Korridorium

♫ Wim­mel­bild ♫

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68/398

I enter the cor­ri­dor at the police sta­tion. Even from here, I can hear Albo yelling. He seems to be in a foul mood. No sur­prise there. When he sees me, he shoos the rook­ies out of the office. Even pulls up a chair for me. Never does that, the detec­tive.

“Find any­thing?” His voice is hoarse. He nods towards the copies with the blood­stain that fades down to doc­u­ment num­ber 10. “The team here says he’s a can­ni­bal and ate every­thing but the heart.”

I help myself to a cof­fee. “They must mean text num­ber 15, the ‘man-eater.’ It’s a lit­er­ary allu­sion to the Mino­taur myth. Unlikely that he iden­ti­fies with it that way.”

Albo sits on the desk and rubs his right thigh. “But there’s no body. And no miss­ing per­son report that fits. He cut the heart out with a knife that, the experts say, ‘was nei­ther par­tic­u­larly sharp nor par­tic­u­larly dull.’ Great! Got any­thing else for me?”

“It’s all pretty vague. Based on the texts, I’d guess he’s sin­gle, a loner, does­n’t like being around peo­ple.”

“The thing about Mount Olym­pus?”

“Yeah. But also the one about the hip­pies. And he’s got a grudge against gov­ern­ment insti­tu­tions and bureau­cracy. Num­ber 42, with the promised blood­bath…”

“Could just be he’s hav­ing trou­ble with his tax office. This is all garbage, man. I’ll spell it out for the dum­mies: What am I sup­posed to be search­ing for? And don’t tell me some young female clerk at the build­ing depart­ment named Cory d’Or!”

“That’s just one of many false leads, sure. Although…”

Albo shifts to get com­fort­able and knocks a pen­cil sharp­ener off the desk. He groans as he bends down. “Although what?”

“There’s a decent chance his real name actu­ally is Cory. It’s a man’s name, too.”

Albo reaches out with extended fin­ger­tips, but the sharp­ener just slides fur­ther under the desk.

“Text num­ber 8, with cav­ity, horn, and boil­ing basin, and so on,” I add.

“Yeah?” He gives up, drops back into his swivel chair, and looks at me expec­tantly.

“All pos­si­ble ety­mo­log­i­cal ori­gins of the name ‘Cory.’ And unless he hap­pens to be a linguist—which I can’t entirely rule out—only some­one with that name would know that.”

Albo rubs his stub­ble. “I’ll have it checked out. A thin lead and a slim chance, but I’ll check it. Can’t be that many Corys in Berlin and the sur­round­ing area.”

“And one more thing, Uwe.” Albo drops his hand. “I’ve been think­ing we should pub­lish some of the texts. With a note mak­ing it clear we’re look­ing for the author.”

“And you don’t think that might be exactly what he wants?”

I expected that ques­tion. “Yeah, could be. But we’ll only pub­lish excerpts, and we’ll slip in a few typos. Enough to make him see red. What do you think? Maybe some­one rec­og­nizes the texts. Or the style, or an allu­sion.”

“That’s all you’ve got? What if he feels pro­voked? I don’t want to find a liver some­where tomor­row, or a lung, excised with a knife that’s not too dull and not too sharp.”

I point to the copies. “I’ve squeezed them dry. The whole thing is a shell game designed to lead us by the nose. I can’t just point a fin­ger at some­one and say, ‘That’s him, he wrote them, you’ll find fifty type­writ­ers in his garage and the bloody knife in his kitchen cab­i­net.’ ”

Albo sways his head back and forth. We’ve known each other for so many years—every now and then he’d con­sult me, his old psy­chol­o­gist friend, on tricky mur­der cases. But despite the use­ful insights I could offer from time to time, he should know I can’t work mir­a­cles. He low­ers his voice, leav­ing no doubt that what comes next is impor­tant. “I want a writ­ten pro­file, as pre­cise as pos­si­ble, clear? One that says he isn’t a can­ni­bal, but an intel­lec­tual who enjoys cruel games. Who might be named Cory, which gave him a trauma that turned into an obses­sion with cor­ri­dors. Got it?!”

“That’s pretty much all I have, though.”

“Write it down. I need it for admin. If you hap­pen to think of any­thing use­ful while doing it, let me know. And as for pub­lish­ing the stuff—I’ll think about it.”