I Will Break You (Best International Thrillers)

by Daniela Arnold

  She stood up, came around the table, and extended her hand to Charly. “I have to agree with Officer Bishop on one point, though. The most important step in alleviating ailments is always self-healing. While doctors can prescribe medication for the symptoms of our aches and pains, that won’t make us healthy in the long run. We have to find the cause of our ailments and get to the root of the problem, and use our self-healing powers to put the enemy to flight. In your case, you must forgive yourself for what happened. If you don’t do this, you will never find inner peace. Even the most amazing drugs won’t help you.”

  That evening Charly sat next to Jody’s bed and watched the little girl sleep. She herself felt a slight weightlessness inside her since she had taken the medicine after dinner, as if she had shed some of her worries like a piece of clothing. She let her gaze wander over Jody and decided to sleep on the floor in her room tonight. She got up to get the mattress from her bed, along with the blanket and pillow, and passed the bathroom on the way. She turned on the light and stepped over to the sink. Looking at her reflection in the mirror, her heartbeat picked up despite the sedative. Or did she imagine that, too? She turned on the faucet, drank a few sips of ice-cold water. She frowned at the thought of Jake. Because she had refused to go with Alice after her appointment with the police psychologist, Jake had offered to drive Jody and her home. On the way, she had told him that the power had gone out. When they arrived at the house he immediately checked the fuse box. Even the lack of light in the house turned out to have a logical explanation—one of the fuses had blown. Charly stuck out her tongue at her reflection. She could no longer avoid admitting that in reality she was the problem. Her stomach cramped up when she remembered Alice’s hurt expression when Charly told her she didn’t want her in the house anymore, let alone near Jody.

  With a groan, Charly turned off the light and went downstairs to check the doors and windows on the first floor. She checked every room, including the front door and the cellar door, and made a note on the little shopping board in the kitchen. As she passed the living room on her way up, she paused. Following an intuition she entered the room, turned on the light switch, and stepped towards the wall above the sofa. She slid her palm over the part of the wall where she thought she had read the word murderess the other day. She closed her eyes and listened inside herself. The letters had been about ten centimeters high, the complete word about fifty centimeters wide. If that was just her imagination, why did she remember it so well? The threatening photos had been lying around everywhere, Charly could still see them clearly in front of her eyes. Why did the pictures not fade? And the horrible voices, the giggling, the crying? Why did she still have their sounds in her ears? She climbed onto the sofa and moved her face very close to the wall. Her heart skipped a beat when she noticed several tiny shiny spots on the otherwise matte white color. They looked like the residue of an adhesive.

  Forming a plan, she hopped off the sofa and looked for the phone, dialed the number of Sally, Jody’s former foster mother.

  She held her breath as the phone rang, praying the woman would not tear her head off for calling so late.

  Two hours later, Charly was on her way to Brighton to a hotel that had an available room on short notice. After talking to Sally Martin, she had hurriedly thrown a few pieces of clothing together with Jody’s favorite toys into a travel bag and prepared a second bag for herself. Jody’s former foster mother had already been asleep when she called, but immediately agreed to help when Charly claimed that she had to travel to Berlin for two days because one of her parents was ill. Jody had hardly noticed anything. Only a few tears had been shed when Charly had woken her up and put her in the car, then she had fallen fast asleep within a few minutes and hadn’t woken up when she had put her into the provided travel bed with Sally.

  Exhaustion threatened to roll over her and she opened the side window of the driver’s door. She left the radio off, because she wanted to think about everything on the way to the hotel.

  Andreas? Alice? Jake?

  These were the names of the people she hadn’t been able to get out of her head for the past hours. Which one of them would stand to gain if something bad happened to her? Andreas, because he didn’t forgive her the separation and was angry because she had called the police on him? Could he have tracked her down?

  No. He was not cunning enough to give her such a spectacle. Not to mention the fact that he knew neither Imogen nor Megan and could not know anything about their past.

  Alice? Did she want Imogen and Adam’s money? Charly went through the last few days in her mind and came to the conclusion that Alice was suspect. Because if she was eligible, it automatically meant that she was responsible for what had happened to Imogen. And why would Alice have wanted her half-sister to die? Besides Jody, Imogen was the only person she had left in her life. It did not make sense.

  The situation was different with Jake. He had changed her lock, which made the possibility of having a spare key very likely. He knew Imogen, Adam, and Linda Shaw. He knew them all. Had Imogen confessed to him what had really happened then? Did he want revenge for leaving his sister to die and destroying his family? Perhaps the death of his wife had also completely shattered him, so that he saw only one purpose in life: to destroy the people who were responsible for all his misery? Was that the real reason Imogen had given her custody of Jody? Was it imposed under duress? Had he used Jody as leverage and threatened to harm her if Imogen didn’t do everything to lure Charly here? Was Jake ultimately responsible for Adam’s death? Had he also murdered Linda Shaw because he felt she was a threat? Maybe Imogen had talked to her at some point about the past and told Jake about it?

  Charly gripped the steering wheel with both hands as if her life depended on it.

  Concentrate! You have to think, go over everything again and again.

