The String Diaries Part 32

Nate gripped her hand. He opened his mouth, tried to speak.

Behind her, she was aware of footsteps, of people drawing close, but that didn't matter, none of it mattered. Not now.

She stared into Nate's eyes and told him that she loved him and held his hand and smoothed his hair away from his face. It took him a further minute to die, and then it was all over.

CHAPTER 20.

Sop.r.o.n, Hungary 1927.

Sitting on the steps of the baroque Trinity Column in Sop.r.o.n's main square, Jakab watched the city's residents hurry past on morning business, swaddled in gloves and hats and overcoats. Breath steamed from their mouths. The previous night had been cloudless and pure, and the heavens had sucked away what warmth remained on the city's streets. Now the sky was a brittle blue, as if dipped with a ceramic glaze.

Opening the paper bag on his lap, Jakab tore off another fat strip of strudel and shovelled it into his mouth. The pastry was gloriously warm, the flavours fizzling on his tongue: sugary apple, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves. Days earlier he had discovered an Austrian bakery on the Varkerulet that made the finest strudels he had ever tasted. This morning, he had purchased three, and not just for the taste alone: his body would require plenty of energy from him today.

Crumpling the top of the bag closed and dusting flakes of pastry from his clothes, Jakab reached inside his coat and withdrew his watch. He snapped open its gold hunter case and checked the time: quarter to eight. If his luck held, he should spot Albert Bauer crossing the square some time in the next five minutes. The chemist, he had learned, was rea.s.suringly punctual.

Out of habit, Jakab turned the watch over and slid his thumb across the inscription on the back plate.

Balazs Lukacs Vegzet 1873 Fifty-four years after his father had presented it to him in their carriage outside Buda Palace, the watch still faithfully recorded the beats of his life. How many times had he traced with a finger the looping lines of those seventeen letters? Even now, over a half-century later, the engraved words stirred emotions in him he would rather not confront. He recalled his father's blade at his throat, the line of fire it drew across his flesh. The blood.

Jakab snapped shut the case and slipped the watch back into his pocket.

He looked up, searching the cold-flushed faces of the people crossing the square for the one he hunted, and then, with a surge of excitement, he spotted Albert walking towards him from the direction of the Firewatch Tower. Jakab clambered to his feet, shaking the numbness from his legs where they had pressed against the frozen steps.

Albert, hatless, was wrapped in a heavy woollen overcoat that hung awkwardly on his tall frame. His skull was all sharp angles. Combined with a hook-like nose, it gave him the appearance of a hawk. Jakab had studied those features relentlessly over the last few months. He knew every cleft and dimple, the precise contours of the man's protruding ears, the line of his thin lips. As usual, Albert had slicked his hair with tonic and parted it to one side. Jakab's hair matched exactly.

He waited until the chemist had walked by, and then fell in step behind him. He only intended to follow Albert as far as his workplace; he needed to confirm that the man would follow his usual routine.

Are you enjoying the crisp winter air, Albert? Are you thinking about your young sweetheart? I wonder if she ever mentioned that she was already betrothed. I wonder if she shared that secret with you. Fear not; I'll be sharing that knowledge sooner than you'd probably hope.

In front, Albert peeled off along Kolostor utca. Jakab followed him down two more streets and watched him bound up the steps of a tall cream-coloured building that served as an apothecary and private laboratory.

Satisfied, Jakab strode back to the main square and to the street where he'd parked his motorcar: a maroon Mercedes-Benz 630K. It was hardly a vehicle suitable for this kind of work, but he had seen it in a showroom in Munich and had been smitten by its muscular lines and chromed brilliance. The super-charged six cylinders could deliver a speed of nearly ninety miles an hour not that he'd come anything close to that on the streets of Sop.r.o.n.

Jakab started the vehicle and followed the road southeast out of the city, towards the mansion where Erna Novak's granddaughter lived with her parents, Carl and Helene Richter, and her grandfather, Hans.

The decades following Erna's death had slid past in a fugue of bitterness and sorrow, fury and grief. Jakab hated the world, raged at the injustice of it. Those were the black years; the lost years. He had allowed himself to become the victim of events, rather than their master.

He recalled little of his lifestyle during that period, and what he did disgusted him. He had sampled every vice, savoured every depravity. By the time he had emerged, clear-headed and healed, nearly fifty years had pa.s.sed. He wondered how it was possible for such a huge tranche of time to be eaten away. Still, however long it had taken him, he had emerged, with renewed strength, renewed purpose. He had attained an awareness of the power he possessed to shape his reality, and the possibilities thrilled him.

