by Helen Grant
‘Hey,’ said Veerle indignantly, though she suspected she was wasting her time.
‘Sorry,’ he said cheerfully.
She put her head down and walked on, but suddenly he was in front of her, the board under his arm, walking backwards and doing his best to catch her eye.
‘You’re the girl from the wall,’ he said. When she didn’t immediately respond he went on, ‘The climbing wall. Sundays. You’re definitely that girl.’
Veerle looked at him. I don’t need this, she thought. She said, ‘So what?’
He tried a grin, blue eyes looking at her appealingly through untidy strands of blond hair. ‘You’re good.’
‘I’m crap,’ said Veerle shortly.
‘No, you’re not.’
Veerle stopped, fighting the desire to roll her eyes. ‘If you were there on Sunday, you saw me fall off. Three times.’
‘Well, before that. You were good.’
No, I wasn’t, thought Veerle. I was rubbish. You didn’t see me before I fell off the castle tower and smashed myself up. I went higher, I didn’t worry about peeling off and landing on the arm I broke. I was fit, because I hadn’t spent weeks in plaster, doing nothing. Back then, I wouldn’t have fallen off an easy climb three times.
Her thoughts must have showed in her face because he said, ‘Hey. You really were. Good, I mean.’
Veerle shrugged. ‘Well . . . thanks.’
‘Bram.’
‘Thanks . . . Bram.’
He was still standing in front of her, not showing any signs of moving away.
‘I have to go,’ said Veerle, hitching up the bag that was slung over her shoulder.
‘Where? I might be going your way.’
‘The cathedral.’
‘Hmm. The cathedral.’
There was a hint of something in his voice – humour or scepticism – that almost prompted Veerle to add something, to justify herself. I’m doing a school project about it. She caught herself just in time. It would only lead to more questions.
Instead she said, ‘Really. I have to go.’
She brushed past him and headed for the cathedral doorway, but as she strode across the grey stones she was aware that he was keeping pace with her.
‘Are you going to be at the wall again on Sunday?’ Bram was saying.
‘I don’t know. Maybe.’ It was the truth; Veerle wasn’t even sure herself. She knew she wouldn’t build up her strength again without practice, but it was too depressing seeing how much ground she had lost.
‘What did you say your name was?’
‘I didn’t,’ said Veerle.
She reached the great Gothic doorway of Sint-Baafs and went inside via the right-hand door without looking back. Bram couldn’t follow her inside, even if he wanted to, not with that board under his arm.
Inside the cathedral it was cool and airy, voices and footsteps echoing off the ancient stonework and the black-and-white floor tiles. Veerle was dwarfed by the immensity of the interior, the great fluted columns disappearing up to the ceiling vaults high above her.
I suppose I was rude to him, she said to herself. He was probably trying to be nice. She let out a sigh. Same as school, she thought. The people who asked questions were probably just trying to be friendly. If she didn’t keep brushing them off, they’d probably get on OK. It was just . . .
Veerle had tried to imagine telling people why she was in Ghent, why she had changed schools in the critical final year. Why she was living with her father and her soon-to-be-stepmother instead of her mother. She foresaw where the questions would lead. They’ll ask me about her, about Mum, and everyone will look really sympathetic, but all the same, they’ll have to ask, what happened? And maybe someone will ask, was I with her, and I’ll have to say no. And if they ask me where I was, I don’t know what I’ll say, because if I tell them the truth they’ll think I’m mad or lying . . . and if they believe me they’ll keep on asking more and more questions. Anyway, I don’t really know what the truth is myself.
Veerle was moving now, wandering further into the interior of the cathedral without really thinking about where she was going. Her gaze drifted over carved stone and murky oil paintings and coloured glass without her really taking them in.
What did I see? she asked herself for the thousandth time. In her imagination she went back to that moment, that terrible moment months before, when she had gazed down from the gallery on the first floor of a dilapidated castle and seen a killer standing there below her, like some brutal idol surrounded by the rising incense of petrol fumes. She had looked down, and suddenly the years had rolled back like a tide and she had recognized him. Joren Sterckx, the child killer. The child hunter.
