by Helen Grant
Veerle looked at Kris, his face half in shadow, half bathed in soft yellow light. She was irresistibly reminded of the night she had met him in the castle.
If I hadn’t had the row at the climbing wall, she thought. If I’d sat on the other side of the bus and looked out of the other window, and never seen the light in the castle. If I’d stayed on the bus . . .
It was strange, the thought that her meeting with him had rested on so tenuous a chain of events. If they hadn’t met that night, he would have remained in her memory for ever as that skinny nine-year-old with the shock of dark hair; the one who was nice in spite of his unpleasant older brothers. The one who had dared her to climb the bell tower with him that day all those years ago, when they had stared out over the village and seen a killer.
Fate? she wondered, but she pushed the idea away as though it were a dish she had tasted and hadn’t liked. Veerle hated to feel that anything was pushing her around – especially not Claudine, but not anyone or anything else either. The future was like some great rock face stretching up and up until it vanished into the obscurity of the clouds. She intended to set to and climb it with all the skill and energy she possessed. No fear of falling, she told herself.
‘Kris?’ She reached out and touched his hand, wanting to feel the warmth of his skin under her fingers. ‘Tell me about the day we saw Joren Sterckx.’
Kris put his head back, studying her. ‘You really don’t remember?’
Veerle shook her head. ‘I don’t remember seeing him. What did he look like?’
‘Tall.’ Kris shrugged. ‘Big. But OK, I was a kid then, and he was a lot older. And fair hair, I remember that. And he had blood all down him, from here to here.’ He gestured.
Veerle shivered. ‘And did you realize what he’d done? I mean, he could have been in an accident.’
Kris nodded. ‘Oh yes. He was carrying the kid in his arms.’
‘In his arms?’ Veerle stared at him.
‘Yeah. Well, that’s how they got him so quickly. If he’d hidden the body, it might have been ages before they found him. But . . . he just walked into the middle of the village carrying it like a hunting trophy.’
‘Why?’
‘Why? Nobody really knows why. He was just crazy.’ Kris shook his head. ‘The weird thing was, he wouldn’t ever talk to anyone about it. Caught red-handed, I mean, it looked like he wanted to be caught, but he wouldn’t say why he did it. I guess now no one’s ever going to know.’
‘Why not?’
‘He’s dead.’ Kris looked at her. ‘You didn’t know? He died in prison. It wasn’t that long afterwards.’
‘How? Did someone attack him?’
‘No. He was sick. Cancer, I think. I remember my mother going on about it, saying it served him right. She was glad to move away, even though Joren Sterckx was in prison. She said it could easily have been me or my brother Ronny he attacked.’ Kris grinned humourlessly. ‘We drove her nuts, going off on our own for hours without saying where we were, getting up to God knows what.’
‘I bet,’ said Veerle. Look how my mother reacted, she thought. She considered for a moment. ‘So nobody has any idea why he did it? Joren Sterckx, I mean?’
‘Oh, there were all sorts of rumours going round afterwards. People saying he’d hunted the kid down like he was a wild boar or something. A lot of people said he’d been hunting animals in the village first – pets had vanished, stuff like that.’
‘And that was our village.’
‘Yeah. Well, the bad stuff doesn’t just happen in the big city. It’s just more of a shock when it happens in a small place where everyone knows everyone. If you know someone, it’s’ – he shrugged – ‘more real.’
‘Like Vlinder.’ Veerle remembered how she had felt when she had heard the news, that the body in the park had been Vlinder. She’d never even met Vlinder, and yet the slender connection via the Koekoeken group had made her feel as though she and the dead girl were somehow linked.
That’s how it started with Mum, she thought. When the stuff that normally just happens in the news happened in our village.
‘Yeah, like Vlinder. Like I said, bad stuff doesn’t just happen in the city.’ Kris leaned forward, his face serious. ‘Look, you know there’s still been nothing from Hommel?’
