Krysalis: Krysalis (9 page)
“Gerhard,” she said, “Gerhard, do just think for a moment.
Think!
All these things are true whether we call the police ourselves, now, or David does it later. They’ve only got my word for it that I opened the safe last night, not weeks ago. Forty-eight hours won’t make the slightest difference to either the file or my chances in a criminal court. But they
could
just save my marriage.”
He hesitated, pretending to consider. Suddenly Anna surprised him by saying, “I know what you’re thinking.”
Stricken, he raised his head and stared at her.
“You want me to wipe my fingerprints off the file and the safe, don’t you? Then there’d be nothing to connect me with either of them. I could just say I came down to find the file lying on top of the safe.”
Gerhard swallowed. It was perfect, so perfect that he couldn’t think of a way to knock it down.
“No.” She shook her head with a smile. “I couldn’t do it.”
“Why?”
“First, I’d trip myself up. I’m not a good liar. And second, if they believed me, it would mean that David had been almost unbelievably careless. Mean the end of his career. My fault. Do you think I could live with that?”
He was tempted to tell her that since Saturday’s hypnosis session he already knew how to open the safe, that they could put the file back and no one would know. But he had to have that file.
“There’s another reason why I have to come clean,
eventually,” Anna said, and he looked at her fearfully, as if she really could read his mind.
“What?”
“You’re assuming this file was the only thing in the safe. I don’t know what David kept in there. Suppose there were other papers, I’ve taken those as well, hidden them somewhere else?”
“I have to think.” Gerhard began to stride around the room. At last he came to rest by the window and stood there looking out over the square. Muscles twitched beneath the skin of his face, turning it into a restless sea of anger. Now it came down to it, he genuinely did not know what to do.
Anyone with Anna’s best interests at heart would persuade her to stay, be utterly frank, and face the music. But what about him, his best interests?
There’d be interrogation. She’d tell them about the sixteen years of on-and-off psychotherapy. In other words, about
him.
Then, suppose she admitted to hearing voices,
a
voice? What if, under someone’s hypnosis, she identified that voice?
She wanted to run away. She’d persuaded herself that that was the only course. It was pointless to try and influence her further. A few moments ago he’d felt he was facing disaster. But now he thought that fortune might be presenting him with the kind of once-in-a-lifetime prize that leaves a man breathless. If only he could stay cool enough to plan the next move….
He became aware that Anna had stopped speaking and was looking at him expectantly. He dithered a moment.
It was the need in her eyes that finally decided him. “You’re right,” he said. “It’s best if you get away for a while. But I’m not taking you to Hampstead.”
“Why not?”
“Because if they find you there—and by God! but they’ll be looking hard—they can take you on the spot, won’t even need a warrant. Abroad’s different. And didn’t you say you were planning a trip to … where was it, Paris? So that would be the first place he’d think you’d gone…. I have a villa in Greece. They won’t find you there, not easily.” His voice had grown steadily more decisive, until at this point he was all but issuing orders. “And I can treat you, while I prepare a report on your mental condition.”
“That makes sense to me. If you set everything out, the … the history …”
“Give David a chance to adjust, without pressure.”
She smiled at him. For the first time he noticed a tic at the corner of her mouth. “I knew you’d understand.”
“I want you to think back. Who knows about us? Who could trace you, through me?”
“No one.”
“Think.
Of course there’s someone—who first referred you to me?”
“My doctor. But that was years ago, he’s dead.”
“There’d be no record of your consulting me since that time, because you never had another referral. Is there anything informal, say a diary entry, a—”
“Nothing. I never told anyone about us.”
“Except Robyn.”
“She’s in America. I haven’t seen her for two years.”
“All right. Now listen. I want you to get your things together …”
Gerhard looked at his watch. Nearly nine o’clock,
shit!
It seemed ages before Anna came back upstairs, carrying a suitcase.
“Do you have your passport?” he asked her.
“In the study.”
“Let’s get it.”
“The file …?”
He picked it up from the desk. “I’ll leave it on top of the safe.” Wonderful, he thought, how convincingly a man can lie when he has to. “Here, give me that case. And for God’s sake, hurry!”
They’d got as far as the door to the second story study, when down below they heard keys jangle on the pavement, followed by the sound of one being inserted in the lock.
“Darling,” a voice cried. “I’m home.”
Gerhard eased the study door shut and held a finger to his lips.
As Anna looked at him she felt queasy. She could risk telling David everything, throw herself on his mercy; it was not too late. Tell him that she had been in and out of therapy, describe the horrors that had led her to Kleist. But
no, she couldn’t, not about the awful thing she’d tried to do to baby Juliet, no, no, no …
Gerhard, mastering his terror, put his mouth close to her ear. “Get the passport,” he whispered. Anna obeyed. When she returned from the desk, Gerhard held her close. “Stay here until he goes upstairs,” he breathed. “Then, you go out. Here are my car keys … wait for me
inside
the car, where he won’t see you.”
“What will you be—”
His face contorted into a scowl.
“Ssh!”
Footsteps were approaching. David tramped past the study on his way upstairs. Gerhard waited until he could no longer hear him, then looked out. The landing was empty. “Ready?” he mouthed.
