The String Diaries (28 page)

Jakab pulled out his watch and squinted at it. Nine o’clock. His feet were already growing numb. Deciding that he might as well wait inside the apartment where it was warm, he got out of the car.

Crossing the street, he felt in his pocket for his set of keys and used one of them to open the outer door. The hallway within was unlit. Jakab climbed the stairs to the first floor, paused and listened outside Albert’s rooms.

Silence.

He used a second key to unlock the front door, and opened it. Again he paused, listening for sounds in the darkness. Muffled laughter drifted to him from further along the passage. But the darkness inside Albert’s apartment was still. Replacing the keys in his pocket, Jakab took out his knife. He went inside.

Easing the door shut behind him, he reached out a hand to the wall, feeling for the bakelite switch that activated the light. As the ceiling bulb winked on, he spun around in the small space. No one cried out, no one lunged at him. He saw Albert’s writing table. The sofa and chair by the fireplace. The bookcase.

The table, usually a jumble of scientific papers, scribbled notes and writing instruments, was clear. The shelves of the bookcase were bare. Above the fireplace, where previously a mediocre watercolour had hung, only a brass nail remained.

An image replayed in his mind: Anna, standing in the hall, telephone mouthpiece held to her lips.

‘. . . 
I won’t, I promise you
 . . .’

She had grinned at him. And for the briefest instant, as she had replaced the telephone on the table, he’d seen a furtive look cross her face.

Striding into the bedroom, Jakab switched on the light. The doors to the room’s two cupboards hung open. Empty drawers gaped. The bed had been stripped. Albert’s radio had vanished.

Crying out, he tore two of the drawers from their runners and hurled them across the room. They broke apart in a splintering crash. He kicked one of the cupboard doors off its hinges. ‘No! No, no,
no
!’

Jakab charged out of the apartment, thundered down the stairs and out into the street. It took him a couple of attempts to start the car, partly due to the cold, and partly because his hands were shaking, his vision blurred by tears.

Even this afternoon, he thought, when she had deceived him in the hallway of her parents’ home, she had done it gracefully. How perfect she was. He ached for her.

The Mercedes lurched forwards and Jakab navigated it along the narrow street, keeping his speed down until he reached the wider roads where he could push the car harder.

Would she still be at home? Unlikely. But where else could he begin his search? Would
any
of the family be there? He was so distracted at the thought of losing her that he nearly missed the turning on to the forested road that led to the Richter house, and when he hauled the wheel over he almost hit a vehicle travelling without lights, barrelling along in the opposite direction.

You have to calm down. You have to think. You can’t afford to handle this badly.

A few hundred yards from the property, he ran the Mercedes off the road. The car ploughed a muddy channel as it slid to a halt. He killed the engine.

Ahead, lights were burning inside the house. From a leather case on the passenger seat beside him Jakab pulled out a Gasser revolver. He jumped out of the car, wiped his eyes clear of tears and sprinted along the drive. He leaped up the front steps. Rang the bell. Heard it trilling, somewhere deep inside the house.

His lungs were burning. His head was buzzing. Wrong. All wrong. He wasn’t thinking clearly. He hadn’t thought this through. He had no plan, no idea of what to do next. Overwhelmed, he collapsed to his knees, steadied himself with one hand on the stones. Concentrated on his breathing.

Was he too late? Had he lost her? Hans had been careless enough to change only his family’s surname. He didn’t think a man of Albert’s intellect would make the same mistake.

He heard a latch rattling. Looked up. The door swung open, revealing the face of an old enemy.

‘Albert?’ Hans Richter squinted down at him. ‘What did you forget? What is it?’

Jakab stood, bared his teeth.

‘You’re not—’

Lunging, he grabbed the old man’s arm and yanked him out of the house. As Hans tumbled down the steps, Jakab clubbed him on the back of the head with the revolver. The woodsman crumpled to the paving stones. He groaned, half turned. Jakab sprang at him. He raised the revolver and drove the butt down on to the top of Hans’s skull. Moments later he caught sight of further movement in the doorway.

