The House with Nine Locks, page 23
Van Ranst hurried away. Footsteps echoed behind him, but he couldn’t be sure they weren’t his own. He reached the far end of Abrahamstraat and looked back again. Why would anyone want to follow him? It made no earthly sense, unless the idea was to rob him. But these days, there were far better prospects among the tourists milling around the city centre.
A light came on somewhere above him. A woman laughed, the sound carrying out into the night. A window banged shut, waking a dog opposite. It barked a few times, whined, and fell silent.
The man was a hundred metres away, just beyond a street light. Van Ranst could see the cigarette glowing in his hand. Was it the same man or another one? What if there were two of them? What did they want?
Should he run? Van Ranst’s black leather shoes weren’t made for running, and the other man would be faster. He had to hold his nerve, act as if everything was normal. Prinsenhof was just ahead. It was usually busier. There might be a policeman on patrol, or a taxi he could flag down.
He went round the corner. Nothing moved on the cobbled street ahead but a sheet of newspaper turning a somersault in the gutter. Van Ranst lived on Zilverhof. The turning was two hundred metres away. He could bang on a door and ask for help. But the houses were dark and shuttered. Would they even answer at such an hour?
Van Ranst took off, running as fast as he could. The cobbles were worn and shiny. His feet slipped. He didn’t dare look back. Halfway to the corner, the street opened out a little. He heard an engine. A band of yellow light panned across the houses on his left. A car was pulling out of a garage.
‘Help! Help me!’
The engine was loud, van Ranst too out of breath to shout again. He waved his arms, caught sight of a woman behind the wheel. She saw him running towards her and stared for a second, before gunning the engine and accelerating away in a cloud of exhaust. How could she do that, just leave him to his fate? Did she think he was some kind of maniac?
Van Ranst kept running. There were footsteps everywhere: behind him, ahead of him, they echoed up and down the street. He reached Zilverhof, coming to rest against an old red postbox. His chest heaved. His lungs were on fire. This was when they would attack him, when he was defenceless. He pressed his back to the wall and waited.
The footsteps had stopped. Nobody came round the corner. All van Ranst could hear was his own breathing. He risked a look back along Prinsenhof: it was just as empty as before. It was the same in every direction: a quiet, respectable quarter of the city, shuttered for the night.
He straightened up. Perhaps he had been a little quick to assume the worst. Just because someone was going the same way didn’t mean they were deliberately following you. What a sight he must have been, tearing down the road in his three-piece suit, as if the Devil himself were at his heels. No wonder that poor woman had driven away. He had seen her before. He did not know her name, but he knew she worked in a hospital. Most likely, she had been heading off for her night shift. She would have recognised him too, as a neighbour. Yet she had still refused to help. It was going to make for a very awkward encounter, the next time he passed her on the street.
He reached his house. It had turned into quite an eventful evening, one worth recounting to his wife. Annet had an appetite for anecdotes and trivia, especially when they involved people she knew. It was only when he opened the front door that he remembered: Annet was not there. Nearly two months had passed since the day she walked out, and he could still forget that it had happened. Part of him refused to believe it – or believed she would come back at any rate. But standing in the hallway under the glow of a single bulb, the rest of the house in darkness, her loss felt as permanent and irrevocable as death. He felt a rush of panic at the thought that he might never speak to his wife again.
What he needed was a drink. After a scare like that, he deserved it. He went to the drinks cabinet in the sitting room and poured himself a brandy. When that was gone, he poured himself another. It was a Monday night, but that could not be helped. He needed to calm himself, to head off the bitter mood that was creeping over him.
It was not his fault that Annet had not produced any children. The doctors had been more or less unanimous on that point: statistically, male infertility was rare compared to the other kind. Either way, it had been a grave disappointment, and not just for the usual sentimental reasons. The fact was – van Ranst had to admit he was at fault for not having seen it sooner – Annet was a shallow and unserious woman. Having children was her one chance to make a genuine contribution to society. If she missed it, all that was left was being a devoted wife, and she was not even very good at that.
