Into the Fire

by Rachael Blok

  ‘How are you feeling?’ he asks. What do they have to confess to? He wants to ask now, but from their faces, he wonders if they’ll tell him anyway. Lois looks distraught.

  Neither of them were on the helicopter, and he wonders briefly at their relief in Aksel’s death. There’s no way Sophie can be innocent, surely?

  ‘Maarten.’ Lois takes a step towards him. But she sways, and Maarten grabs her arm.

  ‘When was the last time you ate?’ he asks. ‘I want you both to sit and talk to me about this conversation, but first, go and eat something. We’ll get nowhere if you all start fainting on me.’

  Lois clutches her stomach and Iqbal jumps. ‘Is it the baby?’ he asks. ‘Shall I call a doctor?’

  More information, Maarten thinks. It just doesn’t stop coming.

  ‘No,’ Lois says. ‘I’m going to be sick.’

  ‘Eat,’ Maarten says. ‘You need to eat. I can call a doctor?’

  ‘No. I’m fine.’

  She looks anything but fine, he thinks, looking at her pale skin, the shadows under her eyes. He wants to push with questions, but they must eat first.

  *

  The table is laid out in the sun. Adrika has got water for everyone, and Sunny has driven to a coffee shop for hot drinks. Food is on its way. It won’t be long before they can start with the statements.

  Maarten thinks of the momentary hesitation, his doubt about Sophie. He’s still thinking about suspects. Why? He was willing to think about Lois and Iqbal – but surely he’s happy with Sophie.

  There’s a spare seat near Marieke, but before he takes it, he steps away from the table and calls Niamh.

  ‘Maarten?’

  ‘Anything odd about the glasses?’ he says, thinking things through. Remembering the chain of events. There’s something niggling him. The sudden doubt about Sophie has unnerved him. She sent the letters, but could she kill?

  ‘Now you ask, yes,’ Niamh says. ‘I was going to report at the finish, but the stem to the broken glass is part seared away. It looks like it’s been done cleanly. Strange – why do you ask?’

  Maarten thinks of Aksel holding the glass, making the toast. Then he runs through the afternoon again, events ticking over. The order of things.

  ‘Thanks, Niamh.’

  Interesting. Like three cherries in a slot machine, pictures fall into place. Who had been where. Who had done what.

  If this is true, he must move fast. It’s one thing to have a theory, but this will need some careful evidence.

  ‘Maarten! Come and eat,’ Marieke calls, and gestures to the spare seat next to her.

  He smiles, heading over. She looks older than she had on Friday.

  ‘So, it’s over?’ Marieke asks.

  Voices swirl round them. He can’t hear what the sisters are discussing, and he doubts they can hear him.

  ‘Yes. Looks that way,’ he says. ‘I think you can stop worrying now. There will be no more letters. No more threats.’

  ‘I can’t believe it, Maart. Sophie sent the letters to me? Tried to kill me? Killed Filip? If I’d have known… It’s all my fault.’

  ‘How is it your fault?’ he asks.

  She shakes her head. ‘Oh fuck. I’ve just pushed on. I’ve not let anything stop me! I always do this. I just push on. I decide and then off I go. We all got on that helicopter even though I’d had that letter. Sometimes it works well. Sometimes I don’t think of the fallout.’ At this point she looks at Maarten. ‘Twenty years ago, I didn’t think of you.’

  So, it’s that time. She looks at him. Waits for him to say something.

  A plane sketches its way through the clouds; a tractor is still, unoccupied, parked in a field nearby.

  No one else seems to be listening. They’ve retreated into themselves and of the original eleven for dinner, it seems crazy that two are dead, one is unconscious, another sits by a hospital bed and one has been arrested for murder. With Liv at home, it’s eleven down to five. In two days.

  ‘It’s been like a dream,’ she says, speaking in Dutch. She looks out down the lawn, towards the Roman theatre. ‘These last few days, like a rush of everything at once. Beginning with the shock of seeing you,’ she says, her eyes softening. ‘But that was the only good part, Maarten.’

  Maarten thinks of the Marieke he knew when he was young.

  ‘I can’t wait to get back to my daughter,’ she says, and Maarten is surprised.

  ‘You have a daughter? How old is she?’

  ‘Twenty,’ she says, staring out across the lawn.

