Chapter 41
It is nearly seven o’clock, and the day is beginning to settle down.
The world has darkened a few shades. In the woodland Levchenko passes, shadows are rising between the trees.
The sun still makes it down to the road in places, dappling the warm tarmac and creating a camouflage of brighter shades in the canopy of overhanging leaves, but evening is arriving.
Birds flit low over the occasional fields, darting in and out of the clouds of midges itching above the hedges.
The purr of the bicycle tyres is all he can hear.
At some point, he slows, then stops, taking a moment to absorb the world around him. The complexity of light and shade, the contrast between the grey road and the shredded greens and browns of overgrown woodland.
The world is beautiful here, he thinks, because there is too much for the eye to take in, so much lovely detail that you glimpse only a part of it and catch the barest sense of an impossibly intricate whole.
He gets the same sensation from some paintings, where an abundance of colours and patterns, built with countless brushstrokes, awes the eye, overwhelming it.
It seems unimaginable that a human mind could have conceived something so complex and then created it, inch by inch, with nothing more than an accumulation of small, simple human movements.
But then, beauty can also be found in simplicity.
His daughter, Emmy, was beautiful – and yet her face was plain and unlined. Her beauty stemmed from the absence of complexity: the lack of guile and anger and hatred. She had been beautiful because, despite everything, she had always appeared undamaged by the world. At least until the end.
There are two types of people in the world, he believes.
There is good and, yes, there is evil. Some people see such simple, innocent beauty as his daughter possessed and they wish to protect it, recognising how fragile and precious it is.
But there are those who resent it and seek to corrupt it: to bring it down to their level.
People who cannot bear the presence of such beauty outside of them when it is gone from inside, or perhaps was never present at all.
Ugliness, then, is easier to define – and the world is full of it. Sometimes it is all you can see. And so he enjoys coming out here, into the countryside, and taking in a brief sip of its opposite. A reminder that the world can be beautiful, albeit almost always when people are not in it.
Levchenko puts his foot back on the pedal and kicks off again.
The tyres whine along the country lanes. The sack of wax pellets he has collected is strapped to the back of the bicycle. Home is mostly downhill; he rarely has to pedal at all.
As usual, once Emmy has entered his thoughts, she refuses to leave.
It is her loss that causes him to question everything.
Why was he spared in that accident? There has to have been a reason, and it cannot have been to see his daughter die.
What kind of God would countenance such a thing?
So there has to be something else. Something he was saved in order to do; a role he will play in a pattern that has not yet been revealed to him.
Unless that moment has already passed …
And this is his deepest fear: that God kept him alive so that, years later, he could save Emmy.
If that is the case, he failed long ago.
The thought is unbearable, but it would explain why, despite his most fervent prayers, God has fallen silent ever since.
While He remains real to Levchenko, perhaps Levchenko is nothing more than a husk in His eyes, devoid now of purpose and passing his remaining years much as he rides his bicycle, permitted only glimpses of beauty and understanding.
But no. That is intolerable.
If any number of things had been different, Emmy would still be alive today. Her murder was the effect, but his own actions were only one of the causes; there were others. He cannot bear to blame himself.
And so he chooses, instead, to blame the detective.
Hicks.
An image drifts into Levchenko’s mind: not the officer he’s been observing on screen, grappling with the spate of murders, turning awkwardly like a worm on a hook, but the younger man. The constable, brash and polished and indifferent. The one he met all those years ago.
He remembers sitting in a room with Hicks, cowed by the man.
Levchenko had been raised to respect and believe in authority; that was the reason he was there.
He could have taken care of her boyfriend himself – warned the man away from Emmy and made sure he took the warning.
Instead, he was here, talking to the police, because the police were meant to deal with things like this.
They were meant to take care of people and make sure they were safe.
They were meant to be good. So Levchenko had been certain the police would help him.
That they would save her. And yet, as he explained the situation, Hicks had practically yawned.
‘Please, sir,’ Levchenko remembers saying. ‘I am scared for her life. She will not leave him; she does not dare. He will surely kill her eventually. That is my fear.’
