I saw the emotions struggling for dominance in Hanna’s face, denial and anger, like oil and vinegar swirling in a bottle.
‘No, no,’ I said, and already I was on my feet, ready to shove her away if she tried to get near me again. I retreated down a couple of stairs, clinging to the banister. I dared not turn my back on her.
‘Don’t say no, Steffi,’ said Hanna.
She was on her feet too now. I saw her expression and backed down another step.
‘It was wrong,’ I told her. ‘All of it. I was wrong to wish those things. It was just a stupid game at the start and it shouldn’t have gone any further. It was wrong, Hanna. Wrong.’
‘What’s the use of saying that?’ she said angrily. ‘You can’t take it back, Steffi.’
‘I would if I could.’
‘Why? Because it’s wrong?’ sneered Hanna. ‘Then tell me what’s right with a life where people who are half dead already tell you what to do, where it’s all mapped out like a prison sentence, unending nothingness. What, are you going to go back and spend fifty years making Florentiners to your dad’s secret recipe?’ She was shouting now. ‘What’s – the – fucking – point?’
‘I don’t know what I’m going to do!’ I shouted back. ‘But I’m making up my own mind. Maybe I will make bloody Florentiners forever, I don’t know. But I’m deciding. Not my parents. Not you. I am.’
‘You can’t leave,’ said Hanna, and her voice was suddenly cold.
‘Yes, I can,’ I said, and I withdrew another step, watching her all the time in case she made a move towards me.
‘You can’t tell anyone. You’re in this just as much as I am.’
‘I didn’t shoot anyone in their bed or push anyone downstairs, Hanna.’
‘You told me to,’ she retorted. ‘I’ve got every single one of your notes proving it. You’re in it up to the neck.’
‘I don’t care,’ I said. ‘I’ll take my chances.’
‘Then you’re stupid. Just as stupid as the rest of them.’
‘Maybe,’ I said, and went down another step.
‘Look, it doesn’t have to be like this. Forget Julius Rensinghof. It can end here.’
‘How can it end?’ I asked her incredulously. ‘There’s a corpse in the garage and two bodies upstairs in bed. You think that’s all just going to go away?’
‘I have money,’ said Hanna. ‘Thousands of euros in my dad’s safe. There’s the Mercedes. We can go anywhere we want, do anything we want.’ She gazed down at me and her dark eyes were as cold and hard as chips of haematite. ‘It’s your last chance. Stay with me.’
‘No.’
I expected her to lunge at me, maybe try to get her hands around my throat, or shove me down the stairs. I was waiting for that, holding on to the banister, ready for the assault that never came.
Instead Hanna turned on her heel and marched away up the landing.
Where’s she going? I thought to myself, and then suddenly I knew. It came into my head as clear as day: Herr Landberg’s study, with the shooting-club photos and the dead animals’ heads on the walls and the open gun locker. Hanna was not going to let me leave. She wasn’t going to bother with anything as unreliable as a shove from the middle of the staircase. She was going to her father’s study to fetch something that would send a message screaming down the hallway after me, a deadly message that could travel faster than I could run, the kind marked no response required.
I thundered down the rest of the stairs as fast as I could, paused for a dangerous second at the bottom, looking wildly for a way out, and then I was running across the parquet floor, making for the front door. I thought I could hear movement on the upstairs landing as I reached the door and grabbed the handle.
Open, open, I thought as I wrenched uselessly at it. I looked for a key, but there wasn’t one in the inside lock. I glanced up and down; there were no bolts either. Hanna must have locked it and taken the key away altogether.
I heard the top stair creak as Hanna put her weight on it. She wasn’t bothering to run now; she knew she had the means to drop me even if I had a good head start on her. She had probably heard me rattling the front door too, so she knew exactly where I was. Sick and light-headed with fear, I ran towards the nearest open door. I glanced in and saw that it was the kitchen, with its subsiding landscape of used cartons and jars spread over every surface like the remains of a bombed city. There was no second door out of the kitchen, I saw. If I hid in here and Hanna found me, I would be trapped.
Sick fear had laid its hand heavily on me and for a moment I almost ran back the way I had come, blind and unreasoning in panic. Then I saw the telephone table with its stack of unopened letters and I remembered that I had come into the house this way. I was within a few footsteps of the door leading to the garage. My heart thumping wildly, I opened the door. It occurred to me that it would have been a good idea to open another door in the hallway, to confuse the trail, but there was no time for that now. I could hear the rapid thuds of Hanna’s feet on the stairs. She had decided to dispense with the sporting head start. I slipped through the door and closed it behind me as quietly as I could.
