by Helen Grant
Veerle had walked home as usual, stopping by the Coupure bridge to read a text message from Bram. There was no particular hurry to get home. It was a clear day in early December; it had been very cold in the morning, but by late afternoon it had mellowed and bright winter sunshine was gilding the buildings that lined the canal. Veerle took her time, walking as far as she could along the bank before she turned off towards Bijlokevest. She was thinking about her homework – there always seemed to be mountains of it, and she still had so much catching up to do – and about Bram’s suggestion that they meet at the climbing wall at seven-thirty.
She reached the apartment block and let herself in via the street door. There was nobody about in the hallway or on the staircase. Veerle was humming to herself under her breath as she got to the door of the flat and slid her key into the lock.
As the door swung open she was aware of a sudden burst of activity inside the flat. She looked down the hallway, and there was Anneke with Adam in her arms, hurrying into the bedroom she shared with Geert. Anneke gave Veerle a swift glance as she went, a short flat stare that gave nothing away. There was an abruptness about her disappearance into the bedroom that struck Veerle as slightly odd – not that she had expected Anneke to greet her with joy. Then Geert came out of the kitchen, and that was a surprise because normally he didn’t get home until a couple of hours after she did. One look at his grim expression told Veerle that she was in trouble.
Still she couldn’t think what she had done. Had she somehow offended Anneke, who was as touchy as a lapdog? She closed the door and put her school bag down on the rug.
‘Go into the kitchen please, Veerle,’ said Geert, and there was such an ominous tone in his voice that she obeyed without saying a word. She felt an obstinate little flare of resentment at Anneke, although she knew it was entirely unreasonable. Anneke had known this was coming. She hadn’t shown any emotion, either scorn or satisfaction, but all the same, Veerle suspected she would get some grim enjoyment out of the storm that was clearly about to break over Veerle’s head. When Geert closed the kitchen door Veerle thought, At least she won’t be able to hear every word. Her heart was beating very fast; whatever she had done, it was apparently serious. She didn’t think she had ever seen Geert look like this, even when he had found out that she was cutting school. His blunt features were rigid with the effort of suppressing some strong emotion; rigid as iron – or no, she thought, like glass, because through that ghastly rigor she could perceive something toxic boiling up like the smoking contents of an alchemist’s flask.
Geert didn’t tell her to sit down, and he remained standing himself. He said, ‘I dropped in at the bank this morning and printed off a statement. There was a credit on it from the school, paid in a couple of days ago.’ He paused for a moment, seeing from Veerle’s face that she was beginning to understand. Then he went on. ‘I wasn’t expecting a payment from them, and it was an odd amount, so when I got to the office I telephoned the school.’
Verdomme. Veerle knew what was coming now, but she didn’t dare say anything, didn’t dare take her eyes off Geert’s angry face, didn’t dare move a muscle in case the lightning of parental anger should strike her.
‘The secretary was very helpful,’ said Geert. ‘She was apologetic, in fact. She told me the reason for the odd amount was that the directeur had only agreed to refund half the money for the school trip to Amsterdam.’ His gaze was searing; Veerle flinched under it. ‘The school trip that you were unable to attend at the last minute, because you were at home looking after Anneke and her new baby.’
A muscle worked in the side of Geert’s face. He said, ‘The directeur felt we could have foreseen that, she said, otherwise they would have returned the whole lot.’
Geert stopped speaking and there was dead silence in the kitchen. Veerle looked at his face, and what she saw there made her feel sick. All at once she couldn’t hold his gaze. She looked away and then she looked at the floor, at the homely beige tiles under her feet. She was completely unable to say a word. There was nothing she could say, nothing that could explain what she had done in a way that Geert would want to hear.
‘Veerle,’ said Geert at last, when it was plain that she was not going to speak, ‘please tell me that this is some kind of mistake.’
‘I can’t.’
‘What did you say?’
Veerle put her head up. ‘I can’t,’ she repeated, more loudly.
‘So you really didn’t go? To Amsterdam?’
‘No,’ said Veerle.
‘Well, where did you go? What were you doing?’
‘The first . . .’ Veerle began to speak, but her mouth was so dry that her words trailed off in a croak. She swallowed, running her tongue around her mouth, and tried again. ‘The first day I went to school.’
‘To school? And will the school be able to confirm this?’
Veerle nodded dumbly.
‘That was the first day. What about the rest of it?’
‘I . . .’ Veerle fell silent.
‘Veerle? I asked you, what about the rest of the time?’
The idea of telling Geert the truth flickered briefly in Veerle’s mind and then guttered like a match burning out. She couldn’t tell her father where she had been that night. Supposing he did something like marching her down to the Gravensteen and insisting she confess what she had done, maybe demanding to check that she hadn’t done any damage? Veerle didn’t have the benefit of years of living with her father, but she knew him well enough to think that there was a real risk of this. She recalled the way he had stood outside the school for hours, making sure she stayed inside, where he thought she ought to be. If it became known that she had been in the castle that night, there was a risk that someone would put two and two together and ask her if she had seen anything, because that was the night that boy had been stabbed to death on the roof of the building opposite – a boy whom she and Bram knew.
