The String Diaries Part 21

Only the end of the bolt remained visible. Jakab saw wooden flights attached to its shaft. Erna's jaw dropped open and a mindless clacking sound escaped her lips. She bucked and spasmed, her teeth snapping at the air, and as he released her she pitched forward on to the slimy planks of the jetty. When he saw the bolt's iron head protruding from the curve of her skull, and the remains of her beautiful mind and her memories dripping from its spike, Jakab felt his diaphragm contract and then he was loosing his own wretched scream that ricocheted inside his head, a tortured sound that would never stop, could never stop.

Hans yanked the axehead out of the Merenyl's spine and the Fnok's man slid from the saddle, his face hitting the ground with a slap. The woodsman stepped over the body, hefted the axe above his head and brought it down a second time. This time the blade sliced through the soft flesh of the a.s.sa.s.sin's neck and sheared through his vertebrae. Hans let go of the handle, staggered, collapsed to his knees. He raised both hands over his head.

Jakab forced himself to look at Erna, forced himself to retain every awful detail. He had walked away from the hosszu eletek willingly, yet they had followed, sending his brother after him. After forcing him to kill Jani, they had sent this vile creature slumped before him.

And now the Merenyl was dead too. But not before he had succeeded in ending Jakab's life. Perhaps not by stealing his last breath, but he had taken something just as valuable.

It was over. He could not think of what to do.

It was over.

Everything.

Jakab let out the breath in his lungs, hearing its hiss as it pa.s.sed his lips. An expunging, an outpouring. He lifted his arms until they pointed away from his body, outstretched. A ruinous calm settled upon him.

Nothing left at all now.

He gave the remaining rider a defeated, sickened smile. And then he allowed his body to fall backwards. Momentum took him. He felt an icy shock as he hit the water. The surface of the lake parted, and then it accepted him, coldness flooding him as he sank beneath, drifting, a funereal roaring in his ears.

The mist closed around the diminis.h.i.+ng ripples of his wake.

CHAPTER 13.

Paris 1979.

Sitting opposite Charles at the small cafe table, Nicole Dubois stirred a sugar lump into her espresso. They were sitting beneath the beige awning of the Cafe de Flore, on the corner of the Boulevard Saint-Germain and the Rue Saint-Benoit.

Traffic flowed along the boulevard. Charles watched as a battered Citroen swerved, but did not brake, to avoid a group of tourists negotiating the junction. The car veered around the corner in a black cough of exhaust fumes, its driver holding the wheel with one hand and gesticulating out of the window with the other.

Nicole looked up at him, her expression grim. 'Later that morning,' she said, 'half mad with grief, Hans Fischer buries his wife in a makes.h.i.+ft grave by the side of Lake Balaton.'

'Erna Novak,' Charles replied.

Before Nicole had left England, she had given him a translation of the earliest diaries, written by Hans. It had taken him two evenings to read them. He had seen enough of the originals to know that the copies were accurate reproductions. They had left him feeling far more disturbed than he had expected.

Nicole nodded. 'My great-great-grandmother. It was 1879. She was twenty-seven years old. She'd been married to Hans for just three years. She died because she tried to protect Jakab from the people who were hunting him. After burying Erna, Hans walks back into Keszthely, packs a bag of belongings, says goodbye to his parents and leaves with his son Carl the same morning. That boy, my great-grandfather, is less than two years old. They never go back.'

Whether it was pure fabrication or the result of a single shocking incident twisted by superst.i.tion, Charles did not know, but hearing the tale from Nicole's lips lifted it straight out of the past and into the present. While neither of them could know the complete truth of what had happened in Keszthely in 1879, something terrible had happened to Erna Novak. It had taken Charles some effort to research it, but Gerold Novak, Erna's father, had reported his daughter missing to the authorities in the spring of 1879. Two months later her corpse was discovered when a local farmer's pigs uprooted it. She had been shot in the head.

Had Hans Fischer murdered her? Or had she been killed much as the diaries described? Perhaps the trauma of seeing his wife's murder, coupled with an upbringing couched in superst.i.tion, had driven Hans to believe that hosszu eletek were responsible. But even if that were true, it didn't explain the continuation of the family's beliefs long after he was dead.

