Therapy (17 page)

‘Godawful weather, godawful island.’

The storm must have brought down the lines.

Viktor sat down on the couch and tried desperately to come up with an idea. He had a potentially violent patient in the house. He didn't have the strength to walk to the village. And the telephone didn't work. He could feel the numbing power of the barbiturates spreading through his system.

What was he to do?

In the very moment that he thought of a solution, he fell asleep.

36

This time it was different. The nightmare didn't follow its usual pattern; something had changed. For one thing, Josy wasn't in the Volvo as they raced down the pier towards the raging sea. At first he couldn't make out who was sitting on the back seat of the car. In his dream, he was intent on identifying the young woman who was drumming her fingers against the door. At last he recognized her:

Anna!

No one heard him shout because a hand was covering his mouth, stopping him from making a sound.

What the hell is going on?

Petrified, Viktor realized that the horrifying nightmare had given way to something indescribably worse. He was lying on the couch and the dream was real. He had woken up to find himself being smothered.

I can't breathe
, he thought. He struck out, trying to shake off his attacker, but the sleeping pills, combined with the effects of his illness, conspired against him, robbing him of the strength to fight back. It felt as if an invisible force were pulling him downwards, pinning his arms to his side.

This is it. She's going to kill me
.

Halberstaedt was right
.

Grunting with exertion, he hurled himself to the side and kicked out wildly with one foot. He could feel himself being pushed further and further into the couch, then his foot connected with something soft and he heard an unnatural cracking and a muffled scream. Suddenly the hand lifted from his mouth and his lungs filled with air. The pressure on his chest was gone.

‘Anna?’ he shouted at the top of his voice, clutching at the air as if he were drowning. He slid off the couch and crawled across the floor.

‘Anna!’

No answer.

Maybe I'm still dreaming. Maybe none of this is real
.

Until now his thoughts had been clogged by flu and barbiturates, but at last he was starting to panic.

Help! Light! I need light!

‘ANNA!’

On hearing his own voice, he felt like a diver gradually returning to the surface.

Where's the bloody light?

Straightening up unsteadily, he reached out and ran his fingers frantically over the wall. At last he found the light switch and the sitting room was flooded in bright yellow light from the four spotlights on the ceiling. He waited for his eyes to adjust and scanned the room.

There's no one here. I'm on my own
.

He walked slowly to the window. It was closed. He
had almost reached his desk when the door slammed behind him. He whirled round. He could hear someone running barefoot up the stairs.

‘Help me, Viktor!’

Three words uttered a few hours earlier by his unexpected guest. Now he repeated the sentence himself. He was in the grip of the same blind panic that had assailed him several times before. He stood rigid with shock, then stumbled to the door.

What's happening to me? Was that her? Or am I dreaming?

He stopped by the bureau in the hallway and rummaged around for the pistol.
Gone!

Upstairs, heavy footsteps pounded across the landing.

He kept searching frantically and found the half-opened package at the back of the drawer, buried under a pile of handkerchiefs. Hands trembling, he ripped off the paper, grabbed two bullets and loaded the pistol. Spurred on by a rush of adrenalin, he sprinted upstairs.

Just as he reached the landing, the door to the spare room slammed shut. He ran to the end of the corridor.

‘Anna, what are you . . .’

Viktor threw open the door and pointed the gun at the bed. He went to pull the trigger and caught his breath. The sight that greeted him was so shocking, so unexpected that it was more than he could handle in his present state.

He lowered the weapon.

Impossible
, he thought, backing out of the room and
closing the door behind him. He was panting and gasping.
Impossible, completely impossible
.

It didn't add up, and worse still, he couldn't explain it. The spare room, the room where he had seen Anna sleeping peacefully, the room whose door she had slammed only moments earlier, was empty. And Anna was nowhere to be seen.

