The String Diaries

by Stephen Lloyd Jones

  ‘. . . I won’t, I promise you,’ she said quietly. Noticing him by the door, she grinned, replaced the phone on the table, and sauntered up to him. ‘Coffee,’ she said, playfully prodding his chest with her finger. ‘Coming right up.’

  He nodded towards the telephone. ‘Problem?’

  ‘No, no.’ She swerved past him, heading deeper into the house, and Jakab returned to the living room where he checked his appearance in the mirror.

  Albert Bauer stared back at him.

  He shouldn’t be here. It had been foolish – desperately so – to visit her again. Especially so soon. How easy for his presence to be revealed; how easy for her to mention today’s encounter to the real Albert and ruin everything. Intoxicated by the intimacy they had shared, he had abandoned all caution in his haste to repeat the experience.

  Jakab took a breath, exhaled. He would have liked longer to study the chemist, longer to learn about the man’s background, his work, the history of his relationship with Anna. But it was too late. If Anna was suspicious, he could deal with that, could mend it, given time. As long as the real Albert Bauer was rotting under six feet of frozen loam.

  You can’t afford to mess this up.

  He wouldn’t. He loved her. Had loved her all his life.

  Knowing that leaving the house without saying goodbye would strike her as odd, but suddenly convinced it was the right thing to do, Jakab tiptoed into the hall, slipped out of the front door and ran back down the road to his car.

  In Sopron, he took lunch at the Pannonia Hotel and retired to his suite on the second floor, where he spent the rest of the afternoon thinking about Albert Bauer. Already, he had discovered plenty of information about the young chemist. The man was an orphan, sponsored by a wealthy uncle who lived in Vienna. He had lived in Sopron for two years, moving to the area from Leipzig, where he had studied at the university. He was a keen philatelist, disliked jazz, and was awkward in social situations. He stammered when nervous, spoke with an accent, suffered from mild bouts of psoriasis.

  While Jakab would not be able to convincingly continue the man’s career as a chemist, a quickly arranged Viennese inheritance would solve that problem. His only concern was that he still knew relatively little about Albert’s relationship with Anna. This morning, however, he had discovered Hans’s diaries. He was sure that many of the answers he needed lay within those pages.

  At the dressing room table, Jakab studied Albert’s reflection. ‘We’ll visit you first, my boy. And then we’re going to arrange a burglary.’ He shook his head. ‘Who’d want to live in Sopron, eh?’

  After nightfall, he parked his car in the narrow street outside Albert’s apartment. The cold weather had swept the majority of Sopron’s residents indoors. Stars glimmered in a cloudless sky, with only the merest chip of a moon. The windows of the chemist’s first-floor apartment were dark.

  Unusual for Albert to be out on a Wednesday evening. The man usually ate supper at a bistro in the adjacent street before returning to his apartment, where he worked for a few hours before retiring.

  Jakab pulled out his watch and squinted at it. Nine o’clock. His feet were already growing numb. Deciding that he might as well wait inside the apartment where it was warm, he got out of the car.

  Crossing the street, he felt in his pocket for his set of keys and used one of them to open the outer door. The hallway within was unlit. Jakab climbed the stairs to the first floor, paused and listened outside Albert’s rooms.

  Silence.

  He used a second key to unlock the front door, and opened it. Again he paused, listening for sounds in the darkness. Muffled laughter drifted to him from further along the passage. But the darkness inside Albert’s apartment was still. Replacing the keys in his pocket, Jakab took out his knife. He went inside.

  Easing the door shut behind him, he reached out a hand to the wall, feeling for the bakelite switch that activated the light. As the ceiling bulb winked on, he spun around in the small space. No one cried out, no one lunged at him. He saw Albert’s writing table. The sofa and chair by the fireplace. The bookcase.

  The table, usually a jumble of scientific papers, scribbled notes and writing instruments, was clear. The shelves of the bookcase were bare. Above the fireplace, where previously a mediocre watercolour had hung, only a brass nail remained.

