He lumbered up the stairs and knocked. Helen didn’t move. He went downstairs again and told Gary’s mother that she was asleep.
She escaped hearing the agony and doubt in her mother-in-law’s voice. Was Jean right to be suspicious of her? You read about people having psychotic episodes with no memory of what they’d done afterwards. She was the one who found the bodies, got blood all over her. And the children – was barricading them in their rooms the work of a rational person? She threw her legs out of bed. No way. It was crazy thinking. She couldn’t rip open a dog’s belly. Sweet old Napoleon. Christ. Why was her first thought the dog? What about Gary and the other human victims? Didn’t she care about them?
37
Monday, 6 December
As Helen left the house, Polly Stephens rushed out. “I’m so sorry about this. Freya won it in the school raffle. We put it up for her.” She gave an embarrassed nod towards the giant inflatable reindeer in her front garden.
Helen hadn’t even noticed. Her eyes strayed to Number Ten. Louisa’s handmade festive wreath was still on the door but the police had turned off the lanterns in the window. It was a house adorned in police incident tape. Christmas had no place there. Without looking back at Polly, she climbed into the police car.
Jutta drove her up the Bundesstraße to the hospital. The glare bounced off the piled up snow on the roadside. Helen pulled down the visor and wished she’d brought her sunglasses. But it wasn’t just the weather giving her a migraine, it was the news that the suspect in for questioning had been Sascha Jakobsen. When Jutta told her, she felt like she’d been stabbed. It was a jabbing, puncturing blow of betrayal. Sascha. She’d trusted him despite everything everyone had said. But then Jutta explained they had let him go again when he provided an alibi. She wondered whether Jutta was breaching police code by telling her. They still hadn’t arrested anyone but Helen felt they no longer regarded her as a serious suspect. Why else were they allowing her to visit Mel?
She wasn’t sure what she expected but it wasn’t to find Mel in bed with a saline drip in her hand. The glow in her that had turned the heads of Jerome Stephens and others at the swim club party had burnt out. The killer cheekbones were now skeletal. She pushed herself up on her pillows.
“How are you?” Helen asked – stupidly. She was the only woman on the planet who already knew the answer.
“They’re worried about a vitamin deficiency and think I haven’t been eating properly for a long time.”
Helen looked away. The sudden weight loss couldn’t have helped.
“No need to be embarrassed, Helen. I know I was the size of a baby hippo. I envied you and Louisa in your Lycra sports kit.”
Helen had never, at all the coffee mornings and dinner parties, heard Mel talk about herself. It must be what trauma did: grabbed you, shook you, and when it dumped you down, all your hidden parts spilled out. She wondered about inviting her to go running, a way to keep the weight off and still eat well, but she hesitated. She ran alone to escape. She needed that solace now more than ever.
Mel rested her hand on hers. Her fingertips were stone-cold despite the tropical heat of the ward. “You’ll get through this. We both will.”
Helen hadn’t thought of Mel as a woman of resolve – that accolade went to Louisa – but, despite the dark circles under them, there was a determined look in her eyes.
Mel asked whether she had heard from the police.
Helen told her Sascha Jakobsen had been in for questioning but released without charge.
“Why?” Mel asked.
“I couldn’t believe they bothered with him. I think Damian put the boot in.”
“I mean why did they let him go?”
“He’s moody and unpredictable, but no one could take him for a killer,” Helen said.
“What makes you so sure? You weren’t here when Louisa’s garden got wrecked last year. That was violent. And the way he stalked us, even to Austria. That’s not normal.”
“But …” Helen didn’t know what to say. She was about to protest but didn’t want to lose the new openness between them. She told her it didn’t matter what they thought because Sascha had an alibi. “Apparently he was at home with his mother all Thursday evening.”
Mel shrugs. “A mother would say anything for her son, wouldn’t she?”
Helen’s head started aching again. She changed the subject. “Have you got family coming over?”
“Not yet. Later, maybe.”
