Silent Saturday

by Helen Grant

  I left her a note, Veerle thought desperately, but she knew that that was about as much use as putting a sticking plaster over the stump of a severed limb.

  When the phone rang, she was so startled that she almost dropped it. She didn’t have to look at the display to know who it was.

  The driver of the 830 bus heard the phone ring too. The rumble of the bus drowned out most actual conversation, but you could always hear mobile phones ringing; the pitch and timbre seemed designed to be as irritatingly obtrusive as possible, the electronic equivalent of very vocal nagging. There was only one passenger on the bus: the pale, dark-haired girl in the window seat. He heard her say something into the phone.

  Half a minute later something came hurtling down the aisle of the bus and clattered into the barrier at the front. Instinctively the driver braked, peering down at the projectile. A mobile phone. That girl. With a rising sense of indignation he slowed the bus almost to a stop and turned in his seat to give the girl an earful. Then he saw the expression on her face, and in spite of his annoyance he held his tongue.

  17

  DE JAGER STOOD in the February cold and dark, in the darker shadow of a tree, and studied the front of the house. The tree was too tall, too overgrown; it should have been cut back, or perhaps cut down altogether – it overshadowed the left side of the house. For De Jager, however, its presence was ideal; it provided him with cover, and it helped to screen the portico from the street. Not that anyone walked down this road; everyone drove, in sleek expensive cars, engineered to such a peak of perfection that they were almost soundless. Most didn’t even get out to open their gates; they were remote-controlled. De Jager had had to take care when he arrived on foot; if he had been seen, he would have been far too noticeable, a peasant strolling along on his own two feet.

  De Jager had not come to hunt. He knew that the house was going to be empty for two weeks and he was not expecting anyone to visit it tonight. He had come to assess the territory, to gauge how best the hunt might be carried out. He had the code to the burglar alarm, but he didn’t have a key, so he had two options. He could try to find some way into the house without a key – a window that might be opened with a little effort, or a door that was not very secure. Once, he had got into a house by slipping under the unsecured garage door and then through a connecting door to the house that someone had forgotten to lock. People were remarkably stupid about home security, he had discovered. Of course, it might be that the owners of this house had checked and locked every door and window before they left, that there were no broken window catches or other weak points. Then he would have to fall back on his other option, which was to let the target open the door, and then make his move before they were able to get inside and close it.

  He preferred the first option. There was considerable pleasure to be had in the anticipation, the waiting in the darkened recesses of the house. Hearing them enter it, thinking that they were alone. It was less risky too. If he tried to force his way into the house alongside his prey, there was bound to be a struggle. Things might get broken – things that would be missed if he simply took them with him. It could be messy, requiring hours of meticulous cleaning. Far better to be waiting for them inside the house, to take them unawares.

  This place would present a challenge, he could see that. It was not the sort of house whose owners left it unsecured. Every visible front window was shuttered. He meant to go and look at the back of the house, but he lingered in the black shadows under the tree for a moment, contemplating the building, imprinting it on his mind.

  Those few moments of delay were significant; the ripples that spread from them travelled far further than he could ever have imagined, like an earth tremor with him at its epicentre. If he had stepped out from under the tree he might have been visible at the moment when she walked up to the house. He could so easily have done so; he barely heard her coming because she was wearing those boots on her feet, the sheepskin ones that all the young women of her age were wearing at the moment, flat and soft. No heels to click on the tiled pathway.

  She was about eighteen, fairly tall and slim – you could see that she was slender in spite of the padded jacket she was wearing and the long scarf wound around her neck. She had light hair – blonde or light brown; it was hard to tell because of the yellowing effect of the streetlights – done up in a sort of sloppy ponytail, half up and half down, casually chic, and long silvery earrings of some ethnic design which swung backwards and forwards as she moved. She was pretty in a spoiled sort of way – slightly round face, pouting lips, and a way of holding her chin up that implied that she knew everyone was looking at her but she simply couldn’t be bothered with it, with the attention. She had a bag over her shoulder, a voluminous leather bag, and she was fumbling with it as she strode up to the house, probably trying to get a key out.

  De Jager watched her in silence from the black heart of the shadows. He was amazed and impressed by her insouciance, arriving on foot, marching up to the deserted house in the dark as though she owned it. She never looked behind her once, never checked to see if anyone was looking. She didn’t even try to stick to the shadows, instead moving boldly through the yellow light cast by the streetlamps.

  He did consider melting away into the night, leaving her to whatever she planned to do. He was not prepared, after all; he didn’t have any of his usual tools with him, and the car was parked two streets away. Fetching it would mean leaving the house and returning again, all of which was risky. He knew from experience what could come of impulsive, unplanned action. It led to mess, it led to discovery, it led to being away for a very long time indeed.

  He could just let her go inside, and then he could leave. No harm done.

  He hesitated, though. If she was here now, it wasn’t likely she would come again. It was now or never, prepared or not.

  He took a step forward, still turning the matter over in his mind. In that instant she slid the key into the lock, and as she did so she glanced behind her, and now in the jaundiced light of the streetlamps she saw him. Her eyes widened.

