She rocked over on her side, got to her feet. The chair was still next to the kitchen cupboard. With one foot she managed to push it over towards the work surface, climbed up on to it. Wriggled upright back first. Turned so that the window latch caught under the handcuffs and then gave a jerk. The latch snapped off. She couldn’t reach as high as the upper latch with her hands. She stretched up, bit round it and snapped like a fish taking bait. Pulled it halfway open. Another bite and it was loose and she flipped it free with her tongue.
The window was frozen. She pressed her full weight against it, but it didn’t move. She leaned back and butted as hard as she could and it flew open.
She didn’t feel the coldness of the snow on her bare feet. Not the outhouse, Liss! You’ve got to take the other direction, away from the cabin. She ran from the veranda, part of the way down towards the lake, hid behind a tree, climbed again, up in the direction of the cliff, the wind blew the fresh snow away there, the hill would be firmer underfoot, if she could get up there, she could run. She dragged herself over a snowdrift, fell and couldn’t break her fall. Something ran down into her eyes; she rubbed her face in the snow, darkening it where she rubbed. Sank down and crawled on. Maybe what she was hearing were footsteps in the snow. She lay still without moving, listening into the wind. Then she crawled on, another metre up the slope, then another, rolled up over the edge and on to the top of the cliff.
He stood leaning against the pine trunk in front of her. Tutted in mock sadness when she tried to get to her feet.
– Oh Liss. I did try to tell you.
He bent down to her. An axe in his hand. – You’re not going anywhere without me, he whispered. – Not until I say so.
8
SHE WAS SWEPT into the warm doze as though by a tidal wave. That was where she heard the voice. It was no longer Mailin’s. It was her father who had made his way through the snowdrift to tell her something.
This place is yours, Liss. Yours and Mailin’s.
But it’s you who owns the cabin.
He stands by the window looking out.
From now on, you two are the owners. I have to go away.
Odd way to say it. Not like when he’s going to Berlin or Amsterdam. Be gone a few weeks and come back home with presents for her.
He sits on the edge of the bed. Strokes her hair. He doesn’t usually do that. Usually stares at her for a long time with a strange smile. But he never touches her.
Why do you have to go away?
He says nothing for a long time. Finally shakes his head slowly.
You’re the one I’ll miss, Liss. We’re the same, you and I. Nothing anyone can do about it.
Viljam had lit the paraffin lamp. He had put the axe down on the edge of the fireplace and was standing there reading her notebook. Everything she’d written to Mailin. She couldn’t bear to think about what he had done to her. Only that he had let her grow cold. Liss was cold too, huddled up in a corner of the sofa. She wasn’t angry with him. He’d given her another shot. The good pain was tightly packed around her.
– Jacket stopped you when you were going to swim out and die, she tried to say. Could feel her voice full of thick sauce. – He saved you.
Viljam didn’t look up from the notebook, turned over a few pages, seemed engrossed in what she had written.
– You needed someone to hold you. But he used you.
Abruptly he tossed the book aside and loomed over her. – Where do you get that from?
She couldn’t lift her hands to defend herself.
– Did she send you anything else? Have you got more CDs? If you’ve hidden anything, then…
It took a few seconds for her to understand what he was talking about.
– There was only one. The one I told you about when I called.
He straightened up again.
– Why didn’t you want anyone to know about Jacket? she groaned. – He was the one who did things to you. You were innocent.
– You understand fuck-all, so don’t talk about it.
He laughed. As suddenly, he was serious again.
– He took a helluva chance letting me come to him. He could have lost everything, ended up in jail, been stoned, ostracised, strung up. Do you understand? He took that chance so that I could be with him. How many are there who care so much that they’ll risk everything just to be with some fucking kid?
– I understand that, she murmured.
He picked up the notebook again, sat in the chair by the fireplace and carried on reading.
She pulled herself up from the sofa, struggled across the floor and into the light from the paraffin lamp. Stood naked in front of him, hands cuffed behind her back so tightly that the pain flashed from her wrists down into her fingertips.
– You killed someone, he said without looking up.
First time she’d heard someone else say those words. But as things stood, it meant nothing at all.
– Everything written there is true, she heard herself reply.
– And now you’re going to offer to keep your mouth shut if I let you walk out of here.
The thought hadn’t occurred to her.
– I can’t let you go, he said. – I came out last time you were here. Had to find out if you knew anything. I could let you go then, but not now. I won’t fool you into believing that. I’ll be honest with you. You’ll never leave here again.
He tossed the notebook into the fire. – Do you realise that?
Liss saw the way a tiny flame began to wrap itself around the red plush cover.
– It wasn’t because of that business with Ylva that I couldn’t let Mailin live, he said tonelessly. – Jo and Jacket swore an oath. Death before anyone else knew about them.
Alongside the burning notebook Liss saw the remains of a book cover. Sándor Ferenczi, she read. The inside was a roll of flaking ash.
– Mailin found out about it, she murmured.
– She never gave up, Viljam interjected. – Kept asking and asking who Jacket was.
Liss tried to hold on to some of the thoughts that were seeping away into the distance, somewhere far from the room she was in, far from the smoke from the fireplace, from the dust and the cold wooden walls, all the smells that would remain behind after her and Mailin, after her father, who once stood by her bed and said he was going away, after his mother, who had sought refuge here before the world came and brought her in.
– Mailin realised that Jacket was Berger.
Viljam looked at her for a few moments. – That’s what happened, he answered.
– He was going to expose you on Taboo. He was going to break the pact.
Viljam shook his head. – I was at Berger’s house every day after Mailin… went missing. Finally he realised what had happened to her. He even wanted to talk about that in front of the camera. He was certain he had me where he wanted me. I got him to believe that I would appear on his programme and confess. We sat and planned it together. Shock TV. He looked forward to it like a kid. Pity to have to deprive him of that enjoyment.
The high she was on was utterly unlike anything Liss had ever experienced before. – You’re fucked up, Viljam, she snuffled. – You’re a fucked-up piece of shit.
Distantly she realised that this was what he had been waiting for, that she would make him angry. He leapt up, forced her down on to the chair by her hair. At the corner of the fireplace was a coil of rope, he twisted it around her waist, tightened it across her breasts and knotted it behind the back of the chair. He made a noose out of the loose end and put it over her head.
– You’re no different from any of them, he growled. – Won’t be missing you.