Nicole paused as a waiter skirted their table and unloaded a tray of coffee and croissants on to two Frenchwomen sitting nearby. When he retreated, she continued. 'Hans and Carl eventually settle in the city of Sop.r.o.n, near the Austrian border. He changes their surname from Fischer to Richter.'

'When the diaries begin.'

'Hans writes the first. He starts it partly to come to terms with everything that has happened, and partly to capture all his memories of Erna, so he can pa.s.s them on to Carl when the boy is old enough.'

'He never saw any evidence of the hosszu eletek's abilities. Any proof whatsoever.'

'Charles, this is nineteenth-century provincial Hungary. Hans doesn't need evidence to accept what he hears about the eletek. He's just seen his wife murdered by their Merenyl.'

'I understand that. I just wanted to be entirely clear.'

Nicole stared at him, her eyes narrowing. 'No, Charles, he never sees any evidence.'

'Sorry.' He held up his hands, placed them on the table. 'They settle in Sop.r.o.n. Then, for years, no more contact.'

'Carl grows up, gets a job as a bookkeeper for the Sarkozy family, one of the wine-producing dynasties in the region. He does well for himself, very well. In 1906 he marries Helene, Sarkozy's eldest daughter.'

'Hans must have been pleased.'

'Immensely. It wasn't a time of great social mobility. Two years later Helene gives birth to Carl's daughter and my grandmother, Anna Richter. Life is good. Hans is now in his fifties, watching his son and granddaughter grow up. He continues to keep a diary, although not quite as regularly. Even so, the memory of Jakab and what happened to Erna never leaves his mind. Throughout his life, he collects stories of the hosszu eletek and records them in the diary's pages. Despite all my years of research, some of the most useful information I have comes from the tales written down by my great-great-grandfather.'

'He was certainly meticulous in his record-keeping.'

'As Hans's granddaughter Anna grows up, her resemblance to Erna Novak is startling. You've read the copies I gave you. In his journal he references the similarity several times, and the poignancy seems as fresh now as it must have been then. In 1926, Anna turns eighteen. It's not long before she meets a young German chemist named Albert Bauer and falls in love. And it's not long after that things start to go wrong.'

Charles lifted the lid of the teapot and used a teaspoon to stir its contents. He poured himself a cup. Adding a splash of milk, he glanced back up at Nicole. He could see the strain in her face and it worried him. Two months had pa.s.sed since she had left England with her mother. He had not heard from her for nearly three weeks before she telephoned him to say she was back in Paris, and safe. He had wanted to come out immediately, but it had taken a while to arrange leave with the college.

He still found it difficult to reconcile the serious, headstrong character she presented with the story she clearly believed. He had spent the weeks in England researching what he could the hosszu eletek. Beckett had been helpful, lending him a number of texts and pointing him in the direction of those he did not own. The information was spa.r.s.e: he had found a few mentions in some of the oldest Hungarian texts, but the majority of the material was little more than badly worded ravings. Whereas Beckett made little distinction, Charles was conditioned to remain sceptical of every source. Nothing he had found gave him a reason to believe even a part of Nicole's story. There was simply nothing, anywhere, to support the fantasy she was wrapped up in.

And yet he loved her. He did not think he was capable of falling in love with someone who was insane, or paranoid, or confused. So where did that leave him?

Nicole seemed to have realised his mind had wandered, because she tilted her head and smiled, lips pressed together. 'You think I'm crazy.'

He shook his head. 'That's just it. I don't. I don't know how to explain all this, and I can't accept what I've read as fact. But I wouldn't be here if I thought you were crazy. You said things started to go wrong not long after your grandmother met Albert Bauer. How old would Jakab have been at this point?'

She shrugged. 'Who knows? How old was he when he first met Erna? Hans believed she met him when Jakab was still a young man, but there's no way of knowing. Erna died in 1879. Anna Richter met Albert in 1926. Forty-seven years later.'