  De Jager flew at her with the savage speed of a falcon diving for its prey. He collided with her with such force that it carried them right inside the house. They landed on the hard floor of the hallway with De Jager on top of the girl. There was no time for finesse. He grasped the ends of the scarf wound around her throat and pulled it tight, choking her. She realized what he was trying to do, and in spite of her shock she began to fight him, bucking and kicking.

  De Jager did not panic. He was confident that he could overcome her, but at the same time he was aware of the open door and the persistent beeping of the alarm system. If he did not tackle them, in a minute or so the alarm would be alerting the entire neighbourhood and he would be in full view of the open doorway.

  He made a decision. He gave a truly savage yank on the scarf in the hopes of subduing the girl, and then he got up to deal with the door and the alarm. He closed the door first, then struck the illuminated light switch with the heel of his hand, drenching the hallway with light so that he could locate the alarm control box. He was punching in the code when he heard a sound behind him and realized that the girl had staggered to her feet and was trying to escape.

  Verdomme, he thought. It was all going wrong. Now he began to feel real anger. The actual hunt – that brought him a strange pleasure but it had nothing to do with any emotions towards the prey. It never had. His hands never shook when he took a life. But this girl – she was messing the whole thing up. If he wasn’t careful she was going to break something or leave traces he couldn’t remove if he cleaned all night. He went after her.

  She heard him coming and panicked – that was the only explanation. She ran into the kitchen, which was exactly where he would have driven her if he had had the choice. She didn’t think to go for the knife block or a rolling pin, though. She made for the back door, which was stupid, because it was locked, and anyway, it led into the back garden, which was almost certainly pitch d
ark and fenced in. The kitchen was large and decorated chiefly in shades of green and blue, which was good because white was a pain to clean up; but there was a large free-standing unit in the middle of it, which was bad because it gave the girl something to hide behind. She was huddled by the back door, struggling with the lock; De Jager suspected that in her panic she had actually bent the key.

  She was crying with fear, babbling, and although he had no real interest in whatever limp defence she was trying to put up for herself he registered that she was speaking English. Not Flemish, nor French. He had some inkling then that she was not who he had thought she was, but it was too late. She had seen his face quite clearly.

  After he had dealt with her, and the house was silent again apart from the sound of his rapid breathing, he paused for a moment. De Jager had the sense of being watched, although there was nothing to hear, nothing to see. He raised his head and scanned the kitchen. Most of the windows were tightly shuttered; there was only one circular window, too small to be a break-in risk, that was uncovered. He gazed at it, at the reflective blackness of the panes throwing back a splintered likeness of his own face. At last he went right up to the glass and stared out into the dark. Nothing.

  He stood there for a few minutes, and when he was satisfied that there was nobody there, he turned away, dismissing the thought from his mind. He had work to do.

  18

  IF THE DRIVER of the number 44 tram had bothered to take a close look at the slim, dark-haired girl who climbed aboard at the terminus, he might have been taken aback at her stormy expression, at the glittering in her eyes that threatened tears. But the driver was preoccupied with thoughts of his own; he glanced back once at the girl to make sure she punched her ticket – Bloody students, he thought, always trying to get a free ride – and then went back to staring morosely out of the front window.

  Veerle sat down with her back to the driver. There were few other passengers on the tram, for which she was grateful. There had been a titanic scene with Claudine before she left; only the danger of being late for her meet-up with Kris had forced Veerle to be brutal and leave in spite of her mother’s protests.

  I’m never going to be able to keep her happy, she thought dismally. Not unless I stay home all the time, never go anywhere. She leaned her head against the window of the tram and closed her eyes. It’s just turning into her-or-me.

  That was just it: trying to carry on with her own life and reason with Claudine was like trying to swim while carrying a lump of lead; you had to let it go or drown. When she’d slammed the door on her way out of the house she’d felt a pang of guilt so sharp that it was like a physical injury, and yet she knew it was necessary, like the pain of an operation. All the same, she had spent the bus journey from the village fighting back tears. Veerle hated crying.

  The tram lurched reluctantly into life and began to rattle through the darkened woods. Veerle gazed out into the darkness and thought, Should I try to contact Dad? She bit her lip. I just don’t see what he can do. She hates him so much, I can’t imagine her listening to anything he suggests.

  Ce salaud de Gand, that was what Claudine called him; that bastard from Ghent. She didn’t even call him Geert or your father. There was no way she was going to let her ex-husband interfere in her life. But Veerle herself felt out of her depth; she couldn’t begin to work out how to deal with her mother.

  The tram crossed the big road intersection at Quatre-Bras and plunged back into the woods again. After a stretch of darkness, lights became visible, twinkling through the screen of trees. Veerle rang the bell and the tram began to slow. It drifted past the two greenish metal statues that faced each other across the road, and came to a halt at Oudergem Woud. There was nothing here, no reason to alight during the hours of darkness; in daytime people stopped here to go walking in the woods, but now it was so dark that you couldn’t have seen your hand in front of your face in there. She and Kris would have to walk the rest of the way. There was a stop much closer to their destination, but Kris didn’t want to risk someone noticing them getting off there.

