Through Dead Eyes (5 page)

‘No . . .’ said Alex, starting at her voice. ‘I thought I saw something.’

Angelien smiled, scanning his face.

‘Anything in particular?’

Alex shrugged. He looked at the hotel again. It was just a trick of light, he was sure, probably caused by the position of the street lights and the fact that other rooms had their lights on, but the window of his room seemed darker somehow. The glass was so black it could have been blocked up and painted.

‘No . . . not really.’

Angelien gave him a quizzical look but didn’t say anything more.

‘Angelien is studying the houses along this canal,’ said Saskia, her voice bright and cheerful.

‘Really?’ said Alex’s father, turning to look at Angelien. ‘How come?’

‘My doctorate is on family life in seventeenth-century Amsterdam,’ said Angelien. ‘I am using this canal as the basis for the study.’

Alex turned away from the hotel. He seemed to feel its chill on his back like ice and shivered slightly as he walked.

‘Are you studying our house?’ said Alex. ‘I mean the house that’s been turned into our hotel?’

Angelien nodded. ‘I was just looking at some papers about it the other day, in fact,’ she said.

They were walking down a busy street now and the crowds and the conversation seemed to have a magical effect. Alex felt entirely normal once more. As strange as the sensation of dread had been, the immediacy of its lifting was, if anything, even stranger.

‘Are you interested in history, Alex?’ said Saskia.

‘I suppose so,’ he replied. ‘A bit. I like the Romans.’

‘He’s
obsessed
by the Romans,’ said his father.

‘No I’m not,’ said Alex, blushing a little. ‘I just think they’re cool, that’s all.’

‘And so they are,’ said Angelien and, to Alex’s surprise, she linked her arm with his. The fur of her hood brushed his face as she leaned in and whispered, ‘Romans are very cool.’

Alex felt his heart race at her touch. He had never walked arm in arm with anyone. That was something people did in the movies. It felt nice though. Saskia and his father had moved on. A distant tram sounded its horn.

‘What did you mean about the mask earlier?’ said Alex. ‘What did you want to tell me?’

Angelien cast a quick glance towards her mother and put her fingers to her lips.

‘Tomorrow,’ she said. ‘It’s too weird to talk about now. Too crazy . . .’

She nodded her head towards their parents and headed after them with Alex in tow, wondering what she meant by ‘Too crazy’.

‘Here we are!’ announced Saskia. Alex’s father turned and raised his eyebrow slightly when he saw Angelien and Alex arm in arm.

They were outside a brightly lit restaurant with a sign that had tropical leaves painted on it in gold. A blast of warm air full of strange aromas hit Alex’s face as he walked in. A waitress, small and dark skinned, dressed in black, smiled and came across to show them to a table.

The contrast between the dark buildings outside and the restaurant interior was startling. It was warm and lit by fairy lights and small candles on the tables. There were potted plants everywhere. It felt as though they had been transported to the tropics.

The conversation was a little strained at first, as everyone tried to avoid all mention of what had happened that afternoon.

Saskia ordered a host of small dishes from the menu and when the food arrived Alex liked most of what he tried, though he found it hard to predict what flavour anything was going to have. Many of the flavours were ones he had never experienced before.

Alex hadn’t realised how tired he had become after the flight and the meal helped to revive him. He wondered if tiredness was the source of his earlier jitters. It seemed a comforting explanation.

‘You seem to like the food, Alex,’ said Saskia with a wide smile.

‘Yeah,’ said Alex. ‘It’s delicious. Weird though.’

Saskia laughed. Alex smiled back. She had a nice laugh.

‘So your teachers don’t mind you not being at school?’ asked Saskia, as the waitress poured her another glass of wine. ‘They don’t mind you missing lessons while you’re here?’

Alex and his father exchanged a quick glance and Alex could see from the panic in his face that he thought Alex was going to tell them about the business with Molly Ryman, but why would he do that?

‘The head teacher gave him a special leave of absence,’ said his father, ‘provided that he writes an essay about his visit.’

Saskia nodded and smiled.

‘What are you going to write about?’ asked Saskia.

Alex shifted in his chair. He had given this no thought whatsoever.

‘Mother!’ said Angelien. ‘How can he know what he’s going to write about? He’s only been here a day.’

‘I just thought –’ began Saskia.

‘So, you’ve been studying the townhouses on our hotel’s stretch of the canal,’ said Alex’s father, turning to Angelien. ‘Have you learned anything about our hotel?’

Alex noticed the look on Saskia’s face as she was interrupted. He’d seen that look on his mother’s face many times. His father just didn’t seem to listen sometimes.

‘A little, yes,’ said Angelien. ‘A lot actually. I may be using it as the centre of my study.’

‘Really?’ said Saskia. ‘You never told me that.’

‘You never asked,’ said Angelien with a shrug.

‘It was a merchant’s house in the 1650s,’ continued Angelien. ‘All the houses along there were merchant’s houses. They are very typical actually.’

‘Do you know who owned that particular one?’ asked Alex’s father. ‘The hotel?’

‘It was a man called Johannes Van Kampen. He was rich, staunchly Protestant. He made his money trading with the Dutch East India Company – with Japan mainly.’

Alex’s father nodded and looked at Alex.

‘It’s amazing to think that old Van Kampen and his family were wandering around in our bedrooms three hundred and fifty years ago, isn’t it?’

‘Yeah,’ said Alex.

And it was amazing, he thought. The house had stood there for centuries and who knew how many people had lived and died in it. Somehow it made the hotel seem different. That dimly lit street and those dark houses with their big blank windows. There were new buildings among the old in that part of Amsterdam, but somehow the old buildings won through, despite the cars and the trams. The past seemed closer there.

