Safe as Houses (3 page)

She can't make a call; she can't even look for a weapon. There are plenty of things up here with which she could defend herself: scissors, a penknife, a loose floorboard with nails sticking out, any number of heavy objects. But as long as Kreuger is with Anouk, she can't take anything with her. Nor can she risk him giving her a body-search.

Lisa grabs the inhaler and the Ventolin canister from Anouk's bedside table. Her hand begins to bleed again from the exertion. She goes to get bandages, cotton wool and disinfectant from the medicine cabinet in the bathroom. When she turns around, Kreuger is standing there.

She represses a scream. Although he is slight, his height fills the doorframe. His presence makes the room feel small. She shuffles backwards but ends up flat against the wall.

Kreuger looks at all the stuff she's holding. ‘What have you got there?'

‘I need to bandage my hand. The bleeding won't stop.'

With a tilt of the head, Kreuger indicates that she should follow him and she obeys. He nods at the bedroom, and, after a slight hesitation, Lisa goes in.

‘Sit down.'

There's no chair. He can only mean on the bed. Lisa awkwardly sits down on the edge. Kreuger lowers his long body next to hers. Close, far too close.

He takes her hand, throws the sock on the floor, rubs some disinfectant on the wound and places a sterile gauze on it. Next he applies a wad of cotton wool and begins to bind her hand. He must know what he's doing. Two minutes later her hand is professionally bandaged up.

‘Thanks.' Lisa doesn't know where to look, hating the intimacy of the moment.

Kreuger doesn't respond. He stands up and Lisa automatically does the same.

They stand facing each other next to the double bed in which she spent so many passionate hours with Mark. Lisa breaks out in a sweat. As long as he doesn't . . . See, he's looking at the bed. And at her. She has to try to distract him.

‘You must have done that before. Just like a doctor.' She holds up her bandaged hand.

‘I did a first-aid course,' comes the gruff reply.

‘Aha. Always handy.'

‘It's absolutely necessary if you have children.
They could choke on a toy or fall into the water or cut themselves on something.'

Lisa nods in reply. So he has children. Children he feels such a responsibility towards that he has gone on a first-aid course.

‘Mummy!' Anouk cries plaintively from downstairs.

Their eyes meet: Lisa's questioning, Kreuger's irritated.

Nevertheless, he nods at her, and she flashes him a quick smile to express her gratitude. This is how things are. She has to ask permission to go downstairs in her own house, and she has to be thankful for receiving it, she thinks as she walks down the stairs.

Kreuger's footsteps follow closely behind.

‘I'm thirsty!' Anouk says weakly, as soon as they enter the sitting room.

‘I'll get you some water. It's time for your medicine anyway.'

In the kitchen she holds a glass under the tap and pretends not to notice Kreuger watching her from the sitting room. She returns to Anouk and gives her a spoonful of antibiotic syrup, followed by the glass of water. Her daughter drinks and then Lisa holds the inhaler to her mouth. A single press on the button releases a stream of Ventolin into Anouk's airways.

Kreuger observes them without comment.

Suddenly Lisa feels more confident. If he'd been planning to murder them, surely he would have done so already.

Just when she is wondering what will happen next, the calm in the house is broken by the shrill sound of the doorbell.

She's been in denial for half an hour, but she can no longer repress the disquieting thought that she is lost. There's no point in just driving around like this any more. Senta sighs and opens the glove box to take out the road map. Not that she is expecting it to help her much, since she doesn't have a clue where she is. But perhaps she can work out where she went wrong and follow that road back.

Spread out, the map covers most of the dashboard and steering wheel. She studies it sceptically. She doesn't really need the map; she already has a suspicion of where she went wrong – at the roundabout, when she should have gone towards Appeltern. She probably got off one exit too soon. The sudden mist obscured the signposts, but she thought she knew which direction to take. The autumn weather is ridiculously changeable during
this period, one moment wonderfully sunny, the next raining or misty.