  The tram was rattling and swaying away from her, the comfort of its lights receding, before she saw Kris. He was standing under one of the chestnut trees that lined the grassy island in the centre of Tervurenlaan, almost invisible in the shadows, but when he spotted her he began to amble forward with easy grace.

  Hastily Veerle wiped under her eyes with her fingertips. She felt an impulse to run over, fling her arms around him and let the events of the whole horrible evening pour out of her in a passionate torrent.

  Don’t, she told herself. Don’t let her ruin it. She looked at Kris and she was aware of the blood singing in her veins and the breath shivering in and out of her mouth like the silvery movement of the breeze through the naked trees. It was not just that he was good-looking in a sharp-featured, saturnine way – good-looking enough to make her stomach do a lazy roll every time she saw him. He seemed rare, improbable, a creature with no place in the monotony that was everyday life. She might as well have glimpsed a unicorn disappearing round the corner of a concrete underpass or found a glowing phoenix feather discarded on a city pavement. She couldn’t imagine doing ordinary things with him – going to the cinema in Leuven or hanging out in the pizzeria in Tervuren. She’d never even seen the place where he lived. She didn’t believe in it. Kris might have been a visitor from another dimension altogether; he hacked through physical obstacles and rules alike with the abandon of an adventurer carving his way through thick jungle undergrowth with a machete. When they stepped into whatever adventure he had planned for the evening, she was determined not to take Claudine with her. She walked to meet Kris, and when she turned her face up to his her eyes were dry.

  Kris put an arm around her and they began to walk down the middle of the grass, where the shadows of the trees were deepest. Where the woods ended, the road opened out into a boulevard lined with villas that bordered on the frankly palatial. Some of them were foreign embassies, with security gates and national flags. Veerle didn’t think that even Kris had the brazenness to break into one of those.

  They followed the road until they came to a left turn.

  ‘That’s the street,’ said Kris in a low voice as they strolled past it. Veerle knew the routine now; she didn’t expect him to walk boldly up it. He led her another twenty metres further, to a smaller turning. A glance behind them to make sure there was no one watching, and then they were walking down a narrow path between high laurel hedges. Some of the houses, including the house they were aiming for, had security fences at the back. They cut through the garden of the house next door, which was less well defended, and then squeezed through the tall shrubs that marked the boundary between the two properties.

  In the yellow light from the streetlamps Veerle had her first clear view of the house they were planning to enter. It took her breath away. It’s huge, she thought. Three storeys of white-walled elegance, with contrasting dark roof and gable tiles of such a high sheen that even in the murk of night they gleamed like gunmetal. Veerle’s gaze took in the high windows, the glossy front door, the balcony that ran round part of the first floor, but mostly the sheer extravagant size of it. Her pulse began to race at the thought of what they planned to do, the outrageous idea of actually entering this palace and exploring it. Owning it, if only for an hour or two.

  The other side of the house was partly shaded by a tall tree, but the route to the front door was less protected. Kris moved swiftly and silently across the lawn, minimizing his exposure to the streetlights. When Veerle caught up he was already standing in front of the door, the key in his hand. It was a couple of centimetres from the lock when he froze.

  Veerle waited for him to unlock the door, but still he stood there, his body tense, the key held a finger’s span from the lock. She was on the point of saying something when he grasped her wrist and pulled her towards the concealing shadow of the tree.

  ‘What’s going on?’ whispered Veerle, and then she felt
Kris’s finger lightly touch her lips, warning her to be quiet. In the darkness he was little more than a silhouette but he was so close that she could feel the warmth of his breath on the side of her face.

  For a moment he said nothing, and then: ‘Something’s wrong.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’m not sure.’ Briefly he was silent, and then he said, ‘There’s a light on.’

  Veerle stared at the house, but as far as she could see it was entirely dark, the shutters tightly closed.

  ‘Where?’ she whispered.

  ‘The little window, to the right of the door.’

  She looked, and now she thought she could see something. The roller shutters were down there too, but whoever had closed them had neglected to let them down to their full extent. There was a perforated space between two of the slats, light appearing through the tiny holes so that it looked like a string of little yellow beads.

  ‘Maybe it’s on a timer,’ she suggested.

  ‘No,’ said Kris in a low voice. ‘They never leave lights on when they go away.’

  ‘Maybe they did this time.’

  ‘No.’ She heard him exhale, considering. ‘There’s something up. We shouldn’t just go in.’

  Veerle bit her lip, studying the house. Is there someone at home after all? But the shutters are all down, the garage doors are closed. There was no sound from the house, but that didn’t mean anything. The shutters would muffle any noises from inside, and in this February chill none of the windows would be open. The house might be completely empty, as it was supposed to be, nothing moving except perhaps a dust mote or two drifting on the stagnant air. Or there could be someone inside, snugly enclosed in their shuttered fortress, within a hand’s reach of the telephone. How can we be sure? she thought. One thing she did know: she had no intention of just giving up and going home, not if there was any chance of carrying out their plan. She looked at the façade of the house as a mountaineer looks at a peak that has never been conquered.