‘No.’
Dr Roth looked at him quizzically.
‘She slipped out while I was talking to Kai. She left a note on my desk, “Didn't want to interrupt. You're obviously busy. Will call round tomorrow.” My nerves were in tatters, but with Anna gone, I had to resign myself to another night without knowing what happened.’
Without knowing what became of Charlotte. And Josy.
‘So you went to bed?’
‘Not exactly. That evening I had another unexpected visitor.’
23
Ten minutes after finishing his conversation with Kai, he heard a knock at the door. For a second he allowed himself to hope that Anna had returned. The disappointment was all the greater when it turned out to be none other than a grim-faced Halberstaedt on his second visit in the wind and rain. Once again he declined Viktor's invitation to come inside and handed him a package.
‘What is it?’
‘A pistol.’
Viktor recoiled as if Halberstaedt had confessed to harbouring some kind of infectious disease.
‘What on earth would I want with a pistol?’
‘It's so you can defend yourself.’
‘From what?’
‘From her.’ Halberstaedt jabbed a thumb in the direction of the beach. ‘I saw her leave.’
Viktor could scarcely believe his ears. He fished a tissue out of his pocket and dabbed at his nose without actually blowing it. ‘Listen Patrick, I've always respected your opinions, but I can't allow you to harass my patients. As her therapist, it's my duty to protect her.’
‘And as the mayor, it's my duty to protect you.’
‘Thank you, Patrick, I appreciate your concern, but I've no intention of keeping it.’ He tried to return the gun, but Halberstaedt kept his hands in the pockets of his threadbare cords. ‘Besides,’ said Viktor, ‘you can't go round making serious allegations without any proof.’
‘Who says I haven't?’
‘Haven't what?’
‘Got proof,’ replied Halberstaedt grimly. ‘Keep the weapon; you might need it. I've been watching that woman and asking around.’
‘Oh really?’ There was a metallic taste in Viktor's mouth. He thought of Kai Strathmann; there were at least two people on Anna's trail.
‘She gave Burg a hell of a shock, you know.’
‘The ferryman? I didn't think Michael Burg was the type to be frightened by a woman.’
‘She's got unfinished business with you, that's what she said.’
‘Unfinished business?’
‘She said something about letting some blood.’
‘That's preposterous!’
A bathroom full of blood.
Halberstaedt shrugged. ‘I'm only telling you what Burg told me. Look, it's fine if you don't believe me, but do me a favour and keep the gun. I'm worried about that carving knife.’
Viktor didn't know what to say. He suddenly remembered a completely separate but equally urgent problem.
Halberstaedt turned to leave, but Viktor tapped him on the back. ‘I was meaning to ask you something. Have you seen my dog?’
‘Is Sindbad dead?’
Viktor was stunned by his brutal directness. It was like surviving an earthquake, only to be hit by the aftershock. And he couldn't help feeling that the biggest blow was yet to come.
‘Dead? What makes you think . . . I mean, no, or at least, I hope not. He's gone missing. I left a message on your answerphone.’
‘Uh-huh,’ muttered Halberstaedt, inclining his head. ‘I told you there was something funny about that woman.’
Viktor wondered whether to point out that Anna had nothing to do with Sindbad's disappearance, but he decided not to bother.
‘I'll let you know if I see him,’ promised Halberstaedt. He didn't seem particularly concerned.
‘Thank you.’
‘Look after yourself, Dr Larenz. That woman is dangerous.’
The mayor left without another word.
Viktor gazed after him for a while, then realized that it was freezing outside. He felt like a small boy who had stayed in the pool until his hands went blue. He closed the door hastily before the wind filled the house with cold wet air.
Halfway along the hall, he stopped and considered. Maybe he should throw the pistol in the outside bin? He felt nervous around weapons and the very idea of having a gun in the house was somehow alarming. In the end he resolved to take it back to Halberstaedt in the morning. For the time being, he placed the unopened package in the bottom drawer of the mahogany bureau by the door.
Viktor spent the next few minutes staring into the dying embers of the hearth and trying to make sense of the day's events.
Sindbad had vanished.
A woman or maybe a girl had broken into his cabin in Sacrow and left menstrual blood in the bathroom.
And the mayor of Parkum had knocked on his door and handed him a gun.
Viktor took off his shoes and lay down on the couch. Fumbling in his pocket, he took out his last remaining Valium tablet, decided not to save it for later as intended, and waited for the sedative to kick in. As much as anything, he needed something to ease the effects of his flu. Closing his eyes, he focused on eradicating the pain that was holding his head in a vice. It worked for a short while and for the first time in ages he was able to breathe through one side of his nose. The heavy aroma of Anna's perfume was still potent in the air, thirty minutes after she had got up from the couch.
Viktor's mind was churning. He wasn't sure what was more worrying: Anna's erratic behaviour or the mayor's sinister warnings.
He didn't reach a satisfactory conclusion because a moment later the nightmare began.
24
It had been haunting him since Josy's disappearance, sometimes three times a week, sometimes once a month; there was no fixed pattern to when it happened, but the chain of events was always the same.
