The String Diaries Part 41

Jamming the accelerator to the floor, she clutched the wheel as the Jeep lunged forwards. When its front wheels. .h.i.t the uneven surface of the track, it bounced and nearly threw her out of her seat. Hannah changed gears, pus.h.i.+ng the vehicle as hard as it would go. A pothole unseated her a second time. She tugged her arm through the seat belt. Tried to fasten it. Secured herself.

Wheels tearing up clods of earth, the Jeep powered up the gradient that led into the trees. Within seconds, she was plunged into shade. Bracken and ivy snapped and ripped. Her tyres shredded dead leaves.

A tight turn ahead. She dared not lose any speed. Dared not hesitate. Like a wild thing, the Jeep slid and spat, clawing at the earth as it took the turn. The steering wheel bucked and spun. She would not let go. The back end lost traction and slid. The Jeep's right side slammed against the trunk of a tree. Hannah cracked her head against the window. Hard enough to dazzle her.

Keep going. Just keep going.

As the car righted itself and accelerated out of of the turn, she saw a crow perched on something in the road ahead. Sickened, she realised it was a man's body. He could not still be alive. A knife protruded from his chest. His right leg was thrown across his body. One side of his skull had been crushed.

The track was too narrow. On each side, the trunks of chestnut, oak, beech and birch crowded close. She could not afford to stop and pull the man's body out of the way. She had to get through. Ahead, the crow exploded into flight. Hannah downs.h.i.+fted and accelerated.

I'm sorry. I don't know who you are. I'm sorry.

The Jeep rocketed up the slope, pistons detonating like cannons. Hannah forced herself to keep her eyes open as her vehicle thumped over the corpse with a jolt that flung her around in her seat.

She smelled the smoke before she saw it acrid in her nose, bitter in her throat.

When she turned into the next bend, she saw the first drifts of it hanging in the dappled light. Another bend and the drifting smoke became a grey cloud, its shade darkening.

She barrelled around the next turn. Ahead, a boiling black soup obscured the entire track. Hannah braked hard. She slowed the Jeep to a crawl. Beyond the windscreen, visibility dropped to a few feet. Oily smoke, as dark and as glossy as tar, billowed all about her. Inching her way now, peering through the roiling ma.s.s, she strained to find its source. A few feet. A few feet more. The stink of burning rubber, burning plastic. The smoke pressed at every window. Hannah switched the headlights on to full beam. In front, something gleamed.

Coughing from the fumes leaching into her lungs, she nursed the Jeep forwards. Whatever had been reflected in its lights vanished as another mushroom of smoke erupted.

It appeared again. Unmistakable now. The back of a white Audi Q7.

And suddenly she knew that this was the car that had brought Daniel Meyer to Le Moulin Bellerose, and that this was the car that Jakab had used to take her daughter away from her, and as she nosed the Jeep through a break in the smoke, and autumn sunlight flooded its interior, she pulled up alongside the horribly wrecked Audi and found that her hands were shaking on the wheel, trembling like the filaments of a spider's web during a kill, and she could hear in her ears the pounding of blood through her arteries, and all because Jakab had been here, and so had her daughter, and oh how could anyone still be alive inside that twisted and blackened metal cage?

Without realising, she had brought the Jeep to a halt. She switched off the engine, unbuckled her belt. Opening the door, she slipped out of the car. She took a breath. Another. Stared at the burning Audi. Looked away. Thought she might be sick. Wondered why she should care about that; about such a trivial thing.

The black smoke rolled away from her, blowing in the direction of the farmhouse that false refuge she had built with Nate. Hannah looked up and down the path. She moved closer to the wreckage.

The vehicle had left the road at a sharp angle, as if the driver had swerved to avoid an obstacle. Another few feet and it would have been out of the trees and into gra.s.sland. Instead, the car had slammed head-on into an oak. The impact had been so violent that its engine bay had fused with the tree trunk. Smoke poured from it: burning cables and rubber and dripping oil. Dark flames licked metal.

The Audi's windscreen had disappeared. Inside, the driver's seat was stained black with blood. There was so much of it.

She hugged herself. Forced herself to approach the car. The pa.s.senger seat was empty. But she could see blood there too. Bright and red and fresh. And, she thought, wanting to close her eyes, wanting to die, it had to be Leah's.

She may be close. She may have crawled into the bushes. She may be dying there, wanting to find somewhere peaceful, somewhere away from the sharp metal and the stink of burning and the violence and the madness. Or she's died already, alone and frightened and wondering where you were, why you broke your promise, why you allowed this to happen.

