The Mute Swan: A Thriller Read online

  “Good guess,” Sailor said.

  “I knew it,” Wolfe said.

  “But wrong guess,” Sailor said. “Strummed notes make me think of a musical instrument, you know?”

  “I know. I’m not ignorant,“ Wolfe said. “My daughter plays the fiddle.”

  “Then you should have known what bars are,” Sailor said. “In music, a bar is four notes. Think of it as a measuring tool to the length and timing of a melody.”

  “So some musical instrument should be played for five bars, I suppose,” Kopke said. “Unfortunately, I haven’t seen any musical instruments in here. Only one was listed on the items chart, an ancient five-string folk guitar, but it was reported as stolen.”

  Sailor eyed Wolfe who suddenly acted disinterested. “I guess we’ll figure it out eventually,” Sailor said to Kopke

  “So we skip to the next line, then. Six for swans, now silent, scarred?” Kopke said.

  Sailor surely knew the answer to that one, but pretended he didn’t. There was no way he could explain it to them. A centuries-old secret that most people would question and disbelieve. “We’ll come back to that as well.”

  “Seven for a box,” Kopke considered. “That looks like a part we shouldn’t skip.”

  “True, That may be the most significant part for now.”

  “So we’re looking for a box somewhere?”

  “It’s not far-fetched to imagine all these clues leading to some kind of a box.”

  “Pandora’s box.” Wolfe said.

  “Metaphorically speaking, yes.” Sailor nodded.

  “The part of Eight, you’re late sounds like a threat,” Kopke said.

  “Or an ominous declaration that we were late for Hannah,” Sailor said.

  A scowl showed on Wolfe’s face, “My daughter is only two years younger."

  “Do you want to call her?” Sailor said.

  “Her mother had put her on the phone just now,” Wolfe said. “She is okay.”

  “What’s her name?”

  “Nadine.”

  “Cool name,” Sailor didn’t care. He needed to know that Wolfe’s daughter wasn’t called Kate or Ann, but then again, Wolfe would have noticed. You’re getting old. Shape up, Sailor.

  “Do we have sailor boxes in the museum?” Wolfe asked Kopke.

  Though a vague sentence, Sailor was pleased the man put his mind to the matter.

  “What is a sailor box?” Kopke said. “There are no sailors in fairy tales, The only childhood story I know about sailors is Treasure Island.”

  “My childhood story about sailors was Captain Ahab in Moby Dick,” Wolfe said.

  “Moby Dick isn’t a bedtime story.” Kopke argued.

  “It was when I was a kid. Poor people read anything to their children, even if it had ‘dick’ in the title,” Wolfe mused, staring at Sailor.

  “Speaking of dicks,” Sailor said. “You sure can be one.”

  Kopke and Wolfe laughed. Sailor didn’t. This was getting a tad too friendly. He hadn’t been around people laughing for some time. It had always amused him how laughter broke through darker times. His hands reached for his fish whistle to remind himself of something he wanted to go back to. Speaking of whistles and music, he had an idea.

  “What’s on your mind, Mr. Sailor?”

  “You asked if there were hints for the box. Remember the line about the ‘four strummed notes for five bars’?”

  “Yes, the music line,” Kopke said and immediately had a eureka moment. “A music box!”

  “Exactly. I think I saw one when I first entered the museum.”

  “Oh my God,” Kopke said. “Come with me.”

  Sailor and Wolfe followed him back around that same column again. They passed Hannah’s corpse and continued in a straight line until they reached a table leaning against the wall. The same table Sailor had first seen earlier tonight. Had there not been a column in between, the table and mirror would have stood exactly in opposite directions.

  On a table was an old box. It didn't look out of place, but it didn't belong here either. Sailor knew that much right away. It bothered him that the box had been here the whole time, hidden in plain sight. Whoever made this stupid puzzle enjoyed the psychological mockery more than the grand finale.

  “If that’s the end game, then it’s a full circle,” Kopke said.

  “What do you mean?” Wolfe said.