When the nightmare started, Viktor was always at the wheel of his Volvo with Josy in the passenger seat. It was the middle of the night and they were driving to see a specialist who had recently opened a practice on the North German seaboard. The journey had taken hours already and Viktor was driving too fast, but the Volvo was stuck in fifth gear. From time to time Josy begged him to slow down, but the car was setting the pace. Considering their speed, it was lucky that the road was dead straight: no corners, no turn-offs, no traffic lights, no junctions. Periodically, another vehicle would hurtle towards them, but they were never in danger of colliding because the lanes were generously sized. After a while Viktor remarked on the length of the journey. Josy shrugged, apparently as baffled as he was. By rights, they should have reached the coast ages ago, especially since they were eating up the kilometres at an incredible rate. The road seemed oddly deserted, and stranger still, it was getting darker all the time. In fact, the streetlights were getting fewer and further between and the trees were closing in. After a while they were driving in total darkness, with dense woodland on either side of the narrowing road.
This was the point at which he started to feel uneasy – not panicked or frightened, but vaguely apprehensive. His sense of dread deepened when he discovered that the car wouldn't stop. He stamped on the brakes but nothing happened. A moment later, the Volvo picked up speed, accelerating down the endless stretch of linear tarmac. Switching on the reading light, he told Josy to find out where they were, but the map didn't help.
At last she pointed ahead and laughed in relief.
‘Look, there's a light. We must be nearly there.’
Viktor made out a faint glow in the distance. The light became brighter as they approached.
‘Keep going straight on,’ said Josy. ‘It looks like a village – or maybe the lights of the coast road.’
Viktor nodded, his heart slowing to something like its normal rate. It was reassuring to think they would soon be there. They sped up again, this time because he was flooring the car. He couldn't wait to reach the coast, to leave the forest and darkness behind hi
m.
In an instant the feeling was back.
His stomach started to knot.
Everything was terrifyingly clear. True, there was a light ahead, but Josy had mistaken its purpose. And he too had been mistaken, mistaken to think that their journey through the darkness could come to any good. Josy had noticed what was up and was staring out of her passenger window in terror.
The road wasn't lined with trees; there was nothing on either side of them but water. Deep, cold, fathomless water.
The realization came too late. Viktor knew there was nothing he could do.
They were driving down a pier. All the while they had been looking for the coast, but the beach was kilometres behind them and the car was racing out to sea, hurtling towards the beacon, and there was nothing he could do.
He tried spinning the wheel, but it was jammed. Viktor wasn't driving the Volvo; the Volvo was driving him.
They covered the last few metres at breakneck speed, the pier ran out, the car launched itself into the air, soaring above the sinister waves of the cold North Sea. The bonnet started to dip and Viktor peered through the windscreen, hoping to catch a glimpse of something in the glow of the headlights. But all he could see was the deep, dark water that was about to swallow them: Josy, the Volvo and himself.
He always woke in the split second before the car splashed down. It was the climax of the nightmare, not only because he knew that he and his daughter were destined to drown, but because he was dumb enough to glance in the rear-view mirror as they sped towards the waves. And as he stared at the mirror, he screamed at the top of his voice, yanking himself out of the nightmare and waking Isabell if she was in the room. What he saw in the rear-view mirror was the apogee of horror. He saw nothing. The mirror was blank.
The pier that jutted into the sea for kilometres, the pier whose beacon they had been racing towards at lightning speed, was gone. It had vanished into thin air.
25
Viktor sat up with a jolt and realized that his pyjamas were drenched in sweat. The sheet was soaking as well and his sore throat had definitely worsened in the course of his nightmare.
What's the matter with me? he wondered, waiting for his heart to settle. At some point before falling asleep he must have got up from the couch and made his way to bed, but he couldn't remember going upstairs, let alone getting undressed. And that wasn't the only thing that was bothering him. The bedroom was really cold. He reached out with his right hand, fumbling in the darkness for the battery-operated alarm clock on his bedside table. At the press of a button, the display lit up, showing the time and temperature: half past three in the morning and only eight degrees, from which he concluded that the generator had cut out. He flicked the switch on his bedside lamp to test the theory. The power was down.
He cursed his misfortune. First the flu, then Anna's strange stories, Sindbad's disappearance, his nightmare and now this. He threw off the covers and lumbered to his feet, remembering to pick up the mini Maglite that he kept by his bed for precisely this reason. Shivering, he crept down the creaking stairs, his torch beam roving over the photographs on the wall. Under normal circumstances, he wasn't easily frightened, but there was something eerie about what he saw: his mother, laughing, on the beach with the dogs; his father smoking a pipe by the fire; the whole family admiring his father's catch.
The images flared up like memories in the first stages of anaesthesia, dazzling him for a moment, then fading into the void.
As Viktor opened the door, he was hit by a ferocious gust of wind that blew the last of the autumn leaves and a flurry of raindrops into the house. Bloody marvellous. I'll be laid up with pneumonia at this rate.
