The String Diaries (24 page)

‘Oh yes?’

There was no Sarah. Facing the counter, her back to him, Nicole suppressed a sob. ‘She said you’ve agreed to teach her French class again.’

‘I did?’

‘Apparently.’

‘I don’t remember. But I’m happy to.’

Next to the cafetière stood the kettle. Next to the kettle, the toaster. Next to the toaster, a wooden block containing six incredibly sharp Sabatier knives Nicole had brought back from Thiers.

She glanced over her shoulder. In the breakfast nook, he had plucked a photo frame from the windowsill and was studying it intently. The picture was of Hannah, taken when she was thirteen. The girl sat in a canoe, life jacket over a summer vest, smiling up at the camera. They had been on a family holiday along the Dordogne. Two weeks of camping by the river, cooking over a stove, telling stories underneath the stars.

The man that might be Charles looked up at her and grinned, and Nicole finally admitted to herself that he was an impostor. She turned back to the kitchen counter, thinking that her legs might give way. Imagine that. Sprawled on the floor with that monster behind her. She swallowed, forced herself not to run.

In Carcassonne, how long had Petre impersonated her father before killing him? Days? Weeks? Was this the first time Jakab had visited her? The tenth? If it had not been for that simple error upstairs, she would never have even suspected.

You made love to him.

Charles’s recent publishing success must have brought him here. The book, with its dust jacket photograph. The journal article. Both had been published within the last month. How long had it taken Jakab to discover them? How long to track Charles down? He couldn’t have been here more than a few weeks, perhaps only a few days. Perhaps this was the first time he had visited. If that were the case, then her husband was probably still alive.

Maybe.

Possibly.

‘The jeweller phoned,’ she said.

‘Oh yes?’

‘Said your watch was ready.’

‘I’ll pick it up in the morning.’

Nicole heard him walk up behind her. There was no jeweller. No watch.

She turned around.

Jakab was standing in front of her, the picture of Hannah still in his hands. He was laughing.

She picked up the cafetière from the counter and flung its contents in his face. Boiling coffee engulfed him and he screamed, staggering backwards. The photo frame dropped from his hands. It smashed on the tiled floor.

‘Do you have any idea how much that
hurts
?’ he roared. When he straightened, she saw that the skin of his face was a bright, scalded red. Coffee grains and liquid dripped from his chin. Crazily, he
laughed
again. ‘Damn, but it wakes you up, doesn’t it? That’s what they say about good coffee. Gives you a kick.’

Nicole yanked a carving knife out of the block. The wooden cube bounced off the counter. Knives clattered to the floor, their steel shafts spinning. She jumped forwards and slashed at him. He was fast – too fast – shielding his face with an arm. The blade sliced through the fabric of his jacket. Blood flicked across the room.

Nicole lunged, intent this time on burying the knife in his face. He dodged. Before she managed to pull back the blade far enough to thrust at him a second time, her foot slipped in the boiling coffee. She toppled backwards, cracking her head against the counter as she fell.

Sprawled on the tiles, Nicole felt coffee burning her legs. The blow had stunned her, the shock too intense to let her move. Glancing down, she saw that her dressing gown gaped open, exposing her nakedness. She gasped at the horror of it.

Jakab tore a tea towel from the back of a chair and mopped his face. Already the red blotches were fading. He tossed away the cloth and examined the tear in his jacket. ‘Oh, you absolute bitch. Look what you’ve done. Seriously, Nicole, look at this. Do you know how much I liked this jacket? I saw Charles wearing something similar last week and looked everywhere for one.’

On the floor to her left, a small filleting knife lay just within reach. She inched out her fingers towards it.

Jakab paced up and down in front of her, holding his hands against the sides of his head. ‘Calm down, Jakab, calm down. It’s not too late, it’s not. Salvage it, that’s what you do. Yes. That’s what you’re good at.’

Nicole touched the cold handle of the filleting knife. Her stomach flipped. She thought she might be sick.

Jakab snatched the smashed photo frame from the floor and brought it over to her. ‘Who’s this? Who is it?’