It had been clever of Hans to change the family's name from Fischer to Richter. But with a typical lack of imagination, the woodsman had neglected to change their first names too. Once Jakab decided to find the family again, it took him less than twelve months. And what he discovered startled him.

Anna Richter.

The girl was a few years younger than her grandmother during Jakab's first visit to Lake Balaton. Younger, fresher, yet somehow wiser. Her eyes were the same deep chocolate, shot through with olive and caramel, and her hair was the same glossy brown. Jakab had feared that he would find the beauty and grace Erna gifted to her descendants corrupted, diluted, by Hans's seed. Those fears were extinguished the first afternoon he caught sight of Anna. Far from corrupting Erna's legacy, the woodsman's influence had helped to produce a creature even more exquisite than the woman Jakab had known during his time in Keszthely. He fell in love that same afternoon.

In Anna, he had been given a second chance of happiness. He would not squander it.

A mile from the Richter residence, on a forested road that was frozen mud and stones and little else, Jakab slowed the Mercedes and steered it into a depression amongst the trees. He cringed at the sound of brambles and holly snapping against the vehicle's coachwork.

Switching off the engine, he lay back in his seat, concentrated on the memory of Albert Bauer's face and clenched his fists against the familiar flaring of pain as he moulded himself into the young man's countenance. Tearing open the paper bag, he stuffed the remaining strudels into his mouth, barely chewing the pastry before swallowing. He took a silver compact mirror from the seat beside him, flicked it open and studied his face. Angular cheekbones, thin lips, ears that stood proud of his head.

The nose wasn't quite right. He strained, pushed. Checked the mirror again. Better. No, perfect.

Flexing his shoulders, Jakab climbed out of the car, careful not to snag his trousers on the undergrowth.

The Richter residence was a wide-fronted mansion in the cla.s.sical style, with ornate pilasters across the width of its facade and a porch supported by four stone columns. The walls were a lemon yellow. Imitating Albert Bauer's graceless walk, filling out the mask he had created with mannerisms that were a perfect replica of the German chemist's, Jakab climbed the steps and pressed the bell. He was expecting a maid to answer, so when the door swung open and revealed Anna, he took a surprised step backwards and nearly tripped.

Her eyebrows rose when she saw him standing there. 'Albert? What a surprise! I thought you'd be at the laboratory today.'

He gazed at her face, chest swelling, thinking about all the ways it reminded him of Erna. And all the ways it didn't.

'Albert?'

'I . . . yes. I was there. But I thought I'd pay you a visit. Silly, but I wanted to see you again.'

She pulled a face. 'Won't you get into trouble?'

'Not a chance. I've been working hard. I deserve a little time of my own.'

Anna opened the door wider. 'Well, come in, come in. You must be half frozen. It's not much warmer inside, to tell you the truth, but there's a good fire going in the drawing room. I'll bring us some coffee if you like.'

'Are your parents home?'

'Father's working in his study. But he won't mind.'

'And Hans?'

'He went into the city.'

'Right.' Jakab walked into the hallway. Anna shut the door behind him. She led him into the drawing room.

This was not the first time he had dared to visit her at home. The first three occasions had been fleeting. He had waited outside the house until he saw Albert Bauer leave and then, on the pretext of forgetting some trinket or other, had rung the bell and had been admitted to hunt for the lost item, s.n.a.t.c.hing a few lines of conversation with Anna, flexing his new skin. On his fourth visit, he arrived in the middle of the day, when he knew Albert would be at the laboratory. He discovered her alone in the house, and an hour later discovered himself in bed with her. He had repeated that experience several times since. Although he didn't feel confident enough yet to supplant Albert completely, he found himself unable to stay away from her. He was, he knew, taking a huge risk.

While Anna perched on the arm of one of the two sofas beside the log fire, Jakab settled himself into a wingback chair and folded his hands in his lap. He drank her in. Over a grey dress of some diaphanous fabric, she had pulled a man's woollen cardigan. Unlaced leather work boots adorned her feet. The skin of her calves was creamy and smooth. He tried not to stare.

Again, Anna smiled brightly at him. 'Coffee, then.'

'Please.'