  Maarten does the maths and feels the air in his stomach contract.

  ‘Wait. Is she…? Shit…’ His head spins.

  And another thought. Liv’s anger the other night. It wasn’t just about him being outside with Marieke… She’d half said something, and he hadn’t listened.

  Marieke speaks quickly. ‘No, Maarten. She’s not your child. But I do have a confession. All this time, without him knowing who you were, I’ve told Aksel you were the father. Not your name – but when you knocked on the door, and found me half dressed with another man. You saw him, he was there. That night.’ She shakes her head, looks to the ground. ‘I’ve been on and off in a relationship with Aksel for years. It’s been destructive. To say the least. I’ve never wanted to tell him he was the father.’

  She looks out across the fields. ‘All this time, I let him think you were. That night when you came round.’ She goes to touch his hand, but pulls back. ‘Maarten, I messaged you about the car, I set you up to come. I wanted him to see you. I needed him to see you. I was pregnant before we got together, Maarten. All those fucking raw eggs in the zabaglione? It was a relief not to have to think of a reason not to eat them.’

  Maarten feels like stone. That night comes rushing back.

  ‘It’s been so hard – my God, the guilt! Should I have told her? Should I have told her who her father was, when I could? But Maarten, you met him. He was so controlling. I couldn’t let her be victim to him, the way I was. Getting away from him. It’s been the hardest thing I’ve done.’

  All this time, all this guilt and pain. She’d used him as a foil? Maarten stares at her. She’d played him. She’d used him to deflect Aksel. And he’s lived with what happened that night, for so long.

  ‘Your face.’ She shakes her head. ‘You meant something to me, Maarten. It wasn’t nothing. Aksel is destructive. Debilitating. For a while, I thought with you I’d get myself away. But he pulled me back in. He always pulled me back in. I’ve been free of him for a while now, and the relief!’

  Maarten can taste the beer he’d been drinking, feel the steps beneath his feet as he’d climbed to her apartment, twenty years ago. He looks at her now; and then.

  He’d left his car at her apartment the night before, at her suggestion. He hadn’t been planning to see Marieke, but she’d sent a reminder, and it had made him think of her.

  He’d been due on duty, so he’d only had the one beer with a friend that afternoon. And as he climbed the stairs to her apartment, he’d felt desire for her. If he was a little late for his shift, would it kill him? He’d knocked on her door and when she’d answered, he’d swept her up, buried his head into her, into what had come to feel familiar.

  There had been a dry laugh from the back of the room. The laugh is tight in his memory box, locked for when he wishes to run himself down, when he wants to think less of himself. To feel small. He’d seen this weekend how Aksel excelled in making others feel small.

  ‘Maarten!’ Marieke had half shouted. And her face. Christ, her face. He’s never forgotten it. He’d almost dropped her.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Maart. I wasn’t expecting you.’

  And as he’d put her down, he’d taken in the candles, the music.

  ‘Fuck,’ he’d said, backing out. And he’d been so embarrassed. ‘Fuck.’

  And he’d fled, running down the steps and towards the car.

  ‘Maarten! Stop!’ she’d screamed at him, running after him. She�
�d pulled on a coat, and by then it was raining. The wet was thick, heavy in a sudden downpour, and his hair was soaked, water running down the back of his neck.

  ‘Maart! Maart! Stop!’

  But he’d carried on. He’d flung himself into his car, feeling stupid. Feeling small. And he was angry. Angry with her.

  ‘Get back to him!’ he’d screamed, slamming the door, glancing once in the mirror. She’d stood in the rain. And he’d powered away.

  The car’s wheels had turned, skidded beneath him. The car ricocheted off a wall, spinning in the wet. Her face was stark in the mirror. He’d started again, driving away, angry. He had spun the car wide, getting it back on the road. The wheels lifted on the water like they were gliding, and in slow motion the car had turned, in a pirouette, Marieke’s face, carved with pity.

  Driving back to his flat, planning on throwing a sickie, the call had come in. Backup was needed. A robbery. He was close. Actually driving past the jewellery shop at the time. He should have just stopped the car.

  Instead, angry, he drove on. Flying fast through the traffic. Almost home, he thought better of it, and he swung the car round, going back.

  He’d entered and the officer who had made the call was already dead.

