Safe as Houses (15 page)

When she goes into the sitting room, Kreuger has gone. Lisa pricks up her ears and hears him pulling the toilet roll in the bathroom. He stays away for so long that she becomes sure he's putting on a show.

She walks to the cupboard in the hall with a stoical face, gets out the vacuum cleaner and sets to work. The temptation is enormous, but she cannot take the risk. Not now that he's on the point of leaving.

She is given lots of opportunities to raise the alarm throughout the day. The computer remains on, and Kreuger regularly leaves her alone downstairs. When she goes upstairs to fetch the dirty sheets, she suddenly sees her mobile lying on the bed.

Lisa stands motionless, prey to torturous indecision. All her survival instincts scream at her to pick up the telephone and dial 112. She doesn't have to give a detailed explanation; just a few seconds
would be enough. But what if this is another test? Maybe Kreuger has put her mobile on the bed in such a way as to alert him if it's touched. She'd have to put it back in exactly the same place. Perhaps he's put a hair on it, or devised some other cunning trick. Or is she thinking too much?

The phone lies on the cheerful floral duvet cover, screaming for her attention. Lisa starts to sweat. Apart from her mistrust, there's another emotion at work: fear. It paralyses her muscles, makes her ears roar and her hands shake. She looks nervously over her shoulder. Where is Kreuger now? She left him downstairs, but he's probably just at the bottom of the stairs. Maybe he's removed her SIM card.

She doesn't do it. Her mobile is lying there too obviously, too nonchalantly. Kreuger must have put it there deliberately.

But this does give her the opportunity to write a note to the postman.

She hastily searches Anouk's room for a sheet of drawing paper and scrawls her cry for help in red felt-tip pen with lots of exclamation marks.

Please help me! The escaped criminal Mick Kreuger is holding me and my daughter hostage! This is NO joke! Please take this note to the police at once!

Lisa Fresen

She tears off the bottom part of the sheet, folds the written part twice and puts it in her jeans pocket. Then she gets the washing basket from the bathroom and goes downstairs, her body shaking. Her cheeks are burning when she enters the sitting room.

Kreuger is sitting in front of the television, zapping through the 24-hour news headlines. He gives her one very brief glance. Lisa ignores him. She walks to the washing machine in the utility room and sorts through the laundry. She takes her time and gradually calms down.

You haven't done anything, she reassures herself. He can't accuse you of anything. You didn't take the risk and that was very sensible.

The problem is that it doesn't
feel
sensible. She never would have thought she'd behave so passively in a threatening situation.

‘You didn't have a choice,' she mutters. ‘It would be different without Anouk, but you simply don't have a choice now.'

She gets up and suddenly Kreuger is standing behind her. Lisa cries out in shock.

‘Don't be afraid!' He puts his hands on her shoulders, and Lisa knows that he can feel her shaking. ‘Hey? Are you so frightened? I just wanted to tell you something.' He waits a while and then gently squeezes her shoulders. ‘You won't sleep in
the basement tonight,' he says, with the expression of someone offering her a magnificent gift.

‘Anouk can return to her own room, and you too. With me,' he adds.

Hope and a sense of resignation make way for a new feeling of horror. Lisa desperately tries to adopt a pose she can hide behind, but she fears he can see right through her. His sardonic laugh confirms this, and so does the hand on her buttocks.

‘I'll leave at the end of the week. Sunday evening I think.' Kreuger grabs her backside more firmly. ‘But I won't take either of you with me. That would make things too complicated. We'll say goodbye for good on Sunday. So we'll just have to enjoy ourselves for the rest of the week, don't you agree?'

Alexander phones in the evening, after visiting hours. This time he wants a detailed account of everything she can remember and what she experienced during the coma.

‘Were you really completely absent or did anything get through?' he asks with interest.

‘You know, it was just like I was swimming around in a deep dark sea,' Senta says pensively. ‘Unfathomable depths that pulled me down like a magnet. Sometimes I managed to get to the surface and then I heard people talking, and was aware of my surroundings. I knew I had to come out, but I just couldn't. I kept being pulled back down into the depths. It was very frightening.'

