The Third Section (59 page)

Tamara went back into Raisa’s room and looked around. Her eyes fell on the tools beside the fireplace. Autumn was heading for winter now, and the fire would soon be needed, but that was not Tamara’s immediate concern. She grabbed the poker and went back into the tiny space. It took only two determined blows for the iron tip to pierce the wooden panel beneath the paint. She pushed the poker deep into the hole it had created and encountered no resistance. She withdrew it and felt a light, cool breeze blowing at her through the gap, accompanied by a musty stench.

She hacked away again with the poker, making the hole bigger, and then used the hook on the end of it to pull away shards of the splintered wood. It wasn’t thick, and Tamara soon realized that it would be easier to break through with her bare hands. Soon there was a large enough gap to peer through. She picked up the lamp and looked. Leading down within the thick wall was a staircase.

Within minutes, Tamara had created enough of a breach that she could squeeze through. She reached back to pick up the lamp and the poker. From inside she could see that the wooden panel had a latch and a handle with no corresponding partner on the other side. Instead, a length of cord was attached to it, feeding upwards before disappearing into the ceiling. Evidently this was a door rather than a wall, and was intended to be opened in a more civilized manner than the one that Tamara had come up with. Where the end of the cord secretly emerged, Tamara did not know – but she could guess who did. She turned and went down the stairs.

They ended at the level of the ground floor. Tamara imagined the salon beyond her, through only a few inches of wooden wall.
The
space was no larger than at the top of the stairs between the two doors. This, though, was not the end of the journey. Now a ladder descended through a small, round gap in the floor. Tamara threw the poker into it and heard a thud as it landed on what sounded like earth. She put the lamp on the floor and began to climb down the ladder, allowing her skirts to ride up so that her feet could find its rungs. Just before her head disappeared, she retrieved the lamp and ducked into the cellar below.

It was a small space, barely high enough for Tamara to stand upright. The building had sizeable cellars – Tamara had been in them – but they did not fill quite all of its floor plan. This extra space explained why. It was inaccessible from the main cellars, but as Tamara glanced at the wall, she guessed it was a temporary barrier and that when the building had first been erected all the spaces beneath it had been interconnected. Both this area and the route down to it were relatively new.

There was only one object in the room – a coffin. Tamara walked over. It was open and empty – expensively made, with a silk lining. Its purpose – the purpose of the whole room – was obvious; it was the resting place of a
voordalak
. Raisa’s job entailed that she work above during the night, but Tamara had never known where she lived during the day. She had said she had rooms across town, but now it was clear that it was into this cellar that she came each day as dawn broke, and in this coffin that she slept.

Tamara looked around again. Across the room, a dark tunnel led away to the north. Along there must have been some other exit, out into one of the gardens or perhaps the cellar of another house. It would explain how she had often seen Raisa arrive for work through the front door – always after dark – as if coming from her home. She had been, but her home was beneath that very building, and all she had done was depart through the tunnel and emerge elsewhere, disguising the fact that she could in reality have simply climbed the ladder and the steps back up to her room.

But the one striking realization that had come to Tamara as soon as her eyes had fallen upon the coffin, as soon, perhaps, as she had discovered the concealed stairway, was that all of this had been here for some time. It could not have been put together
in
the weeks since Raisa’s encounter with Tyeplov, when she had supposedly become a vampire. It could never have been built without Tamara noticing: the wall had always been that thick; the cellar had always been missing this section. It must all have been there when Tamara had first arrived, over a year and a half before.

And that meant that from the moment Tamara had met her, from the moment that Raisa had first opened the door and invited her in, she had been a
voordalak
.