All this passed through Veerle’s head with lightning swiftness. It was impossible to tell Geert the truth, so instead she said nothing at all, although she could see that he was not going to be satisfied with silence.
He took a step closer, and now he was standing over her, with a truly thunderous expression.
‘Veerle, you were out all night and the following day. I insist you tell me where you were, and what you were doing.’
Veerle fixed her eyes on the buttons at his throat, biting her lip. It occurred to her that she could lie, that there were plenty of things she could tell Geert that would be less dangerous than the truth, and less inflammatory than silence. She could tell him that she had gone back to the village, for example; that she had missed it so badly that she’d had to go, but she hadn’t wanted to hurt his feelings by telling him.
I could say that, she thought. He’d understand that.
The trouble was, it wasn’t true. Veerle had never had the slightest problem lying to Claudine, because sometimes it was like withholding the painful truth from a child too young to understand. Geert was a different matter. Geert was as straight as the parallel lines that meet only at infinity. She didn’t think Geert would ever lie, and she didn’t think he’d forgive her if he caught her out in a lie. She kept her eyes fixed on those buttons, not daring to look at her father’s face.
‘Veerle, I’m waiting.’
Still she said nothing. There was nothing to say.
‘Look at me when I’m talking to you,’ ordered her father.
Veerle put her head back, shaking back a strand of dark hair, and made herself look Geert in the eye. Anger was emanating from him like radiation from an exposed radioactive core. It was all she could do to keep looking at him; she wished she could look anywhere else – at the floor or the ceiling or the closed door.
‘Where were you?’ demanded Geert, and Veerle said nothing.
Unexpectedly she could feel a pricking in her eyes, the beginning of tears. She squeezed her hands more tightly into fists, willing herself not to do it. She could f
eel herself beginning to tremble.
Abruptly and shockingly, Geert broke first. He put one of his big hands over his eyes as though he wanted to blot out the very sight of her, and turned aside with a muffled curse.
Veerle continued to look straight ahead. A hot tear ran out of the corner of her right eye and slid down her cheek. She ignored it. She was aware of her father moving restlessly about the little room, as though he would have liked to escape from this situation as much as she longed to.
After a few moments he stopped pacing. The kitchen was small, but he had contrived to put as much space as possible between the two of them.
‘Please tell me you weren’t with the Verstraeten boy,’ he said.
‘Kris,’ said Veerle under her breath.
‘What did you say?’
‘His name is Kris,’ said Veerle, more loudly than she had intended.
‘And were you with him?’
Veerle looked at her father mutinously, and now the tears were running down her face and she couldn’t stop them. ‘No,’ she said.
‘Because if I thought—’
‘No,’ shouted Veerle. ‘I wasn’t with him, OK? I wasn’t with him.’
‘So who were you with?’
Veerle pressed her fingers to her mouth, trying very hard to repress the treacherous sobs that were trying to ghent break out of her. She shook her head. I’m not saying anything.
Geert raised a finger warningly, as though he were at a witch trial, as though he were about to say, That’s her – that’s the one I saw.
‘It was the Verstraeten boy, wasn’t it? He’s behind this.’
‘No,’ screamed Veerle.
‘Then who?’ Geert bellowed back at her.
Silence.
‘Who were you with, Veerle?’
He took a step towards her, and for one moment Veerle actually thought he might strike her. But all he did was point towards the kitchen door.
‘Go to your room.’
She had her hand on the door handle when he said, ‘Wait.’
Veerle didn’t want to wait; she was dying to bolt for the sanctuary of the room she slept in, the room that should have been Adam’s. She didn’t dare antagonize Geert any further, though, so she stopped and waited to hear what he had to say.
‘From tomorrow,’ said Geert in a voice that was thick with suppressed fury, ‘I will take you to school every morning, as I did before. I will wait until you are indoors. After school you will come directly home. You will not take part in any after-school activities, nor will you go to the climbing wall or anywhere else. At the weekend you will stay here in the flat unless you are accompanied by me. Do you understand?’
Veerle nodded.
‘And another thing. If I have any cause to think that you are meeting anyone – anyone – unsuitable, I will be confiscating your mobile phone and your laptop.’
This time Veerle couldn’t help it; a gasp escaped her.
Geert stared at her flatly. ‘I’ll give you once last chance. Where were you, and who were you with?’
Veerle shook her head. While she said nothing, there was still the possibility that she had done something relatively harmless, like staying with a friend back in the village.
Geert continued to look at her for a few seconds, and then he said, ‘Go to your room.’
Veerle opened the door, wondering whether Anneke had heard them shouting from the other end of the flat, and what Geert would say to her about it. She would have liked to say Sorry to her father; she was sorry – she hated to upset him like this. It was no use, though. She couldn’t tell him what he wanted to know. She slipped out of the kitchen and went to her room.
39
Night fell, and Death came out of his hiding place again, as though the dying of the light had created a vacuum that drew him out. The climb up to the roof kindled the familiar searing pain, as if a fuse had been lit and was burning slowly through him. His sinews were wires heated white hot; the marrow of his bones was glowing charcoal. But Death is rarely unaccompanied by pain; he accepted it, embraced it even. The passing years had branded it into him; soon there would be an end to it. He moved determinedly and felt the pain ebb, the grip of its fiery claws on his ancient flesh weakening.