Now she is stuck on a bumpy track heading towards God knows where. Senta turns on her headlights. The bright light barely cuts through the thick ribbons of mist.

Senta takes a deep breath. What now? Turn around and go back to the roundabout, or carry on in the hope of reaching a proper road? She opens the window and sticks her head outside. She looks around mistrustfully. Could she even manage to make a U-turn here? There could be ditches on either side for all she knows. She doesn't feel like getting out. God knows where she is. Just drive on, then. Even dirt tracks lead somewhere.

Senta continues with caution. The road surface becomes even worse: the wheels sink into deep troughs. Everything around her is grey and empty, as if she were approaching the end of the world. After five more minutes of lurching along, she hears a plaintive sound somewhere on her right, in the grey mist. It is a sheep bleating, and others slowly join in on the left and on the right.

Could she be driving through the middle of a field?

If that's the case, there's not much she can do about it. She carefully presses the accelerator and drives on. Tonight, once she's safely ensconced on
the sofa at home, she'll be able to laugh about this adventure. Her three children will laugh about their mother, and Frank, with a tired glance at her, will make some comment about women drivers.

Maybe she'd be better off keeping it to herself.

Suddenly the wheels of her Peugeot get a better purchase on the road. The bumping stops; she's hit hard ground.

Senta opens her door. Looking down, she sees a stony surface, and when she peers in front of her she can make out the contours of a house in the distance. She's probably on private property now, but no one will blame her in this weather. At least she hopes not.

She follows the road, which goes past the house and climbs towards a canal. A little more gas and she's on the embankment, and when she reaches a fork in the road she puts on the brakes.

And now? Her intuition tells her to turn right, but she's already made the mistake of trusting her intuition. After a brief hesitation she decides to go back to the house she's just passed to ask for directions. In a moment of clarity she remembers to put on her hazards, then she gets out, locks the car and walks down the steep slope.

The house looks quiet and deserted. Ribbons of mist swirl around the sloping roof and engulf the flower pots and box trees in the front garden.

The gravel crunches under her feet as she advances towards the front door and rings the bell. An old-fashioned-sounding tinkle fills the space behind it.

No reply. The second time she rings she presses her ear to the door, but once the sound has died out there's nothing from inside. There is probably no one home, but it is difficult to tell through the frosted glass. To her right there is an extension with a garage door. She'll have to walk around the house. It's rather impolite, but the chance of getting even more lost puts paid to any thoughts of decorum.

Decisively, she starts on her way. There's a rotary washing line in the garden. The washing, a few shirts and a nightdress hang motionlessly in the mist. There's a sheet on the ground, surrounded by a jumble of pegs. The washing basket, which had probably been on the wrought-iron side table, lies on the grass a little further up.

It is as though someone is running chilly fingertips along her spine. The thick mist, the doleful washing and the eerie silence around her cause her throat to tighten.

She casts a glance through the kitchen window. Nobody. Now she starts to feel a little afraid. She can hardly try the door or knock on the window-pane, can she?

This is stupid – she's going back. The embankment will probably lead to a village, no matter which way she turns on it.

She arches her neck and takes a step to the side to look in through the large windows of the sitting room. She jumps when she sees someone on the sofa. A young woman is staring right at her. Even at this distance, Senta can see how pale she looks and how unnatural and tense her posture is.

With a reassuring hand gesture and a smile, Senta tries to make it clear that she means no harm. The poor woman must have been terrified when Senta loomed up out of the mist. She raises her eyebrows questioningly and nods at the kitchen door, but the woman doesn't move. She is sitting next to a small girl, who is lying on the sofa under a duvet. The woman holds Senta's gaze for several seconds, then slowly raises her hand and brushes her blonde hair from her face. Then her eyes roam over to a spot in the corner of the room.

Something about her bearing sets off alarm bells in Senta's head. Maybe it is the fixed expression on the woman's face, or the bandage on her raised hand. A warning sign begins to flash. Don't take another step.