‘Could you hear the doctors? What did they say exactly?'

Senta tells the story, interrupted by Alexander's
questions from time to time. His interest does her good, and she talks ten to the dozen about everything that she remembers from those lonely hours.

When she finally hangs up, she's exhausted, but she still has difficulty in falling asleep. Alexander's detailed questions have made her restless. Frank didn't ask her nearly as much, for fear that he'd tire her out or that she'd get upset. His eyes told her again and again that he could barely believe that the catastrophe threatening them had been averted.

Senta turns on to her side and sighs. There's something wrong, but she doesn't know exactly what it is. Only once she's dozed off and has reached a state between waking and sleep does the answer come to her.

The mattresses are back where they belong: in Anouk's room and in the spare bedroom. Anouk is happy, but Lisa would have preferred to stay in the basement. It is Wednesday evening, and even if Kreuger does leave on Sunday, he's got four long nights to enact all of his sexual fantasies with her.

I have to get away, she thinks feverishly. If
he
doesn't leave, I will.
With
Anouk.

Tonight seems like the best time to escape. She can try to get away when he's asleep.

The whole evening she keeps a discreet eye on Kreuger. Her mobile has disappeared from her bed. He must have put it away somewhere. It might be in his trouser pocket, along with the keys to the front door and her car. Or has he hidden those too? That would make matters rather more complicated. They'd have to escape through Anouk's
bedroom window. She pictures herself edging down the drainpipe to the garage roof with a frightened, trembling child. She'd have no hesitation in doing it on her own, but can she force Anouk to attempt something so dangerous?

She doesn't have a choice. She can't imagine Kreuger simply leaving them behind when he goes on Sunday. However sympathetic he might seem at the moment, he's still a criminal, a murderer with a diminished sense of moral responsibility. Since she started to cooperate, he has changed, but she can't count on the change being a permanent one. He might have planned it all this way. She cooks for him, does the washing and lets him fuck her. He couldn't have found a better deal. But she won't find out what his real plans are until Sunday.

Lisa stares out of the window with her arms folded. She's going to do it. Tonight she'll climb out of the window with Anouk.

When she puts her daughter to bed, she dresses her in warm flannel pyjamas and sets her hoody apart from the rest of the clothes in the wardrobe. She'll be able to grab it easily tonight. She puts out Anouk's trainers and looks around. Does she need anything else?

A rope around her waist, she thinks. A rope to bind her to me in case she slips.

A feeling of desperation comes over her and she sinks on to the edge of Anouk's bed.

‘What's the matter, Mummy?' Anouk asks sleepily. ‘Why were you getting my hoody?'

‘Oh, no reason,' Lisa says. ‘Go to sleep. Isn't it lovely to be back in your own bed?'

Anouk rolls on to her side. ‘When's he going away?' she mutters drowsily.

‘Soon,' Lisa promises her with a kiss on the cheek. Very soon, she adds to herself.

His arm is wrapped around her like a tight chain. Lisa has turned on to her side with her back to him and stares into the darkness. Her nakedness screams out at her, accentuated by Kreuger's hand, which has been on her right breast for more than an hour now. Her body is sore where he has bitten her. She has endured it again, relieved that the darkness could hide her tears.

Her throat is fighting against the bile that keeps rising from her stomach. If she's not careful, she'll wake him up by vomiting. Is he really asleep? She keeps her eyes constantly on the red digital numbers lighting up her bedside table. An hour and a half already. She listens to his breathing – calm and regular. His grip on her breast has weakened. That could mean he's asleep. Or he could be pretending.

A new wave of nausea wells up in her. To the
bathroom, quick. She worms her way out of Kreuger's grasp and slides out of bed. There's a strong smell of sex and sweat all around her. No wonder she feels sick.

She starts to feel better as soon as she's on the landing. She takes a few deep breaths in relief and goes to the bathroom to take a sip of water. It stays quiet in the bedroom. Is he really sleeping deeply? She listens carefully, but can hear only his regular breathing. It's such a relief just to be away from him for a while that she can't bring herself to return to the bedroom.