The door to the rooftop was ajar. Once there had been a chain across it. The chain now lay in two pieces on the bare boards. He pushed the door open and stepped outside, onto the flat roof.
The air was very cold but utterly still, as flat as dead lungs. The sky overhead was black but there was enough yellow light to see; it bled up into the sky, turning the hem of the black a sickly grey. After dark, Ghent was gilded by floodlights. The cathedral of Sint-Baaf became a golden Gothic reliquary.
Death stood upon the parapet and looked down upon the old city, his eyes dark and fathomless under their papery lids. How long had it been his home? The years were so many that he had lost count. It was beautiful, that was true. He asked himself whether he loved it; whether he had ever loved it enough to think that he could spend eternity here. At any rate it was better after dark, when the streets emptied of their bustling population and their roaring, spluttering vehicles, all of them moving about to a daily pattern like tiny parts in some complex automaton. He gazed down for a while at the now empty street, and then he turned away, his heavy features cold.
It was hard going, moving about over the rooftops. The upper landscape of Ghent was haphazard. Like a geode, all its most elegant and regular structures were on the inside; the outer crust was rough and ugly. He toiled his way along valleys lined with weathered tiles, and trekked across deserts of metal sheeting. There were places where he had to traverse routes as exposed as paths cut into the side of a mountain. He kept his eyes open too for the other hazard that sometimes lurked in these heights: the dark figures scrambling away into the shadows. They assumed cunning forms, but he knew what they were.
Demons. They would hamper him if they could. He did not fear them. Some of them he had already cast down from the heights to the streets far below, rupturing their assumed shapes on the cobblestones, painting the ground red. Some of them he had cut, with the sharp steel he always carried with him. Always, always, when he killed one of the demons he sealed the death with salt and iron, making sure that they could not come back.
His goal tonight was on the outermost extremity of the area that could be reached from his own eyrie without descending to street level. After that, there was a gulf between blocks, impassable as a canyon.
He was aiming for a little window, a skylight set into the slope of a roof. He had gazed through the window at the occupant of the room below several times before, his eyes unblinking and baleful. He had known her the first time, would have known her even if he had not seen her sleeping face on the pillow, a sliver of moonlight silvering the hair spread out around her head like a halo. He had seen the viola – had recognized the instrument immediately.
She had never woken, had never felt the dark and venomous radiance of his presence above her, infecting her with the truth of her own approaching death. He thought that this was a sign that his goal would soon be achieved. He did not expect forgiveness, no, but he thought that his long march through Purgatory might be drawing to an end. The fact that the demons were weakening, that he was able to snuff out their physical forms, simply confirmed it.
The girl with the viola would be almost the last; after that there was only the blonde girl, the one who kept eluding him. Eva.
He could have taken the girl with the viola before; it would be easy enough to do, and he craved it very badly. But carrying it out was not the difficulty. The danger was the proximity to his own place. If he were thorough, there would be nothing left at the site to connect him to the girl’s death, but still there was the risk that someone would stand in the blackened remains of the room, look upwards and think of the rooftops. There were only so many nesting places under the eaves of the buildings, and if they found his, he would never complete his work.
No
w that he was so close to the end, he thought he could risk it. He did not need so very much more time. When the night’s work was over he would dedicate what remained to searching the city for the blonde girl.
He was confident that he would find her. And when he did, because she was the last, there would be no need to employ stealth. Half a minute in the open street was all he needed to let the steel bite into flesh and free them both.
Death approached the skylight and peered through his own silvered reflection into its depths, like a witch gazing into a scrying glass. There was the sleeping form of the girl; there was the viola. His glittering eyes picked out other things too – small details of her existence: a book, the spine cracked, on the bedside table. A metal stand with sheet music on it. A china mug full of pencils. Soon, all of it would be gone.
He slid the tool out of his pocket and began to work on the window. He took his time. Speed was not important. What was important was not waking the girl before he had gained access, and not leaving visible damage on the windowframe, in case it survived the inferno to come. So he worked slowly, and sometimes he paused for a moment to peer down into the room and check that she had not stirred. The girl slept on, fearless, unsuspecting and beautiful.
She looked like an angel already.
40
Good as his word, Geert walked Veerle to school every morning as he had threatened. He was generally a taciturn person: not unfriendly but simply not given to torrents of small talk. Now, however, there was a grim quality to his silence; the air between them was thick with the insinuating ghosts of words unspoken.
Tell me, said Geert’s severe face and heavy tread.
I can’t, replied Veerle’s hunched shoulders and downcast eyes. She folded her arms across her chest as she walked, as though shivering under the frosty blast of his disapproval.
The first morning, Veerle thought that her father would leave her on the pavement outside the school as he had before, but to her embarrassment he came right inside, into the foyer. Veerle thought she saw a few heads turn, saw a few people pause and cast curious glances her way. This wasn’t nursery school; if one of your parents was with you, something was up. It was a relief when Geert finally turned to go; she had started to fear that he might actually accompany her to the classroom.