Veerle stared down into her iced tea, not wanting to look him in the eye. She thought he was right to be concerned about Hommel. Even if it’s just because her own mother doesn’t care enough about her to contact the police. Still, whenever Kris talked about Hommel it always provoked an instinctive reaction, like the raising of hackles on a dog.
‘Are you sure her mother didn’t say anything about where she might have gone?’ Kris was saying.
‘No,’ said Veerle. She made herself look up, made her voice deliberately neutral. ‘She went on a lot about this guy Jappe, the stepfather. Said Hommel was always arguing with him. She seemed to think that’s why Hommel had gone. She was just churning out stuff Jappe had said, about Hommel being over eighteen and not having to live at home any more. She wasn’t going to call the police because Jappe said it wasn’t necessary.’ She grimaced. ‘I think you’re right, I think Jappe’s a klootzak, but she’s not much better. She’s so busy worrying about keeping Jappe happy that she’s stopped caring about Hommel.’ Veerle looked away from Kris, down to the end of the room where the fibreglass horse stood in the gathering shadows, still snarling its frozen snarl. ‘You know,’ she said, ‘it’s possible she did just take off somewhere. Jappe doesn’t sound like the sort of guy you’d want to live with, not if you could avoid it.’
‘It doesn’t feel right,’ said Kris. ‘Mevrouw Coppens told you Hommel went out one night and didn’t come back, right?’
Veerle nodded.
‘Well . . .’ He hesitated. ‘Supposing she went out to one of the Koekoeken houses, and something happened to her there?’
‘I guess,’ said Veerle. ‘But her mother just said she went out. It could have been anywhere.’
‘None of her friends have heard from her. If she didn’t go to any of them, where did she go?’
‘I don’t know. But that doesn’t mean it had to be one of the houses.’
‘No, it doesn’t.’ Kris frowned. ‘But it could have been. And Horzel’s still missing – you know, Egbert, the lock-picking guy.’
‘Well, that could be completely unconnected.’
‘Maybe.’ Kris fell silent for a moment, thinking. Eventually he said, ‘It was the same with Vlinder, you know. It was in the papers. She went out one evening, supposedly to meet friends, only her family didn’t know who or where, and she never came back.’
Veerle looked at him and she had a cold sensation in the pit of her stomach. ‘What are you suggesting?’
‘I don’t know what I’m suggesting,’ said Kris. ‘I’m not even sure there’s a pattern.’ He sighed. ‘Maybe Hommel’s just gone off somewhere like her mother says. Maybe she and Horzel will show up next week or the week after, both of them. Or maybe Horzel won’t show up again at all. Maybe he’s had enough. That happens sometimes – people get bored or lose their nerve.’
‘And they just vanish?’
‘Yes. Well, nobody’s going to chase them up. That’s the whole point of the Koekoeken – you don’t keep tabs on each other. You don’t know most of the others, except by their user names. If someone stops posting, you don’t go round to their place and check up on them.’
‘So in theory . . .’ said Veerle slowly, ‘other people could have disappeared.’
She and Kris stared at each other.
‘No,’ said Kris, but Veerle was not sure whether he meant, No, that couldn’t have happened or No, I don’t want to believe that.
There was a silence. Then Veerle said, ‘Let’s wait and see. Maybe one of them will turn up in the next few days, or maybe they both will. They’re probably both fine.’
But all the same, she wondered.
41
ON SILENT SATURDAY Veerle
woke up late. Since babyhood she had slept through the sound of the church bell, and she was hardly conscious of hearing it any more, and yet it seemed that it intruded upon her sleep more than she thought. In its absence she slept longer than she normally did, and awoke feeling refreshed but somewhat disorientated, as though she had been under a general anaesthetic.
The house was unusually silent too; Claudine had driven off in her little car on Good Friday, to visit her family in Namur. Veerle had avoided going by promising to accompany her mother when she went again on Ascension Day. She strongly suspected that this would entail a number of sideways looks from her elderly relatives, who would no doubt have digested all the complaining remarks Claudine made about her at Easter, but for the present that particular problem was a comfortable distance in the future. She rolled over, luxuriating, taking the duvet with her, and came nose to nose with the stuffed rabbit.
