Eye Collector, The Read Online Free PDF Page B

sex.’
    None of the victims had been particularly big or strong, so they couldn’t have offered serious resistance. The absence of any signs of a struggle suggested that the murderer had taken
advantage of the element of surprise. Whoever was responsible for the death of Lucia Traunstein and the abduction of Toby and Lea might be either male or female, maybe even one of a team. Professor
Adrian Hohlfort, the profiler who was working with the police on these cases, had already told them as much. But not, alas, anything more than that.
    Scholle sniffed and kneaded his double chin, staring at the woman whose head was lolling sideways at a grotesque 90-degree angle. Her neck was obviously broken, another pointer to the Eye
Collector’s modus operandi.
    The victim’s wide-open eyes were staring past the two detectives at the wall of the tent.
    No, not staring. Screaming.
    ‘Fuck it, who cares?’ Scholle literally spat the words into the cold air. ‘I’ll take down the Eye Collector even if he turns out to be goddamned nun.’
    Stoya nodded. As head of homicide he should have insisted his subordinate be more objective. Instead, all he said was, ‘And I’ll help you.’
    I can’t take it any more either. I’ve had it up to here. This time they must win the Eye Collector’s perverse game of hide-and-seek and catch him before his ultimatum
expires and another jogger stumbles over yet another child’s corpse.
    A child’s corpse with its left eye removed by a psycho. God, what a morning.
    Looking at Scholle, who was angry enough to have torn the tent to shreds, Stoya had to concede, not for the first time, that he was impelled by motives that differed from his
colleague’s.
    Scholle wanted vengeance. All Stoya aspired to was a better life. Damn it all, he’d been hunting down antisocial scum for over twenty years, and his reward at the age of forty was a face
like a rotting apple. Blotchy skin, wrinkled pouches under his eyes and a bald patch on the back of his head. That was the price you paid for unrelenting stress and lack of sleep. None of this
would be a problem if the job had at least generated the sort of bank balance that inclined most women to overlook outward appearances, but no such luck. Stoya was a confirmed bachelor, and most of
the criminals he hunted earned more in an hour than he did in a month.
    Scholle wants vengeance. I want a cushy number.
    Yes, damn it. Unlike the rest of them, Stoya wasn’t too squeamish to admit it. He was sick of grubbing around in shit with both hands. His ultimate aim was a more political job within the
force, a spokesperson with fixed hours of work, better pay, and a big desk behind which to flatten his backside.
    Let the others kneel beside women’s naked corpses in the rain.
    At the moment, however, he was light years from his objective, and if he failed to produce some results in double-quick time he’d be lucky to escape putting on a uniform again. Different
motives or not, at least he and Scholle were pursuing the same goal.
    ‘We’ve got to find this nutter.’
    Stoya’s cold, wet fingers felt for the little plastic bag in his trouser pocket. As soon as the pathologist arrived – Philippe had already informed him by phone of the special nature
of the corpse – he would go inside the house, where a psychologist was ministering to the husband, and shut himself up in the bathroom. He hoped there was enough of the stuff left to keep him
awake for the next forty-five hours...
    What the devil...?
    Stoya heard the change in his surroundings before he saw it. It was the sound of rain falling not on turf but on a hard surface just outside the tent. On plastic. More precisely, on the kind of
white coverall worn by forensics.
    ‘Shit! What’s that arsehole doing here?’ said Scholle. His impotent rage had found a lightning conductor at last. The reporter staring at them within earshot had long
been a thorn in his former colleagues’ sides. Alexander