by Helen Grant
Kris was nodding. ‘We drove through sometimes, and I always looked out.’
Veerle imagined a battered car passing through the village – the Verstraetens had never had anything new or respectable looking – and Kris staring out of the window, looking for her seven-year-old self, a small girl with a pale, serious face and two dark plaits.
‘Did you see me?’ she asked.
‘No.’ He was smiling at her.
She looked at him thoughtfully, as though she could sketch the boy he had been – her friend – in the person sitting before her now.
‘Do you still live there?’ she asked him. ‘Overijse, I mean?’
He nodded. ‘For now.’
‘And what do you do? I mean, when you’re not breaking into houses?’
When he told her, she was surprised. ‘You’re training to be a gardener?’ Then she thought about it, and wasn’t so surprised after all. She couldn’t imagine Kris stuck in an office or a bank for five or six days a week for the rest of his life.
‘You?’ he said.
‘School.’ She made a face. ‘And sometimes the climbing wall. And now, housebreaking.’
She watched Kris as he bent over the plug again, working deftly to reassemble it.
‘So how did you get the key to this place?’ she asked eventually.
‘I know someone.’ For a moment Veerle thought that was it, he wasn’t going to tell her anything else. But then he said, ‘Some places, the old ones, you can get into those without keys and codes. There’s a broken window catch or a back door that isn’t locked properly. Other places, there’s a member of the group who has a key. Anne – she calls herself Kreeftklu, Hermit Crab – waters plants for people when they’re away. She has keys for about fifteen houses. And there’s this Dutch guy Fred knows. He calls himself Egbert, though that’s probably not his real name. He’s obsessed with lock-picking – used to belong to some lock-picking club in Holland.’ Kris shrugged. ‘Fred told me they chucked him out because he wasn’t content with lock-picking contests. He was breaking into places for the hell of it, and they thought he was going to get them all into trouble, so they told him to get lost.’ He had finished screwing the plug back together; he turned it over critically, checking that it was perfect, and then pocketed the screwdriver. ‘Egbert does the ones nobody else can do,’ he said. ‘The ones with modern locks, when we can’t get the keys.’
‘This house, is it one of Anne’s?’ asked Veerle.
‘No.’ Kris shook his head. ‘This place is one of mine. I’ve got a cousin who manages a cleaning company, sending maids into people’s houses. He’s got all the keys in his office, and all the code numbers stored on his office PC.’
‘He gave you the codes?’
‘Didn’t need to. Jeroen’s not exactly the brains of the family. He’s great at bossing the girls around, and crap at thinking up passwords.’
Veerle couldn’t help laughing at that, and then Kris was grinning too, and as she looked at him she nearly forgot what they were saying. She made a valiant effort to continue.
‘I thought you said you didn’t do the places you knew yourself? I thought everyone in the group swapped that information, so nobody could trace you?’
‘They do.’ Kris shrugged again. ‘Mostly. There are one or two places that I keep for myself – like this one. It’s too good to pass on to anyone else.’
‘Special,’ said Veerle. And he brought me here. The thought made her want to hug herself.
Then she remembered what Hommel had said to her the night they had met. I hope you know what you’re getting yourself into. To Kris she had said, Is she the new one?
When Veerle had met Hommel, the girl had seemed so icy that it was a wonder the air hadn’t crackled with frost every time she spoke – but then maybe she had a reason to be like that with Kris.
Am I making a fool of myself? Am I the next throwaway girl?
If she really thought that, perhaps the best thing would be to walk away before she got hurt. Say Thanks, Kris, it was fun, but I’m not going any further. But she looked at him and she knew she wasn’t going to do that.
She thrust all thoughts of Hommel and her insinuating remarks away, like a necromancer dismissing a demon.
I’m not stopping.
13
A WEEK LATER news came, and it was unwelcome.
