by Helen Grant
The woman’s gaze flickered over Veerle with ill-concealed disdain. ‘No,’ she said shortly.
The way she spoke implied that she would not have told Veerle anything even if the doorway opposite had been the daily conduit of an entire circus troupe, complete with elephants, dancing horses and acrobats in spangled leotards. She picked up the menu and walked away, towards the back of the bistro.
The salad when it arrived was very good, but Veerle paid it little attention. She ate as slowly as she dared, keeping her mobile phone on the table next to her, hoping that Bram would switch on his mobile, pick up her message and phone her back.
Halfway through the meal she looked down at her plate, looked up again and across the road, and there was the old man. He was out on the pavement, and he was already walking away from the doorway between the shops, striding out, his dark coat pulled close around his throat.
For a moment Veerle stared at him in shock, and then she was on her feet, heart thudding. She grabbed her mobile phone from the table, her fork clattering unnoticed onto her plate.
Equally rapidly the woman who had served her was out of the back of the bistro and moving smoothly into the space between Veerle and the door.
‘Oh no you don’t.’
Veerle tried to see past her, to see where the old man was going, but the woman dodged to the side, blocking her view.
‘You’ve a bill to pay.’
‘I wasn’t trying to—’ Veerle broke off, speechless with frustration. She dragged her wallet out of her pocket, took out the fifteen euros and thrust them at the woman. ‘I have to go!’
‘This is two euros short. You had the hot chocolate.’
‘Shit.’ Veerle was beside herself. She upended the wallet, caught the handful of coins that fell out, and dumped the lot on the nearest table. ‘There.’
Then she bolted for the door.
‘Hey! Wait until I—’
But Veerle didn’t hang around. She burst out into the street.
The old man had already vanished.
Veerle ran to the first intersection and gazed down every street, but there was no sign of an old man in a dark coat.
After that, heart thumping, her breathing rasping in and out in short gasps, she walked back to the scuffed door through which he had undoubtedly emerged, and contemplated it in silence.
Well, she thought, I know he’s not in there now.
She looked behind her once to make sure that nobody was watching her, and then she slipped inside.
52
The corridor leading to the yard behind the shops was not only narrow, it was unlit and it stank of urine. Veerle picked her way cautiously along it, hoping that the floor was not as filthy as it smelled. She could not imagine anyone from the shops on either side using this corridor; to go from here into the dazzling interior of the candlestick shop would be like tracking mud into an operating theatre. If there were flats through here, they must be squalid. She remembered the thick stench that had hung about the old man, and grimaced. It was a relief to step into the yard.
It was an odd, ill-favoured little space. Simply being inside it made Veerle deeply uneasy. The surrounding buildings stretched to four or five storeys at least, so that being in the yard felt like being at the bottom of a deep crevasse. There were a couple of rubbish bins whose contents some unfortunate soul probably had to haul through that stinking tunnel every week, and various bits of lumber: a couple of broken chairs, some rain-engorged cardboard cartons, and a splintered wooden pallet. A black metal fire escape zigzagged its way up one of the towering walls.
Veerle looked around, very cautiously. It did not seem possible that anyone could spend several hours in the yard; ergo, the old man must have gone up and down the fire escape. She thought that she would climb up and try some of the doors, but first she would call Bram again, and, she decided heavily, if Bram still had his phone switched off, she would call Kris. She would feel better if someone knew where she was, or preferably if someone came down here and climbed the fire escape with her. Knowing that the old man had gone did nothing to reduce the atmosphere of dereliction and decay, of wrongness, in this place. It stank of menace, like the bone-littered entrance to a dragon’s cave.
Bram’s phone was still off. Veerle ended the call, thought for a moment, then called back and left a new message.
‘Bram, it’s me again. Look, I’m really, really sorry I stood you up. I know what you must be thinking, but I wouldn’t have done it if I hadn’t had to. Can you call me back as soon as you get this?’ There was the briefest of pauses before she added, ‘I . . . love you.’
Veerle hung up, and stood motionless for a few moments, the phone clasped in her hand, looking up towards the open sky. Then she called Kris. She made herself do it without thinking too hard about it – there was no other option, after all – and she was completely unprepared when the call went straight to his voicemail too.
Veerle thumbed the OFF button on the touch screen. Her heart was racing now. She felt a little sick.
This is ridiculous. This can’t be.
She stared down at the phone.
Did I call Bram’s number again by mistake?
She called again, taking meticulous care that it was definitely Kris Verstraeten she phoned, and nobody else, but the call diverted straight to voicemail again.
Verdomme.
Veerle felt like hurling the phone across the yard to certain destruction on the wall, but she restrained herself. Instead, she left a message, forcing herself to speak calmly.
