Krysalis: Krysalis

by John Tranhaile

  “Darling,” a voice cried. “I’m home.”

  Gerhard eased the study door shut and held a finger to his lips.

  As Anna looked at him she felt queasy. She could risk telling David everything, throw herself on his mercy; it was not too late. Tell him that she had been in and out of therapy, describe the horrors that had led her to Kleist. But no, she couldn’t, not about the awful thing she’d tried to do to baby Juliet, no, no, no …

  Gerhard, mastering his terror, put his mouth close to her ear. “Get the passport,” he whispered. Anna obeyed. When she returned from the desk, Gerhard held her close. “Stay here until he goes upstairs,” he breathed. “Then, you go out. Here are my car keys … wait for me inside the car, where he won’t see you.”

  “What will you be—”

  His face contorted into a scowl. “Ssh!”

  Footsteps were approaching. David tramped past the study on his way upstairs. Gerhard waited until he could no longer hear him, then looked out. The landing was empty. “Ready?” he mouthed.

  Anna nodded. A quick look up the banisters, and she was running.

  David called, “Anna! Is that you?”

  She had nearly reached the front door. But if she went out that way, David, she realized, might see her, and follow.

  Hide. The cellar. She raced on, passport clutched to her breast, until she reached the stairs to the basement. At the bottom she stopped and raised her head, listening. Above, all was quiet. What could David be up to …?

  Gerhard, meanwhile, had folded up the Krysalis file and stuffed it into an inside pocket of his overcoat. Now he moved silently to the windows to position himself behind one of the wall-length drapes. From there he could keep an eye on both the study door and the street below. Still no sign of Anna.

  He took his Colt .45 out of another pocket and silently checked the magazine. Seven rounds. This gun had not been fired for a long time; there were traces of rust on the breech. Gerhard stared at it, conscious that sweat had broken out on his forehead. The shot would make a noise. A lot of noise.

  Barzel made him keep a weapon always ready; but this would be the first time he’d had to use it.

  He tried to swallow, couldn’t. He was afraid of the gun.

  Where the hell was Anna?

  He’d deliberately chosen to send her on ahead, almost as a decoy, because if either of them was going to be caught he wanted it to be Anna, and if the worst came to the worst he might be able to use her interception as cover for his own escape. But she hadn’t run into David and she hadn’t left the house. He stared down into the street. Empty.

  What would Lescombe do next? Where would he go?

  Gerhard wiped away the sweat with the back of his gun hand. The Colt weighed heavily in his palm; the jerky movement all but caused him to drop it. He was shaking. Would he be able to pull the trigger?

  Footsteps overhead.

  Gerhard stared up at the ceiling, trying to map David Lescombe’s movements. A door closed. That meant … what did that mean?

  Someone was coming downstairs. Gerhard’s throat ached as if with tonsillitis. Now the steps had almost reached the study door. Now they were outside, on the landing.

  Now they had stopped, and silence filled the house.

  Gerhard tried to release the safety catch. It was stiff from disuse. He jabbed at the lever, accidentally knocking the gun barrel against the wall. The noise of metal meeting plaster sounded impossibly loud; breath forced itself between his teeth in a gasp. Another second and he’d be gibbering. He clenched his lower lip between his teeth and somehow managed to stop the shakes.

  “Anna,” he heard David shout. “Anna, where are you, love? Come on, darling, stop playing games!”

  The safety catch was off, the Colt ready to fire. Gerhard raised the gun until it was pointing at the door. But he couldn’t hold it steady. He squeezed even further into the embrasure, and held his breath. A hand rattled the door knob. Movement in the street simultaneously dragged Gerhard’s gaze downward. Anna had emerged onto the pavement and was running toward his car. Then the study door opened, and Gerhard convulsively tightened his grip on the gun, refocusing all his attention on the room.

  “Anna!” Very loud … “Anna!”

