Franz looked down at his sister, trying to decide what to do. She was too badly hurt to help with the search. That much was obvious. And there was no time to lose.
‘Stay here, Jani, I’ll come back when I find her,’ he said, speaking in Dutch. His voice was gruff but not unkind, and Jana picked up on her brother’s use of his pet name for her.
‘Yes, I’m sorry, Franz,’ she said, sounding relieved. ‘She went crazy. I didn’t expect it.’
‘I know. Rest now. I’ll be back soon.’ He picked up his sister’s hand, held it lightly for a moment, and then let it go.
It was the nearest Franz Claes could get to tenderness or affection. Such emotions didn’t come naturally to him. But he was fond of his elder sister. They went back a long way. And the idea of her being pushed around and kicked by bloody little Katya made him angry inside. He could feel the rage building like a knot in his stomach. But he had it under control. It was something he prided himself on — he was always in control of his emotions.
Franz went out into the corridor and stood there for a moment, listening intently. With his left forefinger he stroked a long white scar that ran down from the hairline above his left ear to a blotch of red puckered skin just below his jaw, but otherwise he was entirely still. Titus and the Trave woman were somewhere downstairs, too far away to be audible from where he was. It was Katya he was listening for. But he could hear nothing except the sound of his sister’s painful breathing in the room behind him. He looked from one end of the corridor to the other, trying to decide which way to go. The house was old, full of unused cupboards and recesses where Katya could be hiding, and there were two staircases going down, one at each end of the corridor. After a moment he shrugged his shoulders and went to the right.
A few minutes later he began to be seriously concerned. He’d gone from room to room, systematically searching every crevice, every corner, but he could find no trace of Katya anywhere. What if he was wasting his time? What if she had got out of the house and was even now heading down towards the gate? The doors and windows were locked, but she could have slipped out the front door and past her uncle when he went out to greet Vanessa. He knew Titus wouldn’t welcome an interruption before dinner, but he felt he had no choice. There wasn’t any time to spare, and he needed help if he was going to find the damned girl before she caused any more trouble.
As he’d anticipated, Titus and his guest were downstairs in the drawing room. It was the handsomest room in the house, with its views through high windows onto the rose garden and the valley beyond — a good place for a romantic encounter, Franz thought bitterly. As a rule of thumb, he didn’t like women, but this one he disliked more than most. She was in the way, and she was a security risk. He wished that Titus had never clapped eyes on her.
He took a deep breath, knocked at the door, and went in. They were standing in front of the fireplace. Titus was holding Vanessa’s hand but dropped it when Franz came in.
‘What is it, Franz? It’s surely not time for dinner yet,’ he said, glancing over at the golden ormolu clock ticking sedately beneath the oval Venetian mirror on the mantelpiece. It was just after six o’clock.
‘I know. I’m sorry, Titus, Mrs Trave. Something has come up. It won’t take a moment.’
‘Oh, very well. I won’t be long, my dear.’ Titus Osman made it a point never to raise his voice, never to depart from the elaborate rules of courtesy that he’d set for himself, but under an apparently unruffled exterior he was seriously annoyed by Franz’s intrusion. For several weeks now he’d felt the right moment was approaching for a marriage proposal to Vanessa. The timing had to be right, and Titus was nothing if not patient, but she seemed particularly receptive this evening. The weather helped, of course. A warm late summer evening with the sun sinking gently into the pine woods beyond the lake. Perhaps he would take her out into the rose garden after dinner. Smoke a cigar; walk the carefully tended pathways hand in hand in the moonlight; tell her how he felt. But then again — perhaps not the cigar. The smoke might get in the way, particularly if they kissed. He liked the slow courtship that they had been engaged in, and he had enjoyed planning each move forward, continually adjusting his words and suggestions depending on her response, but now it was time to take their budding relationship to another level. He felt sure of it. Tonight was the night.