'So if Jakab was in his twenties when he met your great-great-grandmother, he would have been in his sixties or even seventies by the time Anna had grown up and met Albert.'

Nicole looked at him, studying his eyes. 'Yes.'

'This is where Hans's diary ends. What happened next?'

'Anna had been worried for some time before she finally confided in her grandfather. Albert Bauer was an academic, a fiercely intelligent man. But six months after they started courting she began to notice changes. Subtle things. He would forget the experiences they had shared, the things they had done together. He would question her, ask her to reminisce about how they had met. Anna kept a diary too. She recorded how Albert began to visit her at unusual times of the day, when he should have been at work. They'd have s.e.x. Pa.s.sionate, rough s.e.x. Finally Anna confided in Hans, who became convinced that Jakab had found them. The only thing he wasn't sure of was whether Jakab had already supplanted Albert entirely, and the man's corpse was lying in a ditch somewhere.

'He wanted Anna to run, but he knew how much she loved Albert, and he promised to find out if her fiance was still alive. Between them, they worked out a plan. When Anna next received a visit from the Albert they suspected was an impostor, Hans set off for the young chemist's laboratory.

'It worked. While Anna engaged the false Albert in conversation at the family home, Hans was talking to the real Albert five miles away in the centre of the city.'

Charles frowned as he listened. For the first time, he could not think of an obvious explanation. 'What did they do?'

'That night, just like her grandfather had done forty-eight years earlier, Anna packed a bag, packed the diaries her grandfather had given her, and left Sop.r.o.n. Albert went with her. It's not clear from the records they left, but it seems the young man had seen something too, something that scared him enough not to persuade her to stay.'

'Did they ever return?'

Nicole shook her head. 'Anna wanted to. She was terribly homesick. Then, a month later, they read in the newspaper that her grandfather, mother and father had been found dead. Hans, Carl and Helene. All three had been tortured.'

Charles felt a twist of unease. Whether it was from Nicole's story, or the hunted look in her eyes as she told it, he did not know.

She took another sip from her espresso and grimaced. 'Jakab tied them to chairs in the living room. He savaged them without mercy. We think he was trying to get information, the whereabouts of Anna. He'd been almost ready to supplant Albert, had felt secure enough in his knowledge of the man's history and day-to-day habits to take on his persona. He was foiled at the last minute.'

'Of course, you don't know any of that,' Charles said, then winced at his insensitivity.

Nicole's eyes flashed with anger. 'Of course I don't. But it's not exactly a wild speculation, is it? The family had no enemies. Even the way they were tortured told its own tale: see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. I'll spare you the details.' She shook her head. 'Jakab couldn't find out where Anna had gone because Hans insisted she did not tell them. But Jakab would have found that difficult to believe. It had taken him forty-eight years to trace the family. When he did, he found a beautiful young girl who was the image of the Erna he'd lost all those years earlier. And then he lost her too. It drove him over the edge. And like the sick lunatic he is, he took out his fury on the family that tried to protect her.'

Charles blew out a breath. 'And then?'

'You know the rest. I told you before I left England. Anna and Albert ended up in Germany, where they married. Anna gave birth to my mother shortly afterwards. Then the Second World War broke out. Albert was conscripted into the army and lost his life to a sniper's bullet in Stalingrad. After the war, Anna fled Germany with my mother. They settled in France.'

Charles nodded, remembering the next part of the story and trying to calculate how old Jakab would have been by the time he caught up with Eric Dubois.

'I was born in '52,' she said. 'Seventy-three years after Erna Novak died. And I remember what happened to my father, Eric.' Nicole s.h.i.+vered. 'Come on, Charles. Let's get out of here.'

He stood, leaving a handful of coins on the table. As they left the Cafe de Flore he found himself studying the waiters, watching to see if any were taking an interest in him.

They walked the busy afternoon streets of Paris, crossing the Seine at the Pont du Carrousel, turning west at the Louvre and arriving at the Jardin des Tuileries. When they pa.s.sed the sculpture of Theseus and the Minotaur, Nicole slipped her hand around his arm. Charles was surprised enough by the gesture that he glanced across at her, but she didn't meet his eyes.