‘Verdomme!’
She sat up in bed and threw the rabbit across the room.
I ought to burn that bloody rabbit, she thought. Only she’d probably buy another one. Or find some way to raise that one from the dead.
She looked at the clock above the door. Time to get up. In fact, she was going to have to get a move on. She ran to the bathroom, showered, and went back to the bedroom to get dressed. Looking out through the window, she could see it was a fine sunny morning. The sky was a clear blue without a single cloud; there was a brilliant crystalline stillness to it, as though the silence of the bells had allowed it to set and harden around the spire of the Sint-Pauluskerk.
No time to make tea. She scavenged a glass of orange juice and a cellophane-wrapped frangipane tart from the kitchen. Five minutes later the front door was banging shut behind her as she bounced out into Kerkstraat.
She saw Kris before he saw her. He was leaning against a battered-looking black Volkswagen parked in the square. She guessed he had borrowed it, since there were no buses running today.
She crossed the street and went up to him. ‘Nice car,’ she said ironically. Now that she was closer to it, she could see that there was an enormous dent in the front wing.
‘Jeroen’s second best one,’ said Kris, patting it. ‘The cleaning business is booming, and he’s got himself a BMW. He wouldn’t lend me that, though.’
‘Mean of him,’ said Veerle, smiling.
Kris folded his arms. ‘So, where are you taking me? Please tell me we aren’t climbing up the outside of it, wherever it is.’
Veerle turned and pointed. ‘There.’
Kris followed her gaze. ‘We’ve done that one.’
‘That was ten years ago.’
They stood side by side and studied the church. Like many Flemish churches it was built of brick, with the tower at the west end stretching its spire to the skies like a swan stretching its neck upwards, the sloping slate-tiled roofs of the north and south aisles forming the wings. Nearly nine hundred years old, the ancient building still dwarfed all those around it. Veerle had not been into the bell tower since the day she and Kris had gone up there as children and seen Joren Sterckx approaching across the allotments with his ominous burden, but even without going up there it was clear that the upper section would offer a splendid view of the entire village.
Kris put an arm around her. He said drily, ‘It’s not going to be much of a challenge getting in there. It’s probably open.’
‘The church is,’ said Veerle. ‘But the bell tower isn’t. It’s locked nearly all the time now. I’m not sure anyone’s been up there since . . . well, since we were.’
They began to walk slowly towards the church. Veerle was scanning the street, checking for anyone who looked as though they were heading the same way, but no one was about. There was no reason why they shouldn’t go into the church if it was open, although she thought that Kris in his black leather jacket and jeans made an unlikely proselyte. Going into the bell tower was another matter, however, and she was relying on the fact that the church would probably be deserted at this time of day. There was a service scheduled for the evening but nothing for the middle of the day.
As they went up the steps to the church she put her head back and gazed up at the bell tower. This close, it looked gigantic and you had the uncomfortable feeling that it was leaning forward over you; that with very little encouragement the whole lot would fall upon you, crushing you in a mountain of worn and aged bricks.
As they entered the church they were greeted by a familiar smell, the dusty scent of incense and furniture polish and old books. Veerle went to the wooden door at the back of the vestibule and peeped into the interior of the church, but it was deserted. Then she went back to Kris, digging into her jeans pocket.
‘How did you get the key?’ he asked her as she fitted it into the lock of the bell-tower door.
‘I didn’t,’ she said, turning the key carefully. It took a little work but then she heard the lock click open. ‘Mum has a box of old keys at home. It used to belong to her father or something. I brought all of them in here and tried every single one of them out.’
‘And one of them worked?’
‘The second to last one. It’s a bit stiff, but it does open the lock.’
