Safe as Houses Read online

  Mr Wenteling hesitates, then agrees to her visit and offers to go with her. ‘I can show you exactly where it happened.’

  ‘Fantastic, thank you.’ Senta looks at her watch. ‘It will take me an hour or two to get to you.’

  ‘I’ll be waiting for you,’ comes the simple response before they hang up.

  Filled with new energy, Senta gathers her things together. It’s difficult, because she has lost so much. It’ll be a while before she can get a new driving licence. But, because she has a spare credit card that she usually keeps in her desk, she’ll be able to fill up the car without any trouble and buy a large bunch of flowers for her rescuer.

  Soon she is sitting at the wheel of her new car, somewhat awkwardly, studying the dashboard. It doesn’t seem to offer any insurmountable problems. It’s a Friday afternoon; the roads are still quiet; she’ll figure out where all the knobs are while she’s driving. She experiences a short burst of fear, but when she switches on the engine and moves out of the drive, it fades away. The Toyota Auris is obedient and practically noiseless. What a lovely car! It’s like flying. Senta drives down the road filled with joy.

  She is about to turn left on to the ring road, when she changes her mind and drives towards the shopping centre. She parks and hurries to the shops. She picks up a large bouquet of flowers at the florist’s, a good bottle of wine at the off-licence and then, at the last moment, goes into Halfords and buys a LifeHammer. Fluorescent yellow, so that she can see it in the dark.

  Back in the car, she puts the flowers and the wine on the back seat and unpacks the LifeHammer. She puts it in her coat pocket, starts the engine and glides out of the parking space.

  She knows she must relax. She turns on the radio and sings along to the latest hits, which she knows off by heart because Denise and Niels play them at full blast every day. But whenever water shines in the distance she stops singing and slows down. She keeps a very close eye on the oncoming traffic and the cars behind her, wary of unexpected manoeuvres. She is relieved when a crash barrier looms up next to her and accompanies her for part of the journey. Whenever the waterfront pops up treacherously, her hands grip the steering wheel hard, turning her knuckles white.

  Calm down, she tells herself. You’re not driving fast, and there isn’t a soul on the road; you won’t drive into the water. And this time, if it does happen, you’ve got a LifeHammer. One tap on the glass and you’ll be out.

  Still, she doesn’t breathe properly again until the motorway winds away and there is no more water to be seen.

  36

  They spend the entire afternoon sitting on the floor on the cushions from the garden furniture, and then spend the night on them too. No blankets – just arms around each other. Anouk doesn’t complain once. She puts up with the hunger, thirst and discomfort with a composure far beyond her years.

  ‘If Daddy comes, he’ll send the bad man away, won’t he?’ There’s such hopeful expectation in Anouk’s eyes. Lisa doesn’t have the heart to take this from her.

  ‘Of course,’ she says. At the same time, the thought that Mark is sure to come by tomorrow adds to her panic. How will Kreuger react?

  ‘I’m cold,’ Anouk admits miserably.

  Lisa pulls her close. This child has given her so much joy. Even though life hasn’t gone the way she’d planned, it has at least given her Anouk.

  What did he say on the answering machine? That he is going to divorce Monique? Hope, mixed with a fear that she’ll have to go through everything she’s already had to bear all over again, overwhelms her. She leans against the wall, her eyes closed, Anouk in her arms.

  37

  ‘Here is where it happened.’ Rob Wenteling points at the water flowing quietly past. The sun is shining; the surface of the water glistens, reflecting the reeds and the blue sky. An unthreatening beauty spot in the Gelderland countryside.

  Senta stands up to her ankles in the long grass and has trouble imagining that she fought for her life here. In her mind’s eye she descends to the bottom of the canal and shivers.

  ‘Are you OK?’ Rob asks, his voice full of concern.

  When they had introduced themselves and she had given him the flowers and the wine, he’d still been a stranger to her, but after she’d heard the short version of the story of how he’d rescued her, it had been difficult to stay formal.