Did that really make much of a difference to things? For Raisa – no. If she had been such a creature for two years, or for ten, or for a century, it was of little import compared with the fact of what she was. But for Dmitry, it made all the difference in the world. He had believed that Raisa had become a vampire out of her love of him; that she had become undead to save herself from the certain death that consumption would bring and to save herself from the separation from Dmitry which would ensue. She had persuaded him that once she had led the way down that path out of love for him, he should follow out of love for her. But while his love had been real, hers was a lie. She had been a
voordalak
since before Dmitry had ever met her, and all of the events with Tyeplov, her journey to Klin to be safe from him and Dmitry’s race out there to save her – so perfectly timed that he witnessed the very moment of her conversion – were part of the same web of deceit, intended to entrap him and make him willingly become a creature like her. It made him no less of a fool for falling for it, but it was clear that the whole thing had been expertly planned.

Too expertly for Raisa. She would not have had the wit for it, and certainly would not have been able on her own to hide her coffin beneath the brothel in this way. Had she had Tyeplov’s help? Certainly in the deception of Dmitry, but Tamara doubted he could have helped her construct this. That would have needed to be organized by whoever owned the building. And that was Yudin.

It was Yudin who had suggested that Raisa go to stay in Klin, Yudin who had miraculously discovered the correspondence between her and Tyeplov, Yudin who had conveniently managed to hire a horse so that Dmitry could chase after the train. Was
Yudin
a
voordalak
himself, or simply a human who had some kind of alliance with them? It did not really matter, though try as she might, Tamara could not recall ever seeing him in daylight, or seeing his shadow, or seeing his reflection. And Yudin, she already felt certain, was Makarov; and Makarov was very old. How well he hid it.

Tamara climbed the ladder and went back up the hidden stairs to Raisa’s room, and then back down the main stairs to the salon to see Nadia about to knock on the door of her office.

‘I’m here,’ said Tamara.

Nadia turned. ‘This was just delivered for you.’ She held out a letter.

Tamara took it. ‘Who by?’ she asked, as she broke the wax seal.

‘Just a messenger boy.’

Tamara read.

My dear Madame Komarova
,

I am informed by my agents that Raisa Styepanovna is heading for the railway station with the apparent intent of catching a train to the capital. I trust this information is of interest to you
.

Titular Councillor Gribov

Tamara walked briskly over to her office. She returned a moment later having acquired two items: a pistol hidden in her bag and a cane held in her hand. The cane’s tip was covered, but beneath it was still sharp enough for its purpose. It might have been Yudin, as part of his intricate deception of Dmitry, who had suggested using that combination of weapons against a
voordalak
, but it did not mean that they would be any less effective.

Outside the house, she turned right and headed towards Tverskaya Street. It was away from the station, but was the nearest place that she would be able to hail a carriage.

She hadn’t gone more than three paces when she felt a hand tugging at her sleeve. As she turned, she heard her name being called. ‘Toma!’

It was the old woman, Natalia Borisovna – or at least that was the name she had used when they had last met, at almost the same
spot
over a year before. Natalia Borisovna’s own son’s testimony, that she was long dead, had proved that this woman was not who she claimed. But could Tamara be sure of that – or of anything? Yudin had spun an impenetrable web of deceit around Dmitry – might he be doing the same with her? Had that really been Natalia’s son she had spoken to? Or perhaps all was true. Perhaps Natalia had died and this was her, risen from the grave? Bizarre though it was, it could prove the most plausible explanation.

But it was Raisa, not Natalia, who was Tamara’s primary concern. ‘Go to Hell!’ she spat, and continued on her way through the darkness. As she walked down Degtyarny Lane, towards Tverskaya Street, she heard the old woman’s shuffling footsteps, desperate to keep up with Tamara’s longer, younger stride.

‘I must speak to you,’ the old woman called out.

This time Tamara didn’t even turn. ‘I’ve no time,’ she shouted. She turned on to Tverskaya Street and saw a coach. She stopped and raised her hand.

Almost immediately the woman caught up with her. ‘Toma,’ she repeated, ‘I have to tell you.’

Tamara turned, at the same time plucking the protective cover from the end of her cane and pointing the sharpened tip towards the woman’s chest. ‘I’ve no idea who you are, but I’ve got a pretty good idea
what
you are, so you’ll be wise to be afraid of this.’