I looked out through the open garage door and for a moment I considered hiding inside. The distance to the gate or the shrubs bordering the garden seemed immense. I was not confident of crossing it before Hanna burst out through the door behind me and took aim. I glanced at the concrete floor, calculating whether there would be sufficient clearance for me to wriggle underneath Herr Landberg’s Mercedes. Some deeply ingrained animal instinct warned me against the idea. Hanna might not think to look there, but if she did I was all out of options. If the Mercedes ever went in for another service the mechanic would be cleaning my brains from the pipework underneath. I went for the open door.
Now I was on the gravel drive and the gate was a million kilometres away. I took a split-second decision and, instead of running towards it, I ran in the other direction, towards the corner of the house. I heard the front door slam as Hanna came racing out with such force that it swung shut behind her. She had foreseen that I would go for the gate and was determined to head me off. I glanced back and saw her standing there on the gravel, chest heaving, eyes scanning the drive for signs of me. At the very instant that I reached the corner, her head turned and our eyes met. I saw the revolver in her hand and my heart seemed to give a mighty kick inside my chest, like a bucking horse. Galvanized by terror, I flung myself around the corner, my feet skidding on the gravel, desperate to put the solidity of a stone wall between myself and the gun. A split second later I heard a single harsh report which echoed off the hillside so that for a moment it seemed that the air was full of the sound, like deadly rain.
Then I was pelting the length of the wall, passing the neatly stacked log pile that Herr Landberg would not be needing next winter. The crunching of gravel under my feet and my own ragged breathing were loud in my ears, but still I was listening with fearful intensity for Hanna’s footsteps and for the second report, the one that would bring death speeding towards me. I thought I could hear the sound of her approach already on the gravel as I turned the far corner, my lungs burning and my heart thumping.
At the rear of the house was a large conservatory, utterly useless to hide behind, and around it an expanse of lawn edged with shrubs and trees. I was running out of options. I circled the conservatory, hoping that it might provide a little cover for my flight, even for an instant, then made for the shelter of the trees. As I ran I sent up a silent prayer of thanks for the long dry summer. Since Herr Landberg had clearly not been in a position to mow the lawn for some weeks, only the searing heat had kept the grass short and dry. If it had been wet my footprints would have shown up as clearly as a neon sign saying She went this way. I dived between two large overhanging shrubs, jarring my knees and elbows painfully on the hard earth. Then I lay there in the shadows, trying desperately to stifle my own gasps of exertion and terror.
Had Hanna seen me? I dared not look out in case she saw me, but my ears strained for every sound. I heard running footsteps, then they were muffled and I guessed that she was crossing the grass. I bit my lip in an agony of terror but dared not move a muscle.
‘Steffi?’
Hanna’s voice sounded so calm, so reasonable. If I had not seen the gun in her hand for myself, if I had not heard its deadly report, I might have been tempted to come out. I caught the sound of something – a dried leaf, a tuft of baked grass – whispering under her feet and then a rustling. Judging that it was far enough from where I lay that she would not detect a very stealthy movement, I edged far enough forward to peep out from my hiding place.
On the other side of the lawn, Hanna was searching the bushes, thrusting them aside with the hand that still grasped the revolver. With a thrill of horror I realized that she was conducting a search and that sooner or later she would work her way over to the spot where I lay hidden. I had to move and the sooner the better, before she got close enough to spot me.
Trying desperately not to make a sound, I wormed my way backwards, deeper into the shelter of the overhanging vegetation. And at last luck was with me. I was right at the border of the garden, where it backed on to the forest. There was a wire fence separating the two, but even Herr Landberg’s fastidiousness had not extended to fighting his way through the shrubbery to maintain it. A long section was torn and curling upwards. I ducked my head and wriggled underneath, shrinking as low as I could, aware that to catch my clothing on the wire now was to sign my own death warrant.
I emerged on the other side, dusty and scratched but in one piece. I paused for a second, listening, and I heard my name hanging on the air, ragged as the cry of a lynx. Then I was scrambling up through brambles and saplings and the dry summer vegetation, until I found myself on a proper forest path and could break into a run.