‘Only us.’


The old black bone-shaker was still there on the track. Relief hit Alexei like a slap in the face and until then he hadn’t realised that a part of him had been doubting Maksim Voshchinsky. Fearing that he’d gone. But why would he do that when he’d just proved himself ruthless and thorough in protecting their backs? Alexei and Lydia resumed their earlier positions on the back seat and Alexei greeted Maksim with a grateful bear hug. The older man smelled of brandy but his skin felt brittle and cold, as though he’d been out in the wind.

‘Good to see you safe, my son,’ Maksim smiled.

‘Thank you, father.’

Lydia reached across Alexei and picked up one of Maksim’s hands. She removed the glove and lifted it to her lips, pressing a kiss on its veined flesh.

‘Spasibo, pakhan,’ she murmured.

The leader of the vory v zakone withdrew his hand with a chilly smile that went nowhere near his eyes.

‘Alexei,’ he said, ‘control your sister.’


The room smelled of blood. Metallic and salty and sticky as tar in the nostrils. Alexei stood just inside the door, heart pumping, seeking the source of the smell. He had accompanied Lydia into her house and up the narrow stairs. Something was wrong and he was determined to find out what. But on the top landing waited a thin man with suspicious eyes and a receding hairline, wearing a red armband that declared him to be the head of the Housing Committee. He blocked their path.

The man puffed out his weedy chest. ‘Comrade, there’s a stain on the floor outside your room. Please clean it up.’

Lydia blinked as though she hadn’t heard properly, then let out a gasp and pushed past, rushing to her door.

The man bit his lip, annoyed. ‘It looks like blood,’ he shouted after her.

Alexei followed. It was blood. And in the room there was more. The big woman, Elena, was standing by the bed. She lifted her head to see who had burst in without knocking, her pale eyes hard and angry. Beside him Lydia was quivering like a small animal, her teeth chattering uncontrollably.

‘Liev,’ she whispered. ‘Liev.’

On the bed sprawled the big man. His barrel chest was naked and exposed, except for a bandage which looked as though a large crimson dinner plate had been placed on top of it. A vivid strident red. Every inch of his skin was covered in blood, sweat or bruises, while his one black eye had sunk into an equally blackened socket. But his mouth, though split and scabbed, was twisted into a lopsided attempt at a grin.

‘ Lydia,’ he bellowed.

She flew across the room. Smears of blood rubbed off on her as she leaned over and kissed his hairy cheek, wrapping her arms around his bull neck.

‘You’re not dead,’ she said. It was an accusation.

‘Nyet. I thought about it. But changed my mind.’

‘I’m glad.’ She was beaming at him, her hands gripping chunks of his beard. ‘I thought you were dead, you big idiot.’

Alexei wondered if she’d act with quite that desperate energy if he came back from the dead one day. He doubted it.

‘They threw you out, did they?’ she laughed. ‘Didn’t want your smelly carcass in their prison?’

The Cossack grunted.

She patted the bandage on his granite chest. ‘Making a bit of a fuss over nothing as usual, aren’t you?’

He grunted again and from somewhere under the bandage rose a bubbling sound. It might have been a laugh.

‘Shut up,’ Elena snapped. ‘Don’t talk, Popkov.’

She was standing in the same spot, staring at Lydia with barely controlled anger. In one hand she held a white enamel basin piled high with scarlet swabs of cotton and stained bandages. In the other, which was turned palm up, lay a blood-streaked rifle bullet.

‘Did you take it out of him?’ Alexei asked.

‘Someone had to.’

‘Anaesthetic?’

She glanced at the empty vodka bottle on the floor and gave it a kick that sent it spinning under the bed.

‘Elena,’ Lydia said, her voice thick with unshed tears. ‘Thank you.’

‘I didn’t do it for you, girl.’

‘I know.’

‘I didn’t think you’d be back here.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because without the Cossack, there is nothing here for you to come back for.’

‘There’s you. And Edik with his dog.’ Her tone was bemused.

‘Like I said. Nothing for you to come back for.’

‘Elena,’ Lydia said solemnly, ‘I thought you and I were friends.’

‘Then you thought wrong.’

The woman dumped the bullet on Liev’s chest where it sat like a miniature gravestone on top of the bandage. A heavy stillness settled in the metallic-tasting air.

‘ Lydia,’ Alexei said quickly, ‘come with me. We’ll buy medicines for him.’ He wanted her out of this room.

She didn’t move. Her huge eyes were lost in shadows but her gaze was fixed unwaveringly on the Russian woman.

‘Why did I think wrong, Elena?’