Anna nodded. A quick look up the banisters, and she was running.
David called, “Anna! Is that you?”
She had nearly reached the front door. But if she went out that way, David, she realized, might see her, and follow.
Hide.
The cellar.
She raced on, passport clutched to her breast, until she reached the stairs to the basement. At the bottom she stopped and raised her head, listening. Above, all was quiet. What could David be up to …?
Gerhard, meanwhile, had folded up the Krysalis file and stuffed it into an inside pocket of his overcoat. Now he moved silently to the windows to position himself behind one of the wall-length drapes. From there he could keep an eye on both the study door and the street below. Still no sign of Anna.
He took his Colt .45 out of another pocket and silently checked the magazine. Seven rounds. This gun had not been fired for a long time; there were traces of rust on the breech. Gerhard stared at it, conscious that sweat had broken out on his forehead. The shot would make a noise. A lot of noise.
Barzel made him keep a weapon always ready; but this would be the first time he’d had to use it.
He tried to swallow, couldn’t. He was afraid of the gun.
Where the hell was Anna?
He’d deliberately chosen to send her on ahead, almost as a decoy, because if either of them was going to be caught he wanted it to be Anna, and if the worst came to the worst he might be able to use her interception as cover for his own escape. But she hadn’t run
into David and she hadn’t left the house. He stared down into the street. Empty.
What would Lescombe do next? Where would he go?
Gerhard wiped away the sweat with the back of his gun hand. The Colt weighed heavily in his palm; the jerky movement all but caused him to drop it. He was shaking. Would he be able to pull the trigger?
Footsteps overhead.
Gerhard stared up at the ceiling, trying to map David Lescombe’s movements. A door closed. That meant
… what did that mean?
Someone was coming downstairs. Gerhard’s throat ached as if with tonsillitis. Now the steps had almost reached the study door. Now they were outside, on the landing.
Now they had stopped, and silence filled the house.
Gerhard tried to release the safety catch. It was stiff from disuse. He jabbed at the lever, accidentally knocking the gun barrel against the wall. The noise of metal meeting plaster sounded impossibly loud; breath forced itself between his teeth in a gasp. Another second and he’d be gibbering. He clenched his lower lip between his teeth and somehow managed to stop the shakes.
“Anna,” he heard David shout. “Anna, where are you, love? Come on, darling, stop playing games!”
The safety catch was off, the Colt ready to fire. Gerhard raised the gun until it was pointing at the door. But he couldn’t hold it steady. He squeezed even further into the embrasure, and held his breath. A hand rattled the door knob. Movement in the street simultaneously dragged Gerhard’s gaze downward. Anna had emerged onto the pavement and was running toward his car. Then the study door opened, and Gerhard convulsively
tightened his grip on the gun, refocusing all his attention on the room.
“Anna!” Very loud …
“Anna!”
A long pause. From where he was standing, Gerhard could not see whether David had actually entered the room. What if he crossed to the window?
Suppose he looked out and saw Anna in the street!
Gerhard closed his eyes. By now he was shaking so badly he’d become terrified of dropping the gun, the floor was parquet, no carpet to deaden the sound, Lescombe couldn’t fail to hear
that.
But if he tried to move …
The study door closed. More footsteps … now outside, on the landing. Gerhard let out all the breath in his lungs.
Move!
He tiptoed to the door, opened it a crack. David was upstairs again. Gently, gently … out the door, close it … listen, wait … silence.
Gerhard bent to take off his shoes. Next second he was running. He had almost reached the hallway when, to his horror, someone rang the front doorbell.
He went rigid. Then hasty footsteps sounded overhead and almost without realizing what he was doing he sped to the back of the house.
The cellar.
Gerhard slithered down the back stairs and made his way through the utility room, past the boiler, and so into the scullery, where he tiptoed carefully around the remains of the pane of glass, shattered during his recent break-in.
What was happening up above? Gerhard slipped the outside door open and listened. A delivery man, David having to sign …
“‘Ere, guv,” he heard the man say.” ‘Scuse me.”
“What?” David’s voice.
“Did you know you’d ‘ad a burglar, then? Broken glass, and that.”
Gerhard closed his eyes. Now he was done for.
“Shit!”
David said.
“Thought you’d like to know. Ta-ra, then.”
Wait for David to come down the street steps, knock him out,
you can’t do that…
But then the front door slammed, no one clattered down to the cellar, Gerhard opened his eyes,
Go!
Anna was in the driver’s seat. She had the engine started. Gerhard flung himself into the car beside her. Then they were being borne along by the tide of traffic and there was no going back.
7
As David threw his raincoat onto the bed he heard a noise downstairs. “Anna?” he shouted.
Something terrible had happened to her. He just knew it. But he couldn’t imagine what. It was driving him mad.
He called again, “Anna? Is that you?” The sound of a door closing somewhere below made his tense expression soften a little; that meant she was at home. Sounded like the study … but when he found no one there, he began to panic.
He was interrupted by a delivery. Wine. He signed the chit while his eyes scanned the square. There was Anna’s red BMW; wherever she’d gone, she hadn’t taken the car, she hadn’t been involved in a car crash, thank God, thank God….