The String Diaries Part 35

A series of burns decorated the professor's chest. Two of his fingers had been snipped off. But however agonising those injuries, they had not been life-threatening. Daniel had not been able to pinpoint the cause of death.

They decided to bury him next to the grave of Nathaniel Wilde, the husband of the girl Sebastien had brought to them. Hannah Wilde. Poor thing, to be caught up in something as awful as this.

'I'll be inside.' Daniel walked towards the building, studying its blank windows. So much loss, he thought. Such a melancholy place.

In the kitchen, he gazed again at the shattered windows, the broken gla.s.s on the flagstones. He went down the hall and into the dining room, where he saw the broken line of shotgun cartridges that snaked across the table.

It was going to be a last stand. Yet they managed to escape. Although not without a price.

Daniel shivered, his thermal layers inadequate inside this draughty mausoleum. He heard footsteps in the hall. Palinkas came into the room.

The big man nodded towards the windows. 'Chopper approaching.'

Daniel moved to the sill and looked out. He could already hear the distant beat of rotor blades. 'Is it finished?'

'It's not pretty, but it'll keep the scavengers off him.'

'We've done what we can.'

'Did you ever meet him?' Palinkas asked.

'Once. A long time ago now. Just after his wife died. He was half mad with grief, suddenly responsible for the safety of a fifteen-year-old girl who half loved him, half hated him for what had happened. I didn't think they had a chance. It's a miracle he stayed alive as long as he did.'

The helicopter, a Bell 206 JetRanger, appeared over the trees and arced around the front of the building, a growling beast of black and silver. The ba.s.s thrum of its engine and the whup-whup-whup of its blades seemed wrong in the funereal stillness of the valley: obscene. Llyn Gwyr was a cemetery now. Its dead begged for silence.

The helicopter circled the house, hovered and began to descend, stirring the snowflakes into a maelstrom. Seconds after landing, its doors opened and three men jumped out. All of them wore insulated winter clothing. Daniel recognised one of them. He stiffened.

Benjamin Va.s.s, chubby-faced second to the signeur, leaned back inside the craft and removed a wheelchair. His two a.s.sociates helped a fourth man out of the aircraft and into it. This time Daniel blew air from his cheeks.

Karoly Gera.

The Eleni signeur looked about as alive as the corpse they had buried earlier. The thick padding of his jacket did little to disguise the frailty of his body. His eyes held a dangerously fanatical shine.

Palinkas appeared at Daniel's side. 'This isn't good.'

'No.'

'You want me to call Lorant?'

'There's nothing the Presidente can do from Budapest.'

Palinkas nodded. They both watched the four men approach the farmhouse.

Benjamin Va.s.s pushed the signeur's chair into the dining room and parked him in front of the fire. When he turned to face Daniel he was smiling, face shiny with perspiration. He clapped his hands, two hard punctuations, and rubbed them together. 'Nice place. Remote, admittedly. Basic. But I could grow to appreciate it. Perhaps. What do you think, Daniel?'

'About what?'

'About your farmhouse, of course. Let me guess. Holiday home? Investment property? Just somewhere you can come to get away from it all? I'm presuming that's why you're here.'

'I'm sure you know that's not why I'm here.'

Va.s.s went to the sideboard, picked up a china figurine, studied it. 'Ah. Of course. There's been some trouble, I understand. Two fresh graves by the lake. Perhaps not such a nice place after all. Oh, well. I'm not intending to stay long. Just long enough, in fact, for you to tell me where I can find Hannah Wilde and that cantankerous old goat, Sebastien.'

Daniel felt his temper rising. 'You forget yourself, and you forget your position, Benjamin. People have died here. I've no wish to listen to your insolence.'

'Insolence? Oh, Daniel, I can't express how much that hurts. Every morning I wake up and tell myself how I need to win the respect of my acadeim, win the trust of the loyal, unimpeachable Daniel Meyer. And now you cut me like that.'

Karoly gripped the armrests of his wheelchair with clawed fingers. His voice was a rasping whip. 'G.o.d d.a.m.n you both, stop it!' The words seemed to exhaust him. He collapsed back in his chair. 'Daniel, come here. Sit down. Listen to me. We know what happened. The important part, at least. We need to know where they went.'

'Signeur, I can't tell you that.'

'The woman and the girl are in danger.'

'I know.' He glanced across at Va.s.s, who was staring out of the window. 'I'm trying to ensure we don't add to it.'

'Your motives are good, Daniel, but you're not making the right decisions. We can protect them.'

'Sebastien is already protecting them.'