Helene Richter stood framed in light, wrapped in a shawl, a hammer clasped in her hands.

Eyes still wet with tears, Jakab stared up at her. ‘Help us,’ he croaked.

He had built up the fire in the drawing room to a crackling blaze, and finally he was beginning to feel warm. Reflected flames danced in each of the three tall windows that looked out on to the night.

Jakab walked around the room, recovering his breath. He let his fingers trail through the display of ostrich feathers, ran them over the smooth tortoiseshell cigar box, brushed the heavy drapes beside the windows.

Hans’s writing desk stood exactly where it had this morning. The Waterman fountain pen still lay on its surface, but the old man’s leather-bound diary had gone. The shelf above, which had contained more volumes of the Richters’ history, was empty.

Taking his time, Jakab returned to the windows and closed each set of curtains. He walked to the centre of the room and sat down on a wingback chair. Closing his eyes, he breathed deeply and allowed the anger and the worry and the pain to drain out of him.

He opened his eyes.

Helene Richter sat on the sofa to his left. Her arms were tied behind her. Her ankles were bound together. Her silk blouse was ripped. She stared at the rug on the parquet floor, eyes wide and disbelieving. Beside Helene sat her husband. Carl wore an open-necked shirt, dark trousers. Unlike his wife’s, Carl’s eyes scanned the room, although they were careful never to rest on Jakab’s face.

Only Hans, roped to a chair opposite his son and daughter-in-law, dared to look at him. A flap of the old man’s scalp hung over his ear. Blood had soaked his jacket and his shirt. He would not take his eyes off Jakab. ‘Whatever you decide to do to me,’ Hans said, ‘I’d ask you to remember one thing. Carl is Erna’s son. Her blood, Jakab. Think about that. He’s as much a part of her as Anna is.’

Jakab was silent for a while. Finally, he said, ‘You’d ask me to remember. I remember a lot, woodsman. I remember how you stole my wife.’

Hans stared. Finally he shook his head. ‘She was never your wife.’

The truth of those words – their stark and cold reality – cut Jakab more deeply than anything in the forty-eight years since Erna’s death. In an instant he was transported back to the night she had met him on Balaton’s shore and told him of the strangers at her father’s tavern. He remembered how his joy at her closeness had transformed to terror at the knowledge that the
hosszú életek
had found him. He remembered the feel of her tears against his cheek as he kissed her and promised that he would return. He remembered the way she had looked at him five years later as she tried to give him money and make him leave, remembered the way the coins had sparkled and tumbled in the air as he shoved her away from him. He saw the
Merénylő
, all sickly skin and poisonous eyes, rising up in his saddle and pulling the crossbow’s trigger. He remembered how he thought he’d been shot, remembered the awful, terrible pain of what happened next: the dreadful
clacking
sound emerging from Erna’s lips; the sight of her teeth snapping at the air; the feel of her slipping from his arms; the gleam of the blood-slicked bolt protruding from her skull; the discovery that in the time it took for a shaft of wood and metal to cross a few yards of empty space he had lost everything, everything.

Jakab found that he was crying. His chest heaved and great shuddering breaths escaped him. He pressed his hands between his knees, rocking back and forth as the tears spilled down his cheeks.

Slowly, he recovered himself.

He wiped his nose, his face. When he looked up, he saw tears glistening in the eyes of the old man too.

‘Where is Anna?’ he asked.

‘Jakab, I loved her just as dearly as you did.’

‘Where has Albert taken her?’

‘If I’d known what those men would do, if I’d known how it would end, I never would have called them. I was scared, Jakab: scared of you, scared of losing her to you.’

‘I have to find her.’

‘You won’t, though. I’m sorry for you. But she has her own life. The right to lead it with whomever she chooses. You must allow her that. Your involvement with her ends here. In this room.’

From his pocket, Jakab pulled out the knife, turned it over in his hands, ran his thumb along the blade and drew a line of scarlet. On the sofa, Helene Richter moaned. She sagged back in her seat.

‘I don’t want any more bloodshed,’ he said.

