Alphabet House (41 page)

When I get to the vineyard I’ll park the BMW down by the main road
, thought Bryan, as he assessed the situation. It was best to be cautious. He had been through much too much during the past few hours.

And had got no further.

Laureen and Petra had been swallowed up by the unknown.

He’d made many ghastly finds during his careful inspection of Stich’s flat. Despite the scant illumination from his lighter there was no mistaking the evidence of Peter Stich’s true self. Drawer after drawer, shelf after shelf and room after room revealed that the old man had still been living in his grim past. Pictures of dead people, weapons, medals, flags, banners, figurines, periodicals, books and still more photographs of more dead people.

Bryan had left Stich’s flat unobserved. From Luisenstrasse he’d resolutely set off for Kröner’s little mansion, which he’d already had under surveillance twice before. He was sure this time would be the last.

Kröner’s big garden had been pitch dark when Bryan reached his house, almost making him lose his nerve. The only sign of life came from a small light on the first floor.

Otherwise the place would have looked dead and deserted.

After ringing the doorbell a couple of times he’d stepped back into the front garden where he picked up a pebble from the garden path and took aim. The windowpane on the first floor only rattled for a fraction of a second. Then he’d thrown several more. Eventually he had bombarded all the windows, the pebbles ricocheting back onto the lawn.

Then he realised how stupid he had been.

Bryan looked out of the car’s side window. The moon had not yet risen. The house and vineyard lay in the cover of darkness.

Even before he reached the drive leading to Lankau’s country home, Bryan noticed the light in the yard was no longer burning.
When he switched off the car lights, everything was dark. Bent almost double, he groped his way a couple of hundred feet over the ditch and alongside the grapevines. Under the cover of the foremost row of vines he made it halfway around the back of the house, so close to it that he could catch a glimpse into the room where he’d left Lankau tied to his chair.

It was dark and quiet inside.

He’d have to begin his pursuit of the truth yet again. While he was lurking around Kröner’s house twenty minutes previously, he’d realised Lankau was probably the only one who could help him in his quest. The big house in town had been empty. Kröner had left his nest and had presumably already made sure Petra and Laureen were under his control.

Bryan sat listening for a long time. There was nothing to indicate Kröner’s having got there first. The only sound that reached his ears was the hoarse screech of birds he’d so often heard on his nightly walks in Dover. The vineyard was their domain.

He looked at the dark sky and crept the last sixty feet to the corner wall facing the courtyard.

This time Lankau was determined not to be caught off guard. After leaving Petra he’d spent most of the time peering into the darkness from his hunting room window. At one point the lanky woman in the chair had been a bit hysterical. She’d awoken with a start and looked around in the dark, bewildered. When she realised she was tied up, she tugged at her bonds and made some guttural sounds behind her gag, but she stopped as if by magic the instant Lankau emerged from his corner. Her eyes expressed astonishment rather than horror or surprise. Lankau smiled. ‘Unable to speak, she is not,’ he whispered to himself. She drew back her head in disgust as he loosened the tight scarf that cut into the corners of her mouth. ‘So you’re not completely dumb,’ he tried again, this time in English.

‘Yes, you’re quite alone,’ he continued, alternating between German and English. ‘Little Petra’s not here. Do you miss her?’ Lankau laughed, but the woman in the chair didn’t react.

‘May I hear you say something again, my dear Laura, or whatever your name is?’ He squatted down in front of her. ‘What about a little scream, for example?’ He raised his fist and spread out his fingers right in front of her face. Then he took hold of it as if it were a big stone he was about to throw. A scream came when he began squeezing, but no words.

‘I think I can make you say something when I want to,’ he said, getting up and looking down at her. He knew he could. The main switch to the bungalow and the wine press was out in the pantry. If he made it clear to her what would happen to Petra if he turned it on, she was bound to talk. If she could.

Then he tightened the gag again and took up his position by the window.

The first glimpse he got of Arno von der Leyen was when he got out of the BMW down on the main road. The sight of the bent-over figure delighted and excited him. Lankau slid his hand slowly along the windowsill without taking his eyes off
his victim. Then, seizing the knife that had lain ready beside his half-eaten apple, he turned resolutely towards the bound woman. After speculating briefly about how drastic measures he should take, he decided to let her live for the time being.

A single blow to her neck just over the collarbone, and she sank into the chair, unconscious.

For a while the figure was hidden from view behind the vines. Failing to detect any movement in the vegetation, Lankau stepped back from the window.

Although it was dry enough outside, the cobblestones in the courtyard felt slippery. Bryan made his way carefully, though he nearly slipped a few times on their mossy covering. The thought of entering the house without knowing why the light in the yard had been switched off worried him. In spite of the Shiki Kenju that lay in his hand with the safety catch off, he couldn’t help feeling uneasy. Darkness had been his constant companion ever since he’d crept into Stich’s flat.

But now it didn’t suit him any more.

He registered something familiar the moment he stepped into the hall. But before he managed to make out what it was, he felt a deep stab in his side. As he was tumbling into the room, he sensed the same familiar thing again. It was intense now.