Hannah turned away. Peered between the trees. Peered through soot-grained eyes and tears and lost hope. Leah wasn't there. n.o.body was there. And so she looked back at the car again, and that was when she saw the enamelled dragon scale.

It glimmered, a red circle edged in gold, pressed deep into the plastic of the Audi's dashboard. She felt her chest swell, her throat tighten, until she doused with cold logic the hope that had wanted to surface.

That the dragon scale was Leah's, she had no doubt. But nothing here indicated that she had left this marker after the crash.

Believe.

Such a simple idea. So difficult. So monumentally difficult, after all that had happened, after all the dreams that had died.

Believe.

She would search for her daughter until she had no more breath. And she would not take that last breath until Jakab Balazs was destroyed, utterly, was little more than a dark memory for the world, a filthy stain that time would bleach away.

And if she confirmed that Leah was dead and managed to kill Jakab, what then? What would she do? What could she do if the last person on earth that she loved had been taken from her? What choice would she have?

You know what you'll do. Even now you're thinking it. Even now. Well, no one will begrudge you that, and likely no one will care. You will have failed everyone that mattered.

But whatever happens, you don't miss your appointment with Jakab. The arms of those scales need to be balanced.

Hannah stepped away from the burning Audi, turning from the smoke and the stink and the crackle. Up ahead, the track emerged from the trees into gra.s.sland. Sunlight caressed browned stalks. A breeze whispered amongst them. To the south ran the river, and closer still the mill race, a man-made channel of water diverted from the Vezere to power the mill's wheel.

And there, in the distance, half in light and half in shadow, a gnarled and age-warped three-storey construction of timber and brick and stone, stood the old watermill itself. Le Moulin Bellerose.

It had cloaked itself, at the river's edge, in a circle of thin trees. Hannah felt the blank stare of its upper windows. They spoke of age and decay. Of atrophy and ruin. Of the inevitability of loss and the futility of hope.

Nate had patched the roof to protect the structure from the worst of the weather, and he had reglazed all but one of the windows. That single black maw remained, its sill spattered with guano, the entry point for the colony of pipistrelle bats that roosted in the building's dusty rafters.

A sound echoed throughout the forgotten structure, bouncing around its sh.e.l.l and spilling out of the broken window. The sound of a young girl's screams.

CHAPTER 27.

Aquitaine region, France Now The weight of conflicting emotions that a.s.saulted Hannah as she heard her daughter's cries threatened to overwhelm her, unravel her. Her heart clenched. Her mind grappled. The almost unbearable relief that Leah was close brought with it terror that even now Hannah might be too far away, too weak, too late. The anguish in those screams sparked fury so blisteringly acute, so animalistic and all-encompa.s.sing, that her body shook, her teeth grated and her eyes felt like they would burst from their sockets. Her skin rippled with electricity. It rose into gooseb.u.mps. It lifted the hairs of her arms and her neck. Her ears rang and her mouth tasted blood. Her nose filled with the reek of burning rubber and plastic and oil.

She had no weapons. No gun, no knife. In her flight from the house she had not even paused long enough to grab something anything with which she could confront Jakab.

Hannah rubbed at her face with shaking hands. Her skin felt both raw and numb, a strange sensory mix. She found herself glancing back at the Audi, at the solitary red dragon scale pinned to the dash, at all it represented.

And suddenly, magically, as she stared at that single enamelled b.u.t.ton, she felt as if a plug had been pulled somewhere deep within her, and all of her emotions her terror and her rage and her guilt and her hate were spiralling away, draining out of her like poison gus.h.i.+ng from an abscess. What remained was the clarity of a single thought.

She had to kill Jakab Balazs, or she had to die in the attempt. And she had to do that today. Now.

Find a weapon. Something. Anything. You need to improvise. You'll be no good to Leah if you go in unprepared. You have one chance. One final opportunity. For Leah. For Nate. For all of them.

Catlike, she darted back to the Jeep, wrenched open its pa.s.senger door. In the glove compartment she found an owner's handbook, a sheaf of papers from the rental company, a map of southern France, an alloy locking nut in a polythene bag. No good.

She slid her hand into the door recess. Empty. Jumping into the pa.s.senger seat, she leaned over the gearstick and checked the driver's door pocket. Her fingers brushed against cloth. Closed around something. Lifting it out, she saw it was Sebastien's canvas medical kit the same one he had brought to Llyn Gwyr. Hannah dropped it on the seat and unrolled it. Antiseptic wipes, painkillers, scissors, burns dressings. Inside individual pockets she found a surgical scalpel, and spare blades in sterile pouches. Separate folds yielded a tracheal tube, suture thread, a selection of syringes, a penlight torch.