‘Then don’t do this—’

‘But I must find her. Please. All of you. It’s a simple enough question.’

‘Jakab, don’t you see? We don’t know where she’s gone. None of us do. We helped them leave, yes. But they won’t come back. Not now. We’ve said our goodbyes.’

He stood, walked into the midst of them. Studied the way the flames in the hearth reflected off the knife’s blade. ‘Of course you know. You must know.’

‘Please don’t do this, Jakab.’

He went to Helene, reached out a hand to her face. She strained away from him, but she could only move so far, and he took her chin and lifted her head. She would still not meet his eyes. Softly, he asked, ‘Where can I find her?’

The woman sobbed.

Behind him, Hans said, ‘Jakab, you know this is wrong. You must know that. Think about Erna. What she would have wanted.’

‘What do you know of what Erna wanted?’

‘Jakab, I was married to her.’

‘And the next time you insist on telling me that, I’m going to cut the lips off your son’s bride.’ He turned to Carl, using the tip of his knife to tilt the man’s face towards him. ‘Look at me, Carl. Just look at me. There, see? That wasn’t so bad. I’m no monster, am I? I don’t wish your daughter any harm. I don’t wish
you
any harm. But you must tell me where Anna’s gone. I know that, deep down, you understand that. I love her, Carl. I must find her.’

The man’s face had lost all its colour. His Adam’s apple bobbed. ‘We don’t know where they’ve gone. Why on earth would they tell us that?
They
don’t even know where they’re going.’

‘A father would know.’

‘I promise you, I—’

‘
A FATHER WOULD KNOW!
’

Jakab dropped the blade from Carl’s chin, hauled himself away, forced himself to retreat from the man. Pacing, circling the room, his mind filled with thoughts of Anna, of Erna, of Anna. And immediately those thoughts turned darker, began to mock him, gloating, insistent.

He imagined Anna and Albert driving through the night, the German chemist at the wheel, Anna’s hand resting on his thigh. He imagined them stopping at a hotel, terrified at what they had just escaped but also energised, alive, thrilled. That energy would find its release in passion, drawing them together, giving them the confidence to believe they could prevail.

He felt as if a tumour had burst inside his skull.

Striding around the sofa, snapping Helene’s head back and brandishing the knife high above him, he said, ‘Last chance, Hans, I swear it. You tell me where they’ve gone right now or I’ll make her so damned ugly you won’t suffer yourself to look at her again.’

On the wingback chair, Hans bowed his head. He began to pray.

Beside Helene, Carl opened his mouth and joined him.

Jakab remained frozen, one hand pressed against Helene’s forehead, the other clutching the knife.

‘. . . 
and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us
 . . .’

He slashed downwards.

Helene Richter gagged, bucked.

‘. . . 
deliver us from evil
 . . .’

Lips pulled back against his teeth, determined to drown out their words, determined to demonstrate the futility of their prayer, Jakab carved into her face.

Later, much later, after the screaming had abated and the life had left them and the only sound in the room was the steady
drip-drip-drip
of blood falling on the rug, Jakab acknowledged that the old man had been telling the truth. He had not known; none of them had known.

It was too late by then, of course. And it would hardly have mattered. Because once Jakab had started cutting, he became too upset to stop.

C
HAPTER
21

Aquitaine region, France

Now

Days passed, but they could have been hours or weeks. Hannah curled around the horror and the pain of her loss, drawing its spike ever deeper, letting its poison travel her veins and its barb twist inside her, eviscerating her of all her hope, her memories, her meaning.

Sebastien dug a grave on the shore of the lake, working as fast as he could in the chill autumn air. The ground was frozen and rocky, and he was unable to dig deep. A mist of rain harried him, and he looked up often and scanned the hills, as if feeling the eyes of her husband’s killer upon him as he worked.

With the shallow site prepared, the old man dragged Nate’s body over the lip and laid it inside as gently as he could. Earlier, Hannah had washed the blood from Nate’s face and hands. She wanted Leah to remember her father without the stains of violence upon his body.