Suddenly the pistol was kicked out of his hand and the light switched on.

The only thing Bryan could see above him was Lankau’s silhouette. The ceiling light surrounded him like an aura. Bryan was blinded and rolled instinctively to one side, into something hard and irregular. In one movement he snatched and flung the object up at the silhouette’s head with all the strength he could muster.

The result was enormous. The figure toppled over with a roar.

Bryan sat up with difficulty and tried to pull himself over against the wall as fast as he could. The contours and arrangement of the room came to him in a flash. Lankau lay on the floor in front of him, staring at him maliciously. He was still holding the knife, but wasn’t ready to jump at him yet. It was easy to see why. A short, deep gash over the bridge of his nose had exposed bluish-white cartilage.

Bryan felt a jab of pain in his side and looked down. He’d been stabbed underneath the third rib. If he had made it an inch further into the room, the thrust would have perforated his lung. Two inches, and he would have been dead. Then and there.

The blood was only trickling out of him slowly, but his left arm was locked in position.

Just as he discovered this, Lankau started crawling towards him. Bryan groped around and found another piece of wood similar to the one he’d just hurled at him. As Lankau leaned forward, slashing at him, Bryan whacked his arm and both the wood and the knife flew out of sight.

‘You swine!’ Lankau roared, forcing his heavy body up on one knee. Both of them were breathing heavily as they glowered at each other. There were only a couple of yards between them.

‘You won’t find it!’ he snarled, as Bryan started scanning the floor. Bryan’s eyes moved fast. Neither the knife nor the Kenju could have landed very far off. Then he stiffened when his eyes spotted the lighter he’d given his wife only two months previously. A variety of Laureen’s small possessions littered the floor. Turning his head, he caught sight of the feet of a bound figure and got the shock of his life. At that moment he knew what he had sensed upon entering the room, something pervasive and insistent that should have warned him. The enticing whiff of the perfume Laureen had used every day for nearly ten years.

Perfume he had bought for her himself.

The gasp he was about to utter upon seeing his wife bound and gagged, her face white and eyes blank, never got a chance to pass his lips.

In that unguarded moment Lankau threw himself forward with such colossal force that the wound in Bryan’s side started bleeding more profusely.

With his nose damaged, Lankau’s mouth was open all the time, spewing nauseating breath and sticky saliva. He was concentrating solely on his attack, his entire physiognomy inflamed with the lust to inflict pain. Bryan’s hands sought feverishly for a way of warding him off and mounting a counterattack. He had to duck punches, intercept slashes and parry kicks from Lankau’s feet and jolts from his knees.

Centrifugal force flung the interlocked bodies across the contents of Laureen’s bag – packs of cigarettes and tampons, eyeliner, make-up compacts, notebooks, and other indeterminate bits and pieces. The men banged into furniture, tore the curtains down over them and overturned black wooden carvings from Kenya. A quiver of Zulu arrows broke like matchsticks.

Just as Bryan managed to wriggle one arm free so he could grab out after Lankau’s crotch, the big man rolled onto his side and pushed Bryan away.

They sat a couple of feet apart, each weighing his options as they recovered their breath. An old man who knew what there was to know about killing and a middle-aged doctor who knew luck was not eternal. Lankau was looking for anything that might serve as a weapon. Bryan was looking solely for the Kenju.

Lankau was the first to succeed. Bryan never saw it coming. The hallway sideboard hit him hard on the collarbone, knocking the wind out of him. Instantly the big man flew at him as if he’d grown wings.

Punching him in the stomach with one arm, Lankau slid the other around Bryan’s neck and seized the neck hairs that Laureen had so often tried to make him trim. The grip of the
arm, huge as a pillar, nearly broke his neck. Then Lankau got up and flung Bryan with inhuman force against the wall with all the antlers. One of the trophies was at chest height. The small, sharp points shred Bryan’s jacket as if it had been mouldering for centuries.

Laureen’s scream made Bryan turn his head for a second. The next thing he felt was the collision with Lankau’s total weight. One of the antler’s points broke off on Bryan’s backbone with a snap, making Lankau roar with delight and intensify his attack.

It may have been pain that made Bryan stretch both arms into the air, or intuition. In any case his hands brushed against the bony armour of another of Lankau’s trophies.

Warm blood was already streaming down his back. With all the weight and strength he could muster, he wrenched the antler off the wall and swept it downward in a single movement, with such force that its points bore deep into Lankau’s thick, muscular neck. The broad-faced man instantly jumped backwards in astonishment, the deer’s skull sticking up above his head like some kind of deformity.

The effect was clear. The man tottered another couple of steps with a swaying movement characteristic of someone about to lose consciousness. But as he teetered backwards towards Laureen, Bryan realised Lankau had yet another ace up his sleeve.

Before he could react, the heavy man had moved behind Laureen and was standing semi-upright, leaning against the back of her chair. His right arm already lay poised across her neck, his hand gripping her chin. It wasn’t hard to figure out what could happen next. A single jerk of that arm and it would be the end of her.