She s.n.a.t.c.hed up the scalpel and torch, bundled up the kit and tossed it on to the back seat. With her finds tucked into a pocket, she climbed out of the Jeep, opened its boot, peered inside. A folded tarpaulin, two blankets, a five-litre jerrycan and two cardboard boxes. Riffling through the first box, she found fis.h.i.+ng line, a sack of dry dog food and two thermos flasks. The second box contained a dual gas stove, spare gas canisters, a box of all-weather matches, a butane lighter, several freeze-dried food packs.

G.o.d love you, Sebastien. You thought of everything.

Hannah grabbed the jerrycan, knowing from its weight that it was full. She stuffed the butane lighter into her s.h.i.+rt pocket. As an afterthought, she opened the matchbox and crammed a handful of pink-tipped matches into her jeans.

You have to go. NOW.

Hannah skirted the Jeep, hefting the jerrycan alongside her, feeling the cold shape of the scalpel handle pressing against her leg. Out of the trees she ran, through long gra.s.s heavy with seed. It tugged at her legs and snagged her boots. She wondered if she was too late. She wondered what horrors were unfolding inside the mill.

Beyond the tree line, the land sloped down to the banks of the Vezere. Sunlight twinkled on its surface, reflecting cold blues and leaf greens and the brown shades of river stone and mud.

The mill race cut a narrow channel from further upstream, diverting water into the reservoir that fed the wheel. The sluice gate was closed; she could hear the overflow pouring down a stepped weir, emptying back into the river. Hannah stumbled on a rock hidden in the gra.s.s. Nearly twisted an ankle. The jerrycan slammed against her leg. She lurched onwards, swinging the container behind her.

The watermill, three storeys of brooding stone and brick, perched on a rocky outcrop thrusting out into the river. Its steeply pitched roof drooped where the timber beneath the tiles had warped and cracked. Moss clung in patches to its northern face. Its windows were blank voids, denying any glimpse of what lurked within.

The waterwheel itself, like some dark and twisted amus.e.m.e.nt park nightmare, hung from the wall that faced the river. Thirty feet in diameter, immense cast-iron spokes held its wooden paddles in place. With the sluice closed, the wheel was still. Its upper paddles, dried by the sun, were spotted with the dusty clumps of dead algae. Those nearer the water were slick and green with river slime.

A railed wooden platform surrounded the base of the building, partly supported by stilts where it jutted over the rocky outcrop. The mill race terminated at a sluice gate directly below the platform. A metal wheel operated a worm drive that raised or lowered it, controlling the flow of water.

Halfway along the nearest wall stood the mill's only door, a thick oak slab studded with ironwork. It hung open. Since hearing Leah's scream, Hannah had seen no one enter or leave by it. All the windows she could see were closed except for the unglazed hatch at the very top, and that was too far above the ground to provide an escape route. Anyone attempting to leave via the windows overlooking the Vezere faced a plunge into the rock-strewn shallows below.

Lungs burning, muscles aching, Hannah stopped at the balcony rail of the structure's wooden platform.

He's stronger than you. Faster than you. Cleverer. You've got to surprise him. Unbalance him somehow. He won't be thinking about you yet. Not with Leah here.

Hannah stared at the doorway, at the darkness that seeped out of it. She could feel her heart clenching and unclenching in her chest like a fist. Behind her, water tumbled over the weir in a roar. Crouching, she unscrewed the lid of the jerrycan.

She still had no idea what she was going to do. Throughout her owners.h.i.+p of Le Moulin Bellerose, the watermill had been the one place where she felt unsettled. Its enforced solitude, out here on this lonely outcrop, gave it a sad and dismal air. Now, it exuded malevolence.

Throw him off balance. Do something unexpected. Give yourself any advantage you can.

Standing, she grasped the metal wheel that controlled the sluice, twisted. Nothing. Tensing, she strained against it, bracing her legs and spine, watching as the skin on her knuckles whitened.

The wheel slipped an inch. It gripped and held fast. Again she heaved against it, feeling rust grate on the teeth of the rack. Then, in an instant, the resistance broke, and the wheel turned in her hands.

Below her the steel sluice plate began to rise. Water, at first a trickle and then a gush and then a flood, foamed and churned.

