Chapter Twenty Three
In London, summer was ending. The leaves were still heavy and
dense on the Bloomsbury plane trees, and the traffic still kicked
up a stifling dust. Laurie paid the cabbie, and read the message
with his first breath of home air: a tang, indefinable, coming in
from distant fields through the medium of tired city soil.
It's later than you think.
Laurie let his rucksack fall, being careful to keep the
satchel in place. He swayed a little, weariness catching up with
him. He and Sasha had gained time on their journey to the States.
That had seemed appropriate to Laurie—magical, almost, getting to
live eight hours of a rainy afternoon over again, this time in West
Coast sun. A good start to a new life, as if the whole of the past
could be transfigured in the same way. He looked at his watch,
which he'd obediently adjusted on the plane when told to do so.
He'd traded Californian evening for a fading afternoon: it was four
o’clock, the day devoured by his flight and the time zones.
Later, so much later than you think...
He had
come home. There was nowhere else to start. Perhaps he'd carried
some frail hope that he would stand here on the pavement, look up
to the second-floor flat and see a window cracked open, a shadow
passing behind the glass. The building's facade glared down on him,
elegant and blank. If Sasha hadn't been here, the trail was cold.
Laurie had nothing. He was poised on the brink of the abyss, the
yawning darkness that could swallow a world.
Dry-mouthed, he let himself in. The hallway was quiet, making
his ears flutter after the noise of the street. He jogged up the
stairs, at the last second calling out Sasha, as if the name could conjure
him. Everything in the kitchen was exactly as they had left it, the
fridge silent, tea towels clean on their rack. Sasha's work, that,
of course. A true Romani never left signs of his inhabitation. If
he could, he'd told Laurie, he'd have picked the building up and
moved it wholesale, sweeping the ground underneath.
There
was only one thing slightly out of place. Laurie laid his rucksack
and the satchel softly on the table and stood still. Grey light
from the overcast day was gleaming on the kitchen cabinets, picking
out their metal handles. Only one of them had a lock. The door to
it was intact. The lock itself had scarcely a mark on it. You would
have to look closely to see that it had been forced.
Laurie
pulled the door open. It didn't resist, its hinges unharmed,
everything inside it orderly and untouched. They'd used it for an
odd range of things—Sasha's confidential files, their passports and
other important paperwork, but napkins and hand towels had also
accumulated there, along with the enormous white lawn tablecloth
Marielle had bestowed upon them as a housewarming gift, three times
bigger than any table they were ever likely to possess. Laurie put
a hand beneath it, reached in deep.
He
closed his eyes. The only thing missing was the Makarov pistol, the
gun Sasha hadn't believed for one second was a prop.
What had he said in his note? There
are some things I have to take care of.
Laurie turned from the cupboard and rested his hands on the
windowsill, staring out unseeing into the street. Sasha had been
here. That was good, he tried to tell himself, as a bone-deep
tremor began in his limbs. It meant he was in London, or had been a
short time before.
He was somewhere loose in London with a gun. “Shit,” Laurie
whispered, banging his brow lightly off the window frame.
Some things... He'd left
his Bucharest greengrocer in Laurie's hands, which only
left...
Stefan.
Stefan Petrica. Laurie had whisked Sasha halfway round the world,
not just to keep him from harm but to shake off the harm's very
shadow, the knowledge of danger that would have surely crept into
Sasha's nightmares and destroyed him. It hadn't worked. Sasha,
hunted fox, had not been able to cast off his vigilance—had found
something out, or perhaps Laurie hadn't run far enough, and Petrica
had reached a claw even into that sunny far-off world which now
seemed like a dream to Laurie, a bright useless toy.
On the
far side of the street, a figure in a grey hooded top was waiting.
It didn't move when Laurie jerked his head up—this time made no
effort to dissolve in shadows or hide. It lifted one
hand.
Laurie
pushed off from the window sill and ran. The table was in his way:
he vaulted it, blind to the grace and the size of the leap. It was
as if all his life had been spent for this moment, all the stunts
and the stagecraft—just this, the need to close the gap between
himself and the frail hooded figure in the road. Cold fury seized
him. For weeks he'd been stalked by this veiled threat of Stefan's.
It was time to grab it by the throat. He tore open the front door,
got ready to make his wildcat's maze-jump through the
traffic.
“Laurie!”
He spun
round. A thin, dark-haired woman was standing at the foot of the
steps. Her arms were folded over her chest, and she'd put back the
grey hood. Laurie stopped himself from grabbing her, though the
effort made him feel sick. “Who the hell are you?”