She had known him because she had seen him before, the day he had slain a child in her own village. The seven-year-old Veerle and her friend Kris had gazed down from the bell tower of the church and seen him striding across a piece of open ground with his victim in his arms and the front of his shirt dyed red with blood. It had been Silent Saturday, the day no church bells ring in Flanders, but the air had rung with her own screams.
She had buried that memory, buried it deep, but when she had seen him again in the castle she had known him instantly. It had been terrifying, that moment of recognition. Terrifying – and utterly impossible.
Joren Sterckx is dead. He died in prison, long ago.
Even now, she couldn’t understand what she had seen, how it could be possible. There had been hundreds of questions afterwards, of course, and she’d known perfectly well what everyone had been thinking: that she’d been mistaken, seeing things, or maybe she’d concussed herself in the fall and wasn’t thinking straight. Then someone had told them about Silent Saturday – it must have been Geert, because it couldn’t have been Claudine – and after that it had been tacitly accepted that she had imagined it, seeing Joren Sterckx.
But I didn’t imagine the deaths.
Vlinder, the girl found frozen into an icy lake. Horzel, buried in a shallow grave miles from home. And Hommel. Hommel was the worst of all because Veerle and Kris had known her personally – and because she had never been found. She had been spirited away, leaving no trace – no way to know how she had died, or where, or when. Her killer, whoever or whatever he was, had perished in the flames when the castle went up; Veerle had heard him die. So he was never going to tell anyone what he had done with Hommel. And not knowing was terrible. When Veerle remembered what had happened to the others, she shuddered for Hommel; imagination filled the void in ways too horrible to contemplate.
Veerle stopped in front of a large block of stone. It was some kind of modern sculpture; not the sort of thing you normally saw in a Gothic church – it wasn’t figurative at all; in fact she had no idea what it was supposed to be.
She thought, Whoever he was, he can’t hurt anyone now. He died in the fire.
He’s gone for good.
Still she didn’t feel entirely easy, thinking about it. I know Joren Sterckx died long before, but I saw him. She shivered, glancing around her. Is it impossible? She looked up the aisle towards the ambulatory and saw an elderly nun standing there, her stout figure swathed in black. She probably doesn’t think so, thought Veerle. Her whole faith is based on the idea that a dead man came back to life.
None of this was making her feel any better; in fact she was making herself feel worse. She tore her gaze away from the nun.
I should go somewhere else. Down to the canal or something.
She turned to leave, and Verdomme, there was Mevrouw Taelemans from the school.
What’s she doing here?
No time to debate it. Veerle looked for a way out. As far as she could see, there was no way of reaching the exit without crossing the teacher’s line of vision. She thought quickly, and then she reached into her jeans pocket and dragged out a fistful of change. Close to where she stood there was a booth selling tickets for the Ghent altarpiece. She stepped up to it and hurriedly put four euros on the little counter, three
of them in one-euro pieces and the rest in change. She resisted the temptation to turn round while the man in the booth took the money and handed over the ticket. Then she slipped past him, into the enclosed space beyond, out of sight of Mevrouw Taelemans.
5
That was stupid, Veerle said to herself almost before she had done it. Four euros. That’s half the cost of a session at the wall. And for what? To look at a painting.
All the same, as hiding places went, it was a pretty good one. Hot on Veerle’s heels came a party of foreign tourists, well-dressed and voluble; she thought they were Italian. Unless Mevrouw Taelemans came right inside the little room and pushed her way to the front, there was no way she could see Veerle, not through the jostling mass of people with their smart jackets and elegantly dressed hair.
There was a young man offering headphones and an audio guide, but Veerle shook her head. She went to the left-hand side of the room and stood with her back to the wall. Her shoulder was beginning to ache with the weight of her school bag, so she put it down on the floor at her feet.
