‘Where are you taking me?’ he demanded. The question was addressed as much to the anonymous driver, who was sitting directly in front of him and looking straight ahead, as to Anna, who had taken a seat in the back.
‘For a drive,’ she said tersely. She clapped her hands and the driver accelerated smoothly away.
We can't be going far, thought Viktor. Parkum had only two roads. In six minutes they would reach the lighthouse and have to turn back.
‘Where to?’ he asked again.
‘You know where we're going, Viktor. Work it out for yourself.’
The car picked up speed. In spite of the driving rain, the driver seemed disinclined to use his wipers.
‘Read this,’ said Anna, handing Viktor three closely written sheets of A4. Viktor recognized the blue biro and deduced that Anna was the author. He took the script with trepidation.
‘What's this?’
‘The final chapter of Charlotte's story. The conclusion. I thought you'd want to know.’
He noticed that the sheets were charred at the edges. It was almost as if Anna had turned back time and rescued the burning manuscript from the hearth.
‘Read it!’ ordered Anna, jabbing the pistol at the paper. He started to read.
ON THE RUN
‘Wouldn't it be easier for you to tell me what—’
‘Keep reading!’ she silenced him. Nervously, he read the first few lines:
The night at the Hyatt was awful. Charlotte's nose poured with blood and I had to call room service for new sheets and towels. I'd run out of tablets, but I couldn't go to the after-hours pharmacy because Charlotte was scared of being alone. After a while she dozed off. I thought about asking the porter to fetch us some penicillin and a packet of paracetamol, but it wasn't worth the risk. Charlotte was guaranteed to wake up as soon as anyone knocked on the door.
The car sped over a pothole, water spraying in all directions, and Viktor glanced up. So far the manuscript hadn't helped to explain why he was trapped in a car with a mad woman who was forcing him at gunpoint to read a handwritten account of her delusions.
She likes to say she's schizophrenic, but she's not.
As if the situation weren't bad enough already, the storm was still raging, visibility was down to four metres, and the driver, who was apparently deaf or dumb or both, seemed intent on clocking up a new world record. They were travelling so fast that the view through the rain-streaked windows was a blur. Viktor had no idea where he was.
‘Keep reading!’ said Anna as soon as he looked up. She released the safety catch to show that she meant business.
‘Calm down, Anna. I'm reading, honestly I am.’
Once again, Viktor gave in to the inevitable. And once again, it was worse than he imagined.
51
The next morning, after a quick breakfast, we left the hotel and drove to the station. We boarded a train and got off in Westerland where we waited for about an hour. Eventually we persuaded a weather-beaten fisherman to ferry us over to Parkum. Charlotte wouldn't tell me where we were going, but it seemed to me that she wanted to get things over with. Maybe Parkum, because of its isolation, was where it was supposed to end.
On reaching dry land, Charlotte underwent a miraculous transformation. She looked positively blooming, as if the North Sea air had done her good. As if to underscore the change, she made a point of changing her name. ‘Don't call me Charlotte,’ she told me. ‘I use another name on my little island.’
‘Josy?’ said Viktor, looking up.
Anna smiled at him. ‘Of course. Don't tell me you didn't know already.’
‘But it makes no sense. People would have noticed if you and Josy had visited Parkum. Someone would have said.’
‘Of course they would,’ said Anna, looking at him as if he were a feeble-minded patient who needed constant assistance. ‘Keep reading.’
Viktor read on.
52
We followed a track to a cottage on the beach. It was a ten-minute walk from the village and the marina. Josy told me that the cottage belonged to her parents: at weekends they went to Sacrow, but in the summer and during longer breaks they holidayed on Parkum.
I was anxious to light the fire and make some tea, but Josy had other ideas.
‘Come on, Anna,’ she said, tugging my hand and pulling me towards the front window which afforded a spectacular view of the sea. ‘It's time for the final clue.’ She pointed outside. ‘Look, do you see it? It was following us all the time. From Sacrow to Berlin, Berlin to Hamburg, Hamburg to Sylt – and now here. It's on the island.’
It took me a while to realize what she meant, but then I spotted a tiny figure five hundred metres from the house.
I desperately wanted to be proven wrong, but as the figure drew closer, I couldn't ignore the evidence before my eyes. Josy had been telling the truth: the evil had lived with her in Schwanenwerder, and it had followed us to the cottage.
I grabbed her hand and rushed to the door. I didn't know where to take her, but I knew we had to hide. A few metres from the porch was a garden shed where the generator was housed. We darted inside.
The cold, stale air clung to us like the smell of old tobacco in a telephone box, but anything was preferable to waiting in the open. I slammed the door – just in time.
By now only a hundred metres separated us from the woman on the beach.
Isabell was heading straight for the porch.
Viktor couldn't bring himself to look Anna in the eye. ‘You were hiding from my wife?’
‘Yes.’
‘What had she done to Josy?’
‘You'll find out if you keep reading.’
The roar of the Volvo's engine almost drowned out the deafening pulsing of blood in Viktor's ears. He could feel the adrenalin pumping through his body, brought on by the cocked pistol or by the speed with which they were racing down the unsealed road – or perhaps by both. He was surprised that he could think, let alone read, when his life was in the balance. Thank God I don't get carsick, he thought, only to chastise himself a moment later for wasting time on such trivial concerns.
