The Trap (24 page)

24

I'm drinking tea in small sips. I had put on music in the hope it would drive away the voices in my head, but it's not working. Ella Fitzgerald is singing to me about the summertime and easy living, but summer is a long way off and my life feels hard and the voices in my head are still arguing about the truth. In the morning sun, the lake gleams indigo, violet, deep red, orange, yellow, and then pale blue.

I saw Victor Lenzen on that terrible, hot, deep-red night—I'm sure I did.

Linda and her stories.

I saw him.

The way you saw that fawn in the clearing all those years ago?

I was only a child then. All children tell fibs, make things up.

And you're still at it now.

I know what I saw. I'm not mad.

Oh, aren't you?

Those pale eyes, the shape of his eyebrows, the look on his face—that mixture of fear and belligerence—all those things I saw twelve years ago, and all those things I recognised when he stood before me yesterday.

He has an alibi.

I saw him.

A bombproof alibi.

Still, it was him. I saw him.

Then why didn't the police catch him?

The police didn't ‘catch' me either. If everyone thinks I'm crazy and murdered my own sister, then why haven't the police arrested me?

You were lucky.

I've never been lucky.

You're a good liar.

I didn't lie. I saw him. At the terrace door.

You've been telling your stories for so long that you've come to believe them yourself.

I know what I saw. I remember that evening. I remember it precisely.

You're mad, Linda.

Nonsense!

You hear music that isn't there.

But I remember.

You see things that aren't there, you're constantly dizzy, your head's almost bursting with pain
—
you can't even help yourself.

I remember it precisely. He was there. I saw it in his eyes; he recognised me as well. And he hated me for bringing it all back to him. He was there. He killed Anna. Maybe I was wrong all along. Maybe Anna wasn't an accidental victim. Maybe the two of them knew each other. Just because I didn't know anything about an affair doesn't mean there was no affair. Who knows? Perhaps a jealous lover. A stalker. A lunatic.

It's YOU who's the lunatic. Maybe you're schizophrenic. Or have a brain tumour. Maybe that's what's causing the pain—and the dizziness and the music.

That ghastly music.

I look out the window. The water glistens and sparkles, and a fair distance away, on the eastern shore of the lake, something stirs. There's a movement of branches, and it steps out from between the trees, majestic and incredibly big: a red deer—dignified and beautiful, its head held high. I catch my breath and watch it as a painter might, drinking in its movements, its grace, its vigour. For a few moments it stands motionless in the light mist that is rising from the lake, and then it vanishes again between the trees.

So often have I sat here in the hope of seeing an animal, and so seldom have I actually seen one. And a red deer? Never. The animal seems to me like a sign.

There's no such thing as signs. You see things that aren't there.

For a long time, I remain sitting at the window in the big peaceful house that is my entire world, looking out, hoping that the red deer will return—knowing full well that it won't, but sitting and waiting all the same. I wouldn't know what else to do. I sit there, and the sight of the lake, its surface rippled by the wind, soothes my mind. The sun rises higher and higher, unmoved by the chaos that has descended on my world. It has its own world to shine on.

The sun is about 4500 million years old. I know that kind of thing; I've had a lot of time to read over the past ten or eleven years. It's already shone on a great deal of things. Its morning rays warm me through the glass. It's as if somebody were touching me and I relish it.

It's a lovely day. Maybe I can forget what I've been through and simply be grateful for this day, for the edge of the woods and the lake and the sunshine. The sun rises higher; it's not tired, even after 4500 million years. There's nothing I have to do, and I'm thinking that I could sit here forever, calm and serene—that it's best if I don't budge so much as an inch, because even the slightest change might destroy everything—when I hear it. The music.

Love, love, love.

No. Please, please, no.

Love, love, love.

Not again. Please, I can't stand it anymore.

I let out a dry sob, curl up on my chair and press my hands to my ears.

The music vanishes. I whimper and hold my head so tight that it hurts, while my heart pumps fear through my body. I don't know whether it was the despair or the pain or my extreme physical and mental exhaustion, but it's only now that it occurs to me: if I'm only imagining the music—if the music is only in my head and has only been in my head all along—then how is it possible that it's silenced as soon as I put my hands over my ears? I take my hands off my ears and listen. Nothing. I'm almost disappointed. I was beginning to think…

Love, love, love.

There it is again. I feel dizzy, like every time I hear it. But this time it sounds different. It swells and fades away and…moves about. The music is moving.

I get up from the chair with aching joints and try to get my bearings. Then, all of a sudden, I understand. The tilted windows all over the house… The music is coming from outside. It's not a recording of the Beatles; it's…whistling. Somebody is creeping round the house whistling.

My heart begins to race. Is it Victor Lenzen, come back to kill me after all? That doesn't make sense, I immediately correct myself; he had ample opportunity.

What a thought. Victor Lenzen is innocent and has proved it, however hard I may be finding it to concede the fact.

Then who was it? On numb legs I step closer to the window, press my face up against the cold glass and try to peer round the corner. I can't see anybody. The whistling grows fainter—whoever it is has moved away from me. I hurry next door to the dining room, telling myself I'm going to miss him again, fling open the door—and our eyes meet.

25

I stand like stone in the middle of the room and stare out of the window.

My gardener is looking in at me; the expression on his face is almost cheerful. The spell breaks and my anger is back, as if someone had flicked a switch—the anger and the piercing headache. Those Siamese twins.

‘Why are you doing that?' I yell.

He frowns. He doesn't seem to have heard me, but he can see my angry face. I fling open the window.

‘What the hell is this?' I ask him.

‘What's what?' Ferdi asks, puzzled, looking at me with his big, brown boy's eyes that are both out of place and touching in his wrinkly face.

‘That song you were whistling…'

I don't know how to finish the sentence; I'm afraid that Ferdi's going to say, ‘What song?' or something like that, and then I'd have to scream—scream and scream and scream and never stop.