Her fingers crabbed over the handle of the knife. Closed around it.

‘It’s Erna, that’s who it is. How? She’s dead, Nicole.
Dead
. This is a
colour photograph
.’ He thrust the picture at her.

She dragged the knife across the tiles.

‘Oh, do you have to?’ He lifted his foot and stamped down.

The bones in her wrist crunched. She screamed, pulling her shattered arm towards her.

Jakab kicked the filleting knife across the room. He noticed the other knives, and kicked them all away from her. ‘All this time looking for you, Nicole. All these years. And look at you.
Old
. Old and
spiteful
. Vicious.’ He paused, sucked in a breath. ‘Who is the girl?’

‘It’s me, Jakab.’

‘Liar! Get up.’

She scissored her legs in front of her. ‘Where’s Charles?’

‘Get up!’

‘What have you done to him?’

‘He’s dead. Now answer my question.’

She cried out, her heart unravelling.

Jakab grabbed her arm and yanked her to her feet. He shoved her back against the counter. ‘I’m going to ask you a final time.
Who
is she?
Where
is she?’

Tears coursing down her cheeks, Nicole stared at him, at the monster that looked like her husband but was not.

Jakab pulled back his fist and punched her in the face.

She woke, slumped on a chair in the corner of the breakfast nook. Her right eye was gummed shut. Her mouth tasted of blood. She raised her head drunkenly, looked about her.

Jakab sat across the table. He had removed the ruined jacket and was dressed in one of Charles’s cashmere jumpers. Oxford Blue.

On the table, arranged in front of her, stood eight photo frames. He must have toured the house for them while she was unconscious. Each frame contained a different picture of Hannah.

Hannah dressed as an angel at a school play. Hannah posing on a sports field with hockey stick and ball. Hannah on a trampoline. Hannah and Charles splashing in the sea.

‘Her name’s Hannah,’ Jakab said. ‘And she’s your daughter.’

Nicole said nothing. She looked up at him. Stared into his dead eyes.

‘You know, I really didn’t want this to happen,’ he continued. ‘I really wanted to make this work. Despite what I said – about you being old and spiteful – I enjoyed what we did earlier. There’s definitely a positive element to your aggressive streak.’

She spat at him. A thick curdle of blood. It splattered across his cheek.

He sighed. ‘But you are vicious. It’s a shame. Where can I find her?’

‘I’ll kill you first.’

Jakab raised a hand to his face and wiped away the clot of blood and saliva. He stood up and walked across the kitchen, returning with a cloth. He used it to clean his fingers.

Moving around the table, he sat on the chair beside her. ‘You’re not going to tell me. I didn’t think you would. Not really. You’re stubborn, just like the rest of them. It’s not an attractive trait, Nicole.’

He reached out to her. She flinched away from him, but her movement caused the room to tilt and spin.

Jakab began to talk, soothingly, as if to a wounded bird he was hoping to mend.

Perhaps that’s what I am, she thought. A wounded bird. Too badly broken now.

‘I’m going to gently – very gently – take your head in my hands,’ he said, reaching out, sliding his fingers through the hair above her ears. ‘And you’re going to let me,
that’s
it, just like that, exactly like that. You see, you might not know this, you probably don’t, but there’s this old
hosszú élet
parlour trick. It’s quite a good one. I don’t know how it works, I don’t even know how I do it. But it does work, and that’s all that really matters.’

She felt the palms of his hands against her temples, felt a sudden warmth from them. Nicole tried to turn her head away, but Jakab eased it back towards him, smiling, always smiling. The warmth in his hands became a heat, and suddenly she felt a lance of pain in her head.

‘It won’t hurt for long,’ he told her. ‘That’s it, relax.’

She felt her heart begin to thump in her chest, its beat accelerating. Dropping her mouth open, she panted, feeling the blood in her arteries beginning to race. A huge pressure was building in her throat, in her head. The walls of her skull felt like they were bulging. Her ears popped.

Then, quite suddenly, Nicole felt something rupture in her left eye, found herself blinking at him through a tide of crimson. She opened her mouth to shriek.

