Safe as Houses (10 page)

Lisa avoids his eyes, but it is as though Kreuger sucks her gaze towards him. His eyes tear the words from her mouth. Now that she's said this, she'll have to speak – she won't get away with this vague confession.

‘I ran him over.'

Kreuger whistles softly. ‘Did he die?'

‘No – he was seriously injured and went to hospital, but he survived.'

There's something of respect in his expression. ‘And you got away with it?'

Lisa runs her hand through her hair nervously. ‘Yes. I drove off really fast. There weren't any witnesses. Mark never found out that I was the one who ran him over, though he suspected it. He used to give me a funny look whenever we talked about his accident . . .'

‘And then?'

‘Then we broke up,' Lisa says simply. ‘He
understood he'd overstepped the mark and that I'd kill him the next time.'

‘Really? You would have done it again?'

‘Definitely.' The wound on her hand throbs; her lip has opened again and stings. ‘I can understand and forgive just like the next person, but there are limits.'

Lisa pulls on her jeans and a clean white top. She hurries because she hates leaving Anouk with Kreuger, even for such a short time. She gives her hair a perfunctory comb with her fingers and runs downstairs. As her foot reaches the bottom step, she hears the sound of a car in the distance.

Her hand grips the banister tightly and, holding her breath, she peers through the frosted glass of the front door to try to see something. Is it Mark, or her mother?

Please let it be one of them, she pleads inwardly. No, for God's sake let it not be one of them!

Torn between hope and fear, she waits until Kreuger notices the sound, but the hall door is closed. Lisa tiptoes to the front door. Something orange shines through the glass. It's the post van. Can she do anything? Thoughts race through her
brain. As long as the door is locked, she can't do anything. Shouting a warning to the elderly, rather deaf postman through the letter box is much too risky. All the conversations she's ever had with him have been shouted comments about the weather.

The post van stops in front of her house, and Lisa looks around, at her wit's end. Pen, paper! She has to write a note, hurry!

Too late: the crunch of footsteps on the gravel announces the postman's approach. His shape pops up in front of the door, like a guardian angel from another world – out of reach. ‘Postman! Postman!' she calls through the letter box as loudly as she can. She sees him rummaging around in his bag and puts her hand through the letter box in an attempt to attract his attention. The next moment she can hear him laughing and feels the post being pressed into her hand.

The sound of footsteps retreating is a drum roll announcing the end of the world – her world.

She goes into the sitting room in despair. Anouk is kneading Play-Doh at the dining table, and Kreuger is following her work closely. He pays the same intense attention to the letter in Lisa's hand.

‘Post,' he says, in a tone that betrays he hadn't thought of this possibility.

The kitchen is suffused with the smell of toasted sandwiches and fresh coffee. It is just after one thirty in the afternoon. The morning slipped by in relative peace and quiet, and Lisa notices that she feels less tense. The radio is on, the curtains are still closed, and it's stuffy and warm inside, but she's less fearful of being murdered. Nothing is certain in the company of a psychopath, but at this moment it is hard to imagine that the man sitting opposite her murdered his family. It's best just not to think about it. Every time her thoughts take the wrong turn, she redirects them to the next morning. The postman will be back then.

Anouk decides she wants to finger-paint, and soon she's absorbed in this.

‘Emily loved that stuff too.' Kreuger takes a bite of his sandwich. ‘After five minutes she'd be totally covered in paint. And the table, the chair and the floor.'

Lisa smiles in recognition at the image, until she remembers that she's smiling at the image of a small, dead girl.