He kept reading.
53
To my dismay, I realized that the door to the shed could only be locked from outside. At that point in time, I didn't know what Isabell was planning, the power she had over us, and what she had in store for Josy, but it was obvious that she would find us in the shed. The door was our only way out, there weren't any windows, and Isabell would be able to spot us at a glance. I thought about hiding behind the generator, but there wasn't enough space between the engine and the corrugated-iron wall. Luckily it was so noisy that we didn't have to worry about being heard.
‘What did Isabell do to you?’ I asked Josy while I looked for a way out of our predicament.
‘I can't read the clues for you.’ This time she didn't sound so sure of herself.
‘I haven't got time for this,’ I told her bluntly. ‘If you want me to help you, I need to know what we're up against. Just tell me what she did to you.’
Josy lowered her voice to a whisper. ‘She poisoned me.’
I whirled round, convinced that someone was nearing the shed.
‘Why?’ I asked, creeping towards the door.
‘I did something wrong. She got angry with me in Sacrow.’
‘What did you do?’
‘I bled on the floor. Mummy didn't like it. She said I was her little girl. She doesn't want me to grow up.’
Viktor let go of the manuscript. It landed on the floor by his feet.
‘Now do you see?’ asked Anna.
‘I think so,’ he murmured.
Suddenly it all made sense. The blood in the bathroom, the poison, Isabell. But it seemed so unreal. Had Isabell wanted to punish her child for growing up? Had she tried to make Josy helpless and dependent? Was she twisted enough to poison her daughter?
‘What do you know about my family?’ demanded Viktor. ‘Why were you involved?’
‘I can
't tell you,’ said Anna. ‘It's in the story. You'll have to keep reading.’
Viktor reached down and scrabbled in the footwell for the final pages of script. He needed to get to the end of the nightmare that he had been living for the past four years.
54
I opened the door an inch or two and recoiled. Isabell was standing on the porch, armed with a carving knife from the kitchen. Her gaze swept the garden, then she slowly descended from the porch.
I closed the door. ‘How did she poison you?’
‘I've got an allergy,’ said Josy in a hoarse voice. ‘Paracetamol and penicillin make me ill. She's the only one who knows.’
I couldn't question her any further because we were running out of time. I knew she was counting on me to protect her from Isabell, but there was nowhere for us to hide. It was hard to see anything in the gloom and I didn't want to attract attention by turning on the light, so I pulled out my lighter and flicked it on. Normally I wouldn't go near a generator with a naked flame.
Trying not to panic, I searched the shed with Josy in tow. I had to keep hold of her in case she lost her nerve and bolted.
‘It's no use, Anna,’ she said softly. ‘Mummy will find us and kill us. I shouldn't have made her mad.’
I carried on looking and pretended not to hear, but I was steeling myself for the door to fly open and Isabell to confront us with a knife. I could hear her calling Josy's name.
‘Josy? Where are you, darling? Mummy's worried.’
Her voice was unnaturally gentle and dangerously close. Josy started to cry. Fortunately the hum of the generator drowned out the noise. My cheap plastic lighter cast a flickering halo on the ceiling, walls and floor. For the millionth time I stared at the rusty generator, and at last I found the answer. A pipe led out from the bottom-right corner of the engine towards the floor. The fuel tank!
As I suspected, the tank, like the generator, had been installed long before anyone cared about safety regulations. The tank was really just a synthetic container with a diameter of almost a metre and had been dropped into the base of the shed; its sides protruded ten or so centimetres above the floor. It was protected by a thin concrete cover. I broke the seal and tried to push aside the cover. At first I thought I wasn't strong enough, but then I tried again, this time wedging my heels against the wall and channelling my fear and desperation into moving it. It worked. I managed to create an opening forty or so centimetres across, big enough for Josy and I to squeeze inside.
‘I'm not going in there,’ said Josy, sidling up to me and peering into the darkness. There was a nauseating smell of old diesel.
‘We don't have a choice,’ I told her. ‘She'll find us.’
As if to prove my point, Isabell's voice sounded from outside the shed. ‘Josy? Come to mummy! Where's my good little girl?’
She was only a couple of metres from the door.
‘There's nothing to be afraid of, Josy,’ I told her. ‘Just trust me, OK?’
She was rigid with fear, which meant I could scoop her up and lower her into the tank. It was about one and a half metres deep and the diesel came up only halfway, so there was no risk of her drowning. As soon as she was safely in the tank, I sprinted to the door and jammed an ancient garden chair under the handle. Then I took a crowbar from the wall and smashed the overhead light. Working in almost total darkness, I ruptured the pipe connecting the tank to the generator, shoved the crowbar under the concrete cover and levered it into the air. My knees were screaming for me to stop, but I kept pushing down on the crowbar and at last, after one final, monumental effort, the cover thudded to the floor between the generator and the tank.
The thought of standing in the murky fluid filled me with dread, but I tried not to think about it and climbed into the tank. Another few seconds and it would have been too late. By the time I had lowered myself in and was trying to keep my balance on the slippery base, Isabell was at the door, rattling the handle.
