The Stolen by T. S. Learner

glass square windows and flat wooden roof, for hours. What he was watching for he didn’t exactly know.
    Keja had sent him, but he had felt the calling himself, although he would never admit it to her. It was more an impulse, the sense that whatever had drawn him there would manifest when it was ready. There was a right timing for everything, his mother had always told him, but you have to put yourself in the way of it. This was Luck; this was Fate. Latcos wasn’t sure whether he really believed in such matters. The Rom were lucky when they were free, but at the last Springfire festival he’d heard stories of arrests, torture and murder, in Romania, Hungary, Poland and Russia. Heard of young Rom men beaten to death by gangs of youths, caravans driven off farms they had visited for decades. Was this Luck? Was this Fate?
    And what about his uncle’s murder?
    They’d buried Yojo the day before; a gypsy band had walked ahead of the coffin loaded onto a van covered in flowers, while Keja and Latcos and Rom friends followed wailing and grieving. Back in Romania Yojo’s house had been closed up, the door painted so that his spirit would not recognise it if he decided to return home. His possessions had been sold as was
marime
and it was now forbidden to mention him by name. All had been properly executed according to custom and the thought gave Latcos some comfort. Nevertheless, some of his uncle’s soul had entered him. He could feel him now, under his skin, wanting him to find the taken child, to reclaim what had been theirs. He shivered. The first fingers of dawn had begun to climb up from behind the pine trees and he was just about to walk away when a white sports car turned into the quiet cul de sac. Latcos stepped back into darkness. There were two figures in the car, a man and a young girl. He watched as it pulled up several houses down from the one he was watching. The young girl climbed out, unsteady on high heels. To Latcos’s eyes she looked like a prostitute, with her skin-tight T-shirt, her short skirt and torn stockings, as she tottered drunkenly down the pavement towards him. Latcos held his breath as the girl walked past only inches away, the sweet musk of her perfume drifting across. Somewhere behind him there was a sudden rustling in the low scrub – a bird scrounging for its breakfast. Liliane swung, stumbling, a bangle slipping off her wrist as she steadied herself against a tree trunk. It fell silently into the snow, unnoticed. Latcos found himself staring at her face as she looked blindly back, not seeing him at all in the shadows. The sight made his heart leap in his ribcage; he knew her as he might know his own sister – he knew that beauty.
    Holding his body and his beating heart as still as he could, Latcos watched the girl turn back and ascend the steps leading up to the front door. Just before she stepped into the house she paused and looked back as if she might have sensed his presence after all. It took all his willpower not to call out to her.
    After the door was closed, he steadied himself against the tree trunk; he’d found the right house.
    Carefully, he retraced the girl’s footsteps. The bangle was halfway along the path, edge up in the snow, its gold a glinting half-circle. Latcos reached down and slipped it into his pocket.

FIVE
    The morning breeze was still coming off the mountains. A shivering Klauser stared up at the apartment. It was characteristic of the houses built for the bourgeoisie in the Hottingen district. A mansion that had seen better days, Klauser noted as he climbed up the steep steps, the book he’d found hidden in the priest’s mattress now under his arm carefully wrapped in brown paper. He reached the top out of breath and stared at the tiny typed names next to each buzzer. There had to be at least four flats in the one building; squinting, he saw that Frau Neumann’s was at the top. He sighed. It was going to be a