Jakab tilted his head as he watched her. ‘I always find this part fascinating. Where
do
you go?’

Charles parked on the street outside his house, switched off the engine and unclipped his seat belt. He rubbed his face and stared at the sweat glistening on his fingers. One question repeated in his mind.

What have you done?

The man he had visited earlier was undoubtedly Beckett. The creature he had met in the physic garden yesterday undoubtedly was not. They had looked identical, sounded identical, acted identical. But the impostor who had shown him the Royal Decree had seemed pleased at Charles’s discomfort. Had mocked him with his eyes.

Charles stared at his house, at the home he had shared with Nicole for the last twelve years. What did they do now? The experiences of those who had already travelled this path suggested only one option. Flee. Immediately. Pack up the necessary things, the few precious and irreplaceable things – letters, photographs. Find Nicole. Collect Hannah from her school. Leave.

What have you done?

He knew where their passports were, knew the whereabouts of his important documents. He had about a thousand pounds in cash inside the house. Enough for their immediate needs. He could quickly get more.

A shadow passed across the bevelled glass of the front door. Instinctively, Charles ducked down on to the passenger seat. Raising his head, he watched the door open and saw an identical Charles Meredith step outside.

‘Oh my God, no.’

The creature was wearing his favourite Oxford Blue sweater. It shut the door behind it and walked down the path to the street.

Charles rolled off the seat and wedged himself in the floor well. He realised he was shivering, convulsing. He did not know how long he lay there, but when he sat up, looking up and down the street, his nightmare double had gone. Charles clambered out of the car. He felt his jaw moving, his teeth clattering together in his mouth.

In the hall, he called out his wife’s name. All the lights were on. He walked down the corridor to the kitchen, noticing that many of the photographs that lined the wall had disappeared. Discoloured oblongs of wallpaper announced their absence.

He opened the door to the kitchen and found a pool of what looked like coffee on the floor. Footprints had skidded and slipped through it, leaving trails. In one corner lay an empty knife block. In another, its collection of knives. A bloodied tea towel was bunched up on the work surface. On the kitchen table he saw a collection of photo frames, their backs towards him. On a chair, facing him, sat Nicole.

Charles closed the door behind him, shutting them both inside the room. The phone hung from a bracket on the wall beside the fridge. Pinned to a cork board above it was a list of important numbers. Nicole had put them there for him, as he was always misplacing things. Charles stared at the list for a while, looking for the number he needed. Then he picked up the phone and dialled.

A woman answered.

He cleared his throat and explained that he needed to speak to Hannah Meredith, that he was her father, and that it was urgent. The woman listened, and put him on hold while someone was sent to fetch his daughter from her class.

From the breakfast nook, his dead wife watched him. It looked as if, at the end, she had wept tears of blood. Her left eye was closed. Beads of blood oozed from beneath her eyelid. Her right eye stared at him, a bright red orb. He didn’t like to look at it for long. Didn’t want to remember her that way. Her bathrobe was open. Blood had gushed from her nose. It had splashed down her breasts on to the round curve of her stomach.

He didn’t understand this. He had thought that Jakab wanted her. Had thought that had been the point.

‘Dad?’

‘Hannah.’

‘What’s happened? Everything all right?’

‘No. Not really.’ Charles paused, turned his back on his wife. It was difficult to concentrate with her staring at him like that. ‘I’m afraid I need you to walk out of school. Right now. Once I finish talking, you need to hang up and just go. Do you understand?’

A pause on the other end of the line. ‘. . . Did he come?’

‘Yes, Hannah, he did.’

‘Is Mum with you?’

‘Listen to me. Can you find your way to St Mary’s Church?’

‘Sure.’

‘Good. Go there. Wait for me. I’ll be there within the hour.’ He paused. ‘Is there anything you want me to bring? From the house?’

‘No, Dad. Just you, and Mum.’

C
HAPTER
18

Budapest

Now

With his eyes closed, the rising sound beneath him could have been the hum of some vast human machine. Whispers, coughs, smothered laughter. The creak of seat backs. The rustle of paper.

