Safe as Houses (7 page)

Her hand rubs her painfully throbbing temples, and she takes a sip of water to wet her dry throat.

When she turns around, Kreuger is suddenly in front of her. Lisa catches her breath sharply.

‘I fancy some coffee,' is all Kreuger says.

‘I'll put some on.' She turns to the espresso machine and switches it on. The machine comes to life with a splutter.

‘Did you hear that?' Kreuger asks, nodding towards the TV.

‘I was busy. The television is just too far away. Why? Were you on the news?' She manages to
keep her voice light, as though it's totally normal for Kreuger to be on TV. It's quiet behind her for so long that she regrets asking the question. Kreuger comes and stands next to her, leans on the worktop and gives her a searching look.

‘What did you hear?'

Lisa mechanically puts two cups under the espresso machine's spouts. ‘Like I said, not much. A few snippets.'

Kreuger crosses his arms. ‘They showed a photo of my family. There they were, right in my face, all three of them.'

The coffee beans have run out. Happy with this excuse to delay her reaction, Lisa adds some more. Then she gathers her courage.

‘Do you have three children?'

‘Two,' he says. ‘A boy and a girl. Around the same age as your daughter.'

‘Nice, a boy and a girl. We call that a king's wish, don't we?' He must have noticed the fake enthusiasm in her voice.

‘That's what they say, yes.' It doesn't sound like a wish that came true.

There's a silence, which Lisa breaks by pressing a button. The coffee beans are milled with an enormous clatter. When they're ready, she presses another button and the coffee streams into the two cups. What does Kreuger want from her? He is
restless; perhaps he's looking for distractions. The problem is that having a conversation with him is like taking a walk through a minefield. She can't ask him anything about his wife, but perhaps she can talk about his children. They've probably been placed with a foster family or are in a children's home.

‘Do you miss them?' she asks, feeling like she's jumping off a mountain blindfolded.

The crushing grip on her arm comes as no surprise.

‘And why wouldn't I miss them? Eh? Why do you think I wouldn't miss my own children? Because I've got a criminal record? Maybe you can't imagine it, but I do have feelings. Did you think I didn't have any feelings, you filthy bitch?'

His shouting fills the kitchen. Lisa is scared, but she doesn't shrink back, look down or begin to sob.

With all the self-control she can muster, she sticks out her bandaged hand and lays it on his arm.

‘Of course you have feelings,' she says gently. ‘And of course you miss your children.'

His rage disappears just as quickly as it surfaced. His face contorts, and the vacant expression returns to his eyes.

‘I'm not allowed to see them any more,' he says tonelessly. ‘Never again. Can you imagine that?
Their own father? But that didn't matter to the judge. I'm forbidden from seeing them.'

‘How terrible for you . . .'

‘Yes.' A confused expression appears on his face, as though he doesn't understand quite what he's doing here.

‘My ex tried to take Anouk away from me,' Lisa says.

Kreuger massages his forehead with his thumb.

‘I told you that he was jealous, didn't I?' She offers Kreuger one of the cups of coffee. He takes it but doesn't drink. ‘That jealousy of his ruined our lives. He was jealous of everything, particularly that I had a career and he didn't. He was a manager at a large supermarket, but got made redundant when they restructured. Suddenly he was at home and had all the time in the world to get involved in what I was doing. I was working at a research lab in Utrecht and carpooling with a colleague. A nice guy, but just a colleague. I never thought that Mark would make a fuss about it. At first he didn't, but after he lost his job he started to worry about everything. I reassured him that he could trust me. But he didn't. It only got better when I became pregnant with Anouk.'

Lisa sips from her coffee. Their eyes make contact for a moment and then she looks down.

In a quiet, toneless voice, she tells him about the
post-natal depression that overcame her after Anouk was born, about the dark, dead-end world she inhabited at that time.