‘Josy? Are you in there?’
The chair prevented her from opening the door, but I could tell it wouldn't be long until she forced her way in.
‘She'll see us,’ sobbed Josy, slipping her oil-smeared hand into mine. ‘Why did you move the lid?’
‘She would have spotted it hanging over the side. I thought about pulling it over us, but I'm not strong enough. We'll just have to hope that she doesn't notice it on the floor.’
I knew it was ridiculous to think that she wouldn't see us; we didn't stand a chance.
The door flew open, crashing against the side of the shed. I felt a cold draught as the wind swept into the shed and swirled across the floor to our hiding place in the tank.
‘Josy?’
Isabell was evidently in the shed, but I couldn't hear her footsteps because the drone from the generator was rising all the time.
Judging by the continuing gloom, the only light in the shed came from the fading afternoon sun, which meant Isabell didn't have a torch. I was praying that she wouldn't notice the open tank – or that she wouldn't see us in the darkness. It was obvious what would happen if she decided to light a match, but surely even Isabell wouldn't do that . . .
I instructed Josy to kneel on the bottom, and she did as I said. Only her head protruded above the oil; the rest of her body was coated in cold fuel.
Just then she coughed – not her usual sickly wheezing, but a hacking cough brought on by the toxic smell. I wanted to reassure her, but when I tried to stroke her hair, my fingers left a slurry of diesel oil on her scalp.
‘Don't worry. We're going to be all right,’ I whispered, but Josy was inconsolable.
By now she was shaking all over and crying uncontrollably. I put my hand over her mouth, leaving enough room for her to breathe through her nose. She bit me as hard as she could. A sharp pain stabbed through my arm, but I didn't let go. I had to keep her quiet while Isabell was in the shed.
How long did we stay like that, me standing, Josy kneeling, in the foul smelling tank? I honestly don't know. All I remember is gasping for air and holding the panicking little girl in a vicelike grip while she trembled in the darkness. Maybe a minute went past, maybe five; I had no sense of time. At some point I realized that Isabell had left. The dusky light had stopped slanting across the floor. She must have closed the door.
Relieved, I loosened my hold on the sobbing Josy.
‘Daddy, I'm scared,’ she whimpered.
I liked the way she called me ‘daddy’; it proved I'd gained her trust.
‘Me too,’ I said, clasping her to my side. ‘But we're OK now.’
Maybe we would have been. The worst was over and Isabell had gone.
I knew she was still nearby – probably in the cottage, looking for a torch – but we had enough time, time to climb out of the tank, run to the village, call for help . . .
Time to escape.
It didn't happen that way. Josy was too upset to keep quiet. We'd been through a terrible ordeal, she was only a child, and she couldn't stop crying. She felt trapped in the slippery, smelly tank, and it was dark down there, darker than a crypt. Her sobs turned to ear-splitting screams. I couldn't do anything to stop her. We were stuck in the tank and I couldn't calm her down. But that wasn't the real problem. What sealed our fate was a mistake I'd made before Isabell entered the shed. I should never have sabotaged the fuel pipe, but I only realized the consequences now. The generator started to stutter, then cut out completely.
That was our downfall. From then on every noise from the shed could be heard outside.
55
Viktor's eyes welled with tears.
His poor baby, buried alive in stinking oil. He glanced at Anna, breathed in the smell of the Volvo, and felt the hum of the engine vibrating through his body. He was back in his recurring nightmare, only this time it was real.
‘What happened to her? Where is she?’
‘Finish the story.’
The door flew open and this time, without the noise of the generator, I heard her
footsteps on the floorboards. I was running out of options. In a few seconds Isabell would reach our hiding place, and I knew she was desperate enough to shine her lighter into the tank. There was only one thing I could do to ensure that Josy didn't give us away. I dived into the generator fuel and pulled her with me.
Diesel soaked through our clothes and clung to our bodies like a cloak of death. A sticky film of oil covered our faces, clogging our mouths, plugging our nostrils and bunging our ears. At that moment I felt like a sea eagle fighting for survival in a slick of black poison, trying to clean my soiled plumage and sinking deeper and deeper beneath the tarry waves.
My lungs were screaming for air, and more than anything I wanted to surface, but I forced myself to stay down and maintain the pressure on Josy's head. I had no idea what was happening in the shed. I couldn't see, couldn't hear, and I was running out of strength. I waited until I couldn't last another second, then shoved Josy towards the surface and came up for air. I was half expecting to see Isabell towering over the tank, but I knew I'd done my best. I'd stayed down as long as possible, and it wasn't my fault if we'd come up too soon.
We hadn't.
It was already too late.
Josy was lying limply in my arms. I wiped the oily film from her mouth and parted her lips so she could breathe. I shook her. I wanted to give her the kiss of life, but I knew in my heart that she was gone.
I still can't be sure whether it was the shock or the oil that killed her, but one thing is certain: Isabell wasn't the murderer. It was me.
Viktor desperately wanted to shout, but his voice came out in a croak. ‘That's a lie and you know it!’