Then, stirring, the orchestra. A solitary oboe note at first, long and mournful. The vibration of horsehair on string announcing violins. Viola, cello and double bass adding their voice. A swell of trumpet, trombone and horn. Somewhere a breathy flute arpeggio, leaping among them.

Lorant Vince opened his eyes and breathed in the golden magnificence of the Budapest Opera House as its orchestra tuned its instruments. He sat alone in the royal box, on a straight-backed chair of maroon velvet. Above him, the auditorium’s huge chandelier lit the ceiling frescos of Károly Lotz: startling images of Olympus and the Greek gods. Three golden storeys of private boxes curved away from him in a horseshoe around the stage. With the exception of the Royal Palace, the Opera House was Lorant’s favourite building in Budapest.

As the orchestra continued to tune its instruments, the door behind him opened and Lorant heard someone enter. ‘You’re late,’ he whispered.

The chair beside him scraped. Lorant turned in his seat. He had been expecting Károly Gera, and while he could muster little love these days for the
signeur
, Lorant found the man beside him far more disquieting

Benjámin Vass looked down at the orchestra, at the audience in the stalls, the gilt and velvet splendour of the auditorium. Then he turned to Lorant. Vass’s face was fleshy and placid, empty of expression, eyes hooded by drooping lids. His breath smelled of spiced meat, as if he had just eaten a plate of
gyulai kolbász
.

‘Károly sends his apologies,
Presidente
. He asked me to attend you instead.’

‘Károly requests a meeting with me and then sends his
second
?’

‘His illness has worsened. I’m acting in his interest.’

Lorant felt his jaw tighten. No one acted in the interest of the Eleni’s three
ülnökök
. No
ülnök
acted in his own interest, either; an
ülnök
acted in the sole interest of the Eleni Council. ‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ he said.

It was true. Károly was an old man, nearly as old as Lorant, dying from a disease he had spent the last six months battling. While Lorant would not grieve his death when it arrived, he would grieve for the man Károly had once been. What really concerned Lorant was that Károly’s death increased the threat of Vass’s elevation to
signeur
. As
Presidente,
Lorant could veto that appointment, but if the remaining
ülnökök
voted for Vass, his own position would become untenable.

Do I even want this burden any more? Probably not. I’m too old, too tired. And what, after all, have I achieved in all this time?

Regardless, he knew that if he did nothing else before stepping down, he had to do everything possible to prevent Vass from rising any higher. The man would twist the Council’s manifesto, warp its objectives, tear it apart.

‘Károly demands to know—’

‘He
demands
?’

Vass hesitated. Then he smiled. ‘Károly begs, he
grovels
, to discover why you’ve flown Dániel Meyer and others to London and have not deemed it pertinent to inform him.’

Lorant stared at Vass, forcing himself to maintain eye contact. Meyer was the only
ülnök
whose judgement Lorant could still trust. It was why he had sent him. ‘You may tell Károly that I feel no pressing need to answer that.’

‘He asks me to remind you that if the
ülnökök
majority raise a question, the
Presidente
is obliged to answer.’

‘I see no
ülnökök
majority before me. I see no
ülnök
at all, nor the likelihood of one.’

If Vass was stung by that, he gave no sign. ‘I will remind you, Lorant. I am acting for Károly. Which means I’m acting with the full authority of the
signeur
and—’

‘
You
have
no authority!
’

‘And I’m sure when I speak to Földessy he’ll be equally keen to find out what is going on. There are your two
ülnökök
, Lorant. There is your majority.’

‘You speak for Földessy now, too?’

‘Of course not. But I think it’s a safe assumption that he’ll want to know what’s happening as much as I do.’ Vass smiled. ‘As much as Károly does, I should say.’

Vass was correct. It was a safe assumption. Földessy had become impatient in recent years: impatient and hard-line. It was exactly the reason Lorant had confided in Dániel Meyer alone.

Below them, the notes of the orchestra faded. The audience settled, expectant.

‘Well?’ Vass asked.