Veerle was standing on the corner of the street with her mobile phone clamped to her ear. The snow had mostly gone but nevertheless it was a freezing February evening and there was a sharp wind. It was unpleasant to stand outdoors, but Veerle had no intention of going inside and letting her mother overhear every word of the conversation. Once she turned and glanced at the house on Kerkstraat as though she expected her mother to be peering round the doorway, like a moray eel glaring out of a crevice. There was no sign of Claudine, however; no doubt she was shut up inside with her shoulders in that permanent hunch and her cardigan pulled tightly around her body, as though she could never escape from the chill, indoors or out.
‘Valérie Renard,’ said Kris’s voice in Veerle’s ear. ‘Valérie Renard was Vlinder.’
Veerle stared at the building on the other side of the road, a dull-looking apartment block. She had a vague memory of a time long past when there had been an ugly space like a missing tooth where that building now stood.
Valérie Renard, she thought. There couldn’t be a person in Belgium who hadn’t heard that name by now. The girl in the park – the one they found in the pond.
‘Really?’ she said at last. ‘I mean, are you sure?’
‘Yes.’ Veerle heard Kris exhale, as though he were tired. ‘Gregory was the one who introduced her. He’s been away working, otherwise we’d have known before.’
‘Someone else must have known her,’ Veerle pointed out, as though she were contradicting Kris, trying to argue that the thing could not have happened. She had never met Vlinder, had only heard her name, but even that tenuous connection made the girl’s death more shocking. It made her real.
‘Fred,’ said Kris. ‘But he’s off somewhere buying up stuff for his gallery. Spain, I think.’
Veerle shivered; the wind was icy. ‘It’s horrible,’ she said.
She was thinking about the messages she had seen on the Koekoeken website, the muted condolences. RIP Vlinder. Vlinder, we’ll miss you. None of them had mentioned Valérie Renard by name, as though even in death Vlinder’s anonymity had to be preserved. And so she had asked Kris, and this was the result.
‘Sorry,’ said Kris. ‘I wasn’t going to tell you over the phone.’
‘That’s OK,’ she said automatically. She was still staring at the apartment block, without really taking it in. There was a light on, a rectangle of yellow against the grey exterior wall, and inside you could make out the owner of the flat moving about in the kitchen. Cooking the evening meal, maybe opening a bottle of wine. Life was going on, as it always did. A girl was dead but nothing stopped because of it.
Poor Vlinder. Nobody knew exactly when she had died. Her family would not even have a date to carve into her gravestone.
‘Veerle?’ said Kris in her ear. ‘I have to go. I’ll see you tomorrow.’
‘I know.’
‘Eight-thirty at the tram stop, OK?’
When the call had ended she closed her phone and turned reluctantly towards home. She wished she could have talked to Kris for longer, although she was not sure what she would have said. I didn’t know Vlinder personally, but . . . Veerle shook her head. I feel as though I did know her. She wanted adventure too . . . She wasn’t afraid to break rules. She was special. And now she’s gone.
She could imagine what Claudine would say if she knew what Valérie Reynard had got up to her in spare time. Doing dangerous things like that, forbidden things, it’s no wonder she ended up dead.
But Valérie – Vlinder – had been found in a metre of filthy freezing water, not in a deserted house.
It had nothing to do with the Koekoeken, thought V
eerle. Nothing at all.
14
THE NEXT NIGHT Veerle had a stroke of luck: Claudine went to visit her friend Melise. She took her time getting ready, fussing over the supper and turning the place upside down looking for a magazine she had promised to lend her friend, and trying to decide which jacket to wear. She seemed so reluctant to actually leave Veerle alone that Veerle began to be afraid that she would suggest they both went, saying, You can come along and amuse Lotte – or Louise, or whatever her name was – as though they were two small girls again.
In the end Claudine departed, and as soon as Veerle was sure that she had really gone and was not coming back for anything, she began to get ready to go out herself. She was not sure how long she would be out, and if she got home later than Claudine it would inevitably mean a scene of some kind, but she would deal with that if it came to it. At least she could escape from the house without Claudine clinging onto her like a drag anchor, wanting to know whom she was meeting and exactly when she would be back.
You know, she thought as she stood in front of the hall mirror zipping up her jacket, you’re going to have to tell her about Kris sooner or later. Kris – the boy she said she’d kill if he ever came near you again. Even if that was ten years ago. She made a face at herself. Later, then.