  An image replayed in his mind: Anna, standing in the hall, telephone mouthpiece held to her lips.

  ‘. . . I won’t, I promise you . . .’

  She had grinned at him. And for the briefest instant, as she had replaced the telephone on the table, he’d seen a furtive look cross her face.

  Striding into the bedroom, Jakab switched on the light. The doors to the room’s two cupboards hung open. Empty drawers gaped. The bed had been stripped. Albert’s radio had vanished.

  Crying out, he tore two of the drawers from their runners and hurled them across the room. They broke apart in a splintering crash. He kicked one of the cupboard doors off its hinges. ‘No! No, no, no!’

  Jakab charged out of the apartment, thundered down the stairs and out into the street. It took him a couple of attempts to start the car, partly due to the cold, and partly because his hands were shaking, his vision blurred by tears.

  Even this afternoon, he thought, when she had deceived him in the hallway of her parents’ home, she had done it gracefully. How perfect she was. He ached for her.

  The Mercedes lurched forwards and Jakab navigated it along the narrow street, keeping his speed down until he reached the wider roads where he could push the car harder.

  Would she still be at home? Unlikely. But where else could he begin his search? Would any of the family be there? He was so distracted at the thought of losing her that he nearly missed the turning on to the forested road that led to the Richter house, and when he hauled the wheel over he almost hit a vehicle travelling without lights, barrelling along in the opposite direction.

  You have to calm down. You have to think. You can’t afford to handle this badly.

  A few hundred yards from the property, he ran the Mercedes off the road. The car ploughed a muddy channel as it slid to a halt. He killed the engine.

  Ahead, lights were burning inside the house. From a leather case on the passenger seat beside him Jakab pulled out a Gasser revolver. He jumped out of the car, wiped his eyes clear of tears and sprinted along the drive. He leaped up the front steps. Rang the bell. Heard it trilling, somewhere deep inside the house.

  His lungs were burning. His head was buzzing. Wrong. All wrong. He wasn’t thinking clearly. He hadn’t thought this through. He had no plan, no idea of what to do next. Overwhelmed, he collapsed to his knees, steadied himself with one hand on the stones. Concentrated on his breathing.

  Was he too late? Had he lost her? Hans had been careless enough to change only his family’s surname. He didn’t think a man of Albert’s intellect would make the same mistake.

  He heard a latch rattling. Looked up. The door swung open, revealing the face of an old enemy.

  ‘Albert?’ Hans Richter squinted down at him. ‘What did you forget? What is it?’

  Jakab stood, bared his teeth.

  ‘You’re not—’

  Lunging, he grabbed the old man’s arm and yanked him out of the house. As Hans tumbled down the steps, Jakab clubbed him on the back of the head with the revolver. The woodsman crumpled to the paving stones. He groaned, half turned. Jakab sprang at him. He raised the revolver and drove the butt down on to the top of Hans’s skull. Moments later he caught sight of further movement in the doorway.

  Helene Richter stood framed in light, wrapped in a shawl, a hammer clasped in her hands.

  Eyes still wet with tears, Jakab stared up at her. ‘Help us,’ he croaked.

  He had built up the fire in the drawing room to a crackling blaze, and finally he was beginning
to feel warm. Reflected flames danced in each of the three tall windows that looked out on to the night.

  Jakab walked around the room, recovering his breath. He let his fingers trail through the display of ostrich feathers, ran them over the smooth tortoiseshell cigar box, brushed the heavy drapes beside the windows.

  Hans’s writing desk stood exactly where it had this morning. The Waterman fountain pen still lay on its surface, but the old man’s leather-bound diary had gone. The shelf above, which had contained more volumes of the Richters’ history, was empty.

  Taking his time, Jakab returned to the windows and closed each set of curtains. He walked to the centre of the room and sat down on a wingback chair. Closing his eyes, he breathed deeply and allowed the anger and the worry and the pain to drain out of him.

  He opened his eyes.