  A long pause. From where he was standing, Gerhard could not see whether David had actually entered the room. What if he crossed to the window? Suppose he looked out and saw Anna in the street!

  Gerhard closed his eyes. By now he was shaking so badly he’d become terrified of dropping the gun, the floor was parquet, no carpet to deaden the sound, Lescombe couldn’t fail to hear that. But if he tried to move …

  The study door closed. More footsteps … now outside, on the landing. Gerhard let out all the breath in his lungs. Move!

  He tiptoed to the door, opened it a crack. David was upstairs again. Gently, gently … out the door, close it … listen, wait … silence.

  Gerhard bent to take off his shoes. Next second he was running. He had almost reached the hallway when, to his horror, someone rang the front doorbell.

  He went rigid. Then hasty footsteps sounded overhead and almost without realizing what he was doing he sped to the back of the house.

  The cellar.

  Gerhard slithered down the back stairs and made his way through the utility room, past the boiler, and so into the scullery, where he tiptoed carefully around the remains of the pane of glass, shattered during his recent break-in.

  What was happening up above? Gerhard slipped the outside door open and listened. A delivery man, David having to sign …

  “‘Ere, guv,” he heard the man say.” ‘Scuse me.”

  “What?” David’s voice.

  “Did you know you’d ‘ad a burglar, then? Broken glass, and that.”

  Gerhard closed his eyes. Now he was done for. “Shit!” David said.

  “Thought you’d like to know. Ta-ra, then.”

  Wait for David to come down the street steps, knock him out, you can’t do that…

  But then the front door slammed, no one clattered down to the cellar, Gerhard opened his eyes, Go!

  Anna was in the driver’s seat. She had the engine started. Gerhard flung himself into the car beside her. Then they were being borne along by the tide of traffic and there was no going back.

  MONDAY

  CHAPTER

  7

  As David threw his raincoat onto the bed he heard a noise downstairs. “Anna?” he shouted.

  Something terrible had happened to her. He just knew it. But he couldn’t imagine what. It was driving him mad.

  He called again, “Anna? Is that you?” The sound of a door closing somewhere below made his tense expression soften a little; that meant she was at home. Sounded like the study … but when he found no one there, he began to panic.

  He was interrupted by a delivery. Wine. He signed the chit while his eyes scanned the square. There was Anna’s red BMW; wherever she’d gone, she hadn’t taken the car, she hadn’t been involved in a car crash, thank God, thank God….

  The delivery man pointed out a break-in. David’s first impulse was to run down and look. Then he thought again. Disaster hovered somewhere on the fringes of his consciousness. Don’t do anything on impulse, he ordered himself. Think first.

  Phone the police. No, wait. Search the house. Start at the top.

  He raced up the stairs two at a time. As soon as he entered the master bedroom, something seemed not quite right, something that he had sensed earlier but been unable to identify. His eyes darted into every corner. Anna’s suitcase no longer sat in its usual place on top of the wardrobe. He dashed across to the bed. Her nightgown had gone from under the pillow.

  The sheets were soft, and still redolent of Anna’s night scent, a mélange of warm aromas, full of associations he loved, that made him want to cry. He flung the duvet back and turned away. As he did so, his eyes lighted on two images of himself, giving him a shock.

  A black-and-white photograph of a much younger David
stood on the stripped pine chest of drawers between the bedroom windows; it showed his face three-quarters toward the camera, with a narrow tie and white shirt. In those days his hair had been lighter—the photo was fifteen years old—and there was more of it, but the preoccupied smile was the same. Not quite … above the chest of drawers hung a mirror, disclosing David’s contemporary face, and he was startled to see how extensive a network of lines had eaten into his skin. He was forty-two, but looked five years older, a reversal of the state of affairs disclosed by the photograph, which was of a man in fact aged twenty-seven who appeared to be scarcely out of his teens. The new-style David was sallow, etched with the tension that comes from long, midnight-oil-soaked hours of labor in the service of his country. And today there could be no mistaking his haggard expression of dread mixed with exhaustion.