Above them the sky was a polished blue. Autumn sunlight lit the statues from a low angle, painting the milk-white stone with dark shadows. Parisians and tourists filled the gardens. Office workers strode past huddles of young mothers on park benches with prams lined up before them. A party of screaming and laughing schoolchildren followed a trio of sharp-eyed school mistresses. A tramp shuffled by, pus.h.i.+ng an enormous wheeled contraption stuffed with clothes and topped by a fluttering tricolour.

Despite feeling foolish, Charles couldn't stop himself studying the strangers they pa.s.sed, lingering on faces far longer than etiquette allowed. Some smiled; most ignored him, or frowned as they walked by.

'How do you do it?' he asked her eventually, as they pa.s.sed La Misere.

'Do what, Charles?'

He took a breath of air, exhaled. 'Live your life like this. Constantly searching faces in the crowd, wondering which of them you can trust, which of them you can't.'

'What choice do I have?'

The choice to let go of this insanity, he wanted to say. The choice to refuse to believe in this nonsense any longer, to take back control of your life and leave the superst.i.tion and tragedy in the past where it belongs. But he couldn't tell her that. Not yet. Every conversation was a tightrope walk between her quick-tempered convictions and his disbelief. 'I don't know,' he admitted.

'Don't forget,' she said, 'it's not me that's in danger here. It's those closest to me. At this point, that's you.'

He glanced across at her, hoping to see the trace of a smile, and was depressed to find that her face was serious, distant. 'Have there been others?' he asked.

'I'm not a virgin, Charles, if that's what you're asking.'

'I wasn't. I just wondered whether you've confided in others before.'

'Once. Yes.' She laughed, a brittle sound. 'I said I wasn't going to make that mistake again.'

'It didn't work out.'

'To say the least.'

'But there was no intervention. What I mean . . . you've not encountered this Jakab as a result.'

'No. I don't believe so.'

'So the last time he made an appearance, as far as you're aware, was when you were living in Carca.s.sonne as a little girl.'

'Yes.'

'Some twenty or so years ago.'

She nodded.

'So what is it you think he wants?' Charles asked.

'He wants Erna.'

'But she's dead.'

'He wants to recreate the life he lost with her. And he doesn't care who he has to kill to achieve it. Anna Bauer was the image of her grandmother. My mother tells me I look the same. Jakab knew that Anna would never submit to him willingly. He intended to kill her husband, supplant him and slide into her life unawares. Years later, after that attempt had failed, he tried again, this time with my mother. He failed then too, but I think he's learning, getting better at it.'

She slipped her hand down his arm and interlaced her fingers with his. Charles would have sighed with pleasure had she not looked so thoroughly miserable.

'What are we going to do?' she asked.

He knew she addressed the question to herself, but he decided to answer it anyway. 'We're going to get some dinner,' he told her. 'And then we're going to get roaringly drunk.'

Nicole laughed, and for the first time that afternoon it sounded genuine. She squeezed his hand. 'The great Charles Meredith, always thinking of his stomach.'

'I've only eaten a crepe since getting off the ferry.'

'Then we must find you some proper sustenance.' She tugged his hand. 'Come on. I know a place.'

They ate in a crowded and noisy bistro huddled on a street just off the Champs-Elysees. Charles ordered a smoked mackerel mousse, followed by calves' liver with bacon and rosti potatoes. The food, when it arrived, was excellent. While he tucked his head down and sated his appet.i.te, Nicole picked at a cod fillet, yielding the plate to Charles when she could not finish it.

'Something's distracting you,' he said, noting again how she scrutinised the diners at other tables.

'I'm sorry. It's been a strange day. Seeing you again, here in Paris, after the time we had in England.'

He studied her face. 'You don't make it sound a particularly enjoyable experience.'

She smiled, and the weariness in that look made him yearn to hold her, to discover the best way of knocking this senseless superst.i.tion out of her head, to stop her ruining her life with it. 'I've loved seeing you again. How could I deny myself the pleasure of your fabulous English pomp?'

'So what is it?'