Helen waited for Mel to ask her about her family. When the question didn’t come, she explained that she’d asked her brother to sort out her house in Shrewsbury.
“How soon will you leave?” Mel asked, pushing herself upright against the pillows.
“Not until the police say it’s okay.”
“I don’t want you to go.”
Helen felt touched. “I expect I’ll still be here at Christmas. I’m too dazed to think about packing up right now. I can’t plan anything. When I close my eyes I see …” She swallowed hard.
“Sometimes I think about Chris and I’m overwhelmed with guilt,” Mel said.
“Guilt?”
Mel stared ahead of her. She seemed to be replaying something in her mind. “Our last words before he left for the dinner party were angry. I was in bed and he came in, accusing me of taking the DVDs that were stolen in July. He cared more about his film than he did about me.”
“Gary and I bickered that evening too but I know he loved me. I’m sure Chris loved you.”
Helen watched tears well in Mel’s eyes.
***
Helen pretended to doze on the journey back. She suspected Jutta’s questions about how Mel was feeling were a police ploy to learn more about both women.
Mel had looked ill, frail, tearful, and yet there was certainty in the way she’d condemned Sascha. Did she know something about him? Helen had seen them talking once by Chris’s car. She’d glimpsed them from her upstairs window. Was he threatening her? If Mel had spoken up, could she have prevented the murders? But Sascha had been with his mother, hadn’t he?
“Do you get on well with Mrs Mowar?” Jutta asked.
Helen kept her eyes closed and didn’t answer.
38
Tuesday, 7 December
Damian was at the door.
“What time is it?” Helen asked.
“I’m sorry, were you asleep? It’s about nine. Where’s your policewoman?”
“I was catnapping. It’s all I can manage. Jutta left yesterday.”
“So you’re in the house on your own?”
“My brother’s coming out,” she lied, unsure where Damian’s question was leading. “Besides, Mel will be out of hospital soon and she might move in here for a few days,” she added. Her belly felt uncomfortable – was it because of this second lie or the notion of living with Mel?
“Well, if you need any company before that, let me know. The Holiday Inn isn’t bad, but I could do without businessmen and their drinking games right now. Look, can I come in so you don’t catch a chill?”
The first time she met Louisa was on this same doorstep and Louisa had said something similar. At least Damian posed it as a question whereas Louisa had invited herself in. Helen had felt exposed, wearing nothing but her short towelling dressing gown. Since the murders she’d been going to bed in Gary’s old tracksuit but now, facing Damian, she felt as naked as the day she met Louisa. She went upstairs to get dressed.
“You don’t have to put your clothes on for my benefit,” Damian called after her.
Her cheeks burned as she locked herself in the bathroom to dress.
He was gazing out of the patio window when she came back down. His mood had changed. “I hope Dickensweg disappears in a white cocoon that freezes us all to death,” he said.
Helen wasn’t sure he realized she was there. She offered to make him a coffee but he ignored the question. “It’s Toby’s cello exam today. I went round to the foster house this morning to wish him luck and give the boys a lift t
o school. He had his music books out on the kitchen table and he was practising on an imaginary cello between mouthfuls of Coco Pops. It was like looking at my son and not my son at the same time. The last-minute revision had Louisa’s influence stamped right through it, but tucking into sugary cereal – Louisa would never have allowed that.
“He looked so happy there. The foster mother sat next to him sipping her tea while her husband stacked the dishwasher. Murdo and Leo were watching the Disney Channel. It was the picture of domestic bliss. When I wished Toby luck in the exam, he said, ‘Proper practice makes luck irrelevant’. That was pure Louisa; but then he refused to come in the car with me because the foster family’s boy had offered to cycle with him, taking the hired cello on his back. He rejected me, Helen, my own son. Can you believe it?”
“He’s a young lad who’s been through something unspeakable and who’s been given some attention by an older teenager. He probably looks up to him. Most boys would at that age.”
“Leo and Murdo didn’t want to know me either. They gave me a hug but didn’t take their eyes off the TV screen, not for a single second.”