A couple of minutes after that she was stepping out into the darkness, her breath visible in the chill evening air. She pulled the door shut behind her with a sense of relief, and hurried to the bus stop. She couldn’t help glancing up at the dark bulk of the Sint-Pauluskerk as she passed. Most evenings there was a light burning in the vestibule, illuminating the little stained-glass window above the main door so that it shone out like a single kaleidoscopic eye. Tonight, however, the old church was shrouded in darkness.
Silent Saturday, thought Veerle. Even though any precise recollection of that day was elusive, contemplating the bell tower still gave her a feeling of unease. It was not just the knowledge that she had seen Joren Sterckx with her own eyes, thus playing an infinitesimally minor role in the darkest day her village had ever known; it was the image that kept unfurling in her mind: a terrified seven-year-old child, her screams of fright cut off with a slap that sounded like the flat retort of a gunshot. There was just no getting away from it: I was scared half out of my wits, and she hit me. When she looked at it like that, she didn’t feel so bad about keeping Kris a secret.
She was still thinking about this when the bus reached the tram stop at the edge of Tervuren. Kris was waiting on the platform; anyone who saw him greet her would think they were just another young couple on their way into Brussels for the evening. A romantic evening out, thought Veerle, and suddenly Claudine was forgotten. She almost laughed aloud. A romantic evening of housebreaking.
She was still smiling at that when she came up to Kris, so when he leaned over and kissed her almost casually on the mouth she was taken by surprise. Then they were walking away from the tram stop at a brisk pace, ducking between the trees that separated the platform from the street behind it, and she put her fingertips to her lips in the dark as though she could capture the brief pressure of Kris’s kiss on them.
She glanced at him but he wasn’t looking at her; he was scanning the street, his aquiline profile silhouetted against the amber light of the streetlamps. It was a very long street, dead straight and broad, and laid with carefully maintained cobbles. It was also very well-lit, so that there was little possibility of them melting into the welcome darkness. One side of the street was lined with trees that screened the tram line from the road, but on the other side stood a series of expensive-looking villas, their balconies and gables and turrets defended by high gated walls and hedges.
The street was deserted; perhaps a hundred metres away Veerle saw the sleek black shape of a cat flit across the cobbled road and disappear into the shadows under the trees, but otherwise everything was still. Kris touched her arm and they began to move down the street.
Veerle’s heart was thumping. She wanted very badly to keep looking around, to see whether anyone was watching them. She imagined a face at an upper window of one of the splendid villas, or a security camera whirring and clicking as it followed their motion. Don’t turn round. It looks suspicious. She put her head down, increasing her pace to keep up with Kris’s long legs. You haven’t done anything wrong, remember? Her lips twisted. Not yet, anyway.
She could not remember ever walking along this street before, in spite of the fact that it lay a few metres off her bus route to high school. There was no reason to come here, not unless you owned one of those enormous houses; there were no shops or restaurants in this part of the town. You could have gated off the whole area, grown a ten-metre thicket of thorn bushes around it like the castle where Doornroosje, the Sleeping Beauty, dreamed away a century, and most of the population would have no cause to notice.
They came to the end of the road and turned right, up another street that ran off at an acute angle. Far ahead, a gleaming car slid almost soundlessly across an intersection and disappeared down another street.
‘Here,’ said Kris briefly, and they turned a corner. Now they found themselves skirting a high wall of white stucco capped with black tiles. Close to the wall was a great beech tree, its bare branches and twigs a roadmap against the yellow glare of the streetlamps; when they were safely in its shadow, Kris stopped and laid a hand on the wall.
‘In here,’ he said. ‘There’s a gate further up we can get over, but we have to be quick, OK? That’s the riskiest bit. Once we’re on the other side, nobody’s going to see us.’
Veerle stared up at the wall, assessing it. She supposed it was perhaps two and a half metres high. She glanced at the beech tree too, but there was no hope of using that; if there had been any lower branches they had been sawn off. The gate, then.