‘Mark looked after me really well. Even though he'd found a job by then, he took over all my chores: doing the shopping, taking Anouk for her check-ups, you name it. In the meantime, my world became smaller and smaller. My whole life took place inside the house. In hindsight I realise that was what Mark wanted. Finally he had me all to himself.'

She recounts her difficult struggle to escape from her isolation. Mark persuaded her not to go to a psychiatrist, which he thought was just an expensive way of grousing. Mark couldn't understand why she would want to share her thoughts and feelings with a stranger, when her husband was there for her the whole time. He found it insulting, wounding, completely unnecessary. And, what's more, they couldn't afford it.

This was how Mark became the only thing she could cling to as she sank further and further into a deep sea of depression. The tide turned when she joined some internet forums. She ordered anti-depressants from an online chemist and slowly rediscovered the world around her again – only to find that Mark was leading a double life.

‘He was cheating on you,' Kreuger states.

‘Not only that: he had two sons with that woman.' Lisa's voice sounds dull. ‘When I announced that I wanted a divorce, he became furious and threatened to take Anouk away from me. It wouldn't have been that difficult for him, because he'd printed all my correspondence from those forums and saved the invoices for the anti-depressants. I was terrified he'd get sole custody of Anouk.'

‘But he didn't. Of course he didn't – they always let the mothers keep the children.' There is an aggressive undertone to Kreuger's voice.

‘Not always.' Lisa lifts the espresso cup to her mouth and takes a sip. ‘And Mark didn't take it to court. He left Anouk with me. Actually, he dumped both of us.'

Senta's greatest dream had always been to become a journalist. Preferably for a big, respected newspaper. But once she was employed by one, she realised that the magazine world was much more attractive to her. She didn't hesitate to make the change and never regretted it. One promotion followed another, with Senta making editor-in-chief of one of the biggest women's magazines before her fortieth birthday.

Getting a good interview requires special skill. Anyone can fire off a series of questions, but you need to be able to do more than this to have a good conversation. Many journalists make the mistake of talking too much themselves, when all they really need to bring to the room is empathy. The only way to think up good leading questions is through trying to understand the interviewee –
and the self-knowledge prompted by such questions will lead the interviewee, in turn, to give answers that make for remarkable reading.

This was what had happened with Alexander Riskens. A writer who led a fairly reclusive life, he wasn't known for his generosity in giving interviews, and it had taken a lot of effort to get him to agree to talk to someone. He had consented only on the condition that she, the editor-in-chief, should do the interview, and she was happy to oblige: she had been a fan of his work for years and wouldn't have dreamed of passing it on to one of her colleagues.

It had been an exciting afternoon. Alexander turned out to be a friendly man who didn't like to talk about himself, making for a tough start. It took three quarters of an hour before she began to win his confidence and could progress from clichéd questions to deeper emotional matters.

She had managed by avoiding the taboo topics, such as the deaths of his wife and young daughter, and questioning him only the subjects that he raised himself. At the beginning this meant that they just talked about his work, and about the writer's block that had paralysed him.

At a certain point they almost imperceptibly slipped into the subject of his private life, and finally there was such a good rapport between them that
Senta found it difficult to bring the interview to a close. Alexander seemed to feel the same way, because he invited her to have lunch with him in a cosy restaurant in the village. She had accepted the invitation, even though alarm bells had begun to ring in her head, and all her senses were telling her she'd have been better off driving back to Amstelveen as quickly as possible.

But she didn't. They went to the restaurant and talked for hours, off the record of course.

Senta knew she had entered a danger zone. She was falling in love with this man; perhaps she was already in love with him, with every minute spent in his company just fuelling these feelings.

In the restaurant she had kept her left hand in sight at all times, so that the white gold wedding ring with its small diamond couldn't escape his notice: a last attempt to keep something of a barrier in place. If you'd asked her a year later what the conversation had been about, what they'd eaten and drunk that afternoon, she wouldn't have had a clue.