Once she had left, Jakab looked around the room. A rug with a geometric pattern lay on the parquet floor. Marble-topped side tables supported a ceramic bust of a philosopher he didn't recognise, a gla.s.s vase of ostrich feathers, a tortoisesh.e.l.l cigar box, a Victrola gramophone and stack of 78s. Over the fireplace hung an enormous gilt mirror. In one corner, a lacquered Chinese screen was alive with the twisting bodies of dragons. Her father's writing desk stood in another.

Jakab rose to his feet and went to one of the windows. Outside, frost bearded the leaves of rhododendron bushes yet to be touched by sun.

He moved to the writing desk. A leather-bound diary lay on its surface beside a Waterman fountain pen. On the desk's single shelf stood a row of older journals. Some of their spines displayed a year etched in gold foil; most of them were blank. Opening the volume before him, Jakab saw a bookplate attached to the inside front cover. Ill.u.s.trated with twisting vines, wolves and deer, the handwritten message read: Diary of Fischer Hans 1923 He flicked through the pages of pale-blue handwriting, seeing the names of Carl, Helene, Anna and Albert. He selected an entry at random, and had just started to read the text when he heard a noise from the hallway outside. Something about the sound had been furtive, not quite right. Quickly, he dropped the book and moved to the door. In the hall, he saw Anna standing beside a walnut occasional table. In one hand she held the shaft of a telephone mouthpiece. To her ear, she held the receiver.

'. . . I won't, I promise you,' she said quietly. Noticing him by the door, she grinned, replaced the phone on the table, and sauntered up to him. 'Coffee,' she said, playfully prodding his chest with her finger. 'Coming right up.'

He nodded towards the telephone. 'Problem?'

'No, no.' She swerved past him, heading deeper into the house, and Jakab returned to the living room where he checked his appearance in the mirror.

Albert Bauer stared back at him.

He shouldn't be here. It had been foolish desperately so to visit her again. Especially so soon. How easy for his presence to be revealed; how easy for her to mention today's encounter to the real Albert and ruin everything. Intoxicated by the intimacy they had shared, he had abandoned all caution in his haste to repeat the experience.

Jakab took a breath, exhaled. He would have liked longer to study the chemist, longer to learn about the man's background, his work, the history of his relations.h.i.+p with Anna. But it was too late. If Anna was suspicious, he could deal with that, could mend it, given time. As long as the real Albert Bauer was rotting under six feet of frozen loam.

You can't afford to mess this up.

He wouldn't. He loved her. Had loved her all his life.

Knowing that leaving the house without saying goodbye would strike her as odd, but suddenly convinced it was the right thing to do, Jakab tiptoed into the hall, slipped out of the front door and ran back down the road to his car.

In Sop.r.o.n, he took lunch at the Pannonia Hotel and retired to his suite on the second floor, where he spent the rest of the afternoon thinking about Albert Bauer. Already, he had discovered plenty of information about the young chemist. The man was an orphan, sponsored by a wealthy uncle who lived in Vienna. He had lived in Sop.r.o.n for two years, moving to the area from Leipzig, where he had studied at the university. He was a keen philatelist, disliked jazz, and was awkward in social situations. He stammered when nervous, spoke with an accent, suffered from mild bouts of psoriasis.

While Jakab would not be able to convincingly continue the man's career as a chemist, a quickly arranged Viennese inheritance would solve that problem. His only concern was that he still knew relatively little about Albert's relations.h.i.+p with Anna. This morning, however, he had discovered Hans's diaries. He was sure that many of the answers he needed lay within those pages.

At the dressing room table, Jakab studied Albert's reflection. 'We'll visit you first, my boy. And then we're going to arrange a burglary.' He shook his head. 'Who'd want to live in Sop.r.o.n, eh?'

After nightfall, he parked his car in the narrow street outside Albert's apartment. The cold weather had swept the majority of Sop.r.o.n's residents indoors. Stars glimmered in a cloudless sky, with only the merest chip of a moon. The windows of the chemist's first-floor apartment were dark.

Unusual for Albert to be out on a Wednesday evening. The man usually ate supper at a bistro in the adjacent street before returning to his apartment, where he worked for a few hours before retiring.

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. m.u.f.fled laughter drifted to him from further along the pa.s.sage. 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 s.p.a.ce. 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 bra.s.s 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 pa.s.senger seat beside him Jakab pulled out a Ga.s.ser 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 b.u.t.t 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 tortoisesh.e.l.l 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 s.h.i.+rt, 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 s.h.i.+rt. 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.'