‘I understand.’ Hicks leaned back in his chair. ‘But there’s not a whole lot we can do unless she’s prepared to press charges.’
In desperation, Levchenko slid a photograph of his daughter across to the officer. He had taken it himself the night before, during the brief time Emmy had fled to their home before returning to his.
‘Please,’ he said. ‘Look at her.’
And Hicks did. He stared down at the black and white photograph of her bruised face for what felt like an age, and that age seemed full of possibilities – of hope, hanging by a thread but still hanging.
He was horrified by the image, but trying, professionally, to hide his reaction.
And for that brief time, Levchenko remained convinced that Hicks was a good man, and that he would do what was right, what was necessary.
‘He did this?’
Levchenko nodded.
Hicks looked up from the photograph. ‘She told you that?’
‘Yes.’
‘Will she tell us?’
Levchenko did not reply.
Hicks nodded and slid the photograph back across the desk.
‘I can’t tell you,’ he said, ‘how often we see this. And it breaks my heart, believe me. More than I can tell you. But ultimately, I have to say, there probably isn’t much we can do. We can proceed, but if there is insufficient evidence it will go nowhere.’
‘Nowhere?’
‘Our hands are tied,’ Hicks said. ‘The only evidence we’ll have is her word, and without that we have to weigh up the likelihood of a successful conviction against the cost of the investigation.’
Cost.
Levchenko stared at him, a sinking sensation inside.
‘There is also a danger,’ Hicks said, ‘that our attention might make the situation worse. Do you understand? He might take it out on her.’
Levchenko shook his head.
‘Please. You must protect her. Please. You must.’
There was a long silence, during which Hicks stared at him. Then he slid the photograph back and looked at it again. Levchenko saw his eyes flicking from bruise to bruise.
All right,’ Hicks said. ‘I’ll talk to him. To both of them. I’ll try anyway.’
‘Yes?’
‘I’ll see what we can do.’
‘Yes.’ The tension burst in Levchenko’s chest, hope spreading like blossom. All was right with the world again. ‘Please. Yes, you will do that.’
‘But I have to warn you …’
‘You will keep her safe.’
Hicks did not reply to that, and his expression was unreadable.
Thinking back, Levchenko would identify the look on the man’s face as boredom.
He would decide that Hicks had only ever been humouring him – that he wasn’t going to do anything at all, and his promise was an empty one, designed to get this awkward and naive visitor out of the room as swiftly as possible.
But at the time, he had hope. He believed it meant Emmy was going to be all right.
Levchenko stood up.
‘Thank you. Thank you. Make sure she is safe.’
And he had gone home that night – on the same old bicycle he is riding now – with a sense that it would be okay.
Hicks would talk to John Doherty, to Emmy.
He would recognise Doherty for the evil man he was, and he would arrest him and put him somewhere he could never hurt Emmy again.
Because that was what was supposed to happen, wasn’t it?
That was what the authorities were there for – to protect the beauty from the overwhelming presence of the ugly. Back then, he still believed that.
And yet, two days later, Emmy was dead.
I’m sorry.
Levchenko’s eyes blur slightly, and he thinks he should probably pull over for safety.
The bicycle is going very fast now. For the moment, though, he blinks the tears away and continues on his way home, cutting quickly down the otherwise silent and empty country lanes.
He wants to get home to Jasmina. He needs to hold her.
I’m sorry.
He is not even sure to whom he is addressing the apology. To God? To Emmy? Perhaps even, in some odd way, to the policeman himself?
For a moment, he nearly loses control of the handlebars, and he slows slightly, blinking at the tears blurring the road ahead. Regaining control of himself.
He needs to stop before he has an accident.
He needs to –
As he clenches the brakes, Levchenko focuses on the road for long enough to see that it is no longer empty. There is someone dressed in black at the treeline, just ahead on the left, running out of the woodland, as though coming to meet him.
What is – he barely has time to attempt a swerve –
And the world explodes.
Everything. Bright red.