She looked at the painting for a while. Impressive. She could hear the tourists murmuring, ‘Magnifico . . . stupendo.’ It wasn’t just the massive scale of it (it had to be twice as tall as she was), nor the photographic quality of the painting. It was the sheer opulence of it: the gilding, the jewels, the brilliant colours. There was a central figure, whom Veerle assumed was supposed to represent God, dressed in crimson draperies studded with pearls and wearing a crown encrusted with gemstones. On his right was a bearded male figure clad in emerald green, holding a book upon his knees. Veerle had no idea who he might be, but she recognized the female figure on the left immediately: the Virgin Mary, dressed all in blue. On the outer panels flanking these figures were angels in finely embroidered robes, playing instruments and singing, and, at the very extremities, two naked human figures, one male and one female.
Adam and Eve, thought Veerle.
Underneath these virtually life-sized figures was another row of panels depicting a landscape crowded with people, gazing towards the central point where a lamb, representing Jesus, stood upon a scarlet altar, surrounded by kneeling angels. If you looked closely you could see that there was some kind of cup standing on the altar in front of the Lamb. Veerle thought it was the sort you called a chalice. There was a thin jet of blood arcing out of the Lamb’s breast into the cup, which was nearly full of the crimson liquid.
Veerle had absolutely no interest in religious paintings, and yet she could see why people made such a big thing of this one; why they were so fascinated by it. She picked up her bag again, pushed away from the wall and edged a little closer to the reinforced glass protecting the painting. All those hundreds of figures, she thought. Was there a real-life model for every single one of them? And why is that one on the right, the one in the red cloak, so much taller than everyone else? It was odd too that when you first saw it you thought that everyone was looking into the middle, at the Lamb on the scarlet altar, but when you studied it more closely you could see that some of them weren’t looking there at all, they were looking away. Some of them were looking at each other, and now she saw that one of them, a dour-looking bishop in a gold mitre, was staring directly out of the painting, challenging the viewer with his eyes.
Maybe you’re not supposed to notice that, Veerle thought. Maybe you’re supposed to be too busy looking at the Lamb too.
She thought the landscape in which the Lamb stood was intriguing as well. Beyond the dark masses of trees there were buildings in the distance, spires, perhaps whole towns.
Real places? she wondered. Maybe one of them is Ghent.
On the whole, Veerle thought that she was impressed by the altarpiece but she wasn’t sure she actually liked it. There was something unnatural about it. It wasn’t just the creepiness of the man staring out at you from the middle of the crowd, it was the whole scene, the way everyone was arranged so stiffly, almost geometrically, around the bleeding Lamb. All those tiny figures, so meticulously painted, so realistic in every detail and yet so static.
Like insects in amber, she thought. Beautifully preserved but frozen for ever.
And such a bizarre thing to be staring at for all eternity too: an animal with its heart’s blood pouring out of its chest in a neat little arc.
Veerle decided that she had seen enough. The painting gave her the creeps, and she had been in here for at least ten minutes now, long enough for Mevrouw Taelemans to have moved on. It was a little claustrophobic too in this enclosed space, with so many people. She began to push her way towards the door.
There were more people coming in, and at first she found it difficult to make much headway. There was a couple standing directly in front of her, the man in a smart charcoal-grey coat, too warm for this mild autumn day, and the woman in a shiny black padded jacket, streaked blonde hair curling over her collar. They hadn’t turned towards the painting; they had their backs to it because they were trying to look at something in a guide book, so they didn’t realize that Veerle was trying to get past.
She tried saying, ‘Excuse me,’ but either they were too engrossed or they didn’t understand her, because they didn’t move an inch. Frustrated, Veerle dodged to the side to go round them, and found herself face to face with someone else. Their faces were literally centimetres apart.
It was a girl, perhaps a couple of years older than Veerle, with very light, very sleek blonde hair pulled back from her face, accentuating her fine-boned, angular features. Her eyes were large and a very clear grey-blue colour, and as Veerle stared into them she saw them widen, saw recognition flooding into the girl’s expression just as it came crashing into her own consciousness.
