Safe as Houses (19 page)

It's difficult to get inside the mind of a child killer, the psychiatrist had concluded on the programme. Researchers don't have much to go
on other than motive: in half of the cases the parents turn out to have been in serious trouble. Suicide and killing their children to prevent the whole family from having a miserable life is for many the only way out. Everyone has a space where he or she saves up revenge, hatred and jealousy, the psychiatrist had explained. But normal people clear it out now and again, so that the space doesn't become overcrowded.

The day slips by. The darkness and gloom act as a sedative. Her struggle against thirst turns into resignation. She feels the black hole beneath her, tugging her down. The temptation to just let herself sink is great. She hasn't slept properly for ages. Stumbling into the darkness and resting feels nice. Nothing else to think about. No one can harm her. She closes her eyes and thinks of Mark.

When a loud noise startles her, she has no idea how long she has been out. Anouk is lying next to her with her eyes closed, breathing deeply and regularly. Lisa lifts her arm up with some difficulty and looks at her watch. Almost seven: it's evening again.

She listens, tense, but the house has fallen silent again.

Her head feels heavy, her body weak. She can hardly see a thing: just a narrow strip of light under the door at the top of the stairs. The spectre of
thirst pokes up its head again. Her tongue, glued to the roof of her mouth, feels like a piece of dead meat.

She tries to concentrate on the sound that woke her up. It sounded like a door slamming shut. Has Kreuger left?

She attempts to get up, but an attack of dizziness makes her fall back on to the cushions. She gathers herself and slowly rises again. She stands up carefully and shuffles towards the stairs. She works herself up them, one at the time, her forehead clammy. Despite her shaking hands, she manages to get the key in the lock. She waits for a while and then rests her ear against the door. She can hear voices in the sitting room. One of them is very familiar. Mark?

Hope flaps in her chest like a freed bird.

Lisa turns the key and hesitates for a few seconds. Then, checking that Anouk is still sleeping, she carefully pushes at the door.

Holding her breath, she opens it enough to squeeze through. She is desperate to drink. She takes a step into the utility room. Kreuger's voice is suddenly so loud that it sounds like he's standing next to her. Lisa reflexively jumps back.

It's a few seconds before she's fully convinced that she's still alone.

Her eyes longingly roam around the utility room.
There are only bottles of wine in the rack. The big packs of soft drinks are in the garage, but she'll never make it that far. She'll have to rely on the kitchen.

She inches towards the kitchen and listens, but only Kreuger is talking. Meanwhile, she keeps her eyes focused on the worktop, on the shining taps. One for hot and one for cold. She only has to turn them for a life-saving stream to flow. She can already feel the freshness of the water in her dehydrated mouth, feel how the liquid will rinse the mucus from her tongue and down her throat. Whoever is in there can wait a few seconds.

Her eyes glued to the taps, she shuffles to the worktop and puts her mouth under them.

The fresh stream rushes inside, and she drinks and drinks, without getting enough. Kreuger's voice breaks through again, interrupted by another that seems rather stern. It sounds like Mark's voice. Lisa straightens up and listens. My God, it is Mark. Should she call for help – can she take that risk? But before she can make a decision, she hears a scream in the sitting room, followed by loud moans.

She tiptoes towards the kitchen door. And carefully peers around the corner into the sitting room.

Kreuger is leaning forward with his back to Lisa. Mark is in the same position but Lisa recognises him at once. That long, straight back, dark hair, slightly too long neck, hands balled into fists betraying fear as well as anger. Mark is taller than Kreuger, but the long, razor-sharp knife that Kreuger is holding to his throat renders him totally helpless. He's not in a position to speak. Only Kreuger's voice is audible, soft and hissing.

‘So you're the bastard who cheated on his wife with this slut here?'

‘Don't do it,' she hears Mark beg. ‘Please.'

His plea takes a while to enter Lisa's stupefied brain. She looks around feverishly. A knife, any weapon, it doesn't matter what. If she waits any longer that lunatic will do something with the knife.