Va.s.s turned from the window. 'I know that one of those graves contains the woman's husband. I'm guessing the other contains her father. Dropping like flies, aren't they? If that's the kind of protection Sebastien's providing, it makes me feel a little sorry for her.'

'Benjamin, that's enough!' the signeur barked. 'Daniel, you're not a fool. I admit we have a chance to turn this to our advantage. But the positive side effect is that we can save the lives of this woman and her daughter. I know I speak as only one ulnok. I can dial Foldessy right now and give you a majority decision if you wish. But I believe we're beyond Eleni politics at this point. It's become a very simple choice. Whose side do you want to be on?'

The signeur studied Daniel's face. He seemed disappointed with what he saw. Sighing, he inclined his head at his second.

Daniel felt Va.s.s approach him from behind. The man's breath, spicy and meaty, filled his nostrils.

'It's unpleasant being on the other side, Daniel,' he said. 'If you're interested in seeing how unpleasant, I'd be more than happy to demonstrate.'

CHAPTER 23.

Aquitaine region, France Now Hannah discovered the note while she was preparing Leah's breakfast.

She had woken when the first pale light of morning slipped between the slats of the shutters in her daughter's room. The girl was asleep beside her, warm and at peace, and it took all Hannah's will to force herself up from the bed and down the stairs to the kitchen.

She had, for too long, allowed her grief to consume her. It had been an unforgivable dereliction of the girl. The knowledge of her failure was like a steady drip of poison in her veins, and while she would force herself to bury the agony of Nate's death for now stifle it, smother it, drown it she would not forgive herself for the three days she had abandoned Leah to her loss.

He makes monsters of us all.

No.

Too easy, Hannah. That failure had nothing to do with Jakab. That was your weakness alone.

Nate's pa.s.sing, she knew, had destroyed something in her that could never be healed. That life was over, its echoes already faint, and now that she had emerged from her paralysis into this cold new existence, she found she had only one goal. Last night she had extracted a promise from Sebastien to find Leah a loving home should she not survive a final encounter with Jakab. She had asked him because she felt the conclusion of their struggle lay near, and because she planned to kill him at whatever cost to herself.

The prospect of death did not raise in her the slightest fear. Perhaps, she thought, it was the one advantage she had over the creature that stalked them. She no longer placed any value on her life.

On the kitchen worktop she found two baguettes from the day before, still soft beneath their crusts. The fridge yielded a box of soft cheese, a paper bag of sausages, a ham, six eggs, apples, a jar of plum jam, orange juice and milk. In one of the cupboards, she found tea bags and coffee. She discovered the note, written on a single sheet of watermarked paper, propped on the windowsill between pots of basil and tarragon. The handwriting was a graceful looping of ink.

Hannah, I'll be down at the river. My people are coming. Gabriel.

She turned the note over in her hands. The experience they had shared the previous evening had filled her with wonder at first, although it had quickly been overtaken by fear. Perhaps she shouldn't have been surprised by that: despite her inclination to trust Gabriel, he was still hosszu elet, inextricably linked to the nightmare that had claimed her for so much of her life. Oddly, though, the experience seemed to have shaken him too. For whatever reason, the sadness she had glimpsed in him during their ride up Cadair Idris had surfaced once more; she had caught an aching loneliness in his eyes.

My people are coming.

Hearing the creak of floorboards from Leah's room and the soft thump as her daughter descended the stairs, Hannah poured juice, filled a kettle and began to lay the table.

Leah slouched into the room, bare feet scuffing along the floor, and pulled up a chair. The girl's face was puffy and flushed. She yawned and squinted up at her mother.

'Want some breakfast, kiddo?' Hannah asked, forcing a brightness into her voice.

Leah blinked, nodded.

'That's my girl.'

After they had breakfasted on bread, cheese and ham, washing it down with tall gla.s.ses of orange juice, she rinsed the dishes, dressed them both and took Leah outside. Hannah had not left the house since they had arrived. She wanted to see how the place had changed since her last visit wanted to a.s.sess its privacy, its security.

'Is this going to be our new home?' Leah asked.

'Yes, it is. Do you like it?'

'Does it have a name?'

'Le Moulin Bellerose.'

'French.'

'That's right.'

'Can you speak French?'

Hannah smiled, slinging her arm around her daughter. 'Yes, I can. And so will you.' She had owned Le Moulin Bellerose for nearly nine years. No one but Nate knew of her connection to it. After her mother's death, Charles had liquidated his investments. He used the funds to purchase a couple of inexpensive properties in remote locations he liked to call them his safe-houses which they could use as a temporary refuge should Jakab ever find them. When Leah was born, and Charles became even more fearful for their safety, he gifted Hannah a sum of money.