With the brandy, he began to feel more optimistic. He decided to run himself a hot bath. The pipes were soon rattling and rumbling, the taps gushing like waterfalls. Van Ranst undressed. Annet would come back to him sooner or later. She would grow tired of living with her aunt in Roeselare – a dreary sort of town, if ever there was one – and begin to dream of home. He would be magnanimous too, once she made the first move. He took his marriage vows seriously, unlike a lot of people these days. And besides, his encounter with Jens Blommen had been an uncomfortable reminder of how embarrassing it was to have an absent wife, one who did not even have the decency to be dead.
Van Ranst dropped the last of his clothes on the chair and climbed into the bath. It was a good-sized tub and he was able to stretch out, so that only his head and his toes were above the water. He found himself thinking about the Astrid Christyn and the young women who ran it. If Miss de Wolf wanted to squander her inheritance trying to run a hotel that was her affair, but the gambling? How it had ever been allowed was a mystery. Reimond Huybrechts had been the main advocate. Van Ranst shuddered to think what hospitality, what manner of favours Miss de Wolf and Miss Helsen had lavished on the man to win him round – except, if he was being honest with himself, it wasn’t really a shudder that went through van Ranst’s body. It was more of a tingle, concentrated in the vicinity of his groin.
The young women would have had his letter by now. Soon he would have theirs: a humble, beseeching letter, promising to raise standards, and do better in future, if only he would reconsider. He would have to disappoint them eventually – the idea of young women in charge of a gambling establishment flirted with indecency – but the idea of them metaphorically kneeling before him, as they had perhaps knelt before Reimond Huybrechts, sent another tingle of excitement to his loins. He had reached down to more fully investigate the effect when he saw, reflected in the steamed-up mirror opposite him, a ghostly white face.
He screamed and tried to rise from the bath, the image already imprinted on his brain: white skin, a tiny pink mouth, a curly blond moustache and eyebrows, a pair of wire spectacles with dark green lenses.
Van Ranst’s hand slipped on the side of the tub. He crashed down into the water again, sending a surge over the side. The pale face was there again, looking down at him this time. It was a mask, one of those worn by the Gilles at the carnival in Binche. He had seen them on his honeymoon. His wife had taken a photograph, had even bought him a Gilles de Binche mask, though he had refused to wear it.
‘Annet?’
The Gille slowly shook his head. A hand in a rubber glove reached out and pushed van Ranst under the water. It was a strong hand, not like Annet’s, a hand strong enough to drown him. Panic took him. Somehow he got hold of an arm, a hand. He bit down hard.
The Gille yelped. For a moment van Ranst was free. He rose up, coughing. ‘Please, please, please, please, please!’
The hand planted itself on his head. He was helpless.
‘Conradt van Ranst.’ The stranger sounded like a judge pronouncing sentence, except that there was a coarseness in his speech that a judge would never have had.
‘You’ve got the wrong man.’ It was all van Ranst could think of, the one possibility of reprieve.
The hand pushed him under the water again. He was going to die this time. He was going to die and be left to rot in his bathtub. Van Ranst fought, tried to turn, get on his knees, but the hand – two hands now – held him in place.
Suddenly, they let go. Van Ranst surfaced. It came to him that he was being deliberately tortured to death, like one of the Christian martyrs he had studied at the seminary. ‘What … what have I done to you?’
The Gille bent over him. The mask wore an expression of mild surprise. ‘At the next meeting of the licensing committee, Mr van Ranst, you are going to be in a very good mood.’
‘W-what?’
‘You are going to say yes to every application, no matter where it comes from, no matter what it is. Got it?’
Van Ranst was shaking. He managed to nod.
The hand came down on his head again. ‘What are you gonna do?’
‘Say yes, say yes. Everything. Say yes. I will, I will.’