‘Trap shut, prick. I was talking,' Kreuger snarls.
He begins to talk about being faithful and people not being capable of it any more. Lisa doesn't wait.

There aren't any knives. There is only the chair at the kitchen table. Lisa turns around and grabs hold of the chair's back.

The kitchen isn't big, but suddenly the distance that Lisa, the chair clamped in her hands, has to cross is enormous. It is curious how heavy such an unimposing wooden chair can be. Her heart races, and there seems to be so little oxygen in her lungs that she wonders whether she'll make it as far as Kreuger. Breathing is hard and she pants; any second now he'll hear her. She realises that she's hyperventilating. But she has no choice: she has to attack Kreuger with the chair, even if it means that he'll kill Mark and then her.

The open doorway is like a portal into unknown, dangerous territory. Just as Lisa is about to announce her presence, Kreuger draws the knife across Mark's throat. Mark falls to the side, his face towards Lisa. It takes a second before the blood begins to flow, as though his body hasn't quite understood what's happened to it. At first just a trickle seeps from the wound, but then the levees burst. As though that's not enough, Kreuger begins to stab at Mark's body with terrifying fervour, getting rid of all of his frustrations in one fell swoop.

Lisa races back and grabs hold of the doorpost. Something in her spills over, coating her body in ice, making each heartbeat reverberate around her head. In a split second, her field of vision is reduced to the section of floor where Mark is lying. He can see her. Not totally conscious, yet aware he's going to die, he keeps his eyes fixed on hers.

I love you
, they say.
Even though I've made mistakes, I've always loved you
.

I know and I've never stopped hoping you'd come to me
.

I'm so sorry. I'm so terribly sorry
.

His eyes become glassy.

Stay with me
, Lisa begs.

She tries to focus on him, but he drifts away from her in a fog of tears. Her most powerful thoughts aren't enough to keep him with her, and she knows this is the end. The awareness that any hope of reunion has been sliced away by the stroke of a knife is replaced by the realisation that nothing will ever fill her with such strong feelings again. Simply because she wouldn't be able to bear it – the intense pain that races through her now is just too great.

Mark draws three more rasping breaths, and with each gulp of air more and more of Lisa's nerve endings seem to die, until she is completely numb.

Mark stares ahead with vacant eyes. Eyes that had admired her, eyes that had winked at her, and cried when she broke off their relationship. Eyes that never stopped looking at her, full of love. Eyes that gave her hope, despite everything else.

Lisa clings to the doorpost and uses every last resource to keep her grief inside. She sees Kreuger stand up, about to turn around. She takes a step backwards, but the chair is still in the doorway.

His footsteps set off a flight reflex. Her body is so weak and powerless that she doesn't stand a chance in a fight with him. She is condemned to die if she goes back into the basement, but she must. Anouk is there.

The basement door is still open. Lisa runs. Just as Kreuger enters the kitchen, she turns the key in the lock and stays dead still.

Kreuger's heaving breathing is clearly audible on the other side of the door. She doesn't move a muscle. Although it feels like she's been standing there endlessly, it's only a few minutes before Kreuger leaves the utility room. She listens to his footsteps. Then she hears him rummaging around in the garage. After a while she hears a thud against the door. For a second she thinks the door will burst open. But then she realises that he is nailing it shut. Wooden planks are slapped up, nails force their way in, the whole house reverberates with
the hammering. Anouk lies still on the ground and doesn't react to any of it.

Lisa sinks to her knees at the top of the stairs and cries with her face against the door.

Senta drives slowly. She studies every house that looms up on her left, but each time she knows straightaway it's not the one she's looking for.

And then, to her amazement, she sees it. It's below the embankment, surrounded by fields. This is the house in her head; she recognises it at once. She was here before she had the accident; it's the only possible explanation.

Senta turns off the embankment and drives down a narrow track to the bottom. She stops her car where the road forks, parks as tight to the verge as possible and gets out.

Nothing moves in or around the house. Looks like she's unlucky and nobody's home.

She walks between the dwarf box hedges and along the gravel path to the front door. An
old-fashioned-sounding ring fills the hall when she presses the bell.

