Written in the Blood (39 page)

C
HAPTER
41

Interlaken, Switzerland

B
y the time they reached the private road serving A Kutya Herceg’s home, the skies over the Alps had darkened to indigo and the moon was up, companion to a smattering of stars. Leah saw the jagged silhouettes of the Jungfrau, the Mönch and the Eiger. Where snow gathered on their gentler slopes it glowed in the lunar light, but their steeper faces were so dark they looked like shapes snipped from black felt.

Except for two channels of crushed ice where a few other vehicles had made the ascent, a foot of snow covered the tarmac. Pine forest pressed close on either side, so still it seemed to be holding its breath.

Leah flicked on the vehicle’s full beams, illuminating a ribbon of snow curving up through the darkness. She didn’t want to lose traction on the slippery surface, but if they were to have any chance of climbing the slope, they needed as much speed as they could get. ‘Hold on, guys.’ Dropping down a gear, she pressed her foot harder to the floor. The old bus surged forward, engine blatting. Soraya planted a hand on the dash, bracing herself in her seat. Leah coaxed more speed from the vehicle, feeling it seesaw as it bounced around inside the tracks carved into the snow.

A few more seconds and they broke free into open white space. The road arced up and to the right, and there in the distance she saw, clinging to the mountainside, A Kutya Herceg’s sprawling chalet home. The building blazed with light, as pretty as a Christmas village. Smoke chugged from its chimneys, feathering away into the sky.

Soraya looked behind her and for the first time, as she regarded their young passengers, she smiled. ‘We’re here,’ she told them. ‘You’re safe.’

It was far too early to promise any such thing, but Leah kept her mouth closed, concentrating on the road. The engine was making a tortured rattling sound now, as if a bucketload of washers had been tipped inside.

Just as they came out of the turn, the rear wheels lost traction and the van began to slide. Leah compensated, turning into the skid, but the steering felt loose in her hands. Teeth clenched, she felt the wheels thump into a bank of frozen earth. The front end bounced up and then it crunched down. With a shudder, the engine died.

‘Sorry folks.’ Leah glanced behind her. ‘Everyone OK?’

A series of startled nods.

She peered into her wing mirrors. Darkness behind her, as oppressive as a grave. A few hundred yards up ahead, the carnival of lights streaming from the chalet’s windows.

With the engine dead, the silence around them was absolute. No breath of wind stirred the snow-laden trees. No animals hooted or cried.

Already the air inside the cab was beginning to cool. Leah turned the key in the ignition. She saw the headlights dim as the battery fed power to the starter motor, heard the pistons kick sluggishly. But the engine wouldn’t turn over. She tried it a handful of times before conceding that the old bus had carried them as far as it could.

She forced a grin. ‘Looks like we’re walking.’ Pulling off her fleece, she handed it to Emánuel, of all the children the most lightly dressed. ‘Here. Put this on.’ Beside her, Soraya unbuttoned her cardigan and swaddled Elias in it.

‘It’s going to be cold outside, but you’ll be warm soon,’ Leah told them. ‘I’ll go first, and I want you to follow closely, holding hands, just like we did before.’

She cranked open the door and jumped down into snow up to her knees. The frozen air hit her like a slap in the face. Wading to the VW’s side door, she rolled it open, feeling the vehicle’s warmth spiral out into the night.

Already, her fingers were beginning to numb.

‘Quickly,’ she said, helping the children climb out. They’d been silent until now, but the frigid mountain darkness was an unsettling change from the snugness of the VW’s interior. The two six-year-olds, Carina and Philipp, began to cry. ‘I know it’s cold,’ she told them, ‘but see that big bright house over there? That’s where we’re going, and I’m sure they’ll have warm milk, all sorts of nice things. We do need to hurry, though. Come on, everyone walk in my footprints.’

Breath steaming from her mouth, Soraya appeared from the other side of the van, cradling Elias.

‘OK?’ Leah asked. The woman nodded, cheeks burning red.

Leah pushed through the snow, clearing a path for those who followed. Her teeth ached with cold. As her eyes began to water, the chalet fractured into a thousand twinkling lights.

Underbellies lit by the moon reflecting off the snow, moving like oceans liners on a dark sea, the first few wisps of cloud had appeared, emissaries of a much larger pack sailing in from the east.