But she needs clothes, even if it's only her dressing gown. It's risky, but she'll have to search his trouser pockets to see if he has her mobile or keys. Probably not, but you never know. It might spare them a dangerous escapade on the garage roof.

Lisa looks at herself in the mirror. Moonlight falls through the window and lights up her pale, waxen face. There are circles under her eyes, and her hair hangs flat and lifeless around her face. A shadow of the woman who unsuspectingly hung out the washing on Monday afternoon.

She tries to encourage herself. Go on, girl. Tiptoe into the bedroom and quickly check his trouser pockets. A piece of cake.

She's trembling too much to walk on tiptoe. She shuffles back to the bedroom, one foot in front of
the other, into the darkness and the stench. Kreuger is snoring lightly.

Lisa silently walks around the bed to where his clothes are messily piled on a chair. Her hands are shaking, her wound suddenly throbbing, as she feels around until she finds the tough denim of his jeans. If there are keys in the pocket, they might clink.

She picks them up very carefully. Her fingers find his belt and then slide around to the pockets. They are disappointingly light. She cautiously slips her hand into the first pocket, but it is empty.

Kreuger turns on to his side with a groan. Lisa's nausea returns at full force. She can't vomit, not now. She breathes deeply in and out, and when the wave has subsided a little, she hurries her hand into the other pocket. It too is empty. She had expected this, but the disappointment is still harsh. Nothing for it now but to get Anouk on to the garage roof, only she doesn't know if she'll manage with her legs feeling so weak.

Her eyes slide to the empty place next to Kreuger in the bed, and her face contorts into a grimace. Of course she'll manage. The alternative is unbearable.

She picks up her dressing gown, which is lying at the foot of the bed, and takes it with her. She puts it on outside on the landing. She is suddenly
angry with herself for not having any trainers, only shoes and high-heeled boots. They would make much too much noise, and might easily cause her to slip on the sloping roof. It'll have to be bare feet.

Wake up Anouk and get her into her hoody. Hope that she doesn't protest at the top of her voice or insist on going to the loo.

Lisa creeps to her daughter's room, but then the bile rises again unstoppably. A few more steps and she's in the bathroom, where she collapses on to her knees in front of the toilet bowl.

Her stomach heaves, her body cramps, and she feels it coming. Her vomit hits the water in the toilet. So much noise. She isn't surprised when she hears someone coming into the bathroom behind her.

‘What's the matter with you?' Kreuger's voice asks.

She doesn't go to the trouble to answer, but holds her long hair into a ponytail with one hand. Every time she stops to catch her breath, her body shakes and she starts to gag again.

Kreuger watches her from the edge of the bath. Lisa ignores him.

When she's got to the point of vomiting only water and bile and her body has regained its composure, it occurs to her that tomorrow she'll have to
spend another day and another night with this man. She wipes her mouth, takes the beaker of water that Kreuger offers her with her shoulders slumped and begins to cry. Kreuger soothingly strokes her hair.

‘Poor Lisa,' he says. ‘Poor, poor Lisa.'

The first thing she sees when she parks in front of the door are the streamers. Pink, blue and white, they are draped around the door, across the front of the house, along the garden fence all the way to the street. If they'd had enough streamers, they'd have included the lamp-post, Frank tells her.

Senta gets out of the car, her eyes damp. She can hardly control her emotions when she sees her children waiting for her in the sitting room full of flowers. They burst into cheers and throw themselves at her; even Niels wraps his arms around her and presses his cheek against his mother's in a silent display of affection.

‘Oh, children, how lovely.' Senta cuddles each of them in turn.

‘We've got cake too!' Jelmer cries, and pulls her with one hand towards the kitchen, where an
enormous iced chocolate cake is waiting on the worktop. ‘This is your favourite kind of cake, isn't it, Mummy?'

‘Absolutely.' Senta reassures him. She turns to Frank, who is watching her every movement, his hands in his pockets and a wide grin on his face. A wave of tenderness and devotion runs through her. She walks over to him and kisses him gently on the lips.