  ‘In some cultures, rescuer and casualty maintain a spiritual connection for ever,’ he had said. ‘Even blood ties can’t compete.’

  This is undoubtedly true. Even if she never sees this man again, she’ll think about him for the rest of her life.

  ‘Yes, I’m fine,’ she says when she realises that Rob is looking at her searchingly.

  Rob Wenteling is a calm, dignified old man who looks older than he is. After retiring, he gave up his daily shave. He has a grey beard and large, bristly eyebrows.

  ‘The village children think I’m Father Christmas,’ he had said with a smile.

  Senta could imagine that.

  After they’d had coffee, they’d gone to the site of the accident. Wolf, the sheepdog who had been with Rob on the Monday, walked alongside them off the lead.

  ‘You came from this direction.’ Rob gestures to the left, where the road bends away from them a few times. ‘I heard you coming and I thought, they’re going fast. I went to stand on the verge and called Wolf. You drove past, probably didn’t even see me in the mist, and then suddenly I heard the screech of your tyres. I began to run at once, but you’d gone into the water quite a way off. When I got there, the car had already disappeared under water. It was a while before I could find the right place. At last I saw the brake marks on the road and the tyre imprints in the grass. I kicked off my shoes, called 112 on my mobile and dived into the water.’

  They remain silent, their eyes fixed on the same spot.

  ‘And then?’ Senta asks finally.

  Rob Wenteling tells her. How scarily dark it was under water. He had concentrated on the car, which he could see only because the headlights were still burning. It was sinking quickly. While he was diving, they suddenly went out. Rob had cursed inwardly and immediately begun to doubt the location.

  Descending to the bottom with powerful strokes, he arrived just as the car landed with a bump.

  It was so dark down there, he told her, that he was unable to see what he was doing. He had swum around the car and let his hand glide over its side, looking for the door handle. But the only thing he could feel was glass. He kept reaching and searching, and then his head began to pound. Despite this, he continued, and suddenly his fingers closed around the edge of a door. It was slightly ajar. He somehow managed to pull it wide open and to feel around in the space inside, until his hand brushed against something heavy that was hanging half out of the car. A woman’s body.

  To his relief she moved when he pulled. If she had still been in the seatbelt, he’d have had a problem.

  It wasn’t difficult to get her out of the car: under water the weight of the body didn’t play a part, but he had become desperate for air. With one arm around her waist, he worked his way back up to the surface of the water.

  The journey upwards had seemed interminable. His lungs ran out of oxygen, and he came up panting for breath. Using his single free arm, he made his way to the bank with awkward strokes. He grabbed hold of a clump of reeds with one hand and pulled himself up. It cost him all his strength to pull Senta’s limp, heavy body behind him. He wrestled his way along, pulling and tugging, and when they were finally on the bank, he fell to the ground next to her body. He wheezed and hacked, but every second counted. All the time they’d been under water she’d worked along with him, but just as they’d surfaced her body had gone slack. Despite his exhaustion he began mouth-to-mouth at once.

  ‘So I wasn’t unconscious for long,’ Senta says.

  ‘No, not under water, but once you were up I couldn’t get you to come round. I carried on breathing into you; I was afraid I’d have to give you cardiac massage. Luckil
y you suddenly began to breathe again on your own, but you remained unconscious. I stayed with you and kept an eye on your breathing until the ambulance came,’ Rob recounts.

  Overwhelmed by his story, Senta throws both her arms around him. Rob lays a comforting hand on her shoulder.

  38

  As Senta drives back along the embankment, she is troubled by the thought that she will probably never see Rob Wenteling again. Everything that had to be said has been said, but she is still saddened to be leaving him behind.

  She turns left, the direction in which she was going when the accident occurred, and follows the curves of the bank at a steady speed. Why on earth was she driving so fast on that particular afternoon? She hates mist and drives carefully in it. Why wasn’t she doing so on that day?

  The only thing she has to go on is a certain feeling, which she is sure is somehow connected with the house she keeps picturing.

