Through Every Human Heart (7 page)

Lazslo eyed her nervously. Clearly she'd led Feliks a bit of a dance. He wondered what had happened to the shoes. She was a pretty little thing in spite of everything. Not her fault she was caught up in all this. She was a victim of circumstance. Like himself. He'd done his best to reassure her, but what use was that, when Feliks with his sarcastic unfunny remarks was determined to do the opposite.

If things were different, if he were a tourist, meeting her somewhere by accident, they might talk over coffee and become friends. Not that coffee was always a precursor of something good. Boris had offered him Italian coffee. He'd barely taken a first sip when the great man had announced, ‘I'm sending my son to Britain, and you are going with him.' He'd felt as if he'd been pushed into a lift shaft and was falling, leaving his mind disconnected and floating somewhere above him. He'd made an attempt to explain why this might not be a good idea, but his excuses were brushed aside. He was not to tell anyone where they were going or why. Specifically, he was not to tell Janek.

‘But he will ask me.'

‘I will tell him not to ask you,' Boris said.

Which was not as reassuring as it might have been for all sorts of reasons. Then as he turned to leave, Boris added, ‘I see one of your sisters had another little girl last month.'

‘Did she? I don't . . .'

‘. . . keep in touch. I understand completely. You're so busy here, and Dobruja is so far away. Congratulations anyway. Families are the backbone of our nation, Lazslo, we must all work at keeping them safe and well.'

 

The girl had fallen silent. Lazslo opened a brass box beside the hearth and picked out some pieces of a white compressed material with the tongs, laying them carefully on top of the small thin sticks. They burned well. The logs would come next. A good smell, the smell of burning wood. Solid and uncomplicated. He watched tiny beads of sap darken, and the flames lick along the sticks. There was no coal. Coal lasted longer but wood smelled better.

He used to like me. I used to make him laugh.

The flight had been dreadful. Feliks hadn't known who was coming with him until they met at the airport. He'd been furious. Then after the first outburst he'd hardly spoken at all, except when necessary. It was stupid to even imagine he'd want to hear Lazslo's side of things: how miserable he'd been, what little choice he'd had, all that had happened and why it had happened. They'd all depended on Feliks too much, that was the real problem. Leaderless, they'd scattered. So, whose fault was that? Not theirs, not completely. A true leader would have prepared someone else in case the worst happened. They'd believed all his big words but, behind the big words, he'd been nothing after all. Three years with those holy, sour-faced eunuchs on the mountain and he'd turned into one.

‘I suppose I could eat something.'

She was looking up at him under the fringe of hair.

‘Good, I will bring cake, and I will heat some soup.'

When he brought the cake to her, along with a glass of milk, she said, ‘Are you Russians?'

‘I think I may not tell you.'

‘Because Mr Uglyface told you not to?'

‘You should not call him that.'

‘You don't have to pretend. I know you don't like him. Oh all right, never mind. Who were those men in Irene's flat? Do you really not know them?'

The change of subject took him by surprise.

‘Not that it matters,' she went on. ‘This whole thing is just one insane nightmare from start to finish. I could be at home right now watching Denzel Washington with Rachel and a tub of Haagen Dazs.'

He didn't know what she meant but she had found her voice again. That was good.

‘He's making you do all this, isn't he? But you don't have to. You could let me get away now, while he's out, or later, when he's asleep.'

Or possibly it wasn't good. Not if it made Feliks angry. He shook his head, and went back to the kitchen, where tins of food stood in cardboard boxes. This at least had been properly done. The house itself was very neglected. He supposed whoever had arranged it had picked the cheapest place available without bothering to check whether it was clean or not. In a way, to do what she suggested would not be hard. Feliks trusted him with the car keys. If he wanted to, he could take the car and take her to wherever she wanted to go. If he were a different person. If his family didn't exist. If he didn't care what happened to them. He opened two tins of soup, poured them into a pot and, following the instructions on the wall carefully, powered on the gas.

With the girl's shoes dangling in his hand, Feliks stood in the uncut grass, watching the two figures inside the house. Lazslo had turned a light on. He was staring at the girl almost greedily, as if he'd not seen a woman for months and was ready to eat her.

There was traffic far away on the main road. Nothing closer. Before they left the city they'd lost without too much difficulty the red BMW with its dark-haired driver who might or might not have been curious about them. The sun was sinking. He tucked the shoes inside his zipped jacket and, vaulting the fence, began to go up the slope, moving from dim to darker shade and out again. The hillside was quiet, with scarcely any birdsong, though he thought he heard a noise that might be a stream somewhere. The slope grew steeper, birch giving way to closely-planted pine. He ignored the branches that caught at him, heedless of scratches.