  Once he’d found him, his rage turned against himself. He’d run in, tackled the gunman. It had been his duty to answer the call, and he had left another officer to die. Whether he could have made a difference, if he had got there sooner…

  He’ll never know. He’d received a medal for bravery, which he’d given away almost as soon as he was able.

  Aksel had known it was him. Aksel told him he’d seen the articles about the death, about the medal, Maarten’s face in the newspaper. He would have known when Maarten left the flat.

  ‘Do you ever think of it? That night?’ Marieke says.

  Maarten’s phone rings and he rises with relief. He can’t speak to her right now. He made his own decisions that night. But all he can think of is Liv, of how soon he can go home and tell it all to Liv. Then all their secrets, frying in the sun, can be aired. It’s no longer a secret, if everybody knows.

  *

  Moving down the lawn quickly, he rubs his face with the back of his hand.

  Someone says, ‘Lister Hospital’, and asks him to hold. Then Sarah Arkwright’s voice sails down the line.

  ‘Maarten? It’s Richard. He’s awake! He’s OK! Thank God.’

  ‘Oh, Sarah, I’m so pleased!’

  ‘Listen, he wants me to tell you. When Aksel was stumbling into Filip, he said something. And Richard thinks it could be important. I think I’ve got it right.’

  Maarten’s mouth parts slightly as he listens to her speak, and it takes him a second to say, ‘Thank you for that. And Sarah, that’s such good news.’

  The line clicks off, after Sarah offers a goodbye. Maarten glances back at the table.

  Filip hadn’t heard it right. What he’d said he’d heard. But this. This ties in with his theory. This will help enormously.

  They’re almost there. This weekend. A little more evidence, and it will be complete.

  64

  LOIS

  Torn between grief for Filip and terror for her sister, Lois hangs on to Ebba’s hand as though she’s afraid she’ll drift away.

  ‘Please, eat something,’ she says, but Ebba stares at her, vacant. It’s almost 3 p.m. now and Ebba’s eaten nothing all day, as far as she knows.

  ‘Please,’ Lois repeats.

  Slowly, Ebba lifts a sandwich and takes a bite. Lois sees Maarten talking on the phone, walking in the gardens.

  ‘Will we have to go to the station?’ she asks the police officer with the brown bob, who nods.

  ‘Can we take a walk first?’ Lois asks, feeling the pressing weight of people, everywhere, for three days.

  ‘If you like, but not up to the house,’ the officer says, but she smiles, kind.

  Looping arms, they walk down towards the trees, towards the amphitheatre.

  ‘It’s still standing,’ says Ebba. ‘I’d imagined it flattened after yesterday. All those years, and then it would burn to the ground.’

  Lois takes in the scene. She thinks of how scared she’d been. Of how scared she is now.

  ‘I’m pregnant,’ Lois says. She looks down at the ground. She loves this place. She remembers them playing when they were young. Before their father had died and they’d lost everything they’d known. They’d climbed trees here, played hide-and-seek. Their birthday parties had been on this lawn: balloons, cake and their father, playing the part of the clown.

  ‘Lois!’ Ebba’s face lights up, and for a second she looks like herself again. ‘Lois, this is amazing! Who’s the father?’

  ‘Let’s do all that later,’ Lois says, not ready to confront the guilt, the sadness, wrapped up with the father. ‘I’m scared. I am so scared we’re going to lose all of this. Lose it all again.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Ebba says. ‘Why will we lose it all? We’ve worked so hard to keep it. To get it back.’ Her eyes cloud again, and Lois wishes the weekend away, like a bad dream.

  Looking up, the sun is breaking through. The light is cold. ‘I was speaking to Iqbal earlier. He’s heard from someone he knew in Dhaka. It sounds like we could be involved in some kind of IP theft from a factory worker; you know we’ve embedded clauses everywhere to force our contractors to minimise slavery and exploitation. If we’re found guilty of doing the same thing, we could lose millions.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Ebba looks confused. ‘Who stole the IP?’

  ‘It sounds like it was Aksel.’ Lois wraps her arms around her, shivering. Her stomach growls, but she’s still too nauseous to eat. ‘He was in Dhaka when we were. He paid Iqbal’s friend a pittance for the idea of moving the viewing lens closer to the eye in the way we did – what let us launch our VR sets with a splash.’