‘Or else I’ll come back and the finish the job. Understand?’
‘Yes, yes, unders-s-s- … Understand.’
The hand was gone. The mask drew closer. ‘Remember, I can find you anytime, anywhere, Mr van Ranst. You won’t keep me out.’
Van Ranst heard footsteps on the stairs. A gentle draught cooled his wet skin. The front door closed with a click. He lay in the water, shaking, his breath coming in shuddering pulls. He was not sure how long he lay there, but by the time he was calm again, the water was almost cold. He looked down and realised from the colour that at some point in the struggle he had lost control of his bowels.
The next morning, Staaf Ingels went early to the Astrid Christyn Hotel. He parked his van outside the service entrance and wandered over to the stable block, carrying his toolbox. It was a still morning, quiet but for the hum of the extractor fan in the kitchens, and the shriek of swifts overhead. The roofers had not yet arrived.
Saskia Helsen was inside, wearing a blue print dress. Her face looked puffy and she was not wearing make-up. Ingels had the impression she had not slept very well.
‘So. Did you …?’
Ingels nodded.
‘You conveyed the message?’
‘He got it.’
‘You’re sure?’
Ingels shrugged. Saskia handed him an envelope. He opened it and counted the notes. ‘I’ll need another five thousand.’
‘We agreed the price.’
‘The bastard bit me.’ Ingels held up a hand. There was a bandage round it. ‘I might need shots.’ He let the hand drop. ‘Five thousand francs. Call it a down payment on next time.’
‘There won’t be a next time.’
Ingels nodded towards the gaming room. ‘Like those odds, do you?’
A truck rolled into the driveway. The roofing crew had arrived.
‘Wait here,’ Saskia said.
She made her way through the hotel via the service entrance and let herself into the office. There was a chance Adelais would be up by now, but the kitchens were usually her first stop, followed by the dining room. Saskia went to the safe, and dialled the combination.
There was enough cash inside, but five thousand was going to be missed. She had already taken money from the cage on successive nights, making a noticeable dent in the takings. What could she say to explain the shortfall in the safe? Nothing very credible came to mind.
She heard Hendryck’s voice greeting one of the guests, a clatter of pans from the kitchens, the sounds of the Astrid Christyn coming to life. Saskia closed the safe, reached for her keys and unlocked a drawer in the desk. Concealed in the usual place was a stack of Patershol francs. She counted out ten of them and stuffed them in her pocket.
THIRTY-SIX
Adelais found the city council’s letter waiting for her on the desk. It had been three weeks since Mr van Ranst’s unannounced visit and she had been dreading bad news. The envelope had already been opened. Saskia had got to it first, but she hadn’t been in any hurry to share its contents. It had to be a bad sign.
The letter was brief and impersonal. The licensing panel had extended the gaming licence at the Astrid Christyn for another year. At the bottom was an illegible signature and an official stamp. Adelais read it three times, just to be sure she hadn’t misunderstood.
She found Saskia in the kitchens, helping herself to breakfast. ‘Have you seen this?’
Saskia nodded, her mouth full of fresh croissant. ‘Good, isn’t it?’
‘Good? I thought we were done for.’
Saskia shrugged. As usual, she had made herself a large café au lait, which she drank out of a bowl, like a Walloon. ‘He must have been outvoted, that awful man.’ She slurped her coffee. ‘What was his name?’
‘Van Ranst, Conradt van Ranst. His letter seemed so final, like it was all decided. He can’t have changed his mind.’
‘Maybe someone changed it for him.’
‘What do you mean?’
Saskia turned back to the ovens, where the morning’s fresh bread and pastries were keeping warm. ‘I mean, nobody likes a spoilsport, do they? And he was certainly that.’
‘Maybe. Or maybe your prayer was answered.’
‘What prayer?’
‘Your prayer for Mr Huybrechts’s recovery. Maybe this was his doing.’
