The String Diaries Part 33

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 sh.o.r.e 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 hosszu eletek 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 Merenyl, 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 s.p.a.ce 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 pa.s.sion, 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 brandis.h.i.+ng 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 d.a.m.ned 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 trespa.s.ses, as we forgive those who trespa.s.s 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.

CHAPTER 21.

Aquitaine region, France Now Days pa.s.sed, 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 sh.o.r.e 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 s.h.i.+rt. 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, ma.s.saged 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 succ.u.mbed 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 p.r.i.c.kling, 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 doc.u.ments, their pa.s.sports, 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 cl.u.s.tered 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 gla.s.s. 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, sc.r.a.ping 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 s.n.a.t.c.hed a gla.s.s from the draining board, found a half-litre bottle of gin in a cupboard she hadn't checked, and filled the gla.s.s to br.i.m.m.i.n.g. 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 gla.s.s 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 G.o.d.'

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. s.h.i.+vered. '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 d.a.m.ned 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.'