She sat there looking at him as if she were bewitched. And vice versa. That first smile of recognition, that first special glance – she saved everything in her memory, larger than life. Not that they were flirting with each other. There was no question of double entendres or teasing – just a calm
conversation, with a natural accord that rendered such nonsense unnecessary.

After a while they both fell silent and listened to a song playing in the background.

He looked right inside her.
I want you
, his gaze said.
I love you
.

That's a bit quick, don't you think?
her eyes answered.

I don't need any more time
.

Senta dropped her eyes, as shy as a teenager, but not before she had conveyed an answer. He pushed a beer mat towards her and she wrote down her number.

I've been punished, Senta thinks; this coma is my punishment. Nothing happens without a reason. Please, God, can we make a pact? If you let me wake up, I promise I'll do the right thing, I really promise. Just let me wake up . . .

Police are still hunting escaped psychiatric prisoner Mick Kreuger, who disappeared on Sunday afternoon during an escorted day-release. Despite television appeals for help in tracing the man, and the allocation of extra manpower, nothing is known of his whereabouts. Kreuger was responsible for the death of his 25-year-old escort at a petrol station on Sunday afternoon; surveillance cameras recorded the convicted criminal's violent assault. In the last few hours, the body of a 52-year-old woman has been found in her home, and the police have issued a statement saying that the circumstances are suspicious. RTL has learned that a man fitting Kreuger's description was sighted in the area shortly before the discovery of the body
.

After the
RTL News
there's the eight o'clock news,
The Heart of Holland
and various talk shows, all of which lead with Kreuger's escape.

Lisa and Anouk follow the coverage, but Kreuger doesn't seem bothered by this. Without appearing to pay them even a minute amount of attention, he sits on the edge of the sofa, though Lisa knows he is watching their every move.

Anouk, exhausted from coughing, leans against her. ‘I want to go to bed, Mummy,' she mumbles, her eyes already closed.

After a brief hesitation, Lisa asks Kreuger if he minds her putting her daughter to bed.

Kreuger slowly turns his head towards her. He seems vacant, as though he has been in a completely different world and is slowly re-entering reality.

After rubbing his face with his hands a few times, he mutters that that's fine.

Lisa is overcome with an immense feeling of relief. She'll let Anouk sleep in her bed and shut the door firmly behind them. Behind the closed door, they'll be able to escape from the atmosphere of constant threat. Kreuger will probably sleep on the sofa, watchful of everything happening outside the house, the television on all night.

She starts to get up, but Kreuger's voice stops her. ‘You'll both sleep in the basement tonight.'

Lisa cannot hide her astonishment. ‘In the basement?'

Kreuger turns back to the television programme without any further comment.

‘But . . . the basement is much too damp for Anouk. And the light's broken – you can't see your hand in front of your face at night.'

‘You can put down a mattress and bedding,' is Kreuger's only response.

Lisa pauses, panicked. There's not a lot she can do. Leaving Anouk alone down there in the dark is obviously out of the question, so she'll have to go with her, even though it's still early in the evening.

‘She can sleep on the sofa for a while first,' she mutters.

‘Whatever,' Kreuger says absently.

‘Do I have to go into the basement? No, Mummy. I don't really have to go to the basement, do I?' Anouk looks at her mother with anxious eyes.

There's no point in upsetting her. With a bit of luck, she'll fall asleep on the sofa.

‘No, of course not – you're going to sleep on the sofa. We'll put the cushion down like this and then you'll get under your blanket. Isn't that a cosy nest?'

Anouk turns on to her side cautiously. ‘You mustn't go away.'

‘I'm not going away. I'll stay with you the whole night.'

Anouk's eyes glide over to Kreuger, and she gives her mother a questioning look.

‘He's staying here for a while.' To Lisa's own surprise her voice sounds steady and neutral.

‘Doesn't he have a home?' Anouk yawns, her mouth unashamedly wide open.

Lisa hurriedly bends down and kisses her cheek.

‘Shh, go to sleep. Good girl, eyes closed. Sleep tight, darling.'