At last he paused for breath. Beside him was a broken birch tree, shattered by wind or frost or both. Where the bark was gone, the trunk was a lustrous silver grey, and smooth, with darker, perpendicular grooves. Here and there tiny slivers protruded, like arrows broken off just below the arrowhead. A martyr tree. Some fragments of bark remained. He pulled, and off they came easily, like miniature plaster casts or the rough crusts of a wound. The trunk beneath was raw and red like a scar. A small white spider scuttled across the surface of the piece of bark in his hand.

Dimitar had been greatly upset by his face, that night when they'd talked together. He'd come via the outside window, creeping like a monkey over the sill. Feliks switched on a table lamp in the darkness. With only his hands to speak for him, the old man needed light to be heard.

‘I didn't tell him where you were,' Dimitar signed.

‘Did you know?'

Urgently the words took shape, ‘I took you there.'

‘How the hell did you . . .?' Feliks broke off, catching the agitated hands which were signing too fast for him.

‘It took too long,' Dimitar told him, beginning again. ‘I had to carry you to a doctor. Then three days by horse and cart to Tavcarjeva.'

‘How did you get away with it? Why there?'

‘Konstantin is an old friend. Boyhood. We stole apples many times together.'

He took a piece of paper from his trouser pocket and passed it over.

Feliks read aloud: ‘To inform you that the new plum tree is taking root and shows signs of good health.'

‘The plum tree was you,' the old man told him.

Now as he climbed on, the sound of water grew louder. He found himself on the edge of a crack in the earth. He caught hold of the nearest branch and sat down. The ground was damp. Above his head, the topmost branches on either side of the narrow crack almost touched, like the framework of a fragile roof.

‘You must get away tonight,' Dimitar had told him. The Asiatic cast of the man's features had become more obvious with age, the cheekbones more pronounced, the dark eyes wearier.

‘What happened to the others?'

‘Viktor and Daniel to Romania, then to the USA. Others I don't know. Lazslo you have seen. Michal and Vanya are still locked up in the Cismigui. The charges were bogus.' The fingers made the sign for ‘witnesses' and ‘lying bastards'.

‘But why? Why are they still there?'

‘Because he couldn't hurt you.'

‘What he said about the woman in Britain, is that true?'

‘Yes. I think so.'

‘Why does he want her? What use is she to him?'

‘Don't know. Many things are changing. Many foreigners visit him. Not just the Russians. They must want something from him.'

‘But he hasn't changed.' Feliks said, pulling the covers up around his chest and shoulders.

Dimitar shook his head.

‘All right, I'll run, but only if you come with me. You won't get away with crossing him this time. God knows how you managed it once.'

The hands became still.

‘Why do you stay with him? You've wasted nearly thirty years of your life on him, isn't that enough? Oh, I know. He rescued you from hell. But you won't save him. And it wouldn't surprise me if he believes in the fine old Hunnish tradition of slaves being buried with their masters.' He glanced at his brand new watch. ‘It's almost dawn. You'd better gets back before he wakes up and sends for you.'

‘You are angry with me,' the fingers signed slowly.

Was it anger, this horrible feeling? He had loved this old man all his life, and was still baffled by him.

With exaggerated slowness, the fingers moved again.

‘What kind of crap question is that?' Feliks replied.

‘Not crap. Tell me. Should I have let you die?'

The hands lifted his chin. The old man touched his damaged cheek, before kissing his forehead lightly. Then as silently as he had come, he was gone.

 

Gingerly Feliks leaned forward to see what he could of the drop. It appeared to fall away almost perpendicularly. Water rushed in a dim white line some fifteen metres below. The gap was wide enough, the ravine deep enough, the rocks at the bottom sufficiently hard. It would be easy. No more difficult than ending a spider's brief existence. He felt the cool air enter his lungs, the warmed air leave. Above him, the canopy of leaves shifted in the rising evening wind. He sat back on his heels then rose to his feet, feeling the girl's shoes shift against his chest. They were the shoes of a child who wanted to copy her older sisters, a spoiled child who shouted to get her way, and lapsed into hysterics if thwarted.

He stood up, zipped his jacket higher and began the descent. He remembered how her breasts had felt against his back when he'd carried her. And the smell of her, and her ankle bones under his hand.