There's no reply. She presses again and holds her ear to the door, but when the ringing has died away there's still no sound.

To the right of the house there's an extension with a garage door. If she really wants to check that nobody's home, she'll have to walk around the house. That's going a bit far.

On the other hand, what if the people who live here are busy in the garden and haven't heard her?

Senta hesitates for a while, then walks around to the back of the house. A large terrace stretches out in front of her, surrounded by borders full of hydrangeas, phlox, hollyhocks and salvias. Behind them the blades of a windmill slowly revolve. There are a few sheets and a nightdress on the washing line. A sheet has fallen on to the grass, and the contents of the peg basket are strewn about.

It feels like she's experienced this before. She looks at the pegs and shakes her head in confusion. Then she goes on to the terrace and starts: there's a man at the window. His arms are crossed, and his gaze is focused right on her. It's as though he's been keeping an eye on her the whole time.

Intuitively she takes a step backwards, but then the tension is broken by his smile.

Senta returns his smile hesitantly. The man
disappears, reappears in the kitchen and unlocks the door.

‘Good afternoon,' he says with a friendly face, full of expectation.

‘Good afternoon. Excuse me for bothering you. I'm sorry if it seems cheeky to have gone round the back, but I wanted to ask you something. It's important.'

The man raises his eyebrows and waits, as though she might be able to explain what's so important in a couple of words. But she doesn't have much choice if he's not going to invite her in.

‘I was here a few days ago,' she begins. ‘On Monday afternoon. It was very misty.'

‘Yes,' the man says slowly.

‘I got lost,' Senta continues, ‘and I think I came here to ask for directions. Do you remember seeing me?'

A frown joins his eyebrows together. ‘Monday afternoon?'

‘Maybe there wasn't anyone home when I called. I can't remember anything myself, you see. Just after that I had a serious accident. I drove into the water a little further up the road.' She nods vaguely at the embankment, and the man looks at her with a little more interest.

‘I read about it in the paper,' he says. ‘Was that you?'

‘Yes, but I've lost my memory of what happened before the accident. But I keep seeing this house in my mind's eye. That's why I thought—'

‘Come in for a while.' He holds open the door invitingly, and Senta enters gratefully. There's an intense smell in the kitchen.

‘How kind of you to spare me the time. It's important that I start to fill in that missing hour, you see. There's so much I don't understand . . .'

He smiles and offers her his hand. ‘I'm Mark.'

Senta squeezes his hand. ‘Senta.'

Mark precedes her into the sitting room and gestures at the sofa. ‘Take a seat, Senta.'

It sounds more like an order than a friendly invitation, but Senta isn't bothered by this. Some people are gruff, and she's just happy she'll get the chance to find out more.

She sits down. The blinds have been lowered against the setting sun, and the room is bathed in a soft, orange light.

‘So you don't remember me,' she says.

‘No, I wasn't here on Monday. If you spoke to anyone, it would have been my wife,' he says as he sits down too.

‘Oh, yes, that's possible, of course.'

‘I'll ask her when she gets home. Or I'll phone her. I can see it's important to you.' He leans
forward slightly, his arms on his knees. ‘But you don't have a single memory of that day?'

‘Of that day I do, but not of the hour running up to the accident. I don't understand what I was doing around here or why I was driving so stupidly fast that I went over the bank. The only thing I can remember is this house. So I decided to return to the scene of the accident and look for the house. That's why I'm here.'

Mark nods slowly. ‘I understand. Do you know what – I'll just go and give my wife a call. Do you have a moment?'

To Senta's surprise he goes into the kitchen and closes the door behind him. Another door opens and closes, and then there's a sound of thumping somewhere further away. In the garage?

Senta wrinkles her nose a couple of times. The strange smell is in here too.

She gets up and wanders around the room. What a lovely big house this is. Nicely decorated too, just her taste. She carefully studies the photographs on the dresser. Lots of shots of a small, dark-haired little girl, mostly together with an attractive blonde woman and a man with shoulder-length dark hair.