The girl, white-faced and silent, lips pressed together as if she concentrated on a reel of horrors spooling before her eyes, bent and tucked a letter into the pocket of Nate’s shirt. Hannah saw the hard, urgent scratches of her daughter’s handwriting and had not the courage to ponder what questions they asked.

In the shadow of the mountain, Sebastien read words from the Book of Common Prayer as Hannah gripped Leah’s hand.

We brought nothing into this world and it is certain we can carry nothing out. The Lord gave, and The Lord hath taken away; blessed be the Name of the Lord
.

Nate might have brought nothing into this world, but with his departure he had carried off every opportunity for Hannah’s happiness, her peace. She screamed when Sebastien threw the first shovel of dirt over him and the grains of soil skittered across his face. She collapsed to her knees, the cold mud soaking through her jeans. She would have thrown herself on Nate’s body, pressing her lips to his cheek, if Sebastien had not tossed away his shovel and grabbed her, gathering up Leah and holding her too.

Hannah screamed again, guttural and forlorn, when Sebastien pushed her away, picked up his spade and continued to shovel. She watched, gulping down air in disbelief, as the level of earth grew up over Nate’s chest, around the tops of his boots.

The soil buried his right hand first, the hand that had held her as she panted and heaved and brought Leah into the world. She wept a goodbye to the fingers that had caressed her face, massaged her feet. His left hand disappeared next, absent of the wedding ring she had hung from the chain around her neck.

It took three shovels of earth to cover his face. Lips that had kissed her – had laughed with her, had spoken vows to her – surrendered to wet mud and worms and stones. Eyes that had watched their daughter grow, ears that had heard her profess her love for him, all succumbed to the cold press of earth. A lock of hair and a pale strip of forehead was the last she saw of him.

As Sebastien hammered a simple wooden cross into the soil, Hannah felt her vision flickering, her scalp prickling, and she slumped to the ground, useless and spent. Hollow and lost.

Of their journey from Llyn Gwyr, she remembered little. Sebastien carried her to the car while she mumbled and shuddered and told him of her plans, the whereabouts of their documents, their passports, their money. As he drove them over the stone bridge, her grief overcame her. She flung open the door of the Land Rover and tried to launch herself out of the seat, the tangle of her seat belt the only thing stopping her from plummeting into the river below.

He sedated her then. Something powerful from his canvas military kit that wrapped pillows around her pain and dropped it into a well, leaving her pliable, awake, yet virtually idiotic from its effects. Had she seen her father’s corpse, propped beneath the painted sign for Llyn Gwyr, his frozen hands clutching a copy of his last work? Or had that been a macabre hallucination gifted to her by Sebastien’s drugs?

She recollected a cottage, somewhere in Snowdonia, the faces of men she did not know, their features molten in the soup of her thoughts. An aeroplane interior, its fuselage shorter and narrower than of any aircraft she had travelled in before. Another car journey, this one by night. Whispered conversations, the agony of her daughter’s quiet sobbing, the guilt as she lay senseless and anaesthetised, too selfish to lift her head from the mercy of the sedative’s embrace.

Someone opened the car door and carried her across a crunching gravel path. The night air was warmer here. A different country now, a different life. A key turned in a lock. Footsteps echoed on flagstones. Scents of ginger, cinnamon and cloves. Upwards to a dark room, starched sheets, shuttered windows. Silence. Sleep.

She woke in the night, eyelids gummed shut and mouth like chalk dust, and stumbled down a bare staircase to a kitchen with simple wooden furniture and whitewashed walls. Sebastien sat in one of two armchairs clustered around an unlit wood stove, reading a newspaper in the light thrown from a table lamp. Hannah searched through cupboards until she found what she needed – a bottle of brandy and a single glass. She poured herself a shot, swallowed it and poured another. Sebastien put down his newspaper, folded his hands in his lap and opened his mouth to speak. She shook her head at him, threw back another shot and carried the brandy bottle back to her bed. When she woke next, light was filtering through the gap in the shutters, and a congealed breakfast of eggs and toast sat on a tray beside her bed. She gulped brandy from the neck of the bottle and embraced unconsciousness once more.