The woman’s expression softened. But that made it worse, as if she saw no hope for the young girl in front of her.

‘Because,’ Elena said, ‘you damage everything you touch.’

50

Lydia rang the doorbell this time. She closed her eyes while she waited, to shut herself off from this moment as if it could belong to someone else. She had rattled halfway across Moscow in the trams as the bleached and pungent city air at last grew dark, and a moon as yellow as a melon skimmed up into the evening sky.

She’d watched a lamplighter pedal down the street whistling, with his long wooden pole over his shoulder, stop under a streetlamp and, without dismounting, turn its gas jet on with the tip of his pole. She wished she was him. She’d seen how the conductor on the tram, a woman with tired eyes, had handed out tickets with due attention to each passenger. Lydia had wanted to be her. Or the girl with the baby with the birthmark. Or the couple in the street with their arms looped together.

Anybody but herself.

The door opened. ‘Ah, Lydia. How charming of you to call.’

‘Good evening, Dmitri.’

‘I can’t say I wasn’t expecting you. You see how much faith I have in your word.’

He was wearing a silk maroon robe over black trousers and a smile so courteous that for one thin sliver of time she let it give her hope. He threw back the door and she walked into the hallway. Music was drifting out from one of the rooms and she recognised it at once. Her mother used to play the piece, one of Chopin’s Nocturnes.

‘You’re looking tired, Lydia, distinctly pale. Let me pour you a glass of wine. You’ll feel better.’ He held out his hands to help her off with her coat.

She didn’t move, just stood there in his warm apartment with her hat and coat firmly in place. She tried to find him behind his smile but he was too well hidden.

‘Dmitri, don’t do this.’

His grey eyes widened. ‘My dearest Lydia, you surprise me. We made a deal.’

‘I know.’

‘Your Cossack is back home?’

‘Yes.’

‘Not even dead.’

‘No.’

‘So,’ he spread his hands as if confused, ‘what’s the problem?’

‘I don’t want to do this.’

He gave her a slow, sad look and gently removed her hat, so that her flaming hair tumbled over her shoulders.

‘I really don’t think,’ he said softly, ‘that what you want is relevant. We agreed. A bargain is a bargain. I have fulfilled my half of it and now it’s time for yours.’ His voice was sounding different, as though his mouth were dry and his tongue heavy.

‘Dmitri, please. You are a decent man and we can still be friends despite-’

‘Friends! I don’t want to be friends!’

Anger flared for a second and he bared his teeth at her. And then it was gone, smothered by an attentive smile. That was when she knew nothing would change his mind and that was when she started to hate him. She glanced behind her at the door.

His hand closed over her wrist. ‘No, my little Lydia, nyet.’ He spoke soothingly, the way he would to a nervous colt. ‘Don’t think of leaving. And don’t glare at me like that. Such contempt.’ He laughed and the sound of it made her skin crawl. ‘If you try to leave, my dear, I shall have Comrade Popkov rearrested.’ His eyes grew brittle as glass. ‘Understand?’

‘Yes.’

‘Good. Now we understand each other, let me take your coat.’

She didn’t move but he carefully unbuttoned it for her and started to slide it from her stiff shoulders.

‘Dmitri,’ she said without looking at him, ‘what is to stop you threatening to arrest Popkov in the future every time you want me to come over here?’

He beamed at her, delighted. ‘Ah, now I see we really do understand each other.’

‘Answer me. What is to stop you?’

‘Nothing. Nichevo. Absolutely nothing.’


The room with the music turned out to be his study. It was intimate, despite the hard lines of the desk and the shelves of leather-bound books. Well chosen for seduction, it seemed to Lydia. Soft lighting, a gramophone playing, the rich colours of an Afghan rug on the floor, a pot of coffee and a bottle of burgundy on a table next to a chaise longue. It was the chaise longue that caught her eyes, with its elegant curves and dense green velvet. Silk cushions of amber and russet, as inviting as a forest floor in springtime.

‘Wine?’ he offered.

‘No.’

‘Do sit down.’

She remained standing.

He removed the gramophone needle from the record, poured out two glasses of wine and paused for a moment with one in each hand while he inspected her, head cocked to one side. He seemed to like what he saw. She wanted to slap the smile off his face. The room was over-hot. Or was it her? The aroma of coffee seemed to clog up her lungs and she felt suddenly sick. I can handle him, she’d boasted to Elena. How naive could she be? She’d stupidly believed she could flutter her eyelids and toss her hair at this man, extract what she wanted from him and escape without having to pay the price. That man eats girls like you for breakfast, Elena had warned. She should have listened to her.