Part 21 (1/2)

Only the end of the bolt rehts attached to its shaft Erna's jaw dropped open and asound escaped her lips She bucked and spas 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 re fro his oretched 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 round with a slap The woodsman stepped over the body, hefted the axe above his head and brought it down a second tih the soft flesh of the assassin'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 fro his brother after hi 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 so 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 passed his lips An expunging, an outpouring He lifted his arms until they pointed away from his body, outstretched A ruinous calave the re 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 hi, a funereal roaring in his ears

Theripples of his wake

CHAPTER 13

Paris 1979

Sitting opposite Charles at the sar lue awning of the Cafe de Flore, on the corner of the Boulevard Saint-Ger 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 fuesticulating out of the ith the other

Nicole looked up at hi,' she said, 'half rief, Hans Fischer buries his wife in a rave 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 hiinals to know that the copies were accurate reproductions They had left hi far more disturbed than he had expected

Nicole nodded 'My great-great-grandmother It was 1879 She enty-seven years old She'd been married to Hans for just three years She died because she tried to protect Jakab fro Erna, Hans walks back into Keszthely, packs a bag of belongings, says goodbye to his parents and leaves with his son Carl the sarandfather, 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 superstition, Charles did not know, but hearing the tale froht 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, so terrible had happened to Erna Novak It had taken Charles some effort to research it, but Gerold Novak, Erna's father, had reported his daughterof 1879 Two months later her corpse was discovered when a local fars uprooted it She had been shot in the head

Had Hans Fischer murdered her? Or had she been killedhis wife'scouched in superstition, had driven Hans to believe that hosszu eletek were responsible But even if that were true, it didn't explain the continuation of the fa after he was dead

Nicole paused as a waiter skirted their table and unloaded a tray of coffee and croissants on to two Frenchwo nearby When he retreated, she continued 'Hans and Carl eventually settle in the city of Sopron, near the Austrian border He changes their surnain'

'Hans writes the first He starts it partly to co that has happened, and partly to capture all his memories of Erna, so he can pass theh'

'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 hi 'No, Charles, he never sees any evidence'

'Sorry' He held up his hands, placed them on the table 'They settle in Sopron Then, for years, no ets a job as a bookkeeper for the Sarkozy faion He does well for himself, very well In 1906 he hter'

'Hans must have been pleased'

'Ireat social hter and ood 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 hout his life, he collects stories of the hosszu eletek and records thees Despite all my years of research, some of the most useful inforreat-grandfather'

'He was certainly hter Anna grows up, her reseave you In his journal he references the sinancy seems as fresh now as it hteen It's not long before sheGerman che after that things start to go wrong'

Charles lifted the lid of the teapot and used a teaspoon to stir its contents He poured hilanced back up at Nicole He could see the strain in her face and it worried hiland 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 coe 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 hi him in the direction of those he did not own The information was sparse: he had found a few arian texts, but the majority of the s Whereas Beckett made little distinction, Charles was conditioned to reave him a reason to believe even a part of Nicole's story There was si, anywhere, to support the fantasy she rapped up in

And yet he loved her He did not think he was capable of falling in love with someone as 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 sether 'You think I'm crazy'

He shook his head 'That's just it I don't I don't kno 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 sheErna died in 1879 Anna Richter met Albert in 1926 Forty-seven years later'

'So if Jakab was in his twenties when he randmother, he would have been in his sixties or even seventies by the tirown up andhis eyes 'Yes'

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

'Anna had been worried for sorandfather Albert Bauer was an acadeent an 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 an to visit her at unusual times of the day, when he should have been at work They'd have sex Passionate, rough sex Finally Anna confided in Hans, who beca he wasn't sure of hether Jakab had already supplanted Albert entirely, and thein a ditch somewhere

'He wanted Anna to run, but he kne 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 i cheed the false Albert in conversation at the fa 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 Sopron Albert ith her It's not clear fro h not to persuade her to stay'

'Did they ever return?'

Nicole shook her head 'Anna wanted to She was terribly homesick Then, a randfather, mother and father had been found dead Hans, Carl and Helene All three had been tortured'