  “Imagine a straight line connecting the mirror on the other side to the box. In Between is the column, and before it the dead girl, Hannah. All we had to do was find the writing under Hannah’s arms, walk to her right, past the column, to the mirror, read the poem and walk back, past the column again, and further on past Hannah this time, and arrive at the table leaning against the wall to Hannah’s left. All landmarks in one straight line.”

  Sailor saw goosebumps on Wolfe’s arm. “What the hell is all this?” the man was creeped out.

  “Are you sure this is the box?” Kopke asked Sailor.

  Sailor nodded, eyes on the final clue.

  “Is that a pentagram?” Wolfe pointed at the box.

  “Yes,” Sailor said.

  “You know that’s the sign of the devil, right?” Wolfe said.

  Sailor dismissed the comment.

  “Just like the inside of the apple.” Kopke said.

  Sailor’s made an effort to stop his hand from trembling. Kopke’s words caught him off guard. He was right. Things were coming full circle.

  He took a deep breath and began inspecting the pentagram first. It was made of colorful inlaid marble on the top half of the lid. In the middle, someone had carved two swans, forming two S letters.

  “Six for swans, now silent, scarred, ” Kopke whispered.

  “But those are two swans, not six,” Wolfe said.

  “An abbreviation Mr. Wolfe. SS. Six Swans,” Kopke said. “I assume we have to open the music box, Mr. Sailor.”

  Sailor refrained from talking, eyes on the box. Thinking.

  Will his reality be further shattered if he opened it?

  Was it Pandora’s Box like Wolfe had suggested?

  Kopke pointed at four number dials in front like on Samsonite luggage.

  “A little too modern for a supposedly ancient box,” Wolfe said.

  “Lock dials have existed since the fifteenth century,” Sailor said, running his hand over it.

  “Four dials. Four numbers,” Kopke said. “Five bars means we enter the four numbers five times until the box opens.”

  “Yup.”

  Kopke said, “I wonder if the killer hinted at the number in the rhyme.”

  “He didn’t need to,” Sailor pointed at the word written beneath the dial. Small but in capital letters: DEAF.

  “How did you see that so fast? Those are really tiny letters,” Wolfe glared at Sailor again, “This is really about you, isn’t it?”

  They weren’t going to have this discussion again.

  “Writing DEAF on a music box,” Kopke considered. “Irony? Sarcasm?”

  “Clue.” Sailor said.

  “How so?”

  “It’s the code to dialing the numbers,” Sailor said.

  “How can we enter letters in a number dial?”

  “You’re smarter than that, Kopke.”

  “I am?”

  “Look, it’s easier than you think,” Sailor began rolling the dials with his thumb while whispering the question that bothered him the most. “Who the hell is Hannah And Kate?”

  Chapter 14

  Hamelin, Northwest Germany

  The woman with the grey hair opened the creaking door for the young man.

  She put a hand on her heart with appreciation when she saw him wearing the traditional green hat with a white feather over a white shirt with lederhosen trousers, the perfect German tradition.

  “Oh, how sweet of you,” she stretched out a hand. “I’m Erika.”

  “Please,” the charming man hugged her instead. “Call me Piper. The Pied Piper.”

&n
bsp; She laughed wholeheartedly. The town of Hamelin had always prided itself for being the origin story of the notorious rat catcher and child thief. An incident which most tourists considered a cute fairy tale when it had been a real life massacre more than twelve centuries ago — a nightmare that hadn’t ended yet.

  She said, “I guess you came to rid us from the rats.”

  “But of course,” he showed her a box in his hands. “With my magic flute inside this box, Fräulein Erika.”

  Erika blushed, “I’m an old married woman. You can’t call me Fräulein. It’s only for the young beauties like my daughter.”

  “Ah, Erika,” Piper waved a hand in the air. “Your husband is dead, and you’re still beautiful.”

  “Stop it, charming young Piper,” she waved a hand back and winked. He was a charming young man. Otherwise she would have taken a moment thinking about the dead husband comment. Erika, and her bloodline, never married, but how was this young man to know about such a history. “Come inside. I still have to wake up my daughter.”