She sighed and hoped he’d stop the self-pity; she wanted to be left alone to wallow in her own. “All parents despair of tearing their children away from Disney. It’s normal,” she said.
“But they’re not normal, are they? Their mother’s been murdered, had her throat cut. Violated in her own home. In their home, while they were sleeping. The place where they should feel safe.”
When he rubbed his eyes, his hand trembled. She led him to the sofa and sat down beside him. There was no option but to listen.
“We’re not a family without her. I used to fantasize about becoming one of those weekend dads with the best of both worlds: fatherly and footloose at the same time. Taking them to Kids Planet and McDonald’s and then handing them back to Louisa to grapple them into bed when they were too full of cola to shut their eyes. But it’s not like that, Helen. I’m not their dad anymore. I’m a shadow to them, a hazy memory of a different life.” He burst into angry tears.
His open grief bemused her. If only her own could work like that. She wanted it to harrow through her, to penetrate the deadness in her body. She told him: “It’s only been a few days. None of us know who we are anymore.” She made to move away but he moved with her and rested his head on her shoulder. The intimacy of the gesture kicked her. It was the first physical contact she’d had since Gary. But this man repulsed her. He smelled of yesterday’s shirt.
He lifted his head. “I’ll kill Jakobsen. I’ll find out where he lives and I’ll take a knife to him like he did to Louisa.” His eyes bulged with anger and his face was red. There was no trace of the debonair neighbour she’d lived opposite for the past eight months.
“But Sascha didn’t do it. He had an alibi. The police let him go.”
“You’re friendly with him; do you know where he lives?”
“I … he’s not a friend. I saw him at the Dortmannhausen pool in the summer sometimes.”
“Dortmannhausen, that’s it. He lives in the village. Where’s your phone book?”
“I don’t think we’ve got …”
“Deutsche Telekom delivers them. Where’s yours? In the hall?”
Helen blocked his way out of the lounge. “I’m not helping you find the address of someone you want to kill.”
“He killed your husband too. He butchered him.”
“Stop it, please.”
“Don’t you want revenge?” He stepped towards her. “Move out of the way. I’ll get the phone book myself.”
She didn’t budge.
“What is it with you, Helen? I’m starting to think there’s more to your relationship with Jakobsen than idle gossip. Did you put him up to it, Lady Macbeth?”
In a reflex, she brought her hand up and slapped him.
His face did a tour of shock, humiliation, and anger. For a moment she thought he would hit her back, but he sighed, his anger subsiding, and said: “I deserved that. You’re not the type to have an affair. I know the telltale signs. I’ve practised hiding them often enough. Anyone could see you loved Gary. Can you forgive me?”
She shrugged, accepting the apology as the quickest way out of the conversation. “We’re not ourselves at the moment.”
Her words triggered another mood change. “We never will be again,” he said as tears rolled down his face.
He sank against her shoulder, and she wondered how soon she could break away.
He must have sensed her discomfort. “I’d best be off. I’m on compassionate leave, but I told my deputy I’d go into school this morning.”
He looked at the carpet and spoke softly. “I’m sorry about all that just now. You’ve got your own demons to deal with – worse than mine, probably, as you were the one who found them.” He glanced at her as if to check he hadn’t said too much. “Anyway, I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.” He held out his hand.
Helen shook it. “Promise you won’t do anything stupid. Let the police do their job.”
“I promise. I must have sounded like a raving lunatic.”
“Let’s forget it.” She led him out and stood on the icy doorstep, shifting from foot to foot.
“We could go out for a meal one day this week,” he said. Even after everything else, the flirtation made a return to his voice. It was true then; some men couldn’t help themselves.
She found a way of letting him down gently. “If you want to take the boys out to tea, I could come and help.”
If he was disappointed, he didn’t show it. He gave her a cheery thumbs up and was about to head off when they both heard movement at the other end of the road. Sascha emerged with Manfred Scholz from Manfred’s house.
“You bastard,” Damian yelled, striding towards them.