There was no lock on the bedroom door, so Dina wedged a chair as best she could against the knob. She sat on the bed for a moment or two, then swung her legs up. The tufts of the candlewick bedspread were stiff. A faint disagreeable dust came off on her fingers. Above her, where the ceiling met the wall, thin cobwebs dangled. There was a white-painted wooden table beside the bed with dog-eared picture books and a dead clock on it, Disney pictures taped to the walls. On the wall light shade, Cinderella held hands with her Prince, infinitely adoring.

Well,
she asked them,
what are my chances?

She felt she'd been quite brave, all things considered, speaking up for herself with the nervous man. The horrible scary one had ignored her completely when he came back with her shoes, thank God. She'd never experienced real fear before, though she knew quite a lot about it. She'd written an excellent essay on ‘The Fear Response', for part of her diploma. ‘
The thalamus takes in data from the outside world. The data is sent on to the amygdala, which in turn tells the thalamus to fight or fly.'

Her amygdala wasn't working that well, she decided. Either evolution was a myth or she was one of the un-fittest, because she still wasn't fighting or flying. She was lying on some child's bed, asking advice from a lampshade, with slow tears dribbling off her cheeks into her hair. After a while she got up, pulled the itchy bedspread down onto the carpet, and got under the duvet. It felt a bit cleaner. Images and confused bits of thoughts skittered round and round in her head. Bebe with his head hanging nearly off. The stinky smell of the phone box. The nervous one smiling, saying she wouldn't be hurt. But the other one was the boss and hadn't she seen their violence with her own eyes? They'd thought she was Irene. So had the plumbers. They crashed into Irene's furniture, over and over again, the gold and scarlet Rosedale glass goblets splintering against the wall. But what was the fight about? And did these two foreign ones want to protect Irene, or pretend to protect her so they could kidnap her? Irene was worth kidnapping. She had lots of money.

On the positive side, since the phone call Irene knew that she had been kidnapped. Irene would tell the police. And if the repair men were ok, they might give descriptions. But even if they didn't the police would be looking for her.

Without taking the duvet off completely, she shuffled out of her skirt and the ruined tights, and inspected the front of her leg. The skin wasn't broken. She hoped his bruises were worse. The nervous one wasn't so bad. He had a nice smile. He talked to her as if she was a real person.

Reaching over, she pulled on the light and took a book from the bedside table. The title was faded, silver print on a green board cover.
Secret Water
by Arthur Ransome. In childish but painstakingly neat writing on the first blank page, the original owner had inscribed his name. George C Byford 1943.

The First Lord of the Admiralty was unpopular at Pin Mill,

I hate him, said Roger, sitting on the foredeck of the Goblin with his legs dangling over the side.

‘Who?' said Titty.

‘The first of those lords,' said Roger.

‘We all hate him,' said Titty.

She felt she was on Titty's side, although who in their right mind would call a character Titty? She attempted to read on, trying to enter a world where children had a Daddy and Mother, where they could wander unharmed in the country, with porridge for breakfast, and ginger beer and cucumber sandwiches, while her sensory cortex and hippocampus and hypothalamus raged on, sending data to and fro in her exhausted brain.

When she woke, the room was dim. Ten past three by her watch. She looked at the motionless hands of the clock, then found the key on the back and reset it. The second hand jerked its way round the face. How horribly like a spider's leg. She closed her eyes, but after a while, the discomfort low in her belly turned into proper pain. There was nothing else for it. She lifted the chair out of the way, trying to make no noise, and went out into the darker corridor. Underfoot, the lino was cold and tacky. She tugged the bathroom light cord with the very tips of her fingers, remembering how hairy and dusty it had been earlier. The light stuttered on. Gently she pushed the door shut.

Placing Kleenex around the seat, she sat as near the front as she could, trying to direct the flow forward so that it wouldn't be audible. No sooner had she finished and pulled her pants up when something huge fluttered in and out of her left ear. It darted away, and now it was flapping wildly along the light . . .

The door burst open, and he was trying to catch hold of her, demanding to know what was wrong.

She gestured upwards.

‘This is all? All that screaming for this only?' He let go of her, reached towards the moth, hands cupped, and brought them together soundlessly.

‘If you will raise the window, I will set him free.'

She managed it. He closed the window.

‘He was probably more afraid.'

‘That's so stupid. Why do people always say that? How could you possibly know?'

‘Come,' he said after a moment. ‘Since we are both awake, I will make some tea.'

‘I don't want tea.'

He sighed. ‘I have spoken again to Miss Arbanisi. We go to meet her tomorrow. You will be home soon.'

‘Liar.'