  The reason for all these speculations was the adhesive residue on the exact spot on the wall where she thought she saw the word murderess. Then there was her recent nausea. The fact that she had fainted several times. Once in the night when she had had the hallucination of Megan, wasn’t Jake with her that day? Had he spiked some food that only she regularly ate with a drug that made her react so violently? If he did have a spare key, he could have entered the house at any time, put the earring down, taken the photos and cut them up at home, then distributed them in the living room.

  Charly felt a leaden tiredness lulling her and slowly but surely turning into a beginning migraine. She stepped on the brakes and drove to the side of the road. Then she looked at the navigation system. Five minutes to go until she arrived at the hotel. She let her neck circle until it cracked. Whoever or whatever was behind it, tonight would reveal once and for all if she was just fantasizing these things or if someone had set all this up to drive her crazy or even to her death. Because if she did not hear voices or see any strange things on her first night in the hotel, this was a sure sign that everything was fine with her.

  Determined, she stepped on the gas.

  chapter 20

  Newhaven, June 2015

  The next morning Charly was woken up by the sun. She straightened up, stretched extensively, yawned. Then she grabbed her cell phone on the bedside table, took a sleepy look at it. When she realized that it was already after ten o’clock, she frowned. For the first time in days, she had slumbered for over seven hours at a stretch without a strange incident and without a nightmare. So she had indeed been right about her suspicions. What had happened had not just happened in her imagination, as the psychologist had assumed, but seemed to have been staged by someone. Now all that remained was to find out by whom and why. She swung her legs out of bed, got up, and moaned when her back responded with a protesting pain. Charly threw a bitterly angry look at the mattress. The first hour in the hotel bed had been pure torture. It had taken a little while for the stress of the past days to dissipate and for her to fall asleep. Now she was faced with the dubious pleasure of showering in a ba
throom where mold had infested all the joints and there was a danger that she would be killed by asbestos tiles from the 1960s while showering.

  No matter, she had to take a shower, not to mention that the hot water would help her clear her head. If there was any hot water at all in this dive. Anger flooded her veins as she remembered that she had paid over 100 dollars for a night in this dump.

  When she was in the shower and hot water came out of the tap, her anger evaporated a little. After she was done, she slipped into her clothes, tied her wet hair in a braid, and left the room. The man from last night was off duty, and an extremely overweight woman in her mid-fifties was now standing behind the reception desk. Her hair had the same red color as her intrusive lips and her breasts seemed to almost spring from her much too tight top, giving her the appearance of an aging prostitute.

  “We only serve breakfast until nine o’clock,” she explained to Charly. “Maybe I could organize a coffee for you. But it costs extra.”

  “No thanks, I have to leave right away.” Charly gave the woman the key. “I’ve already paid.”

  The redhead typed something on her computer keyboard. “All right. Come again and visit us.”

  Certainly not, Charly thought, and left the hotel in a hurry.

  On the way to her car, parked in a nearby parking lot, she thought again about last night’s uneventful events. The realization that she was not crazy should calm her down, but with every step she took fear closed her throat more and more. She had basically guessed from the very first moment that there must be something else, something far greater, behind Adam and Imogen’s death. Now she had certainty, because the culprit was after her.

  Jake!

  Charly had been blinded by his initial friendliness, by his talk about the past that could no longer be changed. Instead, he had pursued a cold-blooded plan all along to take revenge on the people who had killed his sister Megan.

  The thought of her weighed heavy on Charly’s heart. Imogen and she had done something terrible back then, twenty-five years ago. But they did not deserve to die for it.

  She ran faster, ran the last few yards to the car. Her fingers trembled when she unlocked the car door. Then she let herself fall behind the steering wheel, breathing heavily.

  Jody. She had to call Jody. Then Alice.

  She felt more than bad that she had even considered suspecting Imogen’s sister of being involved in this matter. Alice, who had helped her so much lately, had been there for Jody and her. How could she have offended her like that? She ripped her cell phone out of her pocket and typed “please forgive me!!!” in the message box and clicked send. Then she called Sally.

  “Are you already in Berlin?” the foster mother wanted to know.

  Charly deeply disliked lying to people she liked. “I caught the last plane last night. How is Jody?”

  Sally sighed. “Not so good, I’m afraid. She keeps asking for you, wants to go home.”

  “Can I talk to her for a moment?”

  “To be honest, I don’t think you should,” said Sally. “She took forever to fall asleep yesterday, had bad dreams. Now she’s playing a little, and a phone call from you will make everything come back up. Do you understand?”

  “Of course, I don’t want to cause you any more trouble. Please tell her that I will pick her up as soon as possible.”

  Charly heard a muffled male voice in the background, then Sally said, “We understand that you need to visit your family, but I would have to ask you to pick Jody up the day after tomorrow at the latest. If you can’t do that, I will have to inform the Welfare Department.”

  “No! I’ll be there, don’t worry. The day after tomorrow will be fine. Thank you, Sally. You have no idea how much I appreciate what you’re doing.” Charly hung up the phone just in time before her voice broke completely. Then she dialed Alice’s number. She hadn’t responded to her message yet, but it couldn’t hurt to apologize.