The woman was bewildered. She certainly had none of the arrogant self-confidence that Tamara had seen in Tyeplov and Ignatyev and even at times in Raisa. Perhaps she was mistaken, but still she had no time to consider. The coach pulled up and she climbed aboard.

The woman grabbed at her. ‘Toma!’ she cried. Tamara pushed her off, not strongly, but the old woman fell down. Tamara felt a pang of sorrow, but she knew she must not yield to it. She gave a brief, firm instruction to the driver.

‘The station – quickly.’

The coach began to move off. Tamara looked back and saw with some relief that the old woman was back on her feet. She raised her hand to her mouth to shout and at the words, Tamara froze. ‘Your father sent me to warn you!’

Tamara almost told the driver to turn back, but she would be
a
fool to do so. She was being manipulated, just as Dmitry had been. She had to catch up with Raisa, had to stop her, had to punish her for what she had done to Dmitry. Thinking of it, as she sat in the coach, rattling through the Moscow streets, it sounded foolhardy, but who else was there to do it? Perhaps one day she would have to kill Dmitry too, but that would be an act of mercy, not vengeance. And what of Yudin? She did not know. All that could wait. First she must deal with Raisa – or try to. If Raisa were the victor then at least Tamara would die doing something good. Luka might never hear of it, but he would have a mother that he could be proud of.

She felt a pain in her stomach again and something rising in her gullet. She thought she was going to be sick, but it was only wind. She breathed deeply. Here inside the carriage she was safe and comfortable, if only for a few minutes. She had to ready herself. Even so, she had no idea what she was actually going to do. She could not stab Raisa in the middle of the station. Or could she? There would be no body left behind, she had seen that with Ignatyev. All she needed was to find some quiet corner where no one was looking and it would be as if Raisa had never existed. If such an opportunity did not arise, Tamara could wait. She had time on her side; in around eight hours it would be dawn.

Now the station was in sight, its clock tower, topped by the Russian flag, rising above Komsomolskaya Square. The coach stopped and she paid the driver, then rushed into the station. There was only one train waiting – a mixture of freight and passenger wagons. Winter was now close enough to merit boxcars for the third-class passengers instead of open, flat trucks. Tamara walked along the train, peering through the unglazed windows, but saw no sign of her quarry. Now she was passing the second-class coaches, and the windows had glass. A flash of blonde hair was all that was needed for her to spot Raisa, her head turned away, looking out of the far side of the carriage.

Tamara doubled back and climbed on to the metal platform at the end of that carriage, standing next to the conductor. She didn’t go in yet – she didn’t want Raisa to see her and have the chance to get off. Things would be much easier once the train was moving.

‘Would you like to take your seat, madam?’ the young man asked.

‘When we get going. I just want to be able to wave goodbye.’

The conductor shrugged, but didn’t object. Tamara kept glancing into the carriage, but Raisa was still there, and had not caught sight of her. At last the whistle blew. The conductor released the brake and the train began to roll out of the station. In keeping with her story, Tamara waved towards the people who were left standing on the platform, perhaps surprising one or two who had never realized that they knew her. Finally, when they were clear of the station buildings and on open track, she went inside.

Raisa had her back to her, and that really wouldn’t do. Now that they were moving, it would be better if Raisa understood the danger she was in. Tamara walked to the front end of the coach, where there was a spare seat three rows along from Raisa. She took it and fixed her gaze on the vampire.

It was about two minutes before Raisa turned away from the window and saw her. There was no indication of shock or surprise, or even acknowledgement. There were tears in her eyes, but they had been there before she had noticed Tamara. Tamara suppressed the pity she felt at the sight. It was a human reaction to a human emotion, but she knew that whatever soul might lie within Raisa, it had long ago forgotten what humanity meant. Whatever tears she might shed now were nothing compared with what was to come. If she got off the train then Tamara would follow her and drive the wooden cane into her heart. If she remained on board then eventually the light of dawn would shine through that window and destroy her. Tamara had only to wait, but in doing so she still watched, her eyes fixed on Raisa, reminding her that there was no escape.