Of course, if Vanessa said yes, that still wouldn’t be the end of the story. She’d need a divorce, and Titus knew how much Vanessa’s husband hated him. But he had a strange feeling that that might make it more likely, not less, that Trave would cooperate if Vanessa asked him. The inspector had too much self-love not to want to take the moral high ground if it was offered to him. He was what the English liked to call ‘an honourable man’.
However, Titus realized he was getting ahead of himself. First he had to deal with Franz, whose anxiety was obvious. Titus noticed how two bright red spots had appeared in the centre of Franz’s pale cheeks, a sure sign of trouble. They talked in the hall. There was no chance Vanessa could hear. Titus had been careful to shut the door of the drawing room when they left.
‘Katya locked Jana in her room,’ said Franz. ‘She attacked her when Jana tried to give her the injection. I don’t know where she’s gone. I can’t find her. I’ve looked almost everywhere.’
‘Christ, Franz. Can’t I rely on anyone?’ asked Titus angrily.
‘We wouldn’t have had the problem if you hadn’t brought her here,’ said Franz, gesturing with his thumb toward the drawing room door.
‘It’s my house. I’ll do what I want in it.’
Franz met Titus’s eye but otherwise didn’t respond, and Titus paused, took a deep breath, and nodded.
‘Is your sister hurt?’ he asked.
‘Yes, but she’ll be all right. The point is she can’t help us now. That’s why I fetched you. It needs two of us to find the girl.’
‘Yes, you were right. Could she have got outside?’
‘Maybe, when you opened the door. But I think it’s more likely she’s hiding somewhere. If we don’t find her, I’ll go after her in the car. She can’t get far; she’s got no money.’
‘All right. You carry on upstairs. I’ll look down here after I’ve told Vanessa. I’m sorry, Franz. You were right to tell me.’
Katya stood at the back of a small closet under the stairs on the other side of the entrance hall from the drawing room. The coat rail running down the centre of the closet was only half-filled and she’d pushed the coats and mackintoshes to the front, creating a hiding place for herself at the back. One coat in particular reached down almost to the floor, and so she’d been all but invisible when Franz had peered inside a moment before. Now she stood holding on to the rail with both hands for support while she listened intently to Franz and her uncle through the half-open door. She felt terrible. Her right arm hurt constantly where Jana’s needle had gone into her vein. The bitch — Jana deserved exactly what she’d got. Katya wished she’d kicked Jana a few more times when she’d had the chance. But some of the sedative must have got into her system. She had been fighting drowsiness ever since she got downstairs, and now she felt almost grateful for the pain throbbing in her arm since it was at least keeping her awake — but for how much longer she didn’t know. Releasing her left hand from the rail, she squeezed her right wrist hard. Pain was good, and she wished that she had nails to dig into her skin, but she had bitten them all down to the quick long ago.
Damn them; damn them all! What right did they have to treat her like this? She wished Ethan was here to help her. More than two years later and she still missed him as much as ever. So much for time as the great healer, she thought bitterly. She remembered how they had stood together in this same hall and how she had put her arms around his waist and buried her head in his chest and felt for a moment that her life was perfect — nothing needed to be added; nothing needed to be taken away. Everything was exactly right. But it had all been an illusion, a chimera made of delicate crystal glass that had shattered into a thousand tiny pieces a long time ago. Ethan had died with a knife in his back and she’d gone down to skid row and ended up a prisoner in her own bedroom, starved and terrified, without a friend in the world.
Except that now she had a chance, a small chance but a chance nonetheless. If she could just stay awake and escape detection long enough to tell this woman what had happened, then maybe someone would come and help her. So what if the woman had something going with her uncle. From what she’d overheard in the last few minutes, this Vanessa sounded normal, nice even. And Franz and her uncle didn’t want Vanessa to know she was here. That much was obvious. Why else would they have got Jana to give her the injection?
Another wave of exhaustion swept over Katya. She hung desperately on to the coat rail, but there was no strength left in her arms and her legs were giving way beneath her. But then, just as she felt sure she was going to fall, she heard Franz above her head going up the stairs. She knew it was him because she could hear the unevenness of his steps; it was unmistakable the way he always dragged his left leg behind him as he walked. A