The wheel groaned. For a moment she thought the water's force was going to tear it loose, rip out the huge axle and bring the entire building cras.h.i.+ng over the lip of outcrop into the river below. Instead, it began to turn. Slowly it gathered speed, flinging white spray into the air as the paddles rotated through the seething water. She heard gears engaging inside the mill, the old machinery roused from sleep.

Hannah picked up the jerrycan. She pulled the scalpel from the pocket of her jeans. Stared at its blade.

He'll kill you. You know he'll kill you.

The great wheel turned. Water foamed and boiled and hissed. The platform beneath her feet vibrated with the power she had unleashed.

Hannah moved to the mill's heavy oak door, took a last breath and slipped inside.

CHAPTER 28.

Aquitaine region, France Now From rich autumn light she stepped into a cloying abyss. The sun's heat had roasted the air inside the mill; it was thick with the smell of dust and timber and disintegrating linen sacks. Underlying it was a fouler odour. Some animal had crawled in here recently to die.

The windows were caked in filth. They allowed scant sunlight to filter through. To Hannah's left, the waterwheel's main shaft entered the room through a hole in the wall. Upon it sat a huge metal pit wheel. As the pit wheel turned it rotated a cog on a separate axle, converting horizontal motion into vertical. A toothed spur wheel drove a second spinning shaft that disappeared through the ceiling to the milling room upstairs.

The machinery clacked and shook and knocked and creaked. Its vibrations lifted a fine haze of flour into the air around her.

Slowly Hannah's eyes adjusted to the gloom. A collection of rusted farm tools were heaped in one corner. In another, a stack of firewood. Under a window stood the workbench Nate had used to patch the mill's roof and reglaze its windows. On it rested a chipped blue coffee mug, a china plate, several offcuts of gla.s.s.

Leah sat cross-legged in the middle of the room. The girl's pupils had dilated so much that her eyes looked like black holes. Her face was smudged with dirt and blood. A lump like a halved plum swelled on her forehead. Her skin was white. Her left cheek was lacerated.

But she was here. In this same room. Alive.

On the floor, opposite her, sat Jakab.

Utterly still, his back to Hannah, legs tucked beneath him, he perfectly mirrored Leah's stance. He wore corduroy trousers, boots, an old army coat. Hannah would need only two steps to bring him within reach: the abomination from G.o.dollo; the horror that had ripped through generations of her family like a sharpened scythe.

Her husband. Her mother and father. The grandfather she had never met. Erna Novak, little more than a name in an old diary, but a woman who had loved and feared and grieved and died. All of them gone. All because of this creature before her, this stalking beast.

She stared at the back of Jakab's head at the tanned skin of his neck, at his dark hair and felt her stomach seizing, her mouth flooding with saliva. To be this close, within touching distance of the source of so much death and pain, made her nauseous. Waves of insanity and corruption seemed to flow from him. She felt buffeted by their swells.

Leah lifted her gaze to Hannah. The girl's eyes were wild, lost. Her mouth hung slack.

Oh please G.o.d, am I too late? Has he ruined her already? Stolen away her mind?

She tightened her grip on the scalpel. Against Jakab, it was a mere talisman, but it was all she had. 'Leah, get up. Come away from him.'

The girl remained still, as if transfixed by some spell he had woven.

'Leah.'

Finally, her daughter blinked. 'It's OK, Mummy. He explained everything.'

Never before had Hannah heard that tone in Leah's voice. It was caught somewhere between wonder and horror, denial and acceptance. 'Darling, please. I don't know what he's said. But you know who he is. What he is. Anything he's told you is a lie. I promise you that. Now stand up. Come away.'

Leah's face tightened, as if she tried to communicate with more than mere words. 'We don't have to be afraid any more.'

'You're right. We don't have to be afraid. Not of him not ever again. Please, honey. Get up.'

Around them, the mill wheels clanked and turned. Dust s.h.i.+vered in the air. Floorboards vibrated. Leah untucked her feet from beneath her.

When the girl began to rise, Jakab copied her. Moving with preternatural grace, he unfolded his legs and pushed himself up from the floor: a single sinuous movement, like steam curling from a pot.

He turned and Hannah felt the breath whoosh from her lungs as if she had been kicked. Felt her fingers lose their grip on the jerrycan. Heard it thump to the floor. Felt her throat constricting as impossibly impossibly she found herself staring not at Jakab, not Jakab at all, but Nate.

Nate. Solid, incarnate. Standing before her.