Forcing his voice to remain calm even as his fingers clutched the arms of his chair, Lorant said, ‘If the
signeur
wishes to force my hand, he knows what he needs to do. I will not negotiate with a messenger.’

Vass held Lorant’s stare. He blinked his hooded eyes twice. ‘Enjoy the opera,
Presidente
.’

The cab took Benjámin Vass across the city, circling the Városliget and dropping him outside the entrance to the Széchenyi Baths. He paid the fare, walked up the steps of the building’s neo-baroque frontage and passed its enormous stone pillars. Against the night sky, its spotlit walls glowed a rich egg-yolk yellow. Vass showed his card to a guard in the marble-floored entrance lobby and walked through an archway to the three huge outdoor baths.

Illuminated by lamps on wrought-iron posts, two semi-circular pools book-ended a central oblong bath. Surrounding them rose the colossal towers, domes, balconies and fountains that dominated the building’s architecture. Doorways led to a further fifteen indoor baths, all fed from two artesian wells tapping the thermal spring deep below the city park.

Steam coalesced on the surface of the water, obscuring the features of the hundred or so bathers. The smell of the minerals sharp in his nose, Vass walked across the stone paving to the furthest semi-circular pool. He found Károly Gera soaking near the steps, following a chess game two patrons had erected on a plinth jutting into the water.

Flesh hung off the man like melted candle wax. The skin of his face was a stained hessian, unable to soften the sharp ridges of his hairless skull. His eyes blinked from sunken sockets. Each rib of his liver-spotted torso strained against skin like the spines of a bat’s wing.

Recognising Vass, Károly eased himself away from the chess players, moving through the water to a secluded spot at the edge of the pool. Vass squatted down opposite him.

‘You saw him?’ the
signeur
asked. He held a glass in his right hand. It contained a measure of spirit and a single cube of ice.

Vass nodded.

‘Well? Out with it, then.’

Vass smirked. ‘He’s scared.’

‘Nothing new there. Lorant’s always been scared. What’s he up to? Why has he sent Meyer to London?’

‘He wouldn’t say.’

Károly’s face puckered into a scowl. ‘That’s outrageous. Have you spoken to Földessy?’

‘Not yet.’

‘I gave you very specific instructions.’

‘I wanted you to see this first.’ Vass unsnapped the clasps of a leather satchel and removed a clear plastic sleeve. It held an English newspaper clipping. ‘I found this. It was published two days ago.’

Károly snatched up the document and squinted at it. He was silent for a minute and then he thrust the sleeve back at Vass. ‘Suspected murder. Missing persons. So what?’

‘The missing person is Anthony Pearson. Isn’t that one of the identities Lorant arranged for Charles Meredith? After his wife’s death?’

Károly lurched forwards. ‘
Te jó ég
!’ he said, eyes glittering. ‘Balázs Jakab. He’s found them.’

Vass moved the
signeur’s
wheelchair to the edge of the pool and helped the old man out of the water. In the moonlight, Károly’s body was a milk-white membrane, sloughing off steam. Vass slung a robe around his shoulders and eased him into the chair.

Leukaemia was survivable in many of its forms. But once the cancer passed from the blood to the central nervous system, as it had with Károly, the prognosis was dismal; the median survival rate was one hundred and eight days.

The
signeur’s
fingers twitched at the air. He swung towards Vass. ‘We need to intercept. You have to arrange flights immediately.’

‘We need to find out exactly where Meyer’s gone first. We don’t even have a contact over there.’

‘Don’t argue with me,’ Károly snapped. ‘Remember our deal.’

Vass stopped himself from smiling. ‘Yes,
signeur.
Can I ask this, then?
Do
we have a contact?’

‘We did. A long time ago.’

‘Who?’

‘His name is Sebastien Lang.’

‘Sounds familiar.’

‘It should, Benjámin. Lang was
signeur
before me.’

‘And you know his whereabouts?’

‘I have a suspicion.’

‘Can we trust him?’

Károly grinned, his teeth luminous in the moonlight. ‘You don’t need to worry about that.’