When she next opened her eyes, night had returned. Head thumping and stomach clenching, she didn’t manage to reach the bedroom door before she vomited a bitter and stinging stream of bile on to the floorboards.

Staggering back down the stairs, she found the kitchen empty. The smell of roasted chicken hung in the air. Dishes stood drying on the rack. Someone – probably Leah – had been drawing pictures at the table. A man lying down. Flowers on his chest. A woman and a girl holding hands. A sun. A bird. A mountain.

The french windows were ajar, and Sebastien walked into the kitchen while Hannah was searching for another bottle. There was no more brandy, and by the time she found wine and a corkscrew, her hands were shaking so badly that she slipped and cut a gash in her thumb and dropped the corkscrew and started crying.

Silent, Sebastien took her hand and led her to the sink. He ran her thumb under the cold tap, wrapped a kitchen towel around it and lowered her into a chair. He boiled a kettle and made her a mug of tea, and when she took a sip of it, scraping her hair away from her face, he said, ‘She needs you.’

‘I can’t.’

‘There’s no one else.’

‘I know.’

‘She’s an incredible girl, Hannah. But she can’t cope with this without you. She needs your strength.’

‘And what do
I
need?’

She cringed, shamed by the brutality of her words. Lifting her head, she was shocked at the strain she saw in Sebastien’s features. His skin was waxy and shadowed, his eyes dull and laced with red.

‘You lost a husband,’ he replied. ‘She lost her father. Will you let her lose her mother too?’

‘There’s no hope.’

‘That’s letting him win.’

‘He
has
won. Look at us. Look at what’s left.’

‘You’ve still got a daughter.’

‘For how long?’

Swearing, Sebastien strode to the kitchen counter. He snatched a glass from the draining board, found a half-litre bottle of gin in a cupboard she hadn’t checked, and filled the glass to brimming. He thrust it in front of her. Spirits slopped on to her legs. ‘Go on, then, if you must! Take the easy way out. It’s not what I expected of you, but everyone disappoints if you give them long enough, don’t they? I thought—’

‘He’s
dead
, Seb! He’s
DEAD
!’ she shrieked, batting the glass out of his hands. It shattered on the floor.

‘I know! It’s horrific, and nothing you or I can do will change that! But you have a little girl that needs you, so pull yourself together and think about that instead! How did you feel when your mother died? What did you need? Did Charles abandon you to a bottle of brandy? My God.’

Hannah placed her hands over her ears as the tears coursed down her cheeks. ‘Stop, please stop,’ she whispered. ‘I’m sorry, Seb, I’m sorry, just please . . . stop.’ Rocking back and forth in the chair, she hugged herself. Shivered. ‘What am I going to do?’

Sebastien turned his back and walked out of the room. When he returned, he was carrying a blanket. He draped it across her shoulders. ‘You’re going to survive, that’s what. Bury this grief for now. Turn it into anger. You have to.’

‘When you sedated me, back at the farmhouse. I thought I saw . . .’ She raised her eyes to him. ‘Did I see my father?’

Sebastien bowed his head. ‘I’d hoped you wouldn’t remember that.’

‘I hoped I’d dreamt it. I’ve lost him too, and I can’t even summon any more grief. I’m empty.’

‘I know.’

‘Jakab placed him there to taunt me, didn’t he? To punish me. He propped him up with that damned journal in his hands. Do you think it was quick?’ She shook her head, dismissing the question. She really didn’t want an answer. ‘That creature killed my grandfather, my mother. Now he’s taken my father and my husband.’

‘I’ve said it once before, but it’s an evil thing, this. It has to end. I’ll do everything I can to make sure it does.’

‘We’re at the endgame now, aren’t we?’

‘It feels that way.’

‘If it comes to it, and I don’t survive, will you make sure that Leah is looked after?’

‘You don’t need to ask me that.’

‘But I do need to hear it from you. I’ve a feeling we’re close too, the last throw of the dice. If I have a chance to kill him, and if that chance means my life, I’ll take it if I know she’ll be all right. I’m sorry. There’s no one else to ask.’