Half an hour later, when Viktor embarked on his second tour of the house to check the doors and windows, his fatigue had lifted. His uncontrolled shivering and rising temperature had cancelled out the effect of the sleeping pills. Besides, Anna had done her utmost to keep him awake. She had attacked him in his own living room and taken flight in the middle of a storm without stopping to get dressed. All her clothes and even his bathrobe were lying on the carpet in the spare room. She hadn't taken anything with her.

Viktor made himself a pot of strong coffee. Four questions were playing tag in his head:

What does Anna want?

Did she really attack me?

Why did she run away?

Who is she?

At half past four in the morning, he revived himself with a double dose of paracetamol and an ibuprofen. The day had only just begun.

37

Day of Reckoning, Parkum

In certain situations, even the most rationally minded people behave in absurd and illogical ways. Nine times out of ten, a person in possession of a remote control will press the buttons harder if the battery runs low. But a nickel cadmium cell isn't like a lemon, and squeezing it firmly won't produce more juice.

In Viktor's opinion, the same could be said of the human brain. Exhaustion, illness and other factors were liable to drain a person's battery, thereby slowing his thoughts. In such circumstances, concentrating harder was futile: no amount of effort could force a synapse to generate a thought.

This was the attitude adopted by Viktor with regard to the previous night. None of what happened seemed to make sense. He could wrack his brains and consider the matter for as long as he liked, but poring over the details wasn't going to give him any answers and it certainly wasn't going to help his peace of mind.

Charlotte
,
Sindbad
,
Josy
.
Murder
.

Everything hinged on a single question:
Who was
Anna Glass
? He needed to get to the truth before it was too late. At first he toyed with the idea of calling the police, but what evidence did he have? His dog was dead, he felt ill, someone had tried to kill him and his savings had disappeared. But he couldn't prove that Anna was involved.

On Monday morning, he would call the bank manager and put a block on his account. But it was only Sunday and he had neither the time nor the inclination to sit around and wait. He had to deal with the problem, and he had to deal with it alone. In spite of his near suffocation, he felt marginally better. But that was perturbing as well. What if his improved health were due to the fact that he had stopped drinking tea?

He was in the bathroom when he was startled by a strange noise. It came from downstairs. Someone was at the front door. This time it didn't sound like Halberstaedt's waders or Anna's high heels. Seized by a sudden, irrational fear, he closed his fingers around the pistol in his pocket, crept to the door and peered through the spyhole. Who would be out and about so early on a Sunday morning?

No one.

Viktor stood on tiptoe, then crouched down and peered under the door. Try as he might, he couldn't see anyone at all. He reached for the heavy brass handle, intending to open the door a centimetre or so. At that moment, he heard a rustling by his right foot. He glanced
down and picked up an envelope that someone had slid through to him from outside.

It was a telegram. Years ago, at a time when no one had heard of email or faxes, Viktor wouldn't have been surprised to receive a telegram. But what was the point of a telegram when everyone could be contacted twenty-four hours a day by mobile phone? Surely telegrams were obsolete? True, he couldn't get a signal on Parkum, but he usually had a functioning landline and email as well. Why would anyone send him a telegram?

Viktor shoved the pistol into the pocket of his dressing gown and opened the door. Whoever had delivered the telegram was no longer in sight. The only living creature was a stray cat, its black fur wet and bedraggled, slinking towards the village. For a person to have disappeared like that would take an impressive burst of speed. The only cover was afforded by a forest of pine trees and spruces whose dripping branches seemed to block out the daylight.

Trembling, Viktor closed the door. He wasn't sure whether he was cold, frightened or ill. He discarded his sweat-drenched bathrobe and left it on the floor. After wrapping himself in a thick woollen cardigan from the coatrack in the hall, he opened the telegram, ripping the white envelope to get to the message. It consisted of a single sentence. He had to read it three times before it made sense and even then it made him gasp with shock.

SHAME ON YOU.

The message was printed in block capitals in a 12-point font on standard post office paper. The sender's details were listed at the bottom. He sat down slowly. The words seemed to blur before his eyes.
Isabell
.

