring them as I was the flashing light on the answerphone in my flat. Stoya had left several agitated messages requesting me to present myself at police headquarters in
person, which made it seem probable that no warrant had yet been issued for my arrest.