Buy a place, somewhere far from here. Somewhere you can all go, in anonymity, should the worst happen. Don't tell me where it is. I don't want to know. Less chance of me betraying you that way.

Hannah had found the farm during a family trip through France when Leah was six months old. She only needed half the money her father had given her to buy it, and with good reason. The roof of the honeyed-limestone farmhouse had collapsed. It had no heating, no electricity, no water. A tree grew in one of the rooms.

The following summer, Nate spent a fortnight sawing timber and hammering joists, re-laying all the old roof tiles that had survived, and replacing those that hadn't. The summer after that, he connected a water supply and added an oil tank and furnace. Between them they made Le Moulin Bellerose their secret retreat. Not just their bolt-hole, but their idyll.

At the front of the property stood two wheat fields, separated by a tree-lined track that stretched away to the main road. Their land was encircled by a forest of oak, sweet chestnut and walnut. Among the trees they saw roe deer, red squirrel, bright yellow Cleopatra b.u.t.terflies. During the day they listened to the song of mistle thrush and goldfinch, and in the evening to the reedy call of tawny owls and the looping music of nightingales.

The farmhouse kitchen faced south. It opened on to a small plum orchard, neglected and overgrown when they bought the farm, but flourishing since. Below the orchard, a track led through woodland to the north bank of the Vezere River, one of the tributaries of the Dordogne to the southwest. The farm, and its land, was cupped in a horseshoe bend of the river. Early in the last century a mill race had been cut to syphon water from the river to a watermill that still stood on the property's western border.

Like the farmhouse, the mill had been in ruins when they first arrived, home to a colony of pipistrelle bats that hung from its rafters like a rippling fur coat. Nate had repaired the roof and reglazed all but one of its broken windows, allowing the bats to continue their tenure. He had talked of converting the mill to produce their own electricity. His sketched plans still lay in the drawer of the living-room bureau.

Le Moulin Bellerose was a place of beauty, the backdrop to a thousand precious memories, and as Hannah walked outside with Leah and smelled the familiar sweetness of the plums that had split open on the ground, the warmth of those memories now so fragile, already so distant made the ache of her loss flare into bright new pain.

She picked a plum from the nearest tree and handed it to Leah. 'Here, try one of these while you can. We're at the end of the season.'

The girl took a bite, smiled. 'It's sweet.'

'I watched your dad eat so many plums one summer he had stomach-ache for two whole days.'

At the mention of her father Leah's face tightened. 'Where are we going?'

Hannah saw the sparkle of tears welling in the girl's eyes. Knowing that Leah did not want her to see, she took her hand and pointed down the path. 'This takes us to the river. Do you want to have a look?'

Leah nodded, took another bite of the plum.

They followed the trail through a patch of woodland, crunching over dead leaves. The morning sun was low and the sky was pale and clear. In the deep shade of the trees off to their left, two carrion crows pecked at something red and wet in the undergrowth. One of the birds looked up and screamed at them as they pa.s.sed.

The path meandered through the trees until it arrived at the Vezere's northern bank. The river was wide and slow at this stage of its journey, olive-coloured and speckled with the crisp carca.s.ses of dead leaves. A swarm of midges hovered above the water, offering themselves as food to the birds that swooped from the trees.

Upstream, the river curved away from them. Downstream, it ran straight for a while before curving back behind them. The opposite bank was steep, thick with forest.

Gabriel stood at the edge of the water, hands stuffed into the pockets of his jacket. He turned at their approach, and Hannah thought he looked older this morning. Melancholy. 'Wish I had a fishing rod,' he said.

'There's one at the house. Nate used to come down here all the time and catch our dinner. Pike, trout, all sorts.'

He nodded, and then his eyes found Leah and his face brightened. 'Little miss! Now, I bet I can guess what you've been eating.'

'Plums.'

Gabriel slapped his head. 'How am I supposed to guess if you tell me the answer, eh? What sort of game is that?'

Leah almost found a smile for him. 'A game I won.'

'Oh, you did, did you?' He laughed. 'Do you like the river, little miss? You see that log, half submerged, over by the far bank? I saw a kingfisher perched there a minute ago. If you watch, he might come back. Beautiful bird, the kingfisher. A real treat to see one.'

Leah's eyes moved between Gabriel and where he pointed, as if deciding whether he was teasing her. Appearing to rule in his favour, she approached the bank and crouched down. Chewing her lip, she stared intently at the log.

Hannah went to Gabriel's side. 'Your note said your people were coming.'

'They want to meet you.'

'Why?'

'A few reasons. Not least because of what you've suffered at the hands of one of our own.'

'I suppose their desire to find Jakab doesn't rank highly in that decision.'