For a second Veerle was so astounded that no words came at all; she was conscious of a pressure in her chest and realized she had been holding her breath. She let it all out in a gasp.
‘Hommel,’ she said.
6
Hommel. Veerle’s mind was failing to grasp what her eyes were telling her; she felt as though her entire world had tilted and she was sliding screaming into nothingness, grasping uselessly at reality as it streaked past her in a blur. Hommel. How can Hommel be here? She’s dead. She can’t be here – she can’t—
For a couple of seconds they gaped at each other, Veerle’s hazel eyes staring into Hommel’s blue-grey ones. Veerle read shock in those eyes, then panic. Hommel turned on her heel and lunged for the doorway, pushing blindly at the people pressing into the little chamber. Veerle heard mingled exclamations of ‘Pas op!’ and ‘Attention!’ and ‘Hey!’ as Hommel forced her way towards the exit.
Stop, thought Veerle. I have to know . . .
But she saw that Hommel was not going to stop; she was going to vanish again unless Veerle caught her. Galvanized into action, she launched herself into the gap that Hommel’s flight had created in the packed bodies. Now people were getting really irritated, and someone gave her an ill-tempered shove as she went past. Veerle staggered, righted herself, and stumbled out of the exit in time to see Hommel take off at top speed, sprinting across the black-and-white-tiled floor of the cathedral, heading for the door. Veerle saw heads turning as Hommel raced past, her sleek blonde ponytail flipping from side to side as she dodged past stationary groups of tourists.
I can’t let her go. The inertia of shock had cleared and now Veerle wanted to catch Hommel very badly. She wanted to ask her a thousand questions.
‘Hommel!’ she shouted, and realized her mistake as all those heads turned away from Hommel, turned to look at her. Hommel didn’t even break stride. She was making a bee-line for the exit. Veerle gave chase, threading her arms into the straps of her rucksack as she went. She made it halfway to the door before someone appeared in front of her, arms out-spread to block her way: an older man, with close-cropped grey hair and a grim expression, and a plastic security badge pinned to the front of his jacket.
‘No running in the cathedral,’ he was saying angrily.
Veerle fei
nted to the left and then lunged to the right, passing within five centimetres of the man’s outstretched fingertips.
‘Sorry,’ she shouted over her shoulder as she ran for the door.
Then she was out in the square and the sunshine was blinding after the dimmer interior of the cathedral. She paused for a moment, scanning Sint-Baafsplein for a glimpse of Hommel.
There she is.
Veerle saw the other girl running at full tilt down the tramlines that ran along the side of the square, towards the Belfort tower. It was the movement that caught her eye; Hommel was dressed all in black, with no flash of colour to make her stand out. No time to think about why Hommel was running away from her, no time to guess where she might be heading.
If I lose sight of her, I’ll never find her in a city this size.
She threw herself into the chase, tearing down the street after the other girl, her feet slapping on the stones, her bag thumping unpleasantly on her back.
Hommel was passing the steps at the foot of the Belfort tower, with their ornate black railings, and here came a tram, rattling up the street behind them, the bell sounding a metallic bleat of warning. Hommel cut over onto the other track, and Veerle followed her. Up ahead she saw the great church of Sint-Niklaas, with its grey-tiled turrets and geometrically precise tower, and then the tram was rattling past her, blocking the view.
Hommel dodged left, into Magelein, narrowly avoiding a stand of brightly coloured postcards on the corner.
If I’d been the other side of the tram I’d have lost her, Veerle realized grimly. She did her best to speed up, but the school bag was slowing her down, and she could already feel how out of condition she was.
Magelein was pedestrianized and it was crowded, even this early in the day. It didn’t help that an already narrow street was choked with restaurant boards and racks of merchandise. Both Hommel and Veerle had to drop their pace a bit, but it became harder for Veerle to keep sight of her quarry because they were both having to dodge their way round obstacles.