Most of the children were crying softly now, an eerie sound in the stillness, like the distant baying of wolves. They’d covered perhaps a quarter of the distance to the chalet, and already Leah had lost the feeling in her hands and feet.

She saw, from up in front, the swabbing beam of a torch. It swung left and right, and then it picked her out. The light wobbled and stuttered, and Leah realised that whoever operated it was moving towards them. She narrowed her eyes against its glare; all she could see behind it was an impenetrable wall of darkness. But as the light closed on her she gradually distinguished a figure, large and cumbersome. Gouts of breath snaked from its mouth. She heard breathing, rattling and loose, from lungs unused to exertion.

Finally, a voice. ‘I knew, from the moment I met you, that this would end in blood. You visit horrors on my home, Leah Wilde.’

A Kutya Herceg closed the last few yards to her, the torch beam’s reflections picking out the shining points of his eyes.

‘Hello, Ágoston,’ she said.

He was dressed in furs so expansive that his body seemed lost within them. His eyes weren’t kind as they appraised her, but when he trained his torch on the faces of the children she led, his mouth dropped open and his expression softened. ‘Well, don’t just stand there,’ he barked. ‘You’ll freeze. Get up to the house. Now!’ Playing the light over his daughter, he asked, ‘Are you hurt?’

Shivering, Soraya shook her head.

‘Gods, you don’t even have a coat. Idiots, all of you.’

He clumped back towards the chalet, torch beam bobbing before him.

Despite his age, he was surprisingly spry. Leah struggled to keep up. ‘Where’s Luca?’

‘Back at the house. A few things he had to do.’

‘He sent you out here in this?’

A Kutya Herceg lurched to a stop and aimed his light at her face, blinding her. ‘No one sends me anywhere,’ he snapped. He moved away before she could respond, continuing his wheezing climb up the slope.

A few things he had to do
.

Would her reunion with Luca Sultés be an awkward one? She hoped not. Neither of them had been able to hide the attraction they’d felt for each other when they’d first met, but Leah had never managed to reconcile her feelings with the knowledge of his father’s deeds.

Perhaps that had been unfair, but she suspected that Luca shared the same dark rage as his father when provoked. With a history like hers, she wanted none of that. He had contacted her a few times over the past year, had even offered to visit once or twice. Steadily, as she vacillated, his phone calls were replaced by silence.

Leah followed Ágoston across the driveway, shivering so uncontrollably now that she found it increasingly difficult to breathe. He unlatched the chalet’s fortress-like entrance and a furnace heat rolled out to greet her. She led the children inside, greedy for its warmth.

Soraya was the last over the threshold. Ágoston closed the door behind her. Its mortices engaged with a clunk, and even though Leah was immeasurably grateful, she couldn’t help thinking that it was the sound of a crypt slamming shut.

Stupid. She could not allow thoughts like that to infect her. Somewhere out there, a nest of
tolvajok
hunted them. They might already be on the mountain. She needed to think clearly, as her mother would – not surrender to the paralysis of fear. So far, her plan had been simple: get the children out of Italy, warn her family in Calw. That part of it was complete. Now she needed to focus on what came next.

Ágoston moved to the nearest wall and pressed a button on a security panel. The device scanned his iris, and then it chimed. He stamped his boots on the hardwood floor. ‘This way.’

He led them along a short passage and into an industrial-sized kitchen. A bear-like man, with a rampant ginger beard and a huge belly restrained by a spotless white apron, was standing at a range, stirring a pot with a wooden spoon.

‘This is Jérôme,’ her host said. ‘The best chef you’ll meet this side of Le Maurice.’

She nodded a greeting. The aroma from whatever was cooking smelled so heavenly she felt her stomach mutter in response.

Jérôme smiled, and then he gasped in mock surprise as he saw the legion of children filing into his workspace. ‘. . . eight . . . nine . . . ten,’ he said, counting them off. ‘Well, I guess we can handle that many. Who’s hungry?’ A forest of hands shot up, and his smile rose a notch. ‘That’s what I like to see. Hungry bellies! Why don’t you all get settled over there?’ He pointed to a long table by one wall, and Leah saw that ten place settings had already been laid. There was even a highchair for Elias.

With Soraya’s assistance, she seated the children. Jérôme served up bowls of chicken stew and placed them on the table, along with baskets filled with buttered rolls. After the carnage at Villa del Osservatore, the sudden domesticity felt surreal.