As though he can read her thoughts, Kreuger suddenly begins to share. ‘Jeffrey was two and Emily was four when my wife left me. I'd already known for a while that Angelique was seeing someone else – I just knew.' His voice takes on the defensive tone of someone who assumes that
everything they say will be treated with scepticism. ‘A man can sense when he's being cheated on. I asked her about it, but she refused to talk to me. She just disappeared off upstairs without saying a thing. When she turned her back on me, something snapped inside. I felt so unbelievably humiliated by having to run around after her, and yes, then I lost control of myself. I threw her down the stairs. In front of the children – that wasn't so clever. But I couldn't think clearly: it was as though I was only fragments of myself, as though you'd only have to pull a single thread for me to fall apart. And she kept pulling at that thread.' He pauses for a while and then continues. ‘Angelique had a few bruises and concussion. She got up, took the children to her parents' and came back the next day with her brother and sister to pick up her stuff. I tried to talk to her, to say sorry, but there was no point. She disappeared from my life without giving me the chance to make it up to her.' Kreuger's voice quavers at the unfairness of the memory. ‘The worst thing was that I hardly got to see my children after that. The visiting arrangements were ridiculous: a few hours a fortnight, under strict supervision. The first hour my children stood there staring at me like I was a total stranger who might attack them at any second, and just when they'd finally relaxed the bitch who came to supervise took them
away again.' His voice is shaking, and his eyes take on a strange lustre.

Lisa keeps a careful watch on him. ‘And then what happened?'

‘My life fell to pieces. I'd never cried as much as I did then. My wife was gone, my children were gone, and, as if that wasn't enough, I lost my job too. I sat around at home all day with nothing but problems on my mind. And one day I saw her. She was walking through the town centre with another guy. So I was right. She had been cheating on me with someone else, and now they were walking down the street together. With the children. She was holding Emily's hand, and my little boy was skipping along holding that bastard's hand. All my fuses blew, but I knew I couldn't do much in the middle of the high street. I found out where he lived and drove to that bastard's house. It wasn't that difficult to break in, and then I lay in wait.'

He stops and looks at Lisa to check that she's still listening. She is. One hundred per cent.

‘What did you do next?' she asks quietly.

‘I murdered them,' he says simply. ‘First that prick. He went to the garage. I slipped in behind him and bashed his brains out. Piece of piss – he never knew what hit him. That was a shame, but I couldn't take the risk of it turning into a fight. Angelique would have been warned then.'

‘And then you went back into the house.'

Kreuger nods in agreement. ‘I'd seen Angelique going upstairs. I got a big knife from the kitchen and went up after her. The children were in the living room, but I could get into the hall through the garage and the utility room without being seen.' An almost dreamy look appears in his eyes. ‘I'd murdered her so many times in my fantasies. Each time, I did it slowly, so that she would be aware of what she'd done to me, so that she'd realise it was her own fault she was suffering. But, when it came down to it, it wasn't possible. The children were in the house, and I had to be quick.'

He says it with resolve, as though he'd been dealing with an irritating household chore that he couldn't get out of.

‘She saw me coming at her with a knife and began to scream, but downstairs they couldn't hear her over the television. And her screaming soon stopped.' There is satisfaction in Kreuger's voice.

Lisa tries to hide the shivers running down her spine. ‘And the children?' she whispers.

Kreuger's expression darkens. He looks up at her with a face that still betrays despair after all this time. ‘What else could I do? I knew I wouldn't get away with it and that I'd go to prison for years. What would have happened to Emily and Jeffrey? Think about it: what kind of life would they have
had? Their mother murdered, their father in prison, and the two of them sent from foster home to foster home. I did them a service by saving them from that. I did it as fast as I could. I just drew the knife and it was over. I was thinking only about what was best for them. I tried to explain that to the judge too, that I'd been acting in my children's best interests, but he didn't listen.'

Again there is anger in his voice, but it is shortlived. A moment later his eyes are dull, and his voice is tired and depressed.

‘Admit it, I couldn't do anything else, could I?' he mutters to himself.

Lisa can only stare at him. That the man sitting opposite her murdered his ex-wife and her boyfriend is terrible, but that he managed to cut his own children's throats is unthinkable.

Most people would react to a story like this with rigid horror. But, for Lisa, it is as though she can share his memories telepathically. She hears the screaming, the pleading, she smells the blood . . .