  Helene Richter sat on the sofa to his left. Her arms were tied behind her. Her ankles were bound together. Her silk blouse was ripped. She stared at the rug on the parquet floor, eyes wide and disbelieving. Beside Helene sat her husband. Carl wore an open-necked shirt, dark trousers. Unlike his wife’s, Carl’s eyes scanned the room, although they were careful never to rest on Jakab’s face.

  Only Hans, roped to a chair opposite his son and daughter-in-law, dared to look at him. A flap of the old man’s scalp hung over his ear. Blood had soaked his jacket and his shirt. He would not take his eyes off Jakab. ‘Whatever you decide to do to me,’ Hans said, ‘I’d ask you to remember one thing. Carl is Erna’s son. Her blood, Jakab. Think about that. He’s as much a part of her as Anna is.’

  Jakab was silent for a while. Finally, he said, ‘You’d ask me to remember. I remember a lot, woodsman. I remember how you stole my wife.’

  Hans stared. Finally he shook his head. ‘She was never your wife.’

  The truth of those words – their stark and cold reality – cut Jakab more deeply than anything in the forty-eight years since Erna’s death. In an instant he was transported back to the night she had met him on Balaton’s shore and told him of the strangers at her father’s tavern. He remembered how his joy at her closeness had transformed to terror at the knowledge that the hosszú életek had found him. He remembered the feel of her tears against his cheek as he kissed her and promised that he would return. He remembered the way she had looked at him five years later as she tried to give him money and make him leave, remembered the way the coins had sparkled and tumbled in the air as he shoved her away from him. He saw the Merénylő, all sickly skin and poisonous eyes, rising up in his saddle and pulling the crossbow’s trigger. He remembered how he thought he’d been shot, remembered the awful, terrible pain of what happened next: the dreadful clacking sound emerging from Erna’s lips; the sight of her teeth snapping at the air; the feel of her slipping from his arms; the gleam of the blood-slicked bolt protruding from her skull; the discovery that in the time it took for a shaft of wood and metal to cross a few yards of empty space he had lost everything, everything.

  Jakab found that he was crying. His chest heaved and great shuddering breaths escaped him. He pressed his hands between his knees, rocking back and forth as the tears spilled down his cheeks.

  Slowly, he recovered himself.

  He wiped his nose, his face. When he looked up, he saw tears glistening in the eyes of the old man too.

  ‘Where is Anna?’ he asked.

  ‘Jakab, I loved her just as dearly as you did.’

  ‘Where has Albert taken her?’

  ‘If I’d known what those men would do, if I’d known how it would end, I never would have called them. I was scared, Jakab: scared of you, scared of losing her to you.’

  ‘I have to find her.’

  ‘You won’t, though. I’m sorry for you. But she has her own life. The right to lead it with whomever she chooses. You must allow her that. Your involvement with her ends here. In this room.’

  From his pocket, Jakab pulled out the knife, turned it over in his hands, ran his thumb along the blade and drew a line of scarlet. On the sofa, Helene Richter moaned. She sagged back in her seat.

  ‘I don’t want any more bloodshed,’ he said.

  ‘Then don’t do this—’

  ‘But I must find her. Please. All of you. It’s a simple enough question.’

  ‘Jakab, don’t you see? We don’t know where she’s gone. None of us do. We helped them leave, yes. But they won’t come back. Not now. We’ve said our goodbyes.’

  He stood, walked into the midst of them. Studied the way the flames in the hearth reflected off the knife’s blade. ‘Of course you know. You must know.’

  ‘Please don’t do this, Jakab.’

  He went to Helene, reached out a hand to her face. She strained away from him, but she could only move so far, and he took her chin and lifted her head. She would still not meet his eyes. Softly, he asked, ‘Where can I find her?’

  The woman sobbed.

  Behind him, Hans said, ‘Jakab, you know this is wrong. You must know that. Think about Erna. What she would have wanted.’

  ‘What do you know of what Erna wanted?’

  ‘Jakab, I was married to her.’