Saskia helped herself to another croissant. ‘Well then, you have me to thank, don’t you?’
After lunch, Adelais put on her new red raincoat and rode her scooter back to Schoolstraat. She did not usually visit the old house during the working week. There was always too much to do at the hotel. Even on Sundays, there was no guarantee she would go. She went to pick up mail, hoping for a letter from her mother, or from an old friend – Maria Goossens, perhaps, who had recently married an accountant from Drongen, or Sebastian Pieters – but there had not been any letters of a personal sort for months. Sometimes she cleaned, but without her father or anyone else to mess up the place, the job did not take long. All she had to do was wipe the gritty windowsills and mop the floors. Perhaps even that much was unnecessary, but she did not like the idea of her mother coming home to a filthy house. It might have been empty and the lease nearing the end of its life, but 57 Schoolstraat was still the nearest thing they had to a family home.
Several letters had arrived from Africa during the previous year. None of them indicated how long Adelais’s mother intended to stay there. They were brief, incoherent, and took anything up to six weeks to arrive. Adelais had written back, but had said nothing about the hotel. Her mother would know the story about Great-Aunt Magdalena was a fiction of course, and the truth was out of the question, certainly in writing. She would be appalled to learn what Adelais had done. But that was too bad. Her mother had no right to complain. None of it would have happened if she hadn’t taken off, leaving her daughter with no support but an alcoholic father and a couple of thousand francs.
Adelais let herself in through the front door. The only thing on the mat was a flyer for a new restaurant on the Antwerp road. The Netley was parked in the hallway where she had left it, partly blocking the bottom of the stairs. She knew she should get rid of the old thing, but she had a feeling it would be hard to sell, and the thought of a junkyard was too much. She stopped for a moment and ran her hands over the handles, trying to recall the excitement she had felt when she first got hold of them, that sense of anticipation, of exciting new possibilities. The machine had never gone much faster than a gentle trot, but that had been enough to set her pulse racing. It felt like a long time ago.
She went through the house, checking that nothing was amiss. In the pantry she found a pool of water on the windowsill, a speckle of dead thunder flies floating on the surface. The bottom of the frame had warped, leaving a narrow gap under the sash. Adelais plugged it with some old rubber bands and made a mental note to repair it later. The rest of the house was unchanged.
The last room she went into was the workshop. Nothing had changed in there either and yet something felt wrong. It took Adelais a while to realise that the old wall clocks had wound down. For the first time ever the room was completely silent.
Her father never let clocks wind down, not even old clocks like these that nobody wanted any more. It was bad for the mechanisms, he used to say. They were made for movement. Adelais got as far as the door. If she was to wind the clocks, she would need the keys and where would she find them? It would be easier to leave the clocks as they were, telling different times, both wrong. With no one to see them, how could it possibly matter?
The workbench had drawers. The remnants of a system were still discernible: tools and spare parts in one, receipts and invoices in another. But the system had broken down over time, so that in some drawers, everything was mixed up. She went through them one by one. In the bottom drawer, a promising brass key peeped out from under a creased piece of paper.
The writing caught her eye. The hand was distinctive, familiar. The same hand had written the notebook Uncle Cornelis had left in his safe.
It was one page of a letter. The rest of it was nowhere to be found.
… she can get, if her years are not to be spent in the shadows, watching life go by, but never fully taking part. It makes me angry to think about it. She deserves much more. Tell me, Lennart: why should we always play fair in a world that isn’t?
I know Odilie is still upset about the Anderlecht business. It didn’t work out as we’d planned, but that was bad luck, not the work of God. Can she be made to see reason? I like to think that all she needs is time. If not, don’t let her way of thinking infect Adelais. The girl is too clever and brave to be condemned to a life of martyrdom and penury. I look at my beautiful niece and I see in her everything I have ever liked about myself, and nothing that I have ever disliked. If I had such a daughter, there is nothing I would not do for her, nothing I would not risk.