Why on earth would Isabell send him a message like that? He turned the sheet over in his hands and examined it closely. It didn't make sense.
Shame on me for what?
What had he done? Had Isabell, who was still in Manhattan, found out something terrible about him? Had he done something so unspeakably dreadful that she couldn't bear to tell him on the phone? Why was she turning against him when he desperately needed her support?

Viktor decided to call her in New York. He went to the telephone and held the handset to his ear: still no dialling tone. The line, his only means of contacting his wife, was out of order.

What are they playing at? They've had plenty of time to fix it by now
. He could only assume that the telephone masts had been damaged in the storm. Either that, or the high seas were affecting the underwater cables. Then, to his relief, he discovered a far simpler explanation. His instinct was to fix the problem and carry on, but then he was struck by a terrifying thought. The phone hadn't rung since Kai called two days ago. And the reason was obvious. Someone had disconnected it at the wall.

38

Isabell wasn't answering her phone, so Viktor decided to act. He couldn't sit at home all day waiting for her, Kai or Anna to call. It was time to take control.

It took him a few minutes to clear out the top drawer of the bureau in the hall. He was looking for a battered red notebook in which his father had compiled a directory of useful phone numbers. He read through the ‘A's, then turned to ‘G’ for ‘guesthouse’. He let it ring twenty-three times before he gave up.

He smiled wryly.
What do the Marriott Marquis in Times Square and the Anchor on Parkum have in common?

He tried again, hoping that he had dialled the wrong number on his previous attempt. After a while the ringtone cut off of its own accord. No answer.

He stared out of the window. It was raining so heavily that he could barely see the long line of dark waves rolling in from the open water towards the beach.

Thumbing nervously through the notebook, he read through the entries under ‘H’.

This time he was in luck. Halberstaedt, unlike Trudi and Isabell, was prepared to take his call.

‘Good morning, Patrick. I'm terribly sorry for disturbing you at home. I've been thinking about the advice you gave me, and if the offer still stands, I'd appreciate your help.’

‘The advice I gave you,’ echoed Halberstaedt, puzzled. ‘I'm afraid I don't follow.’

‘Under normal circumstances, I wouldn't think twice about walking there myself, but what with the rain and everything, I was hoping you might pop next door and . . .’

‘And what?’

‘Tell Anna that I need to speak to her. It's urgent.’

‘Speak to who?’

‘Anna,’ said Viktor. ‘Anna Glass.’

‘Never heard of her.’

Viktor detected a low whistling in his right ear. It seemed to be getting louder.

‘Come on, Patrick, you said you knew she was dangerous as soon as she got off the boat. You accused her of killing my dog.’

‘You must be mistaken, Dr Larenz.’

‘Mistaken? I've lost count of the number of times you warned me about her. You insisted on keeping an eye on her. Remember what she did to Sindbad?’

‘But I haven't seen you all week – or Sindbad, for that matter. Are you sure you're all right?’

The noise was loud enough to be tinnitus. It had spread to his left ear.

‘Listen, Patrick, I don't know what the hell you're—’
Viktor stopped abruptly and listened to the voice in the background.

‘Is that her?’

‘Who?’

‘Anna. Is she there?’

‘Dr Larenz, I don't know what you're talking about. I'm on my own here, as usual.’

Viktor gripped the handset with the desperation of a drowning man clinging to a lifebuoy.

‘But that's . . . I mean, it's not . . .’ He didn't know what to say. Then he had a sudden thought. ‘Hang on a moment.’

He ran back to the hall and picked up his dressing gown. To his relief, he found what he was looking for: the loaded gun. It was in the pocket where he had left it, proof that he wasn't going mad.

He ran back to the phone.

‘Listen, Patrick, I've had enough of this nonsense. I'm standing here with your pistol.’

‘Oh.’

‘Is that all you've got to say? Aren't you going to tell me what's going on?’ demanded Viktor, raising his voice to a shout.

‘Well I . . . The thing is, I . . .’ stuttered Halberstaedt.

Viktor heard the change in his voice and knew at once that someone was with him, telling him what to say.