‘OK,’ she said, and before Kris had time to react she was off, cutting gracefully along the side of the wall, keeping as close to it as she could. When she reached the gate she could have laughed out loud.
Easy. The most ill-coordinated beginner could have scaled it. Compared to the small, narrow and sloping holds on the climbing wall, the iron gate with its decorative curls and flourishes was as straightforward as a ladder. She was only slightly hampered by wearing outdoor boots. She placed the toe of the right one on what looked like a metal ivy leaf and then she was moving swiftly upwards with the speed and fluidity of a lizard darting up a wall.
When she got to the top, she couldn’t resist it: she swung herself up onto the top of the wall and then straightened, balancing at her full height on the black tiles. She allowed herself the indulgence of a satisfying glance at Kris’s astonished face, but that was all; no point in remaining in such an exposed position for longer than necessary. Then she moved quickly back to the gate and climbed down the other side.
She was waiting in the lee of the wall when Kris came over the gate, dropping carefully onto the gravelled drive. He opened his mouth to say something and then shut it again.
‘That was fun,’ said Veerle, delighted. She was filled with a joyous excitement that made her want to run whooping through the enormous gardens. Instead she began to follow the gravelled drive, running lightly along the strip of grass at the side to minimize the sound of her steps. The drive curved sharply through a screen of towering shrubs and then suddenly the house was in view.
‘Wow.’ Veerle stopped in her tracks, and for a moment she was almost unaware of Kris at her shoulder. The last house had been big, but this one was simply jaw-droppingly huge. Even now, at night, when the only illumination came from the moon and the streetlamps beyond the walls, you could see how staggeringly sprawling the house was; how every aspect of it had been designed to impress, from the colonnade that ran the length of the ground floor to the rounded turret that lent the building a distinctly manorial air. As if this were not impressive enough, there was a kidney-shaped ornamental lake in front, the waters sparkling black like hematite, and in it the dark bulk of the house was reflect
ed, as stately as the Taj Mahal.
So fabulous was it that Veerle felt a little of her confidence drain away. A place like that can’t possibly be left empty and undefended. It has to be bristling with alarms and security lights. Indeed, she could make out the red wink that meant an armed burglar alarm.
‘This is insane,’ she said under her breath.
‘No, it’s not,’ said Kris’s voice in her ear. She felt him touch her shoulder. ‘It just needs a little care. Look, it’s one of Jeroen’s places. I’ve got the keys, and the alarm code. We just need to make sure we get in without setting off all the lights.’
Veerle gazed at the house. ‘What happens if we set them off?’
‘Maybe nothing,’ said Kris. ‘Maybe no one sees them, or maybe they think there’s a fox in the garden or something. But it’s best not to. There are about a dozen lights on that place, big ones. Believe me, if they go on, the place is going to be lit up like Zaventem airport.’
Veerle heard his breath coming in rapid gusts. He’s as hyped up as I am, she thought.
‘How do we avoid them?’ she whispered.
‘We go to the side of the house, there,’ said Kris, pointing. ‘There’s only one window on that wall, and it’s on the second floor, so they didn’t bother mounting lights there. Then we keep really, really close to the wall when we go round the front. Theoretically we’d set the sensors off but the one to the right of the door is on the blink. It goes off if you walk along the front of the lake but it doesn’t pick up anything close to the wall.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘How do you think? By setting it off. The first time I spent half an hour hiding under a laurel bush, thinking the police were going to turn up.’ Veerle felt rather than saw him shrug. ‘Nothing happened, though. Maybe they have a lot of false alarms. Cats, or night birds. Who knows? But we should try not to set the lights off, just in case.’
‘OK.’ Veerle tried to inject as much confidence as possible into her voice. All the same, when they started towards the side of the house she was conscious of her own pulse racing and her breath sawing in and out. They crossed the gravel and as they raced over the grass, aiming for the side wall, she was half wincing, expecting the lights to dazzle her at any moment. The moment never came; safely in the lee of the house where the darkness was at its most impenetrable, she felt paving stones under her feet and then her fingers touched the rough texture of the house wall. She could hear Kris moving beside her, and then he brushed past.