‘Kris, it’s Veerle. Something’s happened. I was in the cathedral and there was this horrible old man. Look, he’s the one who attacked Hommel. I know he is. He said the same thing – you know, Eva. He’s got some kind of thing about the painting, the one in the cathedral.’ Veerle rubbed her forehead with her fingers. Am I insane, even thinking about doing this? But she made herself finish the call. ‘The cathedral guide threw him out and I didn’t want to lose him so I followed him. I’m at . . .’ She gave the street name. ‘There’s a doorway leading through into a back yard. It’s next to a shop with all this home decoration stuff and opposite the bistro. The old man isn’t here – I saw him go out a few minutes ago – so I’m going to go in and have a look around.’ Veerle paused. ‘I just wanted to let someone know where I was, in case I never come back, OK?’ She spoke in a deliberately light tone, but she wasn’t joking. She gave the street name again and then she hung up without ceremony.
So, she thought queasily, I’m on my own.
She tried hard not to think too carefully about that.
I’ll go in and look around for a couple of minutes – five, max – and then I’m out of here. Long gone before the old man even thinks of coming back.
She went to the foot of the fire escape and looked up. Then she pocketed the phone and began to ascend the metal staircase, moving slowly and carefully to minimize the sound of her footsteps. It seemed sound enough but looked sadly neglected, the black paint flaking off in numerous places as though the staircase were shedding its skin, snake-like. There was nothing to indicate that anyone ever used it: no cigarette ends, no discarded food wrappers or till receipts, not so much as a muddy footprint. All the same, as Veerle moved higher and her view of the yard below encompassed every corner, she became more and more convinced that the old man must have used the fire escape. There was nowhere else he could have gone. There was a set of double doors leading into the back of the shop next to this one, but she could see the chains across it from here.
Veerle reached the first floor and the blank closed face of the fire exit. There was no handle to work at, no lock to pick. It looked secure, and indeed, when she touched it, it refused to budge a millimetre. She glanced down into the yard, checking that she was still alone, though she was committed now, anyway; if the old man or anyone else appeared below she had no escape route other than to continue upwards. The yard was deserted. She continued her climb.
As soon as the second-
floor fire door came into view she could see that she had found what she was looking for. It had been pushed almost closed but there was the hint of a shadow running up the side of it like a broken seal.
There was a hard knot of grim excitement in Veerle’s chest, the dark reflection of the exhilaration she had felt whenever she and Kris had explored a new house back in Vlaams-Brabant or Brussels. It felt as though a line had been drawn, and she was about to step over it. It was as brazen and deliberate as saying Sometimes I hated my mother. Or saying I love you when perhaps you didn’t. It was a toxic rush, compulsive and suicidal as bad drugs.
Veerle touched the edge of the door, curling her fingers around it, proving to herself that, yes, it really was open. She listened too, holding her breath, straining her ears for the slightest sound that would tell her that someone was inside. Nothing. The air was still; the interior of the building exuded nothing but cold. She might as well have put her ear to a corpse’s lips and hoped to feel warm breath on her cheek.
Veerle pulled the door open and looked inside. The fire escape looked into a passage and internal staircase. The interior of the building was dimly lit, the light apparently coming from the front windows. There were light fittings with naked bulbs at intervals along the corridor but none of them were on. The cold natural light that spilled from open doorways along the passage showed bare wooden floorboards and unadorned walls.
She stepped inside and pulled the door almost closed behind her. Then she began to explore, treading as silently as possible, all her senses on high alert.
The floor she was on, the second floor, was deserted – that was soon obvious. The rooms were large, with high ceilings decorated with elegant moulded plaster, and if the weather outside had not been so overcast they would have been pleasantly light. They were also very clearly uninhabited, and had been so for a long time. There was not a stick of furniture in any of them, and the dust lay so thickly on the boards that her feet left visible tracks in it, as though she were wading dispiritedly through a layer of fall-out.
The fall-out of time, she thought. It got everyone in the end – everyone, that is, except Joos Vijdt and his fellows, if you believed the legend.
Veerle approached one of the front windows, moving sideways like a crab so that she could peer out and down without being seen from the street. There was nothing untoward to see, no black-clad and wrinkled old man coming up the road towards the building. She turned away.
It made sense to check the first floor too, although she didn’t really think the old man lived there. She was beginning to think that if he lived in this building he was squatting illegally, and in that case he’d probably go further up, as far from the shop with its chic and haughty staff as possible. She went down stairs that were as thickly coated with dust as everything else, and found more deserted rooms, and a great stack of boxes piled up near the head of the staircase that led down to the ground floor.
Veerle opened one of them and was not surprised to find the fat and gleaming face of a ceramic cherub pouting up at her from a mass of packaging material, like the obese victim of a landslide.
Stock from the shop below.
She closed the box, thinking.
They’ve just left it all here, by the stairs, so they obviously don’t think anyone is going to come through here and help themselves to anything.
The only tracks in the dust on the landing were her own, so she didn’t think anyone ever came any further than this point either. Veerle glanced up at the ceiling.
So he goes up there.
She thought about going up.
Five minutes, max, that was what I said. I’ve probably had five minutes.
Stillness; nothing moving, no sound other than her own rapid breathing.
Five more minutes, then out, she said to herself.