He looked directly at her. ‘Oh, I have many faults, Miss MacLeod, but I have never told lies. We will drink tea now, and be sensible. There has been too much stupidity.'

He switched off the light.

‘I don't want tea,' she told him again.

But she did. In fact she wanted milky tea with sugar, her father's constant remedy for childhood ailments. He would prescribe antibiotics to his patients but not to his family. ‘It'll either get worse or it'll get better.' She could hear him saying it. Except for eyes. Eye problems were always taken seriously.

The Arbanisi Design brochure was lying on the kitchen table. How had that got here? She supposed they must have got hold of it to find out about Irene. Rather than watch him while he made tea, she began to turn the pages, though she almost had it by heart. She'd done the proofreading before it had gone to the printers.

Based in Glasgow, Arbanisi Design is the beloved child of Irina Arbanisi and Paul Meeten. Projects range from concept schemes through to architectural refurbishments and decoration for residential and commercial clients . . . By keeping their company small, Irina and Paul ensure they are able to work closely with every client . . .

Irene had drummed that into her from day one. ‘Treat each client as if they were the only one. You're often the first person they speak to, Dina.' Her soft Highland accent, she learned, was a valuable asset.

Irene's photograph was on the front cover, standing over a table, with Paul sitting on the edge of it beside her, sleeves rolled up to show that he was the practical one. Neither of them was looking at the camera. She saw with surprise that her own hairstyle looked very like Irene's had four months earlier, not something she'd consciously aimed at.

Descended from European aristocracy, and a graduate in Fine Art at St Martin's, London, Irina is renowned for her innate appreciation of style and colour, while Paul, initially qualified as an architect, brings his own highly structured and disciplined approach.

She'd got the hang of the language quite quickly. ‘Selective Indulgence' meant you used expensive stuff where necessary, ‘authentic' was keeping some things the client already loved, or suggesting specific pieces for them to do that job. ‘Experience' just meant that the same difficulty had turned up before and could be solved in the same way. ‘Organic' she still wasn't sure about, but Irene said that would come with time. ‘Energy' fell into the same category. It was how a room felt.

Well, this kitchen felt gross, probably not a word designers were supposed to use. Every shade of brown in the universe had been used on the walls, floor and shelves. The cups on the row of hooks would have been rejected by charity shops. The table had been upcycled with pages from The Reader's Digest Book of British Birds, glued on and coated with varnish. Not a bad idea, if it had been part of a design scheme, but it wasn't. It was just there.

‘Is that a good likeness?'

‘Of Irene? Yes.'

He poured tea into two cups, placing hers on the stomach of a Little Owl, who looked rather taken aback. Its black and yellow eyes stared at her, as if it expected an apology. There was milk but no sugar.

This bird is now protected by law . . . the commonest call-note is a low plaintive ‘kiew-kiew' . . .
She tried it out inside her head.

The curtains hadn't been closed over. He stood with his tea looking out at the night. He was wearing a black vest and the same trousers he'd had on before. Maybe he hadn't actually gone to bed. His skin was deeply tanned but there were jagged white scar lines on his shoulder and upper arm, disappearing under the vest, on the same side where his face was damaged. Whatever had happened to him must have hurt a lot, and not been dealt with quickly or expertly enough.

‘It is to your liking?' he said, turning round.

She started guiltily, then realised he only meant the tea.

‘Yes. Thank you.'

‘You are not in this book,' he gestured to the brochure. ‘Why is that?'

‘Yes, I am.' She found the small photograph where her face was just visible behind Jonah's, and pushed it over so he could read the caption with all their names.

‘I'm sorry. I was wrong not to believe you,' he said. ‘This time tomorrow you will be rid of us. Now you must try to get some sleep.'

She didn't know where to look. Leaving the tea unfinished, she mumbled goodnight and went back to her room.

No signs of life in the world outside. No owls of any kind. No lights anywhere, except for the stars. She'd grown up in a place like this, without street light, so her ignorance of the night sky was, she knew, staggering and disgraceful. Her ignorance of so many things was staggering. She got back under the quilt and thought of her fear of moths and all small flying creatures, her father's strong hands, her childhood safe places. She wondered what the ugly man might have looked like before, and what had happened to him. His apology had flummoxed her. It wasn't fair. Her anger and dislike were being undermined, which wasn't fair. She refused to be the one who was mean and unreasonable. This soft talk was meant to fool her, keep her from causing trouble. Well, she'd cause trouble if she wanted to . . .

In all the small intervals between these flummoxing thoughts, she knew for a certainty that she'd not get back to sleep, but in this particular at least she was wrong.