  Ebba looks out over the theatre ruins. Lois glances at her profile – she looks tissue-paper thin in the light. Her hair is scrambled into a knot on her head, and it fades into the pale sun, sitting behind her. She’s drained.

  Before them, there are still signs of the crash. They will pass in time. The grass, blackened, is thinning anyway with autumn. Orange, red, yellow leaves have already part-covered the crash site.

  ‘I knew Aksel was there. He was the one who paid for the trip.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Lois says, amazed. ‘You knew Aksel was there?’

  ‘Yes, I knew. I was the one who asked him to help us.’ Ebba shakes her head. ‘We had nothing when we started this company. Once we lost the house, once we lost all the money in Dad’s firm, we had no chance of starting out properly. You know Aksel and Dad were friends, worked together. I went to Aksel and I asked him to help.’

  ‘But why would he help you?’ Lois says. ‘Aksel is vicious. Why would he bend over backwards to help you?’

  Ebba looks down at her toes. Her eyes fill and she starts to cry quietly. ‘I never told you, Lois. I never told you what Dad said, when he was dying. He was in his office when the press ran that article, about the fault with a product, and within half an hour all his shares were worth nothing. I watched his face: he turned green, and then he clutched his chest. I phoned an ambulance but by the time it arrived, he was dead. There was nothing I could do. Lois, it was horrible! But before he died, he told me only Aksel knew about the possible flaw in the product. It had never even been confirmed!’

  Lois can taste bile in her mouth.

  ‘Aksel saw an opening and moved in for the kill. Once he thought he could buy the stock low…’ Ebba shakes her head. Lois reaches out for her, partly for support. The ground she stands on feels as though it shifts.

  ‘Oh my God,’ Lois says, dizzy, her head spinning. ‘Oh my God. Ebba, why did you go to him? How could you look him in the face again?’

  Ebba waves her hand away, her face screwing up, spitting out the words quickly. ‘It’s easy for you Lois, with your ideals, your morals, your goodness. You don
’t have to deal in the real world! It’s all men and egos, and power. How do you think we got our foot in the door? I went to Aksel and I told him I had proof he leaked the report. I told him we’d lost everything, and it was his turn to make it up to us. Otherwise, I would expose him.’

  She shakes her head.

  Like the house is crumbling down, Lois wants to run. Her foundations are shaking.

  They’d grown up in this house, and they had lost it once. She understands why Ebba fought to keep it. She remembers wondering where funding had come from, when they had first begun making the devices. But she’d assumed it must have been part of Richard and Sarah’s investment, or that Ebba had secured a loan. They had been loaned money from the bank at various stages. She’d never really gone into the details of which parts of the business had been funded from which source, always leaving the business side of things to Ebba. She’d been so busy with the creative side.

  ‘So Aksel suggested the factories in Bangladesh?’

  Ebba nods.

  ‘And I’d insisted on seeing the conditions. Whether or not we we’d be happy to go ahead with them.’ Lois thinks back to that time. ‘When we came back, that was when we had the breakthrough with the sets, and it all started to happen.’

  Ebba interlaces her fingers with Lois’s. ‘Don’t throw it all away now, Lois.’

  ‘Oh, Ebbs.’ Lois thinks of the millions on the table at the moment, of the deal with Hollywood, of the huge factories in Rotterdam and Bergen, waiting to take their products, to ship them out to the whole world. And one man, who sold his idea for less than the price of the bottle of champagne Aksel had brought with him that weekend. ‘We’ll need to go to Dhaka, to compensate him for his invention. Give him what he’s owed. What Aksel stole from him.’

  Ebba nods, looking outwards. She speaks carefully. ‘But let’s do it quietly. We don’t want to scare away the franchise. IP theft would take us down completely. And then all of this, this whole weekend, would be wasted. A waste of time. A waste of…’

  Lois nods. ‘A waste of life,’ she says. She thinks of Filip. ‘I still don’t really understand why Sophie killed him. I thought they’d sorted it all out – it seemed that way. To think we had a murderer at our table, under our roof. That Filip spent his last hours here. And the crash, Aksel’s death. All in our home.’ She puts a hand on her stomach, her tiny baby. ‘Life is so fragile. I’m not sure I’ll ever trust anyone again.’