  “Charly? Where the hell are you?” Alice shouted into the receiver as soon as she answered. She sounded angry.

  “I slept at a hotel,” Charly replied.

  “A hotel? Why?”

  Charly wondered whether she should tell Alice the truth about what she thought she knew, but decided to do so.

  “Jake is behind everything. It’s all about revenge. For Megan.” “Charly, I—”

  “This time I can prove it too.”

  “Oh, yeah? How?”

  Charly told her about the glue residue on the wall above the sofa and that she had neither woken up nor walked around the hotel last night, let alone open windows and doors or defaced any photos. “Everything was totally normal, Alice. I was totally normal. For the first time since I’ve been here.”

  “That’s your proof? I’m just saying because you’ve been having problems for days, stress, and God knows what else. I think the evidence is a little sparse.”

  “What about the glue on the wall? That was the night I saw the photos in which, besides Imogen’s, my face was also missing. It was immediately clear to me that this was a threat, but then the photos and the writing on the wall disappeared in the morning. Don’t you understand that? It was supposed to make it seem as if I was going crazy so that nobody would feel strange later if something happened to me. It was the same with Imogen. At first everyone thought she was depressed about her husband’s death, then crazy. And voilà—her murderer gets away with it.”

  “You’re not thinking clearly,” Alice interrupted Charly’s rant. “If Jake is behind this, explain to me why it all started before you even knew what Megan’s death was about? I Jake found out about it right after you remembered. This weird stuff happened a lot sooner than that.”

  Charly nodded vigorously until she remembered Alice couldn’t see that. “Of course, he knew long before. From Imogen. She must have told him after I left her at Jody’s baptism.”

  “Why would he kill Adam first? He and Imogen knew each other well, how hard could it be to lure them somewhere and kill them both? Why Adam first?”

  “Maybe because he was afraid Adam would suspect something and get him into trouble. Or maybe he wanted to make Imogen suffer as he himself had suffered. Therefore, he took her husband first.”

  “Then how do you explain Linda Shaw’s death? You were sure there was more to it than that.”

  “Maybe Linda had a hunch? Or Jake wanted to prevent her from further disrupting the investigation. After all, she lost her only child, suspecting God and the world. Maybe he just eliminated a future source of danger with her?”

  Alice remained silent on the other end of the line. Then she asked, “What are you going to do now?”

  Charly briefly explained what she intended to do within the next two hours.

  “You’re not doing that!” Alice admonished. “There’s no way you’re seeing Jake. If what you say is true, he could come at you, overpower you, and kill you too. Then what? What happens to Jody if you’re gone?”

  Charly pondered for a moment. “You’re still here,” she said and meant it. “You are Imogen’s sister, Jody’s natural aunt. If anything happens to me, she will be in the best of hands with you. The authorities will decide in the best interests of the child and give her to you.”

  “No,” Alice said again. It sounded like she was crying. “You are not going alone to a meeting with this man.”

  “Does that mean you believe me?” Charly asked breathlessly.

  “No, it doesn’t mean that,” Alice said. “I’m worried about you. Very worried. Nonetheless, what you said sounds reasonably understandable. It might have been that way. Whether it was or not is not for you to find out. That’s what the police are for.”

  Charly shook her head angrily. Alice simply did not understand. “Jake is the police,” she yelled into the receiver. Then she took a deep breath, calmed down a little. “Sorry I snapped at you. But I have to do this. I have to get him out of his reserve somehow and make him end it.”

>   “Charly, that’s not a good idea.”

  “I promise to be careful, meet him in a public place with people around. But please do me a favor and keep what I told you to yourself, otherwise my whole plan will go to hell.” Then she hung up.

  Two hours later, Charly was sitting at the window seat of a busy Indian food restaurant in the center of Lewes. When she saw Jake in his uniform crossing the street, her heartbeat accelerated.

  She groped for her cell phone in her jacket pocket and sent a quick silent prayer that her plan worked. When the door opened and Jake entered, Charly drew a sharp breath. Jake’s face looked grim and determined, as if he knew what she was up to. He sat down opposite her at the table.

  “Listen, Charly,” he said, annoyed. “I’m sorry for what you’re going through, but please stop dragging me into this. I have a son, I have to look ahead.” He looked at Charly with resignation. “You won’t stop, will you?”

  She smiled provocatively. She breathed deeply one last time, then let the bomb explode. “I know I’m not crazy. And I also know who is behind it. Alice. She’s got them all on her conscience. Adam. Imogen. Maybe even Linda. Now she wants to kill me too.”

  Jake’s eyes widened. Then he moved his chair a bit away from the table. “Have you gone completely crazy now? I mean, do you listen to yourself? Why would Alice kill all these people? And why would she want to kill you?” He paused, seemed to be thinking. “I could understand it. You’re a real pain in the ass, Charlotte!”

  Charly grinned. Her plan was working. “I don’t know what her reasons are. Perhaps she’s not really Imogen’s half-sister. Who knows for sure? Have you checked her story? And if she is, it could be that she just wants the Shaw money. All that separates her from that is Jody.”