She breaks out in a sweat; her hands begin to shake, and she takes fast, shallow breaths. She notices that Kreuger is keeping an eye on her, so she tries to keep her facial expression as neutral as possible.

‘You know what it's like,' he says, as though they are kindred spirits. ‘You tried to murder your husband yourself.'

‘It wasn't the same . . .'

‘Oh, no? What's the difference?'

Lisa remains silent.

Kreuger leans towards her a little. ‘You want to spit at me. I'm such a bastard that I make you feel sick. Do you think you're better than me because you don't have any blood on your hands? You're wrong, darling. We're exactly the same.'

No, we're not, Lisa thinks. We're not at all, you disgusting piece of shit. I would never do anything to my daughter. I would rather leave her with Mark and never see her again than lay a single finger on her.

She doesn't say a word until she notices that Kreuger's face is becoming darker and darker. Fear tightens around her throat.

‘Maybe you're right,' she says gently. ‘Remember I told you that I suffered from post-natal depression after Anouk was born? That was really heavy. I wasn't myself for months.' She picks up the leftover crust of a toasted sandwich from her plate and nervously breaks it into tiny pieces. ‘I couldn't cope. The housework, the baby crying all the time, my body completely broken after the difficult birth . . .'

An encouraging nod from Kreuger helps her to carry on.

‘I can't imagine it now, but there was a moment
when I was convinced that Anouk couldn't have ended up with a worse mother than me. Why else would she cry all day and all night? I wondered why on earth I'd thought it necessary to bring a child into the world. Into this polluted, stinking, bad world, where she spent all her time kicking and screaming. One afternoon the bawling got so deep into my head that I couldn't think any more. I took all the sleeping pills that were in the medicine cabinet and the next second I was standing over her cot with a pillow. Just as I started to press it on to Anouk's face, Mark arrived home . . .' Lisa's voice dies away. She keeps her eyes fixed on the plate and the crumbs, so as not to catch the look of understanding and recognition in his eyes.

It remains quiet, and after a while there's nothing else to do but look up. Kreuger is leaning back with an impassive expression on his face.

‘He put me into a clinic,' Lisa says simply. ‘Not a forced admission: I went voluntarily. I knew I'd try again otherwise. I didn't come home until I was cured, and then I learned how to enjoy Anouk.'

‘So you didn't tell me the entire story.'

‘It's nothing to be proud of.'

Kreuger's eyes fix on her. ‘But you can admit it to a disturbed criminal who murdered his own family.'

‘Something like that.'

Her honest reply disarms him. He gives her a hypnotic stare – it lasts so long that Lisa begins to feel nervous – but then suddenly he grins. ‘We have more in common than I thought.'

‘I believe that many people have a dark side. And that there are few people who'll admit how close they've come to the edge.'

Kreuger nods. He believes it, Lisa thinks. That idiot really believes I tried to suffocate my child.

The loud ringing of the telephone breaks the silence like a grenade going off. Lisa jumps up, and Kreuger is so quick to get to his feet that his chair falls over backwards.

He grabs the house telephone, which had been clipped to his belt, and looks at the LCD display.

‘Mum,' he reads aloud. ‘OK, just pick up. And think before you speak: no hints, no cleverness, no secret messages. Just have a chat, get it? Not too long and not too short.' He hands Lisa the telephone, adding, ‘Put it on speaker phone if you like. I know it's impolite, but I'd really like to listen in.'

The relationship between body and soul is a strange phenomenon. We know that the soul has a strong capacity to heal the body, but how exactly this occurs is still a mystery. It must have something to do with willpower, with the force you exert to get your body under control.

If you believe that your body won't obey you, how likely is it that your state will change? But if people can think themselves out of recovery, shouldn't they also be able to think themselves better?

Senta holds her breath and concentrates so hard on waking up that it gives her a headache. Then she opens her mouth and screams an order at her soul with all the air she has in her lungs. But the water absorbs her scream, leaving her only with silence. The black hole tugs at her, but Senta resists
and kicks frantically, like a drowning man on his way to the surface.