The cold seeping through her slippers, Helen chased after him. “Wait, Damian, remember what we agreed.”
He shrugged her off and kept going. The veins in his neck were pulsating with rage. He reached Sascha, punched him in the face and set about kicking him.
Despite looking dazed from the assault, Sascha – the younger, fitter man – dodged most of Damian’s kicks and threw a punch of his own. Damian stopped to rub his forehead and examine the blood on his fingers.
Helen’s ears buzzed. The last time she’d seen blood, lots of blood …
Manfred held Sascha back to prevent him landing more punches.
Cello, cheesecake, blood. The noise in Helen’s head was deafening.
Damian leapt at Sascha, held him by the throat and dragged him down into the snow. He sat on Sascha’s chest, pinning the man’s arms down with his knees.
“Please stop this,” Manfred said.
The different voice distracted Damian enough for Sascha to wriggle free. Manfred pulled him back.
The buzzing stopped in Helen’s head. She tried to grab Damian’s fist but knew it would take more than a woman and an old man to break up this fight. She tried diplomacy. “Can’t we talk about this? There’s been enough violence in this street.”
“And this bastard’s responsible for it.” Damian lunged at Sascha but this time Manfred let go of Sascha to allow him to defend himself. It was Sascha who landed the next punch and sent Damian reeling. He grabbed him by the collar and hauled him against the wall of Manfred’s house.
“So you want justice, do you? Well so do I,” he shouted into Damian’s face. The back of Sascha’s head was soaked in snow, his hair spiking up more than usual. He looked savage. When he pulled back, ready to headbutt his opponent, Helen flinched and closed her eyes. But rather than the sound of Damian’s nose breaking she heard police sirens. Damian pushed Sascha off and started thumping him.
Two police officers leapt out of their car and dragged Damian away. The younger of the two fetched out a pair of handcuffs but, instead of cuffing the struggling Damian, he pulled Sascha’s hands behind his back. The older one told Damian in English to get himself checked over by a doctor.
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“And you also, I think,” he said to Helen. Her arms and legs were shaking and she wondered what the hell she looked like.
Manfred said something in German. It sounded like a question but Helen didn’t understand it or the policeman’s answer.
She saw his face, bleeding and fat-lipped, as he was driven away. It was as expressionless as a police mugshot of a serial killer. Dead behind the eyes.
39
Helen sat stock still, surprised she had breath left in her. So it was Sascha. The swimmer, the smoker, the stalker. The killer.
She was with Damian at the table in Manfred’s kitchen. Manfred fetched a bag of peas out of his freezer box for Damian’s face, pulled two teacups and a bottle of schnapps out of a cupboard and placed the cups, half-full, in front of them. He took a solitary mug off the draining board and filled it for himself. Both men drank deeply. Helen didn’t touch hers.
Manfred folded his arms and rested the mug on his elbow. He shifted his weight from foot to foot.
Sascha, Sascha said her head in time to his rocking. The man she swam with, talked to, defended, had taken Gary from her. If she hadn’t spoken to him at the pool; if she hadn’t brought him into the street; if she hadn’t … She grabbed her cup. The liquid stung her throat but she kept on drinking; the stinging served her right.
“Did you call the police?” Damian asked Manfred suddenly. “How did they know he was here?”
The old man took another drink and said: “He often visits this street. I think perhaps somebody else told the police.”
“Why does he visit you?”
He moved his mug in a tight circle, staring into it. “Not me. He stands often in the street. In the wood.”
“But we saw him coming out of your house,” Damian said.
Manfred’s sallow skin grew a shade darker. He moved in front of the sink with his back to them. “Today, yes, but not before. It was a private matter.”
Damian slammed the frozen peas on the table. The red swelling on his forehead hadn’t gone down.
Alcohol seeped into Helen’s head, through her thoughts, but it still didn’t cushion them. A long way away she remembered something. “But what about Sascha Jakobsen’s alibi?”
The Perfect Neighbours Page 17