  Her mobile rings. As she’s getting it out of her jacket, she sees that it’s Alexander calling. Her instinct is to answer straight away, but she has a sudden image of herself speeding over the bank of the canal while she fiddles with her phone. She calmly pulls over before answering.

  ‘I’m in the car,’ she says without any preamble.

  ‘In the car? So soon?’ Alexander’s voice sounds surprised and worried.

  ‘Don’t worry, I’m fine. I went to the place where the accident happened.’

  ‘Oh!’ He sounds even more surprised. ‘How was it?’

  ‘Strange. I couldn’t really imagine it. If it wasn’t for the brake marks on the road, it would look just like any other spot.’

  ‘How can you be so sure that it was the right place, then?’

  ‘I called the man who rescued me. We went to the site together, and he told me his side of the story. I was really lucky, Alexander. Unbelievably lucky. I wouldn’t have survived without Rob’s help, that much was clear.’

  ‘Did you remember anything new?’

  ‘No, I didn’t. Only just now, when you called, I had a flash of myself driving along the embankment while I was doing something with my mobile, and at that moment I felt a real sense of urgency.’

  ‘Like you were in a hurry,’ Alexander says. ‘Could something have happened? I mean, before the accident?’

  ‘Maybe. I keep imagining a house. I’m going to follow the embankment to see if I can find it.’

  ‘Can you wait for me? I’d really like to go with you,’ Alexander says.

  ‘Then I’d have to sit here for three quarters of an hour!’

  ‘OK, OK,’ Alexander says quickly. ‘Tell me more about that conversation with your rescuer. What was he doing on the embankment, what did he see, what did he do when . . .’

  Senta looks out of the window. A few ducks are chasing each other, flapping and quacking across the water.

  ‘It was misty . . .’ she begins slowly. As Senta recounts the story, she keeps getting the feeling that Alexander isn’t really listening, that he’s doing something else. She hears the tap of a keyboard and stops abruptly.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’re taking notes. You’re typing.’

  From the hesitation in his voice, she knows that she’s right.

  ‘Have you got over your writer’s block?’ she inquires.

  He laughs affectedly, expectantly.

  ‘You’re not listening to me properly.’

  ‘Senta, that’s not true. I’m listening really carefully to you.’

  ‘You’re listening, but not to me. You’re listening to your character.’

  Alexander sighs deeply. ‘Senta, you have to understand—’

  ‘Are you using this for your book?’

  He is quiet for a moment. He is about to speak but Senta interrupts him. ‘I’d rather you didn’t call me again.’

  ‘You don’t mean that! Senta, please, I—’

  ‘A few things have become clear to me over the last few days, Alexander. And one of them is that I love my husband – too much to keep doing this to him. I should have made the decision earlier, but the old Senta wasn’t capable of it. The new one is.’

  She hears him suck in his breath. ‘Senta—’

  ‘Good luck with your book,’ she says gently. Then she hangs up and stares into the distance for a long time.

  39

  Is he still in the house? It wouldn’t be all that surprising if Kreuger had just slipped off and left them in the basement. Each time Lisa thinks he has finally gone her cautious hope is shattered. The sound of footsteps or of running water whenever he has a shower betrays his continued presence. A short while ago she heard the familiar rumble of the post van and the crunch of the postman’s footsteps on the gravel. It struck her that perhaps she could open the high window in the basement and drop her SOS note through the narrow opening. She could just reach it, standing on a stool. But would it help her? There is no reason for anyone to come to this side of the house.

  At least as long as she’s locked up here, they are no longer exposed to Kreuger’s violence and sexual impulses.

  Lisa forces herself to push away thoughts of those repulsive moments. If she allows herself to think about being raped, she knows she’ll break down. Every time the images rear up in her, she forces them back into a place in her unconscious where they can lie dormant without causing any damage. She doesn’t intend to ever let them out. Psychiatrists and their patients might be of the opinion that it is better to process things, but what is wrong with repression? Until now she’s managed really well to clamp everything down in her unconscious. She assumes there’s a good reason why her mind should be capable of doing this.