But she does. A small step – not towards the kitchen door but towards the window. The curtain obscures her view of the room, but the house has
large windows on all sides, which must let in a lot of light in fine weather. Behind the sofa on which the woman sits there's another large window, and she can see the rest of the room reflected in it.

There's a man standing in the middle of the room. She sees a large knife in his right hand.

Senta automatically takes a step backwards. The man doesn't know that she's standing here; he probably assumes that she's still outside the front door. The woman is the only person who has seen her, but she doesn't make the mistake of letting her gaze travel outside again.

Very carefully, Senta retreats, relieved that she didn't knock on the kitchen door or, worse still, go inside.

She runs, her heart racing, back towards the front of the house. As she sets foot on the gravel path, she pulls up and forces herself to walk normally, like someone who has given up ringing the bell and is leaving.

She keeps expecting the man to come up behind her. She resists the temptation to look back over her shoulder and checks her pace all the way to her car. Only when she reaches it does she turn around. The house looks quiet, swallowed up in the mist again.

Senta gets into her car as fast as she can. She puts on her seatbelt and starts the engine. She
hesitates for a second, mobile ready in her hand, but then she sees there is no signal. Get away – not a second to lose.

She presses the accelerator nervously, accidentally turns the wheel too far to the right and almost drives off the bank. With a frustrated curse, she corrects the manoeuvre.

She tears along the embankment. Ideally she'd go at it full throttle, but that would be too risky. She is already driving faster than she should be, and the curves of the road are looming up unexpectedly as it is.

Suddenly the mist seems to dissolve away. She can see quite a stretch of road in front of her and even the road markings. Senta speeds up immediately. There is no time to lose. She has no idea what was going on back there; perhaps that man was the woman's violent husband. But he could just as easily be an intruder. Whatever it is, that woman and that child need help.

She grabs the mobile phone from the seat next to her and dials 112. As it rings, she continues to drive. Usually she would have slowed down, but her foot on the accelerator seems to have a life of its own.

Suddenly she sees a bend in the roadside hurtling towards her out of nowhere. She frantically turns the wheel, swerving violently to the left. Her mobile
falls and lands between her feet. Senta drags the wheel back to the right and goes to brake, but the telephone has become caught under the pedal. She desperately attempts to dislodge it with her other foot, as she tries to keep the wheel straight.

Too fast, she's going too fast! A new bend looms. The brakes screech but she knows she's not going to make it. The smell of burning rubber hits her; she can hear herself screaming as reeds smack into the bonnet. Then she has left the canal bank and is plunging down into a grey world in which light and water can no longer be told apart.

The first thing Senta realises is that she can't see any water, even though it must be there. Just a few seconds later there is an enormous splash, and her head hits the steering wheel. Her vision turns black, but the water around her ankles rouses her immediately. Dazed, she opens her eyes and feels her forehead. Lightning flashes of pain shoot across her retina and bore into her head.

The cold slowly rises up her legs. She sees water streaming in under the door.

At a stroke, the numbness disappears. The coming minutes play out before her – minutes during which she will fight under water with a door that won't open, gasp for air and drown.

She looks around in wild panic.

Outside the car, grey water ripples. Paralysed with fear, Senta seizes the steering wheel. Her body
and soul become completely still. She sits motionlessly in her seat, as though the terrifying situation in which she finds herself can be held at arm's length.

Then the water splashes around her knees and the rising chill sends an enormous scream out of her mouth. She suddenly finds the energy to switch on the light in the car and to search for the buckle of her seatbelt with frantic hands.

Some people say you should wait until the car has filled with water, because then a large air bubble forms. This is nonsense. There isn't always an air bubble, and the stupidest thing you can do is to wait until the doors won't open any more and the electrical windows have stopped working. If you drive your car into water, you have around ten seconds until it disappears under the surface, ten seconds in which to open the windows, ten life-saving seconds in which to make your escape. With an emergency tool like a LifeHammer, you can cut through a seatbelt or break a window.