  What next? The hospitals, the neighbors … phone somebody, anybody.

  Call the police.

  Not yet, not yet.

  Why not?

  He rested his head against the door frame and closed his eyes. Usually he kept his imagination well in check, but today it seemed that the rooms were smirking at him, as if they’d witnessed some scene which had left behind this extraordinarily unpleasant atmosphere.

  Maybe Anna had collapsed and was incapable of speech, a stroke…. He cursed himself for stupidity, for not thinking of that before. It took less than five minutes to hunt through every room, look under bed, check closets. Then he knew for certain that she was not in the house.

  He sat at her desk in the first-floor study, and stared down at the blotter while he tried to work out what to do. But it was impossible. Visions of Anna stretched out like a corpse, Anna maimed, kept thrusting their way into the front of his brain, obscuring thought.

  At last he squeezed his hands into fists and banged them down on the desk. This was no way to go on. Stop fretting, start thinking.

  First: what did he know?

  He found it hard to take seriously her passing mention of going to Paris: too unlike her. But… why had she left just as he arrived home, and without saying a word? He felt sure he’d heard a door close somewhere in the house and that must have been her; it couldn’t have been anyone else.

  Yes, it could. Maybe when he’d got home the burglar was still in the house….

  Yes, good, now you ‘re using your brains … don’t lose your grip again.

  The police would ask questions. He ought to come prepared. He drew up a list of names on Anna’s scratch pad, and frantically started to dial. He misdialed the last digit, slammed down the phone, tried again.

  “Hello … David Lescombe here, I’d like to speak to my wife, please. Yes, it’s still early, but could you just … of course, I’ll hold … she’s not in? Yes, I knew she was due to take a few days off, I just wondered if she’d been into chambers, or contacted you…. No, I see. Thank you.”

  Now he knew something: Anna hadn’t gone to work that day and she hadn’t phoned her chambers. Next: Anna’s parents.

  Mrs. Elwell answered with her usual note of querulous aggression. “Hello … hello, who is this?”

  “Uh … me, David. I’m so glad to find you in, Lydia.”

  “We never go anywhere.”

  David recognized this as the prelude to a critical résumé of his and Anna’s most recent holidays, with overtones of extravagance and want of application, and he had no time for it. “I was wondering if Anna had been in touch,” he said, more brusquely than necessary.

  “We haven’t heard from her in ages.”

  “You’re not expecting her, then?”

  “Certainly not. Why—don’t you know where your own wife is?”

  David’s heart gave a thump. He’d gone too far too fast and now would have to give some explanation. But how to do it without complicating a situation that was already labyrinthine? “You may dig a hole for your minister,” they used to teach, tongue in cheek, at Civil Service College, “as long as you cart away enough soil to ensure that he can’t be buried.” David had no idea of his hole’s dimensions.

  “David? David, are you still there?”

  “Yes, oh Lord, I see what’s happened. I got onto the junior clerk at Anna’s chambers and he must have scrambled two messages. It looked as though she was going to her mother’s, he said.”

  “I don’t know how Anna copes with her staff. They’d never have put up with it in my day. How is she?”

  “Fine, thank you. Look, someone’s pushing a message under my nose and I’ve got to rush….”

  “Oh, mustn’t hold up running the country.”

  Sometimes when David talked to Lydia Elwell he wanted to explode, but now was not the moment. “No, well, nice to talk to you.” He put down the receiver while she was still in the middle of the string of polite codes you were supposed to use when terminating a conversation.

  Where was she? Where had Anna gone?

  He looked at the scratch pad. Who to phone next? His civil servant’s brain began ordering the known evidence. One, Anna knew he was going to be at a residential seminar for a long weekend; two, she had sounded distraught on the phone; three, she sounded as if she had been drinking; four, her suitcase was gone; five, she was gone….

  He consulted his list and decided on a long shot. Cornwall.