Sebastien crouched in front of her and enfolded her hands in his. ‘If it comes to it, Hannah, I’ll ensure Leah is provided for. And not just by me. You won’t be abandoning her to a solitary life in the mountains. She’ll be safe. Loved.’

‘Thank you, Seb. Thank you for everything.’ She raised one hand to her mouth. ‘We didn’t even bury him. Is he still under that sign?’

‘I have people dealing with it.’

‘Your old contacts.’

‘Some of the good ones.’

‘Did we go to see them?’

‘Briefly.’

She nodded. And then something else occurred to her. ‘Gabriel.’

‘What about him?’

‘I don’t know. Do you think it was odd, him riding off like that?’

‘After you threatened to kill him, and then knocked him unconscious?’

‘Another mistake. I’ve made so many of them, haven’t I?’

‘I didn’t mean it like that.’

‘It just doesn’t make sense to me. If he was trying to escape, surely he would have taken a different route?’

‘Rather than one that took him right past you, right into the path of your shotgun.’

‘It seemed more as if he were chasing Jakab, rather than trying to get away from us.’

Sebastien grunted. ‘I’m a bloody idiot. I hadn’t even considered that. Now you mention it, I can’t disagree with you.’

‘I always felt he was laughing at me. That he knew something. At the time I put it down to paranoia. I should have trusted my instincts. I wonder where he is now.’

‘I’m right here.’

Gabriel walked into the kitchen and closed the french windows behind him. He paused at the far end of the room, watching their reactions with eyes like blue azurite. In his right hand he held a duffel bag, which he dropped to the floor. Stubble grazed his cheeks. His face was grave, absent of all humour.

Hannah surprised herself with her lack of movement. Perhaps it was the lingering effect of Sebastien’s sedative, or the alcohol, or both, but she felt anchored to the chair. She glanced around the room, searching for weapons. She could see none. The kitchen worktop held only a kettle, a coffee maker and the dishes stacked on the drainer. A basket stood next to the wood stove, but it contained no logs.

Hannah looked up at him. ‘What do you want?’

‘I want to help you.’

‘Why?’

‘Because of the tragedy that’s found you. Because I began to like the woman I met in the mountains. Because it’s the right thing to do. Because there’s no one else who can.’

Aware that Sebastien’s hand was creeping towards the pocket of his trousers, aware that she needed to hold Gabriel’s attention, Hannah asked, ‘How did you find us?’

‘It wasn’t that difficult.’

‘Who are you?’

Gabriel moved further into the room. Hannah climbed to her feet. Next to her, she felt Sebastien rising.

‘I’m guessing that’s a blade you’re reaching for, old man,’ the Irishman said. ‘Please, don’t. I’m very tired. I’m not here to hurt anyone.’

‘Who are you?’ Hannah repeated.

Gabriel studied her face. Finally he said, ‘I’m
hosszú élet
.’

His words were like a fist in her stomach, driving the air from her lungs. She sucked in a breath. ‘What happened to Gabriel? What did you do with him?’

The man before her frowned, and then his face softened. ‘Hannah, I
am
Gabriel. That same guy. I can understand, based on your experience, why you’d think we’re all as monstrous as Jakab, using and discarding people as if they were little more than a fresh set of clothes. But I assure you we’re not.’ He glanced away from her. ‘I think even Sebastien would agree with me on that.’

‘Don’t tell me what I think,’ the old man snapped. ‘You have no idea who I am, no idea at all. And if you were really
hosszú élet—
’

‘You’re Sebastien Lang,’ Gabriel interrupted calmly. ‘You were born and raised in Vienna and you studied medicine at Semmelweis University in Budapest. While you were still an undergraduate you met a
hosszú élet
woman named Éva Maria-Magdalena Szöllösi. Éva mistook you for one of us. The Eleni cull was still fresh in her memory and secrecy remained the watchword. By the time she revealed herself to you and discovered her mistake, you’d both fallen in love. She admitted the truth, and then she fled.’