She climbed the stairs again, carefully, still listening, still hearing nothing. She passed the deserted second floor and made her way up to the third. Now she could see marks in the dust on the treads, a myriad of them: either a whole crowd of people had gone up and down just once, or one person had done it a hundred times. It was easy to follow the trail now, although she still peered into each of the rooms, just for the sake of thoroughness. All empty. In one, a single torn curtain hung from a rail; otherwise, they might never have been inhabited.
The fourth floor was the same. Now the front rooms were a little lighter in spite of the gloom outside, because they were closer to the rooftops. In one of them there were scuff-marks leading to a spot just to the side of the window; someone had done what Veerle had done; he had positioned himself where he could see out with little risk of being seen himself. Still there was no sign of anyone actually living here.
Maybe he doesn’t live here. Maybe he just comes here to . . . what? To spy on passers-by or the occupants of the building opposite? Veerle couldn’t imagine it. The rooms were bleak and bare, and the higher she went, the colder they were, as though she were slowly ascending to a mountain peak crusted with snow.
Veerle thought that she must be nearly at the top now. One final floor to go, and then nothing more except the roof itself. She stood at the bottom of the staircase looking up towards the fifth floor, and that dark dangerous excitement she had felt gave way to a sense of seething unease.
It’s very dark up there.
The floor she was on wasn’t exactly well-lit; the daylight seemed to seep in grudgingly through the dusty windows. It was light enough though, even if somewhat gloomy. But up there, on the fifth floor, there was no light at all.
Veerle looked up towards the head of the stairs and she could make out nothing except that darkness, a thick muffling darkness that seemed to expand and drift like fog the longer she looked at it.
Why?
There had to be some prosaic explanation. Perhaps someone had decided to close all the shutters on the top floor.
In spite of leaving them open on every other floor?
It didn’t feel right. Veerle stood at the bottom of the stairs and hauled out her phone again to check for messages or missed calls. She knew she hadn’t missed any calls, but she checked anyway. Nothing.
Shit. Bram, Kris, anyone, just switch your phone on.
She leaned over the banisters and gazed down at the floor below, listening. Nothing to see or hear. No sign of the old man returning.
Still, she thought about it before she made up her mind. It was horribly ominous, that blackness at the head of the stairs, and yet she could think of no alternative. She had not traced the old man to a regular address, somewhere they could knock politely on a neighbour’s door and ask questions, or that they could pass on anonymously to the police. The old man was long gone; he might return but equally she might never run into him again. If there were any answers to be had, they were upstairs, cocooned in the smothering dark.
Veerle put her hand on the banister, feeling the wood cool under her hand, the grain slightly rough where the varnish was worn away. She held on as she climbed the stairs, as though to steady herself. If anyone had been standing below on the landing, they would have seen her ascend slowly, her face turned upwards, like a saint in a stained-glass window rising towards the heavens. The darkness swallowed her.
53
Veerle moved haltingly through the darkness, one hand clutching the banister, one stretched out in front of her, groping the air for obstacles she hoped not to find. She was praying that the boards beneath her feet were sound; there was nothing to suggest that they weren’t, but it was unnerving not being able to see where she was treading. That was the logical fear, but worse were the irrational ones that clustered about her like phantasms. She imagined her questing fingers touching something in the blackness – a lipless mouth, a corroded eye socket – and it was all she could do to keep moving forward.
Get a grip, she told herself sternly. It’s just a bunch of rooms with the shutters down. The dark can’t hurt you. It’s the old man you’ve got to listen out for.
That didn’t h
elp – the mere thought gave her a cold feeling in the pit of her stomach. A rapid pulse throbbed in her throat.
Veerle stood still for a moment, her right hand still resting on the banister, her eyes gazing into the darkness, straining to see the slightest chink of light, anything that would tell her whether to go on or turn back.
And she did. As her eyes adjusted to the blackness she could see the thinnest of lines sketched in the air in front of her: delicate as cobweb, and curiously insubstantial, seeming to flicker in and out of existence. So evanescent was it that she doubted the evidence of her eyes at first. But no – she was not imagining it. It really was there.
What am I seeing?
She began to move towards it, still advancing with great care, and now she saw that it was not simply a single line, it was part of an infinitesimally slender outline traced in the darkness with a faint and inconsistent light. A door – a door with light behind it, only not daylight; something very much weaker.
Veerle knew that she was on the outer limits of the second five minutes she had promised herself. It was time to go, time to cut her losses and leave the building, to thank heaven that she had got in and out of it without being caught.
Just one minute more, maybe two. Just time to try the door. If it’s locked, I’ll just go. If it opens, I’ll take thirty seconds to look and then I’ll go.
Veerle knew she was pushing her luck. This was not a good place to be. There were plenty of hiding places but only one way in and out. Every nerve and fibre in her body was screaming at her to get out, right now.
Still, for the sake of a single minute, not to know . . .
Thirty seconds was long enough to see whatever was behind the door. It might be long enough to photograph it with her phone, or to pick something up, some small item she could show to the police as proof.