Still in his silk pyjamas, he put on his trainers and pulled a blue cagoule over his head. The shed was only twenty or so metres from the door. Hood up, he scurried along the waterlogged path. His torch wasn't powerful enough to light up the potholes left by the rain, and he had barely covered half the distance before his feet and calves were drenched. Water was lashing against his face, but he couldn't walk any faster in case he tripped up. His first-aid kit, already depleted because of his cold, contained nothing that would help with twisted ankles or fractured bones. It was pitch-black, he was kilometres from the village, and the island was cut off from civilization by the storm: a broken leg was probably the last thing he needed.
At last he was almost at his goal, a corrugated-iron shed on the edge of his land, bordering the public beach. It was closed off by a dilapidated white fence.
Viktor had vivid memories of weatherproofing the fence. At his father's insistence, he had helped with every step of the arduous ritual, which started with sanding and staining the wood and finished with the application of an exceptionally foul-smelling paint. The wood had been slightly rotten even then, but after years of neglect, the fence and the generator were in similar states of disrepair. With any luck, the generator could still be fixed.
He brushed the water out of his eyes and came to a sudden halt. Botheration. Even as he reached for the cracked plastic handle he knew it was no good. The door was locked and the key was hanging by the fuse box in the basement. He would have to go back. Damn!
Viktor aimed a kick at the door and nearly jumped out of his skin. The corrugated iron made a terrible racket. ‘Oh well,’ he mumbled, ‘at least I don't have to worry about the neighbours. And in this weather I don't suppose anyone will be out for a stroll.’
He was talking out loud and sweating profusely in spite of the cold. He threw back his hood. And then a strange thing happened; the world slowed down. It felt to Viktor as if someone had stopped his inner clock. He was caught in a split second that lasted an eternity. Everything unfolded incredibly slowly in his mind.
Three things surfaced in his consciousness. The first was a noise that had come to his attention as soon as he slipped back his hood. The generator was humming. Why would it hum if it's broken?
The second was a light. Viktor looked up at the house and saw that a light had come on in his room. The lamp on his bedside table was producing a soft yellow glow.
The third was a person. There was someone in his bedroom. And that someone was looking out of the window, looking at him.
Anna?
Viktor set off at a run, dropping his torch. He realized his error when the bedroom light went out before he reached the porch. The house and the garden were plunged into darkness, obliging him to retrace his steps and go back for the torch. He picked it up, hurried to the porch and entered the hall. Charging up the stairs with his fading torch, he saw the ghostly faces in the darkness. He stormed into his bedroom. Nothing.
Panting with exertion, he shone the beam in all four corners of the room: teak furniture by the window, an antique chest of drawers and beside it Isabell's dressing table, where he had dumped a stack of CDs, then the imposing sight of his parents’ marital bed. There was no sign of anyone, not even when Viktor switched on the lights. The generator was clearly working again.
Had it been working all along?
Viktor sat on the bed. He needed to catch his breath and gather his thoughts. Anna, Josy, Sindbad. He wondered whether he was suffering from stress. What had possessed him to leave the house at half past three in the morning to fix a generator that was obviously working? He should have been tucked up in bed, convalescing, instead of chasing phantom apparitions through the wind and rain.
He got up, made his way round the bed and picked up his alarm clock: 20.5° Celsius. Unbelievable. The temperature was back to normal.
He shook his head. In that case it must be me.
He went downstairs to close the door.
You had a horrible nightmare, he comforted himself. What do you expect? And you're under a lot of stress, what with Sindbad disappearing and your flu getting worse. He bolted the door, only to undo it a moment later. Stooping down, he fished out the spare key from under the flowerpot. You can't be too careful, he told himself. After checking the ground-floor windows, he started to feel more h
imself.
As soon as he was in bed, he took a long draught of cough mixture and spent the next few hours dozing fitfully.
The wind that night was determined to live up to the weather forecaster's predictions and battered Parkum with heavy gusts and driving rain. It whipped the North Sea into towering waves and hurled them at the little island with primeval force, then rushed up the beach with undiminished fury. The hurricane snapped branches, rattled windows and erased all signs of activity from the sand. It also obliterated the delicate trail of footprints leading away from Viktor Larenz's house.
26
The day before the truth, Parkum
Shortly after eight o'clock Viktor was woken by the phone. Wearily, he dragged himself downstairs and picked up the receiver, hoping to hear his wife. But it wasn't Isabell returning his calls.
‘Did you find my note?’
Anna.
‘Yes.’ Viktor tried to clear his throat and ended up coughing. Anna had to wait a few seconds for him to recover.
‘After yesterday's session I couldn't stop thinking about Charlotte. I thought about coming back, but I didn't want to disturb you.’
Uh-huh, so you waited outside and broke into my room?
‘I'm ready to tell you the end of the story.’
The end of Josy's story.
‘That's excellent progress,’ croaked Viktor, wondering why Anna hadn't remarked on his wretched state of health. It was probably because she sounded pretty lousy herself, although it was hard to tell with the crackling on the line. She was only a few kilometres away, but the sound quality was terrible. It reminded him of the frustrations of international calling before the technology improved.
‘Could I tell you the rest on the phone? I don't feel up to visiting, but I'd like to get it off my chest.’
‘No problem.’
Viktor glanced irritably at his bare feet. He had forgotten to put on his slippers or dressing gown.
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