She was about to pull out her phone and call her mother when Luca walked in. She straightened, found herself grinning awkwardly. Luca went to his sister, threw his arms around her and kissed her head. Then he turned to Leah. She’d expected him to greet her with more distance, if at all, but he wrapped her in his arms too, crushing her in his embrace.

‘I’m glad you’re safe.’

‘I’m so sorry, Luca.’ Horrified, she realised she was on the brink of tears.

‘Why sorry?’

She closed her eyes, just briefly, a moment’s respite. In the calming warmth of this kitchen, she suddenly felt exhausted. ‘If I’d never come here,’ she began, and then, because she knew her tears would flow after all, and because it wasn’t right for the children to see that, she hid her face and ducked into the hall.

He followed her out. ‘If you’d never come here,’ he told her, ‘then my sister wouldn’t be pregnant. Nor any of the other women you’ve helped. And none of those children eating dinner would have a future.’

‘Maybe they don’t.’

He put his hands on her shoulders. ‘Don’t say that. Don’t even think it.’

This close, his eyes were so intense that she couldn’t look away. For a brief moment she thought he was going to kiss her, and even though it would have been wrong, she might have given in to it.

Instead, he pulled her into another tight embrace, rubbing her back. ‘You’re impossible.’

Leah laughed through her tears, surprised at how much better she felt at his closeness. ‘Yeah, that’s what I heard. But I am sorry. For involving you like this.’

‘I’m already involved. And if there’s one thing this family’s good at, it’s dealing with trouble. Come on, let’s get you kitted out.’

He led her back to the entrance hall and into the cloakroom where, during her first visit a year earlier, he had relieved her of her pistol.

Lining the far wall stood the gun cabinets. At a keypad, Luca entered a code and the doors rolled open. Two cabinets held rows of handguns, hunting rifles and shotguns. The third contained boxes of ammunition and magazine clips.

She stared at the collected weaponry, eyes moving across the various pieces. Never had she been so relieved to see such an arsenal of destruction. She glanced back at Luca.

‘Take your pick.’

Hesitating a moment, she plucked a Beretta from the rack.

‘It’s a nine-millimetre. Are you comfortable with that?’

Leah ejected the empty magazine, pulled back on the slide, checked the barrel was clear, released the slide stop, pointed the weapon at the floor and dry-fired it. From the ammo cabinet she helped herself to four pre-loaded magazines and snapped one into the gun.

‘Point taken,’ he said. ‘Anything else?’

She selected a hunting rifle with a dark green stock and a Zeiss scope. ‘What’s this?’

‘A Blaser R8.’

‘What does it fire?’

‘Here.’ He picked up a clip from the ammo cabinet, took the rifle from her and loaded it before handing it back. ‘Have you ever . . .’ He stopped when he saw her expression. ‘Forget it.’

Luca zipped himself into an ammunition vest, selected a weapon and loaded it, stuffing spare magazines into the vest’s pockets.

The sight should have reassured her. It didn’t. ‘Tell me about Jérôme.’

‘A good guy.’

‘I’m sure. What else?’

‘I’ve known him seventy years. He’s
kirekesztett
. Wife and child killed during the
cull.’

‘What was his crime?’

‘I killed a man,’ said a voice behind her. She found the ginger chef standing in the doorway, arms folded over his gargantuan belly. ‘OK, a couple of them. I was drunk, they were goading me.’ He came over to the gun cabinet, picked out a Remington pump-action and began to load rounds into it. When it was full, he turned to her and shrugged. ‘I used to drink. Now I don’t.’

‘Probably wise.’

He grinned. ‘Those things hunting you, Leah? They’ll have to get past me first. That’s all you need to know.’

‘Your other staff,’ she said to Luca. ‘Where are they?’

‘We sent them away. There’s no safety in numbers with
tolvajok
. The fewer of us, and the more spread out we are, the better.’ He opened a drawer, removed three penlight torches. After checking their batteries, he pocketed one and handed out the others. ‘Let’s go up.’

‘The children,’ Leah said. ‘Where’s the best place to shelter them?’

‘We’ll put them in here for the night. There’s enough space to lay out bedding. No windows, and that door is lined with an inch of steel. The lock is code-operated.’