  Piper froze at the threshold. “She is a sleeping beauty, isn’t she?”

  “She is a brat,” Erika laughed. “But trust me, she was looking forward to the music lesson. She keeps praying all night and reciting those hymns, so she could use some refreshment.”

  “I wouldn’t want to stand between her and the God almighty,” he watched her disappear behind the walls of the timber house, hesitant to step inside.

  “She will be pleased to see you,” Erika shouted from inside. “The previous teacher was an old, big-nosed man with stinky breath.”

  “Well, your house is as stinky, ” he said under his breath and brought himself to step inside then rubbed the dust from the top of a vase with dried flowers.

  His face dimmed as he sat at the kitchen table, keeping his hands to himself. Touching anything else in here was a disgusting idea.

  “She is getting up,” Erika came back. “Sorry for that. Would you like something to drink?”

  He faked that smile again, “I wouldn’t want to trouble you.”

  “We have August beer,” she said. “The original stuff.”

  Piper bowed his head and touched his chest with appreciation, “You’re so kind to me, Erika.”

  She giggled and went to open the refrigerator.

  “Beer would be perfect with my apples,” he pulled out one from his pocket and rubbed it clean with the back of his sleeve.

  “Oh, green apples.”

  “My favorite,” he arched an eyebrow. “If your daughter does a good job today, I will gift her with one.”

  “You’re such a charming teacher,” she put the beer on the table and patted him on the shoulder.

  “No, Fräulein, I’m a Piper,” he winked and sipped the beer, avoiding touching the rim of the bottle to his lips.

  Erika sat opposite to him. “So what is a handsome man like you doing, teaching music? You look like the actor, Cillian Murphy. You can go to the city and become a model or something.”

  “Or play a handsome villain in movies,” he leaned forward with a smile. “But this box is my life,” he pointed at it in his lap. “Inside is my flute. The flute brings me happiness, which I’m keen on spreading to the world. You see, I found happiness, Erika, and I want everyone else to feel it, too. And I ask for nothing more.”

  She wasn’t convinced, but he was too beautiful of a lad for her to suspect foul play. She watched him unwrap a plastic stick or something as she realized her daughter must have fallen back to sleep.

  She sighed, “I will have to wake her up again, sorry Piper”

  “Take your time, Erika,” Piper said, still unwrapping that stick. “I’d wait for your daughter for centuries.”

  He watched her disappear inside again and then crossed his legs, checking out the message on his phone. He smiled at it and wrote: Blue Blood forever

  Then he continued unwrapping his favorite lollipop and tucked it in his mouth.

  Chapter 15

  The Spessart Museum, Lohr, Bavaria, Germany

  Kopke watched Sailor dial the numbers.

  The first one was 1.

  The Second 2.

  The third 5.

  The fourth 3.

  But nothing happened, until he saw Sailor dialing them back to zero then entering the four numbers again. Five times.

  The music box clicked. Jackpot.

  “How did you do that?” Wolfe said.

  “You would’ve known if your daughter really played the fiddle,” Sailor said, eyes on the box, worried about pulling the lid up.

  “I—“ Wolfe began.

  “In music there are ‘scales’, which are like guidelines for musicians to know the flavor and style and tonality they will perform,” Sailor explained. “Scales consist of notes. In some Western cultures, notes translate to the alphabet — the rest use a phonetic made of vowels like Do, Re, Me—”

  “Like Doe, a deer, a female deer. Ray, a drop of golden sun,” Kopke said. “Sound of Music, you know?”

  “Anyways,” Sailor continued, “A scale has seven notes. This music box is in a scale called D Minor.”

  “You knew that because D is the first letter in DEAF?” Kopke said.

  “Yup.”

  “So the word deaf doesn’t actually mean deaf here?” Wolfe said.

  “Consider it a double entendre,” Sailor said. “A play on words. A puzzle with two meanings.”

  “I assume in a D Minor scale the letters D equals the number 1, the F equals 2, and so on,” Kopke said.

  “You assumed right. In a D Minor scale you have the following notes/letters D, E, F, G, A, B, and C,” Sailor only bothered to explain because he liked Kopke.