  ‘And the next time you insist on telling me that, I’m going to cut the lips off your son’s bride.’ He turned to Carl, using the tip of his knife to tilt the man’s face towards him. ‘Look at me, Carl. Just look at me. There, see? That wasn’t so bad. I’m no monster, am I? I don’t wish your daughter any harm. I don’t wish you any harm. But you must tell me where Anna’s gone. I know that, deep down, you understand that. I love her, Carl. I must find her.’

  The man’s face had lost all its colour. His Adam’s apple bobbed. ‘We don’t know where they’ve gone. Why on earth would they tell us that? They don’t even know where they’re going.’

  ‘A father would know.’

  ‘I promise you, I—’

  ‘A FATHER WOULD KNOW!’

  Jakab dropped the blade from Carl’s chin, hauled himself away, forced himself to retreat from the man. Pacing, circling the room, his mind filled with thoughts of Anna, of Erna, of Anna. And immediately those thoughts turned darker, began to mock him, gloating, insistent.

  He imagined Anna and Albert driving through the night, the German chemist at the wheel, Anna’s hand resting on his thigh. He imagined them stopping at a hotel, terrified at what they had just escaped but also energised, alive, thrilled. That energy would find its release in passion, drawing them together, giving them the confidence to believe they could prevail.

  He felt as if a tumour had burst inside his skull.

  Striding around the sofa, snapping Helene’s head back and brandishing the knife high above him, he said, ‘Last chance, Hans, I swear it. You tell me where they’ve gone right now or I’ll make her so damned ugly you won’t suffer yourself to look at her again.’

  On the wingback chair, Hans bowed his head. He began to pray.

  Beside Helene, Carl opened his mouth and joined him.

  Jakab remained frozen, one hand pressed against Helene’s forehead, the other clutching the knife.

  ‘. . . and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us . . .’

  He slashed downwards.

  Helene Richter gagged, bucked.

  ‘. . . deliver us from evil . . .’

  Lips pulled back against his teeth, determined to drown out their words, determined to demonstrate the futility of their prayer, Jakab carved into her face.

  Later, much later, after the screaming had abated and the life had left them and the only sound in the room was the steady drip-drip-drip of blood falling on the rug, Jakab acknowledged that the old man had been telling the truth. He had not known; none of them had known.

  It was too late by then, of course. And it would hardly have mattered. Because once Jakab had started cutting, he became
too upset to stop.

  CHAPTER 21

  Aquitaine region, France

  Now

  Days passed, but they could have been hours or weeks. Hannah curled around the horror and the pain of her loss, drawing its spike ever deeper, letting its poison travel her veins and its barb twist inside her, eviscerating her of all her hope, her memories, her meaning.

  Sebastien dug a grave on the shore of the lake, working as fast as he could in the chill autumn air. The ground was frozen and rocky, and he was unable to dig deep. A mist of rain harried him, and he looked up often and scanned the hills, as if feeling the eyes of her husband’s killer upon him as he worked.

  With the shallow site prepared, the old man dragged Nate’s body over the lip and laid it inside as gently as he could. Earlier, Hannah had washed the blood from Nate’s face and hands. She wanted Leah to remember her father without the stains of violence upon his body.

  The girl, white-faced and silent, lips pressed together as if she concentrated on a reel of horrors spooling before her eyes, bent and tucked a letter into the pocket of Nate’s shirt. Hannah saw the hard, urgent scratches of her daughter’s handwriting and had not the courage to ponder what questions they asked.

  In the shadow of the mountain, Sebastien read words from the Book of Common Prayer as Hannah gripped Leah’s hand.

  We brought nothing into this world and it is certain we can carry nothing out. The Lord gave, and The Lord hath taken away; blessed be the Name of the Lord.

  Nate might have brought nothing into this world, but with his departure he had carried off every opportunity for Hannah’s happiness, her peace. She screamed when Sebastien threw the first shovel of dirt over him and the grains of soil skittered across his face. She collapsed to her knees, the cold mud soaking through her jeans. She would have thrown herself on Nate’s body, pressing her lips to his cheek, if Sebastien had not tossed away his shovel and grabbed her, gathering up Leah and holding her too.