“He did come here. Alexandru... Sasha.”
“I know he did.”
She was
desperately familiar to Laurie. Her mouth had a delicate, generous
curve that made him want to kiss it. He shuddered. “Why did you
call him that? Who...”
“I've been watching the house. I've watched both of you, as
much as I could, ever since I heard Stefan was back in London. You
have to listen to me.”
Laurie
locked a hand round the wrought-iron rail and stared at her. Crowds
of school kids were milling on the pavement, on their way to the
British Museum or Library: they were jostling her, and Laurie
reached out his free hand and drew her out of the way. “Tell
me.”
“He came here, and I thought I could stop him, so I waited. But
he must have gone out the back.”
There is no back, Laurie wanted to
snarl at her. But he was beginning to understand that Sasha didn't
need one. In San Marco there had been the gardens. Here there was
the bathroom window and the wall to next door's yard. It would
do.
“I waited, and then a girl came. She was about eleven or
twelve. She looked a lot like you. There was a woman with her, very
strict and watchful, almost like a guard. They rang the bell of the
flat and they waited, but—”
“A girl who looked like me? My sister was here?”
“I don't know for certain. But I think so, yes.”
Now
Laurie did take hold of her. His hands closed on her shoulders
gently. “My sister and this woman. What became of them?”
“It's what I must tell you. A car came, big, with blacked-out
windows. It stopped by the kerb, and they got inside.”
“Did they want to? Could you see?”
“The woman got in willingly, I think. The little girl... She
was terrified, or furious. She fought.”
“Dear God.” Laurie's mobile was upstairs on the kitchen table.
He made a dive for the hallway, pulling the woman after him. In the
doorway she baulked. “What is it?” he asked her, reaching for the
phone. “Come in. I won't hurt you.”
She was very pale. “This is... his house. Yours and Alexandru's. I
can't come inside.”
“All right. Just... wait there, please. For God's sake don't
disappear again.” The events of two years ago had burned the number
for the Scotland Yard Interpol office deep into Laurie’s memory. He
dialled. Kucharski had given him a direct line. The female voice
that answered sounded startled, as if it seldom rang from the
outside. “Christine Foster. Who is this?”
Laurie
flashed back to his father's house, to a sturdy, compassionate
policewoman who had stood between him and Sir William, and had
backed the old man down. “Constable Foster? I'm Laurence Fitzroy. I
don't know if you remember me, but—”
“As if I'm ever likely to forget.”
“Right.” Laurie sat down on the stairs. “I know we messed you
about last time. You and your office screwed me over too, not
telling me about... Never mind. He has Clara this time, I'm sure of
it. You have to help.”
“Your sister, Clara? Who has her, please?”
“Stefan Petrica.”
“He doesn't, Laurie.”
Why the
hell was she so calm? Distracted, too, as if something more
important was demanding her attention. There was a voice in the
background—high-pitched, alternating screams with volleys of
English and French, as if Interpol had caught a bilingual weasel.
“Jesus,” Laurie exploded. “I'm reporting the abduction of a child!
Your lot didn't see fit to let me know that Petrica was back in
London. And I'm sorry about John Kucharski, but... Look, just help
me now, all right?”
Foster
sighed. “You'd better let go of her, Elena.”
The line
went briefly dead. Then it opened again, to the same wild torrent
he'd heard in the background. Laurie closed his eyes, sparks of
relief dancing. Since Marielle's breakdown, Clara had spent so much
time with Aunt Elise that the voice of her passions had become a
fusion of English and pure Languedoc French. “Clara.”
“Laurie! Make them let me out of here! Je suis emprisonnée ici! Il faut sauver Sasha,
et—”
“Clara.”
It was a
tone he took with her so seldom that it still had power over her.
She cut herself off, dragging in her breath in a sob. “Oh.
Laurie...”
“Quieter. In English. Half an octave down.”
Her effort of control was almost audible, an anguished
creaking down the line. “He left. He said he wouldn't but he did,
after he promised.”
“Who left? Sasha?”
“Yes. He left the house in San Marco.”
“What do you know about it? Why aren't you Jane Eyre in
Seattle?”
“I saw the video clip.”
Laurie's
blood congealed. “Oh, no.”
“Not saw it—they wouldn't let me—but I knew what it was. I had to get
to him, to tell him everything you told me in the churchyard at Mrs
G's wedding, just so he'd know why you —”
“You told him what?”
“Your secrets, Laurie!” She was scaling back up her half
octave, desperation cracking her voice. “So shoot me! You should