  For what seemed ages he listened to the peculiar rasping tone generated by the St. Mary Abbott exchange. At last he abandoned the call. They were probably feeding the pigs, or weaving, or doing whatever communal types did with their days. Besides, Anna had never got on with her daughter. She would hardly have confided in Juliet.

  The options were fewer now. David added another name to the list, at the foot of the page, to indicate that it was a last resort and that there might be alternatives he had not yet considered. Then he rang two local hospitals, drawing a blank in each case.

  Perhaps she really had gone to Paris …?

  The final entry on his list appeared to have been written in darker ink than the rest. He could not take his eyes off it. He imagined himself already talking to the person, trying to anticipate the questions….

  There had to be a simple explanation. But he encountered only this hole where perceptions of his own wife ought to live and did not. Something that a more sensitive husband might have noticed had passed him by, leaving him with this guilty void.

  They had tickets for the South Bank the coming weekend. Brahms, the Second Symphony. It enraged David that at this crucial juncture the thing he remembered was that Anna shared his love of Brahms. Unless she really didn’t like Brahms at all … oh, don’t be stupid, she wouldn’t walk out on you to avoid going to a concert! No, but—how had her voice sounded when he proposed the outing? David could not remember. He was starting to experience an eerie kind of nausea. Nothing could be taken for granted any more.

  It occurred to him to search Anna’s desk. At first he rejected the thought. When you loved someone, trusted her, adored her, you didn’t rifle through her private papers. But sometimes you had to do a small bad thing …

  David opened the top drawer. Anna’s diary. He hesitated before opening it. There were few daily entries, but the last section overflowed with names, addresses, phone numbers, none of which meant anything to him. Who were these people? Professional colleagues? Friends? More than friends …?

  The memory of his interview for the Krysalis committee came back to him: At one time she seemed to be rather friendly with a German chappie. But none of the names in Anna’s diary sounded the least bit foreign. He slammed it shut and tossed it back inside the drawer, now angry with himself as much as Anna.

  David clasped his hands on the lip of the desk and rested his weight against them. Only one number left to ring now. Before he telephoned, however, there was something to check. He rose and went to open the safe.

  For a long moment he stared into the cavity. Then he reached out behind him and groped his way back into the nearest chair, where he slumped down, still keeping his eyes on the safe. He couldn
’t breathe. There was an ache in the pit of his stomach, a devastating mixture of colic and a punch from a prizefighter. Blood throbbed inside his head until he felt it would lift off his shoulders.

  Krysalis gone.

  He could not believe it. He refused to believe it.

  David stood up. For an instant he staggered, his legs not supporting him. At last he summoned up the strength to go and pick up the phone.

  The man he was calling answered on the second ring. “Yes?”

  “My name’s David Lescombe. I’m deputy head of department, defense department, FCO.”

  “Yes? Could you speak up?”

  “My wife’s disappeared.”

  This time there was a long pause before the inevitable “Yes?”

  “My copy of the New Testament appears to have gone as well.”

  “Are you at home?”

  “Yes, I’m at—”

  “We know where you live. Stay there.”

  The line went dead. David replaced the receiver. He was back in the maelstrom of a moment ago: his head ached with tension, his stomach churned, terrible visions of the coming interrogation swamped his mind. But through it all, like a poisoned spear, thrust the knowledge that the woman he adored most in all the world had gone away, no one knew where.

  David rested his head in his hands. And the spear pierced his heart.

  CHAPTER

  8

  Albert had just finished his lunch when he heard the phone.

  “Hi,” said the voice at the other end. “Guess who this is?” And they laughed, so that anyone listening in would think that they were just a couple of high-spirited men enjoying a joke, instead of two extremely professional people covering their tracks.

  “How are you?”

  “Fine, fine,” said Albert. “What’s up?”

  “Sorry to bother you, but your father’s been trying to get hold of you.”

  Albert, whose father had been dead for five years, examined his fingernails critically and said, “Oh yes?”