Veerle opened the door. She could have sworn that there was a change in the air as she did so, a subtle alteration in the musty odour of the church, as though the locked-up tower had been holding a pent-up breath and had exhaled at last. There were the stone stairs, curling away upwards, the treads a little worn in the middle from the passage of feet over the centuries. When Veerle began to climb them, they seemed somehow less steep than she remembered.
But I was smaller then, she thought. She tried to remember Kris as he had been ten years ago, but the memory was sliding away from her. The more solid a part of her present life he became, the more indistinct were the memories of his younger self; it was like glimpsing a ghost growing ever more transparent until it had altogether faded into the background.
She followed the curve of the stairs until they opened out into a room floored with wooden boards. She remembered the ladder that went up into the next floor but she did not recall it being as rickety as it now appeared.
Were there really as many bird droppings as this?
Every surface seemed to be encrusted with them, like the calcified excrescences inside an underground cave. Veerle didn’t like to think what they were inhaling when they disturbed the dry white residue on the floor; she did her best to breathe through her nose.
It’s cold, she thought; something else she had forgotten. It was bloody cold in the bell tower. It was cool to start with within the thick stone walls, and the windows had louvres instead of glass. The birds flew in and every bit of warmth leached out.
She went up the ladder carefully and emerged in the upper room. It was, if possible, even filthier than the one below. This was as far as they had gone last time, and even if they had dared to try to go further up now, it was no longer possible. The ladder that had led precariously to the upper reaches of the bell tower now lay in two pieces on the floor.
Veerle heard Kris’s footsteps on the floorboards behind her, and turned.
‘Nice,’ he commented ironically. ‘A bird sanctuary, right?’
Veerle laughed a little at that. ‘I wanted to come back here – with you.’
‘I’m touched.’
Veerle looked towards the west window. ‘I thought perhaps I’d remember – if I came up here.’
‘And do you?’
She shook her head. ‘Not really. Nothing important. I recognized everything – the stairs and the ladder. Even the mess.’
‘That’s got worse. Nobody ever comes up here, you can see that.’
‘I know.’ She looked up at him. ‘But I still don’t really remember seeing Joren Sterckx. I can remember being scared, really scared. And looking out of the window. But I don’t remember seeing him carrying anyone, anything like that.’
Kris shrugged. ‘Would you want to?’
Veerle glanced
away again, towards the window. ‘I don’t know. It just seems so odd, that I saw something like that and I can’t remember it.’
‘Well, come and look out. Maybe it’ll jog your memory or something.’
Veerle approached the window with a faint sense of unreality. The interior of the bell tower was at once familiar and yet unfamiliar, as though she were now visiting a place that was very like another place she had known in the past, but not quite identical.
The window, she thought. It isn’t as high up as I remember it. She began to have a stronger sense of her younger self, the seven-year-old Veerle, although it was impossible to recapture the child’s perspective. It was more as though she were accompanying that child, the ghost of her seven-year-old self, or as if she had stepped back into the past herself, the shade of things yet to come.
Where the child Veerle had had to stand on the narrow ledge under the window to peep out, she was now tall enough to rest her elbows on the sill. She leaned forward, peering between the slats of the louvres, and looked out.
The view took her by surprise. The apartment block, she realized. That was relatively new; she could still remember them building it. The last time she had looked out of this window there had still been an ugly gap in the street, and a free line of vision through to the allotments beyond. You could still see some of the open ground behind the apartment block, and beyond that a distant row of houses, but if Joren Sterckx had been close enough to recognize, he must have been nearer than that, in the area now blocked from sight.
Veerle fought to recreate the view in her mind’s eye. She knew the layout of the allotments: she could envisage the rough path that ran down the middle of them, towards the street and the church and now the back of the apartment block. Yet her mind refused to complete the picture, to fill in the shape of Joren Sterckx stumbling towards her with his arms full of his dreadful burden. He was as absent from her memory’s landscape as though he were a figure snipped out of a photograph in a magazine, leaving nothing but jagged edges.