  “Do you play an instrument yourself?” Kopke was curious.

  “Isn’t that obvious?” Sailor said, lifting up his fish whistle.

  “It is obvious,” Wolfe scoffed. “But Kopke asked because it seems like everything about this crime is about you, Sailor. The killer knows that when it comes to music Kopke and I are as deaf as a box.”

  Kopke ignored Wolfe’s comment. “Are you going to open that box, Mr. Sailor?”

  Sailor tapped the box with the tip of his finger. “Time to face the music.”

  Kopke chuckled. “Double entendre .”

  Sailor pulled the lid up and slowly the machine’s clockwork spun.

  A small statue of a ballerina rose from the bottom of the box. She wore a white dress, short at the legs and in a circular design with spaghetti straps on the shoulders.

  The image troubled Sailor. He held his breath.

  Metal parts creaked and music began playing from the box. He always found music boxes eerie.

  Neither the ballerina nor the music rang a bell at first. His mind raced to other conclusions, expecting a severed finger, blood, or more clues. He remembered a recurring debate between his wife and daughter over every movie. They had always argued whether in the end they would clap and cheer or if the horror would render them silent.

  One of the ballerina’s arms had been placed on her stomach. The other stretched up in the air with a bitten apple in hand.

  The mechanical music echoed in the museum’s hall.

  Three for men who’re lost with clues .

  No words were spoken.

  The truth was plain and simple. Sailor’s brain resisted it.

  But reality can only be denied for so long.

  “Fuck!” Sailor’s spat out.

  Kopke and Wolfe dared not ask. His tone scared them.

  “The music,” Sailor said.

  “What about it?” Kopke said.

  “It’s Swan Lake by Tchaikovsky.”

  “So?” Wolfe said, as his phone beeped.

  Sailor tilted his head back at Hannah and then back to the ballerina in the box. “This had never been a wedding dress. The killer dressed Hannah to resemble a swan, like the ballerina in Swan Lake, the ballet.”

  Kopke’s focus shifted from Hannah to box, realizing he could h
ave never interpreted this on his own.

  “She was a Screaming Swan,” Sailor hurried back and knelt next to Hannah, “Now a Mute Swan.”

  Chapter 16

  Hamelin , Northwest Germany

  Piper splashed water on his face, barely tolerating the odor in the bathroom. It didn’t stink. It just smelled of them. Those swan people. He looked at his exhausted face in the mirror, now washed up and ready to go.

  “Soon it’ll be over,” he pointed a finger at his reflection. “Soon the bloodline will perish.”

  He snatched a napkin and dried his face then closed the box and tucked it under his arm and walked out. Fast and efficient. He had done this before.

  The hall was silent as the inside of a tomb.

  Piper sighed as he stepped over Erika and her daughter’s corpses sprawled on the floor. This must have been his sloppiest job. Erika had fought for her daughter, long enough he had no choice but to slit her throat.

  He didn’t understand what the woman was fighting for, as he had already poisoned her daughter with the apple. Now blood was everywhere, even on the swan dress he forced her to wear.

  Chapter 17

  The Spessart Museum, Lohr, Bavaria, Germany

  “What is a Mute Swan?” Kopke frantically followed Sailor.

  “The blood from the mouth runs down her chin and neck,” Sailor was talking to himself, puzzling it all together. “Only mute swans have orange or reddish beaks and necks from the iron in the water.”

  “But what does it mean?” Kopke said. “Does it have to do with the swans on the box?”

  “Six Swans, now silent, scarred, ” Sailor talked to himself. “They’re celebrating the silencing of Hannah.”

  “Silencing her? Why?”

  “Because she knew.”

  “I’m very confused, Mr. Sailor,” Kopke said. “And very scared.”

  “She was one of the few girls the secret had been passed to, from generation to generation,” Sailor shouldn’t have uttered these words but he was thinking out loud, knowing that the final strike hadn’t come yet. He was close. “She descended from the bloodline of the Six Swans, but now she is dead, muted by the Colonnade.”