‘It’s good that you made up with Angelien,’ said Alex’s father as he stood in the doorway that connected their two rooms.

‘Yeah,’ said Alex matter-of-factly.

‘You’ll be OK with her again tomorrow?’ said his father with a raised eyebrow.

‘It’s fine,’ said Alex with a yawn. ‘I don’t mind.’

‘Less drama this time.’

Alex nodded.

‘Well OK then. Goodnight, champ.’

‘Night, Dad,’ said Alex.

Alex’s father switched off the main light and went through to his room, closing the door behind him. Alex switched off the bedside light, yawned and pulled the duvet up around him, sinking into the pillows, and almost immediately slid into a deep sleep, filled with tangled dreams, where Amsterdam and England were one impossible place filled with a confusion of faces old and new.

But he hadn’t been asleep long when he was dragged back from these dreaming depths and into a wary consciousness. He had the strongest sensation that something was in the room with him. He sat up, peering suspiciously into the gloom around him. There was nothing there, he was sure. That is, he was sure and yet not sure.

He turned on the bedside light. Alex was startled to see that the mask he had bought was now on top of the chest of drawers. He hadn’t noticed it there before he got into bed. He looked around the room for any other sign of disturbance but everything was just as he had left it: everything apart from the mask.

Someone must have been in his room. Maybe the maid had been going through his stuff? But why? And in any case the maids worked in the morning, not the evening.

Alex heard his father walking round the room next door. Had his father come in and looked through the drawers?

Alex looked towards the connecting door, scowling. What was his father doing going through his stuff? He looked down at the mask, opened the drawer and slid it inside once again.

Alex got back into bed and turned out the light. He shivered, pulling the duvet tight about his face and body so that he was wrapped up like a mummy. Still he felt cold, as though the temperature had dropped ten degrees. He wondered if the air conditioning was to blame but didn’t want to get out of bed to check.

Alex closed his eyes. He was tired, so very tired. If he could just distract himself from whatever was unnerving him for long enough, he knew that he would fall asleep.

And Angelien’s face appeared in his mind’s eye, like sunshine in a dark well. There was something about her that warmed him, relaxed him. He relived their walk together, a walk that now seemed bathed in sunshine rather than threatened by rain. In no time at all he was drifting away with her down the canal in a white boat and off into a peaceful sleep.

Chapter 6

A barge sounded its horn on the canal outside and Alex woke suddenly, fully alert, with a disturbing sensation that something had woken him.

A milky morning light was seeping lazily through the floral curtains and making the room glow.

The barge sounded its horn again and Alex realised that this must be what had woken him.

He pushed the duvet away and got out of bed. He opened a drawer in the chest and there was the mask staring back at him with its dark, empty eyes. He took out a pair of socks and hurriedly closed the drawer, but seeing the mask reminded him of his suspicion that his father had been going through his things.

‘Dad,’ he said, when his silence over breakfast had been ignored. ‘Have you been in my room?’

‘Course I have,’ he said, slurping his coffee. ‘What do you mean?’

‘When I was asleep. Have you been going through my stuff?’

‘Going through your stuff?’ repeated his dad, putting down the newspaper he was reading. ‘You haven’t got much stuff to go through, have you?’

‘I’m serious, Dad,’ said Alex, finding his father’s joking annoying. ‘There’s no point in us having our own rooms if you –’

His father reached out and put his hand on Alex’s sleeve.

‘I promise you,’ he said. ‘I have not been going through your things. OK?’

Alex scanned his father’s face for any sign that this was not the complete truth, and found none. His father was a terrible liar anyway. But if he hadn’t been in his room, then who had?

After breakfast they found Saskia and Angelien once more waiting for them in the lobby downstairs. As soon as Saskia and Alex’s father had gone, Angelien grabbed Alex by the arm.

‘Before we go, can I take another look at the mask, Alex?’ she said.

‘I . . . suppose so,’ said Alex, unsure of whether he ought to be agreeing to this. He could see his father and Saskia through the hotel window, crossing the canal. ‘It’s in my room.’

‘OK,’ said Angelien, patting him on the back. ‘Let’s go.’

After a moment’s hesitation, Alex went back to reception and asked for his key and then took Angelien to the lifts, ignoring the arched eyebrows of the receptionist. While they were in the lift, Angelien noticed Alex’s key and the brooch attached to it.

‘The manager’s wife found loads of different things to use as key rings,’ said Alex.

‘It’s old,’ said Angelien. ‘It’s a bit battered about but it was probably a pretty brooch once.’

Alex unlocked the door and showed Angelien in. She whistled appreciatively as they stepped inside.

‘Hey – nice room,’ she said, walking across to the window. ‘And nice view too.’

As Alex let Angelien into his room, he was suddenly aware of how untidy it was and tried hurriedly to kick his clothes into a neat pile on the floor.

‘Don’t bother,’ said Angelien, turning away from the window. ‘You should see my room. I am the messiest person alive, believe me.’

Angelien sat down on the bed and tested the springs. Then she flopped backwards, looking up at the ceiling. Her jacket fell open to reveal a white T-shirt with a red-and-blue target design across the chest. A sliver of pale flesh showed between the T-shirt and her faded blue jeans. Alex stood staring at her until she sat up, grinning at him.

‘Well?’ she said.

‘W . . . What?’ said Alex.

‘The mask? Remember?’

‘Yeah . . . right,’ mumbled Alex, turning and banging his arm against the chest of drawers and wincing.

Alex opened the drawer, picked up the mask and handed it to her. She held it in her left hand, running the fingers of her right hand lightly over its cracked surface. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly with a puzzled look on her face.

‘What is it?’ said Alex.

‘It will sound crazy enough,’ said Angelien, ‘so I think the best way is for me to show you.’