Lankau said nothing. Breathing heavily and staring Bryan straight in the face, his left hand groped for the antler that dangled from his fleshy neck. Bryan detached himself from the wall at the same moment as Lankau yanked his left hand upward. Their roars of pain were indistinguishable.

‘Stay where you are!’ Lankau screamed, as Bryan took a step forward. ‘One wrong move and I’ll break her neck!’

‘I don’t doubt it!’ Bryan knew it was no empty threat.

‘Bring the twine from over there. You know where it is!’

‘I’ll bleed to death if I don’t bandage my back first!’

Lankau’s bad eye opened a trifle as he raised his eyebrows. There was no mercy to be had from that quarter. Both of them stood still, sizing each other up.

The expression in Laureen’s eyes was heartrending. The grip on her neck made the tendons stand out in taut lines. Breaking her neck would not mean the end of the fight. They both realised this, so Bryan could afford to defy him and slowly remove his pullover. The knife stab in his side was pumping blood slowly and steadily over his thigh. He felt carefully across his back. The wounds caused by the antler tips were jagged, the gouges deep. He stripped all the clothes off his upper body.

The bandaging job was extremely provisional. Lankau smiled as Bryan tore his shirt into strips and attempted to patch himself up with almost acrobatic dexterity. Finally Bryan slipped the pullover back over his head and fetched the twine.

‘I’m afraid all that bandaging won’t do you much good,’ laughed Lankau, putting his hand to his neck.

Bryan ignored him. ‘And now I’ll bet you want me to tie myself up.’

‘Start with your feet, you bastard!’

Bryan bent down with difficulty. ‘You realise you won’t get away with this, don’t you?’

‘Who’s to prevent me?’

‘People know I’m out here!’

Lankau looked at him indulgently. ‘Oh, do they, really? And I suppose there’s a whole cavalry regiment stationed out there on the edge of Münstertal?’ He laughed again loudly. ‘Maybe there’s already someone behind me, ready to shoot. Is that going to be your next practical joke?’

‘I told the clerk at the hotel where I’d be this evening.’

‘Oh, yeah?’ Lankau sneered. ‘Then thanks for the information,
Herr
von der Leyen. We’ll have to find a reasonable explanation for your disappearance, won’t we? That shouldn’t be too hard, should it?’

‘My name’s not von der Leyen. Can’t you get that into your thick skull?’

‘Tie up your feet and quit talking!’

‘You know she’s my wife, don’t you?’

‘I know many things! Oh, yes. That she’s deaf, for example. Also that she can’t say anything unless she’s gagged. Then she manages to talk quite well. And I know her name’s Laura, but in reality it’s Laureen, and that she comes from Freiburg, yet prefers living in Canterbury. You happen to live in Canterbury, too, I would imagine.’

‘I’ve lived there all my life except for the few months during the war when you know very well where I was!’

‘And so you two turtledoves thought you should come over here on a little tourist jaunt? How cosy!’ His sarcastic smile vanished and he drew a deep breath. ‘Have you finished yet? Have you tied it tightly?’

‘Yeah!’

‘Then get up, take the rest of the twine and hop over here to the table. Let me see if it’s tight enough. Put your hands behind your back while you hop!’

Lankau’s tug at the rope confirmed that one part of the job was accomplished. His rapid breathing betrayed his excitement. ‘Lean over the table, you got that?’ Bryan laid his chin on the tabletop. The quick jerk to his right arm almost broke it.

‘Stay like that,’ Lankau warned. ‘If you make the slightest move, I’ll break your arm!’

Whereupon he wound the twine around Bryan’s right wrist and continued around his thumb, then through Bryan’s belt. Bryan howled as his hand was fastened to his back.

‘You’re quite a couple, you two,’ Lankau continued, turning Bryan over so the edge of the table stuck into the punctures in
his back. Bryan bore the pain without flinching. ‘Why, you’re almost like Peter and Andrea. There’s a pair of charmers for you! Friendly and kind and ever so sweet!’ He laughed. ‘You know them, I suppose?’

‘Stich is dead,’ Bryan said tonelessly, as his left arm was tied to his belt in the same manner, only this time in front of his stomach.

Lankau froze. He looked as if he were contemplating hitting him. ‘So, here we go again, you swine. Always full of surprises!’

‘He’s dead. I found him and a woman in a flat on Luisenstrasse about an hour ago. They were still warm.’ Bryan shut his eyes tight as Lankau raised his fist. The blow was calculated and brutal. Then the broad-faced man lugged him over in front of the woman and let him fall at her feet.

‘Let me see the two of you.’ He clutched his neck, rubbed it a bit and then removed the gag from Laureen’s mouth. The woman began sobbing before he managed to apply the scarf to the wound in his neck.

‘Bryan, forgive me!’ she said, with great difficulty. She had tears in her eyes. ‘I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry!’

‘Isn’t that what I said?’ Lankau’s burst of laughter made him cough. ‘For a deaf and dumb German woman, she speaks pretty good English.’ He sat down at the back of the room, breathing heavily as he listened to Laureen’s loving, despairing voice.