  ‘Mummy,’ Anouk says with difficulty. ‘I’m so thirsty.’

  Lisa is thirsty too. Her tongue lies in her mouth, dried up and heavy; her saliva is thick and syrupy. It tastes awful.

  He’s leaving us here to starve and die of thirst, she thinks. Two very simple murders: he doesn’t even have to get his hands dirty.

  The images that Lisa has managed to repress return in full force. She once saw a television programme about a man who set fire to his own house, killing himself, his wife and their children.

  It’s difficult to get inside the mind of a child killer, the psychiatrist had concluded on the programme. Researchers don’t have much to go on other than motive: in half of the cases the parents turn out to have been in serious trouble. Suicide and killing their children to prevent the whole family from having a miserable life is for many the only way out. Everyone has a space where he or she saves up revenge, hatred and jealousy, the psychiatrist had explained. But normal people clear it out now and again, so that the space doesn’t become overcrowded.

  The day slips by. The darkness and gloom act as a sedative. Her struggle against thirst turns into resignation. She feels the black hole beneath her, tugging her down. The temptation to just let herself sink is great. She hasn’t slept properly for ages. Stumbling into the darkness and resting feels nice. Nothing else to think about. No one can harm her. She closes her eyes and thinks of Mark.

  When a loud noise startles her, she has no idea how long she has been out. Anouk is lying next to her with her eyes closed, breathing deeply and regularly. Lisa lifts her arm up with some difficulty and looks at her watch. Almost seven: it’s evening again.

  She listens, tense, but the house has fallen silent again.

  Her head feels heavy, her body weak. She can hardly see a thing: just a narrow strip of light under the door at the top of the stairs. The spectre of thirst pokes up its head again. Her tongue, glued to the roof of her mouth, feels like a piece of dead meat.

  She tries to concentrate on the sound that woke her up. It sounded like a door slamming shut. Has Kreuger left?

  She attempts to get up, but an attack of dizziness makes her fall back on to the cushions. She gathers herself and slowly rises again. She stands up carefully and shuffles towards the stairs. She works herself up them, one at the tim
e, her forehead clammy. Despite her shaking hands, she manages to get the key in the lock. She waits for a while and then rests her ear against the door. She can hear voices in the sitting room. One of them is very familiar. Mark?

  Hope flaps in her chest like a freed bird.

  Lisa turns the key and hesitates for a few seconds. Then, checking that Anouk is still sleeping, she carefully pushes at the door.

  Holding her breath, she opens it enough to squeeze through. She is desperate to drink. She takes a step into the utility room. Kreuger’s voice is suddenly so loud that it sounds like he’s standing next to her. Lisa reflexively jumps back.

  It’s a few seconds before she’s fully convinced that she’s still alone.

  Her eyes longingly roam around the utility room. There are only bottles of wine in the rack. The big packs of soft drinks are in the garage, but she’ll never make it that far. She’ll have to rely on the kitchen.

  She inches towards the kitchen and listens, but only Kreuger is talking. Meanwhile, she keeps her eyes focused on the worktop, on the shining taps. One for hot and one for cold. She only has to turn them for a life-saving stream to flow. She can already feel the freshness of the water in her dehydrated mouth, feel how the liquid will rinse the mucus from her tongue and down her throat. Whoever is in there can wait a few seconds.

  Her eyes glued to the taps, she shuffles to the worktop and puts her mouth under them.

  The fresh stream rushes inside, and she drinks and drinks, without getting enough. Kreuger’s voice breaks through again, interrupted by another that seems rather stern. It sounds like Mark’s voice. Lisa straightens up and listens. My God, it is Mark. Should she call for help – can she take that risk? But before she can make a decision, she hears a scream in the sitting room, followed by loud moans.

  She tiptoes towards the kitchen door. And carefully peers around the corner into the sitting room.